Breaking it down - and knocking it out

At the end of day one of a major contract, I'm numb from absorbing billions of pixels of formal communications. I spent the day learning about the company for whom I'll now be writing and developing information over the next few months.

So I'm going to write something more off-the-cuff. As that poor guy in Mr. Osborne's class said in a posting a few months back: "My brain is full."

I find that so much of my idea generation has to do with finding commonalities between things, or aspects that link them together. If I am going to write anything down - especially here - I will also hope that the product of bringing disparate things together might be something unique, and if not that, at least something worth sharing. After all, there are no unique ideas, only unique iterations, right?

I've been accused by many of being someone who "thinks too much." Since starting to commit my ideas here, I'm now more on the lookout than ever for the deeper meaning of signals everything around me can offer.

Take my last workout with the heavybag in my garage. A former karate student, I still like to mix it up with the bag; I never stopped loving to kick and hit things. (Ah...now one gets why the cheesy choice of photo this week - and no, it ain't me.)

So last time I'm there wailing away on it - it's one of those water-filled base kinds that sit on the floor - and it starts spinning in a predictable pattern, so that it bounces back rythmically toward me with each punch. Each time, I go back in with the right hook in response. It becomes a dance of sorts, as the bag does its wobbly spinning thing each time I club it: bam-wobble-bop-bop-wobble-bam.

And it's this dance that boxers and sparrers of all disciplines rely on in predicting the next best place to go in and punish one's opponent. We also look for signals in the way other body parts might "telegraph" the fighter's intentions, like the eyes getting really wide when someone's about to strike. Dancers act on and often mirror the signals of their partners in a similar fashion.

And isn't it therefore a kind of communication that one has with one's training bag/sparring partner/opponent? See? It's all communication.

Or DO I just think too much? D'you think so? Lemmeknow by posting your comment...

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