Not entirely certain what came over me today. I HAD been reading a book about zen, but reached a point where I had read as much as my peabrain could hold. Got up to move around a bit and my eye fell on the rollerblades that I had purchased many years ago. Being an efficient sort, I skipped most of the intermediate stages after I bought them and just put them on a shelf and sprinkled them with dust. Needless to say, I'm not much of a rollerblader.
Which must be why I picked up the pack and hiked out to find a place to rollerwobble where I wouldn't be placing innocent civilians at risk. On my quest for a land of unobstructed flat asphalt something seemingly random entered my mind: I remembered learning to juggle. There was this kit…juggling for clutzes or something like that, that came with three beanbags and a book of instructions. The first step to learning to juggle was to place the bag in the palm of your outstretched hand, then you pivot your hand 180 degrees around the axis of your wrist/forearm.
In other words, you dropped the bag.
The message was clear, and a bit fun. If you don't accept that you're gonna drop bags….a LOT…you'll never learn to juggle. Learning to juggle may have been the most painless skill I ever developed. Someone had said to me, you're not succeeding if you don't fail a little. Being a slow sort, I failed to apply this lesson to any other aspect of my life. Of course, dropping a bean bag is a fairly low stakes activity. You only risk a little embarassment, after all. (ow)
Anyhow, all this jumbled through my head mixed in with all the zen from my reading as I strapped plastic guards on all my corners and shoved my feet into the torture devices.
  Let me tell you something there is NOTHING as mindful as a middle-aged, out-of-shape dyke with wheels on her feet. You want attention to posture?  When the wrong wriggle can send your nose for the pavement, you're paying attention to posture baby!!!  It was like zen lessons in motion. I discovered that moving on wheels is a lot easier than standing on wheels. When my brain started going "look ma, I'm doing it" I'd stumble or start to get in trouble. Mindfulness. Right here, right now. Perhaps all of a second into the future planning turns. Letting the past (where I wobbled awkwardly and embarassingly) go, because dwelling on it spelled certain destruction. When my feet started to hurt (they may be great recreational devices, but they're lousy shoes), something of my reading came into my brain "suffering itself is how we live, how we extend life". I stopped whining about the pain, and refocused on staying alive. It was like the pain was just an excuse my mind came up with to stop trying.  
I didn't fall down….I'm almost disappointed.