My brain is like a bookshelf...

So I was reading a post on one of the blogs out there called Side Control this evening. In it, the author muses about learning techniques and having them crowded out of his brain by other techniques. (The post can be found here.) It reminded me of an analogy I've used more than once when it comes to describing my learning process in jits.

My brain is like a bookshelf, just a shelf on brackets on the wall, no ends. All the techniques I am taught are like books. As fast as I can get new tech (adding books to the left side) it seems like they're crowding older tech off the right side, where the books fall to the floor in a heap. Picture one person trying as fast as they can to put new books on the left side meanwhile running to the pile on the right! Eventually you stop heading for the right-hand pile and just keep stacking books onto the left, letting them fall off the shelf as they will.

Only, every once in a while, the shelf grows a little longer. Then you start picking up books from the floor again and adding at both ends. There's always a big pile on the floor, and when you roll with someone more gifted, more experienced, they quote chapter and verse from books like they had a photographic memory. It niggles away at you till you realize you saw that somewhere in one of those books on the floor-- so you scrabble around in the pile again.

I swear, I can't even remember technique to try to implement it unless I have been shown it (put it on the shelf, and have it fall off again) at least 5 times.

Oh well... that's the beauty of my love of books.

Had a lovely workout this afternoon that left me sweaty, light-headed, panting and utterly blissed out. Yum!