Can’t blog, must juggle!
So I haven’t written anything lately for a few reasons, none of which are lack of material.
In fact, I might say that the past few weeks have been some of the most productive of my juggling career. When last I wrote, I was feeling a bit lackluster about juggling, and in an attempt to refocus myself I came up with a practice guide.
It has been more successful than I could have ever imagined.
Writing it out gave me a wonderful rededication and focus and I have made absolutely wonderful progress. I’ve made a few changes to the guide in practice, but I am not going to go through and make a real revision for a few more weeks.
The reason for the delay?
I am learning 4 clubs, and putting in so much time to get past the initial stumbling blocks that I am not following the guide as closely as I hope to once I am more comfortable with 4.
Well, that sort of lets the cat out of the bag, because 4 clubs is my biggest news. At least to me. I’ve been very happy with my juggling so far, but honestly up to this point I’ve really felt like I haven’t been doing anything that special.
4 clubs is different.
I consider running 4 clubs fairly serious juggling, and working on them fills me with a wonderful sense of accomplishment and purpose–which is nice, since other parts of my life aren’t really so hot these days.
Also something that warrants mentioning, and is directly related to 4 clubs is the Jesup Juggling Jam. I hosted a World Juggling Day event this year and it was a great success. I actually met another juggler in town!
I hope we can arrange some time to juggle at some point. Anyway, it was at the event that I really got the idea that I had 4 balls down pretty solidly. I saw Ian (the other juggler) run 4 and i knew right off that my fountain was much more solid.
So I thought after a while, “hey I wonder if i could do 3 balls and a club.”
Well, a few hours later I was juggling 3 clubs and one ball, and that night I ordered my fourth and yellowest club. It got here friday and on my third attempt I got 4 catches.
I went out of town for the weekend, and only practiced a bit while I was gone. I managed to get enough catches for a few nice pictures, but didn’t feel like I made any real progress.
Once I got back home though, I made a clean qualifying run with a nice collection after about 20 minuets in the yard. Yesterday, after a warmup I went out and got around 10 catches on nearly every try. I had a few long runs, topping out around 30 or so, but it was hard to keep count.
I feel pretty comfortable with the progress I am making, and it is so very, very exciting even to be working with 4 that I just can’t wait to do another session.
It is all thanks to the practice guide I made. Since I started doing that my practices are no long just haphazard attempts, they have structure and direction.
I have also made profound progress with 3 ball shower, the box and 4 ball multiplexes. Work with five is also going much faster now. My flashes are much more reliable and I can actually run a few catches of the chase (505050?) and 50510. I think that if I start flashing from my left hand I will be in good shape by the end of the summer.
Almost everything I know with 3 is crisper now too.
I am very pleased with the state of my juggling right now. If i can manage to escape the office, I am going to go do it right now.