There's really no purpose to this blog anymore. It's just habit. It's just that I have it.

All the reasons why I started it are now null and void. It was supposed to be a record, a last testament, but those things don't matter at all anymore.

I even tried to write an opinion post last month about religious extremists just being criminals and have nothing to do with religion, but even opinions don't matter anymore in a world where everyone can state opinions on the Internet like they mean anything. But millions of people disagreeing in comment sections is not a conversation. It's just idiotic.

So this is just a personal blog for myself. I'm not communicating to anyone, I'm not leaving a record of an invisible life for people who might be curious. There aren't any.

So the year turned. It's been 10 years since Deer Park. Nine years I've been in Taiwan doing nothing of any worth to anyone. Erased my identities. Continued with mindfulness practice. A lazy hermit-with-Internet-and-alcohol practice.

I finally started getting back to the gym in January. Still no cycling. Running on treadmill had been steadily getting back to where I was before I left for that trip to New Jersey; four miles without injury. From there, the idea was to keep working on strength and increasing distance and time.

I almost had a mishap, whereby I found and read a book about the "Pose method" of running. My first time trying out the concepts, I damn near re-injured my Achilles tendon, but fortunately it was nothing major and pain only lasted a week and I feel I'm good to continue with my planned regimen.

I'm not dismissing the Pose method, but it is particularly hard on the Achilles tendon, so with recent injuries, Pose needs to be approached slowly, with patience, and over a long period of time to develop appropriate strength.

The basic principle of Pose running is that running is optimized when developed as a technique, and not just an innate ability. Few other activities assume excellence can be attained without application and practice of technique, so the book says.

Actually, one that comes to mind is sitting meditation, although not excellence but ability perhaps. Practitioners are taught to apply methods and visualizations, blah, blah, blah, but it's a fine line between that and developing a technique.

I don't know if it was a coincidence in timing, but right when I was reading the book on Pose running, I also thought about applying technique to sitting meditation. It's a work in progress that I'm testing out. It may just be another method among the pantheon of existing taught methods.

I'm certainly not an "accomplished" meditator nor have I reached any level of alternate consciousness or understanding of consciousness.