Dogfish Juggling

in an ideal world
6 am – 7 am : exerball endurance
6 pm – 7 pm: three clubs / three balls
7 pm – 8 pm: four-ball shower

Well, truthfully it doesn’t really. It has been somewhat gloomy of late around here, and that has certainly cut into my unicycling, although the demands of my work schedule bear a much larger share of the blame. ,br> one somewhat depressing thing I’ve noticed about my juggling is that, since ive started working, i have really had to cut down on my exercise juggling.
ok this term is a bit silly, so let me take a moment to elaborate. i have several sets of props. most often i use beanbags since these are the only props i have four of  (well technically i have a set of homemade balls, but they are very poor and i hate them bitterly). i like the beanbags, they have nice dead-drop and they feel very nice in my hands. they are a very good prop for four, and i even have a spare incase i ever manage to make a stab at 5.
now, i also have a few other props that i only have 3 of–a set of russian balls and clubs. i also have a set of ExerBalls. they are a very nice size, around the diameter of a baseball. they have a very nice rubbery grip and they are filled with lead. each ball weighs about 2.35 pounds, so all told its around 7 pounds when you get all three of them going.
in my younger and more vulnerable days i juggled these quite a lot. at the time they were hands down the nicest prop i had (all the others came later) and i had plenty of time to juggle whenever my little heart desired.
currently, my time is so limited, and i find myself so anxious to improve my juggling abilities, that almost all i have time for are my beanbags. don’t misunderstand me. i love the beanbags. the four ball shower is amazingly fun. pushing myself to make those fast, accurate, throws is exhilarating. but i sincerely and desperately miss the sweaty labor of juggling with my exerballs.
part of it is just motivational. i am usually so drained from work that all i can think of doing is some casual juggling. but oh how i miss the endless hours of endurance runs. the tremble in my arms and the quick gasps as my breath falls into the rythem of the balls.
i just hope things at the paper calm down soon, and i find more time to work in longer, more elaborate practices.

i finished my assignments for the paper’s special section this week. it was a hellatious ride. i spent all day monday gathering information for the special section in addition to the full gamut of sport-related assignments. it was exhausting and i went to bed very early. i woke up at 2 a.m. and wrote the entire sports section. i finished around 10:30, switched over to a-section and special section assignments, worked till 3 and then headed to basketball games. i got home around 10 at night, and headed to bed. more special section work all day wednesday, finished up thursday morning. spent thursday afternoon and friday morning on saturday’s copy. thursday friday and today i had a middle school basketball tournament to cover, and in about 20 minutes i have to head to high school games. so, a bit short on juggling time–although i did get in a bit of casual juggling last night while (how amazing is this) i was at the tattoo shop while my dad got his first work done!

i feel pretty good about my shower, it is coming along nicely and i was able to run four for several catches very comfortably. my head is throbbing a bit, and i have to go soon. so thats all for now. more juggling to come in a pre-juggling festival post.  

Well, that might be putting it a bit strongly, but I have, once again, been remiss in my juggling practice. Things have been unbelievably hectic at the newspaper.  We are doing a special section, so in addition to the normal pressure of deadlines, we have an added level of horror and stress to deal with. But, for better or worse it will all be over this week. I am certainly looking forward to a return to a regular practice schedule. I have to admit that I also went out of town this weekend and, foolishly enough, left all of my balls, beanbags and clubs as well as my unicycle sitting up in the loft–what a silly and irresponsible lad I am.  I’ve got several basketball games to attend tonight, and I think I might just bring a few props along with me to keep me busy during the warmups and whatnot between games. That should be fun.  On a side-note: while I didn’t get much practice done this weekend, I did run into a girl I went out with a few times while I lived in columbus. It was very nice to see her again. We had dinner and she invited me to come back into town. As soon as the week of insanity is over it will be back to four ball endurance runs and more work on getting doubles down for clubs. The daycare thing went passably well, though I didn’t get as much time to refine the whole act as I would have like and the speech and juggling were not as integrated as I originally envisioned things.   Uni-juggling practice has been postponed owing largely to the cold rainy weather we’ve had over the past few weeks, but I still have high hopes. High in the sky hopes.   Sadly, that is all.  – Juggle the world! 

