Ornoth

Like golf, kyūdō is supposed to be a little humbling. Part of this Japanese martial art is to provide the archer with opportunities to observe and reflect on his emotional reaction to stress, adversity, frustration, and failure.

I really don’t think it’s supposed to be this hard, tho.

But before I talk about what’s going wrong, let’s talk about what’s gone well: buying things!

Soon after restarting my lapsed kyūdō practice in a new lineage, I purchased a basic kyūdō uniform: a dogi, kaku obi, hakama, and tabi (i.e. shirt, belt, pleated skirt-pants, and footwear). Plus my first yugake (shooting glove), custom-sized for my hand and specially crafted in Japan.

Last year I added the essential equipment. I ordered four semi-fletched arrows from respected kyūdō teacher Dan DeProspero in North Carolina for close-range indoor use with a makiwara target. Then I gained a beautiful set of six fletched arrows for long-distance shooting, which my buddies picked up for me while they were attending a workshop at Blackwell-sensei’s dojo in South Carolina. And I topped it off with a new, extra-long (yon-sun), 12kg draw weight Jikishin II composite bow in a group order from Japan’s Sambu Kyuguten.

I definitely look the part. So what’s the problem? Literally everything else!

But taking aim at the main problem: I can’t release an arrow properly. Sometimes the arrow launches feebly and bounces off the practice target. Other times it flies thru the air sideways and clangs off the target. Sometimes the string tries to rotate around the bow so violently that the bow “flips” and inverts itself, requiring a manual reset. I’ve even broken the string on one bow. And every misfire produces eye-wateringly painful abrasions and bruising on my left thumb or wrist.

This kinda thing happens to archers from time to time. With a normal problem, you would diagnose what you’re doing wrong, correct it, and move on with your practice; but it’s been more than 18 months, and I’ve tried so many things, with no success in fixing my release. In the past six months, I’ve made just 23 successful shots, against 31 misfires of various kinds. And I sat out three entire practice sessions purely out of fear of shooting. I’ve even had actual nightmares about kyūdō.

These days, I panic before every shot, anticipating the painful abrasions and bruising that accompanies yet another humiliating misfire. Obviously, my “release anxiety” isn’t helping matters at all.

Another frustration is the number of plausible fixes I’ve tried. At first I thought that the glove on my right hand wasn’t holding the string securely, causing it to slip free unexpectedly, with my other fingers impeding its release. When fixing that didn’t solve my problems, I started looking at my left wrist, which is weak and thus has a tendency to buckle inward or outward at full draw. Then we tweaked my grip on the bow, even swapping in a larger grip, because my fingers are considerably longer than those of the average Japanese archer. I tried rotating my right arm vertically on release rather than horizontally, in case that motion was interfering with my release. I tried changed where the arrow was positioned against my glove and putting less torque on my right hand, thinking my glove might be nudging the arrow out of nock. I’ve perpetually been advised to loosen my grip on the bow, but that’s something I’m pretty cognizant of, and doesn’t seem to be the main problem. Because I’ve been afraid of doing a full draw for so long, I tried altering my stance to force myself to fully extended my left arm, in case that was influencing the flight of the arrow. And most recently, I’ve tried focusing my grip on the bow with my middle finger. Out of all these things I’ve tried, nothing has worked.

A complicating factor is that our club doesn’t have an actual experienced teacher among us. Our most senior member is still pretty junior, only recently graduating from Second Dan. So although I get a ton of well-intentioned advice from other members, it’s mostly amateur guesswork and is sometimes contradictory. So many different suggestions have been piled on simultaneously that I can’t adequately test whether any of them are working. Especially when we are only able to shoot three or four arrows per weekly session!

As I said above, part of being a kyūdōka is learning how to manifest stoic strength, showing neither elation nor disappointment in one’s performance. So I’ve been exceptionally patient, never showing any overt emotional response. Meanwhile, I’ve helped new practitioners, who began with considerably less skill and self-awareness, advance far beyond me in skill. Although I really don’t care about rank at all, after nearly two years of incompetent struggle, I’m not improving, and I’ve finally exhausted my willingness to suffer in silent solitude.

A normal kyudoka would long ago have called on the experience of their teacher. For better or worse, our Austin group falls under the auspices of a Seventh Dan teacher who lives in South Carolina and runs his own group there. He never comes to Austin, and we can only travel to see him once or twice a year, when he holds kyūdō seminars that are well-attended and open to the public. At those seminars, he prefers to work with his advanced students, and I don’t want to show up on his doorstep asking for him to solve some aging stranger’s beginner struggles. Ideally, I’d get my problems cleared up and develop some basic competence before working with him. But until that happens, I’d be too ashamed to show up with such fundamental problems, and it would be a pointless waste of a trip if I was unable to participate in shooting.

