Downward Dog

Smudge, YogaDog

Since the purpose of this blog is to grease the cogs and get the machine moving after a period of inactivity, meaning the night, I will endeavor to keep the titles on subjects related to the warm-up mode. For instance, today is downward dog, not just because I understand this is Yoga maneuver, but also because my dog Smudge performs this exercise whenever he gets up from laying down somewhere. I understand he does it quite well. I think he's still a very limber dog although his brother Scout is not. Scout used to do the front dog stretch when he was younger but now he usually just makes his front legs straight and then straightens out his back legs, one at a time. He's got a lot of arthritis so I completely understand his modification of the standard dog warm-up drill.

I, myself, practice a very modified version on an infrequent basis. It is helpful especially on those days that we seem to wake up stiffer than usual.

See this is just the typing that gets the fingers moving. Once I get warmed up, typing becomes a pleasure. But somedays, getting to that point seems to be like practicing home dentistry, in the dark. I swear I can't get through a single word, and worse, when my mind is in its special hamster wheel mode, I stop and correct every single little problem as I go. This has the effect of keeping me in a state of agitated frustration and never letting me finish a thought unhindered. Two very bad things. The other thing... I just stopped to change the song that was on because it was driving me nutso, and 6 seconds later, I returned to the sentence I was typing and couldn't remember what I was going to say.

This is just another one of the problems with stream of consciousness writing warm-up. Maybe I can get the thought back by going at the typing again. In the meantime, I'll say that the cure for the problems I listed above is to defocus my eyes, look at the keyboard, not the screen, and just go for it. Fast as I can. Pretty soon the words start coming out faster and better and then I know I'm ready to begin my writing exercises for the day.

When I get to this point as I am now, Typing is actually fun. I can almost keep up with my thinking and I hit keys with vigor and elan. There are a couple words I should type less and live more. Good place to stop and go back to survey the damage. Quel Fromage!
More later,