I feel like I have hit bottom, am on the floor of the ocean. It is murky, and all I can feel underfoot is plastic, mostly bottles. To extend the analogy, when one hits bottom, the only things that one can do is either head sideways or head up.

I have considered heading sideways, that is doing myself in but lack the courage to do this. I have been exploring the various ways and none are easy. I have never taken the easy way out, but the simple act of killing myself (right now) seems far too difficult.

I have no choice now but to head upwards. Heading upwards means defining what the

problem is dealing with it. So after considerable self-examination, this is what I am now doing.

From my lowly vantage point, what I am seeing is that I am more cognitively than I am kinesthetically aware. I obviously have failed in my attempts to convince Tai Chi instructors, and my Bones for Life/Feldenkrais instructors that I can teach body awareness classes. And my Centered Riding instructors are dubious about my instruction-related abilities because my arena riding abilities are suspect. And neither the Tai Chi nor the Body Awareness instructors seemed at all interested in making the human/horse body awareness connection.

So I must now figure out what to do next. I must rise to the occasion. There is a part of me that wants to remain on the ocean floor – and there is a part of me that wants to resume rising upwards.

What to do? I pause in writing this because the two parts of me are duking this out

I must rise, I must rise. My love of language as this relates to communication, is my maligned strength. This is what I have come to value. I have not been successful as a writer in part because I work really hard on projects and then abandon them. In giving this matter thought, I realized that the reason why many are successful is because they follow through with an idea or ideas. Like my neighbor Nancy, who is professional adventurer. She is coming out with a book on horseback riding in Chili. I don’t consider her to be a writer but right now she’s preparing for her book tour. And what am I doing? Not much.

I abandon writing projects because I get to thinking that the work is not good enough. So I have decided to take a few steps backwards and take a fresh look at some of my unpublished work rather than begin any new projects, which is something that I have been chaffing at the bit to do.

This morning I pulled all my drafts out of my filing cabinet and began sorting through them. I will next find the drafts of these projects that are on computer files, and finish them. And I will do this in an organized fashion.

In time, I will write about my successes and my failings. Maybe this will be of value to others.

Up, up, up I go, oh so slowly.

Next: 228. August 21, 2017: Another Piece of the Puzzle