I enjoy writing this blog.  It helps me make sense of things.  I can connect the dots and string the pieces together, ultimately braiding them into a larger understanding. I try to communicate as if I was asked what I was doing, and the interest from both sides was sincere and mutual.  All parties who engaged in curious conversation left with new ideas and tangents to explore.

Before I embarked on my own, I regularly read a lot of blogs.  There were a lot of bright, ambitious minds giving stuff away… the trick was to find them.  T-nation and the Perform Better circuit were my usual index of offerings, but somewhere along the line they felt stifling to expansion.  My interests were shifting, and I no longer felt like they were writing for me.

I distinctly remember finishing a Tony Gentilcore article and saying out loud, almost incredulously, “I think I could do this.”

I thought I could do something different.  I was different, my experience was different, and the way I looked at things were different.  I didn’t perceive things as better or worse, simply as a potential alternative.  I wanted to present options and create an archive of trains of thought.  The thinking and connections made at a particular moment were the most fascinating to me.

The greatest gift that starting a blog gave me was consistent practice in coming up with and explaining my own conclusions.  As I learned to communicate better, I started to find people.  There were others who did not want to be defined by a pack, who indulged by living in the ‘weird’ and abstract.  They, too, had a unique combination of senses, skills, and understandings to offer.  We started talking, and our interest in each other was indeed sincere and mutual.

I did not know when I started this that I was looking for them.  Having spent the vast majority of my life as a solitary creature, I had no illusion they existed.  But here they were.  I saw them through the peephole of my phone.  They were real.

As we chatted and got to know each other, I found myself intrigued by their stories.  Their talents and abilities were obvious, but who they were far surpassed the wonder of what they could do.  I met several in person, and they made me glow with delight.  I wondered if I could make something that revealed my affection for them.

Guess what? She’s as cool as you thought she was, except more so. Because your expectations can’t ever be as good as the real thing, can they? You miss things. You can’t imagine all the little bits that make up a person, or an experience, or what you might perceive when you look up somewhere new. The joy and the beauty is in letting things in and throwing things right back out there that are true, and real, and that bring you joy and make you the happiest you can be. I love and live for those moments that make up my entire life – the wonder and opportunity and unfathomable possibility that comes with each breath. Thank you, @ruffolous, for existing in the world, doing what you do best, and living in the joy of outputting yourself to this world. She won’t see this until after her internet and literal vacation, but I hope she’ll like it too. #thanks #grateful #gratitude #movers #shakers #shakethingsup #sparkjoy #movement

A post shared by Move Well Philly (@movewellphilly) on Jun 19, 2017 at 8:51am PDT

A collaborative site came to mind.  Would it be possible to construct an online space where people of different backgrounds and ideas could converge and feel both safe and free enough to share what they think in an informative manner?   Where nobody argued who was right but that there was possibility of truth in everything?  I imagined it sparking an evolution of new ideas; fireworks both created and conveyed in a cooperative effort.

What movement really is, I believe, is a way to crack the exterior of a being and expose the human underneath.  It reveals their heart and mind — the things we want so desperately to be seen but are terrified by their vulnerability.  The sharing of anything created by us is also the sharing of of ourselves.  Perhaps, like me, these people capturing what they were doing were tinged with loneliness.  I engage with the camera because no one else is there.

There is a ritual in ancient people of going out and finding and bringing back.  A procedure was put in place to give each community member a chance to contribute.  In a small way, I guess I’m trying to do the same.  Consider this my invitation to the social where we celebrate the individual.  You can come whenever you like, and stay as long as you want.

www.thinkmovement.net

Coming end of August, 2017.