I have several things I’m working on juggling-wise at the moment: 

•Tomorrow (Wednesday) morning I am going to be speaking at a career day for a small daycare center full of 3-4 year olds and I plan to integrate some juggling into the speech. I have a rough idea of what I want to do and how I want to blend the two together, but I have been pretty caught up in working on the 4 ball shower so I’ve not really polished the routine I worked out. 

•I’ve also been trying to improve my unicycle juggling, but it’s still pretty rough going in that department. I really want to get this down before the festival in Atlanta. 

•As I mentioned in my last post work on 4 balls and 3 club doubles continues. 

I feel like I am finally reaching a point where I am making some consistent progress with my four ball shower. It feels a bit trite to write this, since I’ve written about it in my journal and made mention of it on rec.juggling, but I want to get it down here as well so I am going to "grit my teeth and bare it," as they say.  So, I started working with four pretty lackadaisically somewhere in mid-october.  Honestly my progress was pretty terrible. Even after following the WJF practice guide (which is very comprehensive) I just didn’t have the time to do much concentrated practice, and the practice I did get in was pretty shoddy. It’s really only been since 2008 that I’ve found any modicum of success.  I’d been quite busy at work and pretty stressed to boot, so I admittedly slacked off on my juggling–while I had been practicing occasionally it was quite lack-luster and unproductive.  Come 2008 I started picking things up because I (with some degree of foolishness I now feel) resolved to learn a 5-ball cascade by spring.  I’ve set a new goal for myself (since it’s still January I feel like I can do this). Once I began to really practice again I realized how far I had to go with four before I could really even think about adding a fifth ball. At that point I realized I needed to shift my priorities. My new goal is 4 clubs.  This seems like quite a tall order at the moment, and I will need to drastically improve both my 4 ball shower and my 3 club cascade before this can happen.  The biggest thing I need to work on with clubs is mastering (hell achieving competency. . .) the doubles throw.  I think a few more viewings of the 3 / 4 club section on Jason Garfield’s Theory and Practice of Juggling will probably elucidate a few things, but what I really need to do is learn not to be so spastic with my doubles throws. As far as the  4 ball shower goes–practice practice practice. I am finally getting to the point where I can visualize the pattern I am juggling and this seems to be a critical step, especially for four since it gives me a way of focusing on both halves of the patter instead of trying to split my attention and shift it back and forth.  Hopefully I will also be able to improve enough so that I can learn and absorb a lot at the upcoming AJA Groundhogs Day Juggling Festival in February. 

I posted this on rec.juggling and decided I wanted some sort of archive. This seemed the most appropriate place. I may come back in and polish that a bit.It seems like from around 1300 or so to "juggle" meant almost exclusively to "play conjuring tricks, cheat or deceive." That understanding and usage seems to have persisted well into the mid 1700’s and indeed persisted in some cases into the 1800’s, although by the 1800’s the idea of juggling as a sort of entertainment was more widespread. It is interesting to note that the idea of juggling as something which entertained seemed to exists during this entire period, it was just much less common. While as early as 1600 one could "juggle before the king" without running the risk of coming up a head or two short, the association between juggling (the word not the act) and witchcraft predominated the english language for centuries. It seems like around 1800 or so the word changed in two ways. 1) the idea of a juggler as a jester (i.e. one who entertains) became much more prominent. this new understanding probably has a lot to do with the decline in the belief in "witchcraft" so it seems pretty natural to me. the "wizards" and conjurers who were previously burned at the stake were beginning to be understood as. . . well not evil, magic casting beings of a supernatural and terrifying power and just dudes. 2) instead of using juggling to mean some form of deception or chance with a decidedly and predetermined evil intent, the term began to mean simply to change or manipulate. Not until nearly the turn of the century (around 1890’s) was juggling used to refer to what we in rec.juggling know as "juggling" (To toss and catch several objects continuously, keeping at least one of them in the air while handling the others. Also, to toss an object, etc., from hand to hand with dexterity; (of two or more persons) to toss an object, etc., back and forth between them.) we can see this usage in the 1892 Routlege’s Book of Cirucs, "All Acrobats can juggle. . .  It is very difficult to juggle with articles of various weights at teh same time" Darwin, who’s life spanned the bulk of the 1800’s, lived at a time when the word "juggling" was at its most ephemeral. Probably late in his life the term would have begun to be applied to prop manipulation, but the usage in this case of jugglery, as Paul noted, most likely refereed to the magical conjuring and deception of his compass and matches.  the whole thread is here 