While I expect my struggles to continue, there are two potential options for possibly getting help.

Our sensei has mentioned the possibility of hosting a weekend seminar specifically for our Austin group. This could be a way for me to meet him and get some personal instruction without taking his precious time away from his favored students. The challenge would be getting a critical number of students to schedule travel together to South Carolina to make it worth sensei’s time. And meanwhile, I’ve got an upcoming surgery that’ll prevent me from flying for six months.

Another possibility might be sending video clips to him for his critique. This has the advantage of being easier to make happen, but it would limit how much sensei can see, as well as how quickly I could test out his suggestions and get rounds of feedback. Plus it would still be an imposition, and he’s known for being terse and a poor correspondent.

At any rate, I’ll be taking the month of March off from kyūdō following my upcoming surgery. I have no idea whether that downtime will be a useful reset for my technique or an opportunity for me to atrophy and fall even further out of practice.

This is all an immense challenge to the air of competence and Buddhist stoicism I usually try to exemplify. Despite my obvious struggles over the past year and a half, I successfully remained nonchalant and kept my frustration on a low simmer. But at this point the pressure has built up and reached an explosive level where it has to come out. It’s been a very long time since anything has frustrated and humiliated me so thoroughly as kyūdō.

After two years of continuous struggle, it would be illogical to think anything is likely to change. So there’s no way to end this post optimistically. Just venting, while documenting my lengthy, painful, and ongoing struggle.

Although it’s a completely arbitrary marker, this is the time of year when people look back and take stock, with the aspiration that things might be different from this point forward.

I am entertaining that same hope this year, because the past 18 months have been pretty brutal. There have been a number of really great things, but also a hell of a lot of adversity to overcome.

I’ve already described much of it in the pages of this journal, so I don’t need to get into the details. Instead, I just wanted to list them out in bullet points… To preserve the big picture, and to share this impression of all the challenges, failures, and victories I’ve faced.

With that as introduction, here’s a list of the major stressors and changes that have come about for me in the past 18 months. They’re color coded: green is good, red is bad, and yellow is something in-between.

• Had a bike crash trying to avoid a car that ignored a stop sign. Ensuing physical recuperation, plus medical expenses and bike repair costs.
• Surpassed $100,000 in lifetime fundraising for the PMC, earning a lifetime achievement award.
• My job ended quietly after my employer being bought out. Although I did get to have another year-long sabbatical.
• Grew my hair out to normal length after 10 years clean-shaven.
• Turned 50 years old.
• Spent that birthday on a tiny Caribbean island I’d long dreamed of visiting. Some stress from the tiny eight-person commuter flight from San Juan, and a bit of loneliness that I had no one to share it with.
• Had a big misunderstanding with a friend that caused a lasting rift between me and my Kalyana Mitta spiritual friends group.
• Very emotionally intense 10-day meditation retreat at IMS, including having someone barge into my room while I was sleeping the night after they announced that a thief had broken into people’s rooms.
• Started a promising friendship and potential relationship only to have it explode in flames in my face.
• Lost my mentor, benefactor, and hero Bobby Mac to cancer.
• Stopped a ten-year hobby of tracking my spending at Where’s George.
• Committed to trying to make a relationship work with my best friend Inna.
• Survived a frigid 51st New England winter. Working on number 52 now.
• Committed to moving south, out of New England, where I’ve lived my entire life.
• Started an expensive new hobby in kyūdō, traditional Japanese archery martial art.
• Celebrated ten years of meditation practice.
• Put a lot of energy into a big project to reach out to others socially, with limited results.
• Another bike crash resulting in a mild concussion, plus another round of medical expenses and bike repair costs.
• The ER nurse botched an IV insertion so badly that a hematoma covered my entire arm, and I was unable to move it or ride for six weeks thereafter.
• Participated in my final Pan-Mass Challenge ride.
• Left my Kalyana Mitta spiritual friends support group with significantly mixed feelings.
• Pretty much ended all involvement at my meditation center, including the longstanding Experienced Practitioners group, the annual Sandwich Retreat, and my volunteering to MC the regular Wednesday night dhamma talks.
• Put my meditation practice on long-term hold.
• Took my beloved cat for vaccinations which he had a severe reaction to. Just as he seemed to be recovering, the hospital called and I was forced to tell them to let him die.
• I developed abdominal pain which took a long time and considerable expense to diagnose and treat, resulting in gall bladder removal: the first surgery of my life.
• Began renovating my condo with a goal of putting it on the market, finally undertaking several repairs I’d put off for years.
• While doing renovation, discovered that the living room drywall needed to be replaced, and there was a gaping 12-inch diameter hole from the bedroom to the outside that should have been bricked up and insulated.
• Major financial issues as a result of unemployment, mortgage, medical bills, and home renovations.
• Raided my 401k in order to fund renovations and medical bills.
• The usual self-questioning during my job hunt.
• Started a new job at Buildium, which will require me to learn quickly and prove myself again without any direct mentoring.
• Discovered that gall bladder removal didn’t address my abdominal symptoms, so will begin 2015 back on the restrictive diet and undergoing further diagnostic work, while hoping it’s not something serious.

