I’m tired of showing up to the dojo - to find only a handful of people there.

It’s especially disheartening when considering consuming the vicious news cycle, the looming techno-feudal landscape creeping in, walking past rats scurrying through the garbage, and the “train traffic up ahead.”

Last week, a couple of times, it was just me and one or another yudansha. We did a lot of weapons and jiyu waza, which was fun and selfishly good for me, but not beneficial for the overall well-being of the dojo.

We need some more members. Now. Come on. Let’s go Universe…

I did some “research” and discovered that Google has a program for nonprofits, offering up to $10,000 a month in “ad grants.” I figured it would be advantageous to sign up my dojo to increase our online outreach, and (so far) I’ve spent 15 hours of my life trying to get the proverbial ball rolling, to no avail.

The dreary details of my failure to set this up are too tedious to recount here. It's utterly boring and stultifyingly complicated.

Google doesn’t have a phone number for issues with “ad grants.” So I resorted to sending an email into the ether. Trust me, I called 5 times to try to finagle my way into a conversation with a living human being who could help, but all they did was send me links to “frequently asked questions.”

Turns out, my question has not been frequently asked. Story of my life. Well, in my case, prose poem of my life. ‘Cause I can’t tell stories.

I’m so unequipped for these android activities. I get petulant, impatient, unnerved, disconcerted, sitting bug-eyed in front of the computer.

I could’ve spent this time on other projects (like this one) or maybe even engaging in some good old-fashioned “passing out fliers in the neighborhood.”

Now I don’t know how to cajole myself into writing about something else. This situation’s consuming my psyche right now (not really; don’t worry, I’m mostly being hyperbolic as a literary device, but it is super annoying).

I'm hovering above a precarious precipice - don't know what to do next. I’ve spent way too much time on this to have nothing to show for it. So I guess I’m gonna do what I always do: resort to prose poetry…

I know I already told you this. Back when my mother was dying, I took a creative writing class in community college. My teacher gave me a book of Rimbaud and Baudelaire, and that sparked a fabulous inner narrative (coupled with my job delivering pizza—which afforded me the opportunity to smoke weed and listen to Jack Kerouac and Alan Watts tapes while working).

The only way my life makes sense is when I transmute failure into alliterate art.

So now how’m I going to sustain this endeavor, fulfill this mission, when it’s so increasingly incumbent on becoming tech savvy?

This is supposed to be about my relationship with Aikido and how it benefits my life, how it helped me get past a thirst for literary vengeance against certain segments of industry and government that I hold responsible for exploiting and experimenting on poor people, including my mother. Not just her, not just me, not just my family. I feel bad for…

Imagine walking around feeling bad for billions of people at once, because you recognize a psychopathic corruption within society that takes advantage of “the unwitting”. I know I'm not the only one, but it affects me all the time. That's why I lose myself in Aikido. That's why I’m trying to focus on promoting my dojo, and keeping this podcast going...

I wanna see if can make this a thing - wanna see if I can feel like I'm contributing something to the good in the world, instead of complaining about the bad.

On the bright side: I’ve continued to learn about Chinkon Kishin from Barrish Sensei. That’s going well. Of course, I didn’t have much time to practice any of it because all my free time was spent staring futilely at a screen, but still… it really is a gift, and I’m grateful.

Ultimately, in conclusion, I retain my faith in the universe.

After all, there’s always next week

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