I’m at the office.  I’ve finished all of my copy for the weekend edition, and at this point I am just killing time until the paper goes to press. I cant really leave because a call could come in with some news and I would have to go cover it.  I have a ribbon cutting for a daycare center (not related to the one mentioned in my previous post) today at 4, so that cuts into my evening nicely.  I got in some good 4-ball practice last night, really focusing on short, accurate runs of about 6-10 catches. I think it was very helpful, and I will continue to work in this manner over my next few sessions.  I also went through the juggling portion of my new "reporter routine" as I have come to call it.  I am still having a few problems with some of the 1 up 2 up tricks. I can usually get the 1 ball to migrate pretty nicely, but I tend to have some difficulties if I try the cross with the 2 throw. I’ve also found it somewhat challenging to transition from 1 up 2 up’s to 4044, but I think I just need to get more comfortable with 1 up 2 up.  I was a bit upset by how long it took me to get focused last night, I hate feeling like I have no control over my thoughts, and that was definitely the case last night. Im telling myself that its just the winter weather–lack of sunlight, S.A.D or whathaveyou–and not the fact that about this time last year I went through a terrible breakup and wound up living in a closet for some months.  But all things are for the best, and had that not happened I never would have begun juggling (which has really been one of the most positive things to ever happen in my life–sad thought that fact may be), so I guess I can’t complain too much.  In other news, I am still slacking off about graduate school, although I did complete the first part of my admission to GC&SU, which I have come to regard as something of a safety school.  It seems like a nice town, and I think it will do me good to have a fresh start, so to speak and not try to pursue a school in Atlanta just to be closer to old friends–although the Atlanta Jugglers Association is a very tempting incentive and I know I will kick myself if I don’t apply to at least one metro-area institution.  Well, im off on a photo assignment. All for now

I started this blog for two reasons.
1. I’ve wanted a juggling blog for some time now.
2. I got an iPod touch and I want to take it out for a spin.

So that is it really for introductions. I’ve been jufgling for about seven or eight months now. I’ve been running four balls for a few months, when I’m on my game I can manage around 50 or so catches on average. I havens beenaking as much progress as I would like(mainly owing to my new job) but I hope to start practicing regularly again soon.
Tonight.
I think I will continue to work on tighter four patterns for the bulk of my practices in the near future, although.i am working out a sole three ball routine for a daycare event I will be speakingal at through work.it is not too complex, bit it is the first thing I have ever tries to put together and I am excited because I have a little narrative to go along witn my tricks. Its mostly one up two up, mills mess, some cascade tricks,and a 4203 (not sure it that is right) trick with an underarm toss (I call it atoms the world). The narrative is about "juggling" the responsibilities of a reporter (its for a career day).
so i will be working on that. I really do want to learn five though. And I also really need to get back to juggling the 2.35lb balls I have. As I fell like I am not in the same shape I was earlier this year, when I spent more time juggling.
all that sets up a pretty nice list of juggling resolutions for the new year–good thing on top of things and not getting distracted by things like graduate school or anything. Nice!
well all this via the touch, and a pretty easy time of it I’ve had… Well all for now. I’ve got balls to juggle.