So as you can see, I’ve had a lot to deal with, including quite a bit of negative stuff, which is happily atypical for me. It’s definitely taxed my energy, morale, and coping resources.

While my health problem is front and center, and there are more big challenges to come in the next couple years, I’m hoping that things will start going a little more smoothly. Although I don’t believe that changing the calendar has any meaningful impact, it would be nice if things started getting back on track again.

After all, I’m not used to life being quite this difficult and exhausting.

Here’s the assertion: your brain wants a rough balance of activity and rest.

If your brain has to work really hard most of the time, it has a tendency to seek out quietude when it can. If you’ve ever worked in a high stress position, you know how precious “down time” can be. On the other hand, if your brain doesn’t get enough exercise, perhaps it becomes restless. Once you reach a certain level of boredom, you start looking around for things to occupy your mind.

Let’s start with that latter state. I’m going to kick around the idea that “creativity” (in general) may be a symptom of your brain looking for things to occupy it. If you have the spare mental energy to noodle on things and wonder about this or that, you’re more likely to produce stuff we’d call “creative” than if your brain is overwhelmed and working hard all day. No?

The reason why I say this is because I think that the converse explains some things I’ve seen in myself. When I’m slammed at work and putting in twelve-hour days, the last thing I can imagine is sitting down and writing a story or designing a web site, even when I happen to find myself with ample time on my hands. But those are exactly the things that motivate and excite me when I’m not challenged at work and there are few demands on my limited attention.

Is “creativity” a symptom of your brain searching for something interesting to do? Does intense, focused work sap your brain of the desire or the impetus to create? I’m curious about others’ experience.

I’ve struggled in recent years to justify my self-perception that I’m a creative person. I rarely find time these days to write fiction, take pictures, or design web pages, and when I do… I keep finding myself stymied by a complete lack of creative energy or inspiration.

Should I attribute that to creative burnout from a very stressful career? Or is it just that I have become less creative with age? Or should I resign myself to the idea that I’ve never been a very creative person, since even my prior successes were mostly derivative in nature?

Whatever the cause, these days my brain seems to be less willing to jump into creative pursuits, but very attracted to just turning off the internal discourse and letting my mind just rest.

Funny that just as I’m putting so much time and energy into being someone else’s pillar of strength, so many bad things are happening to me.

Yesterday it was the bike. I took my bike to the shop for an unrelated fix, and they say they need to replace the headset, which they installed brand new just five weeks earlier.

As if that wasn’t enough gross incompetence, they don’t have the parts, and the guy who took my bike apart isn’t capable of putting it back together again using the old parts, so I have to survive the next ten or more days without my primary mode of transportation to my job or to the hospital to support my best friend in her time of need, and without any ability to continue training for my charity ride.

On top of the existing issues with the ceiling leak, falling behind in class, and being behind schedule in the fundraising for the charity ride, this is really getting discouraging. June (and perhaps now July?) seems to have been officially declared “National Kick Orny in the Teeth Month”. What crisis am I gonna have to endure next?

Wow. What a life it has become. I wish I could update you on everything that’s gone on, but everything that’s going on prohibits me from actually doing so. You’ll get some updates, but I’m afraid it’s not gonna be in the short term, because all of a sudden I find myself under incredible time stress.

There are really five major demands on my time. The first is this new job, which as consulting jobs go really hasn’t been bad so far.

The second is that at about the same time as I started work, a very close friend was hospitalized. I’m not going to get into the details of that, but I’ll be setting up a filter for posts relating to that, if I ever find the time to write them.

Between those two things, I’ve literally spent all my time either at work, at the hospital, or sleeping (and sleep time has already been cut by 50 percent).

On top of that, my final class in my graphic design program has started, and I’ve already fallen behind. Getting caught up is going to be a huge struggle from now through mid-August, when the class ends.

Then there’s my annual cancer charity ride, which is only six weeks away. I have to really get back into training mode, and start raising some money. I usually start at the end of May, but so far this year I’ve only raised $20 out of the $3,000 I need. Fortunately, at least I’m not responsible for it until the middle of October, even if the ride takes place in August.

And, of course, there’s a bunch of DargonZine work that came out of our 2005 Writers’ Summit, which is the topic for another post that I have been hoping to make.

So I’m here, but I haven’t been under this kind of stress in a long, long time. I’m really hopelessly swamped right now. Maybe I should be making more use of LJ’s post-by-phone facility.