Muscle Memory

When an active person repeatedly trains movement, often of the same activity, in an effort to stimulate the mind’s adaptation process, the outcome is to induce physiological changes which attain increased levels of accuracy through repetition. Even though the process is really brain-muscle memory or motor memory, the colloquial expression "muscle memory" is commonly used.

Individuals rely upon the mind’s ability to assimilate a given activity and adapt to the training. As the brain and muscle adapts to training, the subsequent changes are a form or representation of its muscle memory. -- from Wikipedia

That's where I'm trying to be right now: at the point where my brain is completely adapted to the daily training that I call myself doing. I say "call myself doing" perhaps because I am my own biggest critic. Even when others may laud something that I produce as "brilliant" or "thought-provoking" I still can be unimpressed and unwilling to accept their compliments. I'm not certain if this is a problem, so much as a mechanism to keep me from growing content with mediocrity be it in my own perception or the consensus. Once in awhile, I will take a step back and actually accept the praise or constructive feedback of a reader, but believe that I am very stubborn on this. Practice makes perfect, however, so I try to approach this as such.

It's amazing how the same principles apply to those striving for greatness in various pursuits. The concert pianist practices a piece over and over again in hopes that during their performance, their manual dexterity and light touch will bring out their own personal expression or interpretation of a time-honored classic. A jump shooter spends hours and hours in a gym taking the same shots hundreds of times from dozens of different angles so that when dogged by fatigue and draped by a very physical defender late in a game, they will be able to relax and execute without being at all disturbed by the deafening screams of the crowd. I strive to apply this same dedication and reap the same personal fulfillment with my writing. I believe that I show flashes of potential at times, but I'm inconsistent at best. Often times, merely practicing is not nearly enough. Greatness is achieved when the quality of the practice sessions is maintained at a high level. When I get to the point where each daily entry is an exercise in precision, then I might be able to measure some progress.

Well, that can't be entirely true. Insofar as writing is an art form and one in which freedom of expression shall reign supreme, precision cannot exactly be the measurable standard. Communication should be an important tenet though, as should provoking thought. In everything I write, my desire is to make the reader understand what was going through my mind as I experienced something and quite possibly how I felt as I attempted to recount said experience. If successful in this way, my reader could conceivably gain understanding as they consider my viewpoint from that common ground. If my view then provokes introspection and maybe even the adoption of another perspective, then it's possible that I have succeeded.

I should have apologized in advance for an entry like this. We'll liken this to that Monday practice in which all of the mundane things must be attended to first and foremost. It's like an exercise in conditioning, as opposed to skills training. It has been my experience that both are necessary. Excessive practice at a mediocre level serves only to produce mediocre results. If I want to get to the next level in my writing pursuits, I'll have to increase the number of quality practice sessions while simultaneously decreasing the days in which I just "phone it in" and sleep walk through the exercises.