Comments on: Personal/Professional, Practice

By: Arturo

Arturo — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:33:27 +0000

Hi Karen
I’ve read somewhere, okay, in one of these blogs, that we need to be thankful for all of our friends, including our internet friends. So on this one I don’t think I agree with your husband. One of the fellow bloggers in my nutrition group has been very supportive to me. Over time, we’ve learned that our pasts are so similar that it’s uncanny. Would I have met this person in my city? No. She’s in Virginia and I’m in California. I hope to meet you sometime, and practice in your shala with you, so we can be a different version of friends. In my observation of the nutrition groups I belong to, after 4 years of exchanging daily thoughts, I can say that I know at least 8 people pretty well in the groups, even though I have not met them personally. Meeting them personally will happen in the future.

Karen, since I have an interest in Buddhism as well, could you recommend some groups I should belong to? I belong to a few local sanghas’ newsletters, but I don’t interchange ideas as you say you do in your groups. You can email me offblog if you prefer.

Regarding starting a professional blog, I started one and have never added to it. Then Ron Stettles, who occassionally blogs (“exchanging hats”) and whom I have practiced with in San Francisco, mentioned that he enjoys mosts the blogs that can show all of a person’s facets of life – work, yoga, family, etc. I thought htat made sense and I”m planning to do that. I don’t contribute to my blog regarding architecture sufficiently because I can’t present the projects we’re working on. I can present built projects. That’s an idea. I helped design a spa that is now garnering awards. Maybe I should ask permission to mention it in my blog. It would be good to do so, since the articles haven’t mentioned us, the architects, so far.

Anyway, I need to get ready for work. Cheers,
Arturo

By: donutszenmom

donutszenmom — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:31:27 +0000

Oh gosh, the intimate-but-not-personal reality of the Ashtanga shala is definitely a trippy thing. I wonder if introverts are particularly drawn to it. The Cop is accustomed to the sweat and breath of martial arts, but wouldn’t bring friendship into the equation, I think. I’ll ask him.

Cody, I have no idea what voice will develop for the work-related blog! Not knowing is actually the fun part. I always sound like myself to myself — and in a blogging context, I have only one developed voice, but I’m figuring that consciousness of the different audience will affect/moderate the “new” voice.

By: cody p

cody p — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:01:50 +0000

Hey! I write a company-work blog too! Blogging must be addictive. Do you intend to use the same “voice” or do you have a different corporate persona in mind?

What is a friend anyway? I think most people have few true friends and many acquaintances. I would suggest that blog friends (especially super-cool ashtangi bloggers) know more about each other than office friends. We certainly reveal more of our true selves via posts and comments than most people would at work. what’s the old line…a friends is just a stranger you haven’t met yet…

By: (0v0)

(0v0) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 17:54:25 +0000

Would The Cop also feel distant from someone whose eyes he’d never seen nor voice he’d never heard, but whose sweat and breath he came up against daily?

Ashtanga ways of knowing are funny. Either the one-dimensionality of online brain-dumping, or the ritualized ships-passing-in-the-night thing of practice. But never the usual stuff of conversation and eye contact. For me, the first two are more intimate than the second. If I wanted to know someone, I’d sooner invite them to read the blog or to come to practice than ask them to dinner. Except they’d probably think I was weird.

Good thing I’m not single.