Practice and doing it

This little messy place is born out of a need to do something useful with the many hours I spend parked in front of the internet. In part it'll be about my efforts to set up a specific project; a little audiocast, and I'm hoping I can share music I've been finding, how the cast itself comes to be, and little bits of design I might be doing. 


It's also about developing a habit. Till now I've had a notebook; I'll still carry that round with me. It's contained business cards, clothing designs and setlists; ramblings and sketches; all the sundry crap that comes to mind as I'm pottering about living. I want to put bits of that notebook online so I can order these ideas; I can tag posts and check for associations between thoughts. I can also link to other sites and other little mental 'journeys'.


Speakin' of habits, I was thinking about the meaning of practice. 
As a kid, practice meant something done routinely I guess - but it also meant something that wasn't 'for real' - oh I'm just having a 'practice run'. To me, it also became synonymous with terribly boring things; after all, if a thing is no fun, it can only be made less fun by doing it over and over again!


And then there's this word:

Praxis:

1. Practical application or exercise of a branch of learning.

2. Habitual or established practice; custom.

Say, what's that? It's implying a practice that's mentally focused, in a way - take some philosophy, do something with it - but it also seems more, ahem, practical than a lot of the so-called 'practice' one does as a kid. Making noise on a violin, doing the same math problem 20 times or catching curve-balls is such rote learning that it doesn't seem connected to anything. Nor is it even very brain-straining - I mean you could argue that doing an algebra problem is working your mind out, but if so, it's more like doing 20 reps with a dumb-bell than running over an obstacle course. It's not very engaging. And there's no meta-thinking.
Then there's the bit I hate, because I hate anything that implies a commitment; the practice that occurs so regularly, so often, that it becomes customary. Oh dang, it's become a part of your life now! Scary as that is, I want to have a solid go at establishing patterns of practice - all over the show - in order to help order my brain and be a better thinker - but also to save time and effort and generally worry a lot less. So there's the guts of my motivation for this weird little blog. Hopefully doing it over and over - whatever it may become - won't become boring but just the opposite.