Composure is a challenging failure mode to describe, and one of the more common ones; seems to be a reason so many nuanced social layers are designed around appearance and decorum.

So, if you've come across me in recent years, please recognize the burden of an essay is the research that is required to channel a clear idea onto a page; hence please excuse my exceptional lack of decorum, and occasionally abhorrent appearance. If I failed to find my rungs and keep pace on the careening social ladder, this is because'd by my years of research in de-composure.

I'll need most of the day to 'compose' this essay,
and so I'm beginning in bed.
I'll be up to produce a'morning's'cupp'a cafe,
and I hope that it goes to my head.

So, this challenge requires seeking through some socialization norms that hope to uphold our composure, how those norms can be supplanted or surrendered, and the consequences therein.

I'll speak from experience.

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Example, in the Dojo.

When I was young, I resided for three years alongside my immediate family in Tokyo. By some arrangement, my sister was excluded, and my brother and I were signed up for martial arts classes, a discipline called aikido. Aikido has no sparring, a closer neighbor to tai qi than anything you'll have seen from Bruce Lee.

Through middle school and high school, some arrangement landed my brother and I again, in classes for taekwondo, in Eastern Pennsylvania. Taekwondo focuses on sparring, like many other arts, and I'd need to dress up with high-impact pads and headgear.

Decades passed, and when I came back to the East coast for a role in DC, I signed up again for aikido classes; one of my senseis is as inspiring on her blog as she is in class, and is full of small poignant lessons that her pupils all learn to cherish.

One day a few years ago, my composure was slipping; as I arrived at the dojo, I realized I was missing the belt to my gi; I asked if there were spares, and the spare was too small. Sensei told me there may be one in the changing room, and rather than consider this idea seriously, I decided to walk the 6 blocks home to search again. Once home, I decided that I did most likely leave my belt in the changing room as I packed my bag after class earlier in the week. As I returned to the dojo and checked the room, I was embarrassed to find it there, in the most obvious place. Had I been open to hearing my sensei's idea, I could have begun class on schedule. I dressed, and headed back to the dojo, where I waited for sensei to motion me onto the mat in the middle of class.

During those days, I was smoking cannabis daily; these composure-slips were as commonplace as they were unrecognizable to me. I now recognize the effects of cannabis in my younger friends, and I am encountering the karmic challenge of expressing to them how debilitating their dependency is.

I bring up the dojo because composure is perhaps the core lesson, in any martial art. Meipo sensei has shared a couple lessons on this idea;

Each day you come to practice, I am here to form you into shape like a sculptor molding clay. If you are a beginner and you come once a week, I don't have enough of a chance to shape you before you go all shapeless again. You need to come to each class so that you hold your shape, and we can move on to more advanced forms.

Another musing is far simpler, more scolding, and echoes in my mind after years:

Anything can happen. Why should anything make you lose your composure?

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Engine-you-in?

This has been years ago; I no longer smoke aside from momentous occasions, such as reunions among younger peers, when I am under no pressure to socialize properly.

How then does my composure fail these days?

I've been gradually embracing nomadism for the last few years; beginning in a sailboat, and then in a pickup truck with a canopy across the bed, where I held my residence and belongings. Now, I've moved into a conversion camper, a RAM 2500 van - and feel as though I am re-domesticating from a feral experience.

Nomadism is a rough practice to embody, and each day I need to make decisions that none of my peers are likely to face; many of my days begin with "rise and rinse", coffee, chores, logging on - and then using a map to decide which direction the wind should blow me. Many days begin with no idea where I'll fall asleep, whether an alley I feel at home in or a parking lot, in a town that happens to spark my curiosity.

When I discussed social issues among colleagues at Woodbine in May, I became energized to help at a food distribution in Minneapolis. I packed up the camper, including a spare solar panel and all the wiring I'd need to do some in-field solar hacking, made one final big scene in the punk music hall (a monologue about the decisions that lead to genocide), and finally felt the impulse to flee the city I'd been calling home.

I made it four hours before the engine failed; had a tow to the nearby mechanic shop where the coolant pipe was replaced, then to the dealership where they examined the failed head gasket and reported that a new engine should be ordered. After the new engine came, we learned that my haphazard driving from one shop to another (spilling coolant fluid all around the town of Washington, PA) had broken more pieces adjacent to the rusty and rapidly-quaking engine.

Whereas I thought I'd be able to unpack my densely-loaded camper, begin re-framing the furniture inside, help distribute 500 meals a day, and make it back to the East to celebrate pride month alongside the local musicians, I've rather been marooned at my parent's home after a long series of Greyhound buses and phone calls that incrementally add schedule days and mechanics' pays.

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Cyber Pose.

As my engine is being remade I need to keep up with friends through myriad messaging apps; I have a chance to catch up and repair my poor composure in cyberspace.

I am used to composing excuses for my lack of reliability, my unusually-displaced upbringing offering many exceptional explanations for how my failings could be ignored. As a millenial American, there was no end to the resources that were freely accessible; as a coder no bounds on the cyber-spaces to escape to.

Now, only through practice am I realizing the consequence of my decades of social isolation. The long hours of focus that peers pour into their music and productions are amplified by the friendships they form, and my squeamishness for social bonds which seemed a refuge as a foreign-raised child now seem to be a chilling loneliness.

The isolation has a social purpose, similar to depression: finally pinned in place for a change, I now have the space to deliberate on the programs I'm building in the months ahead. I used a high-consequence deadline to make good on a promise to some congressional public engagement groups. I'm finally seeing my grandparents after years of decline, and I seem to be doing none of these in sufficient scope.

My practice in each of these areas remains unreliable, largely because my colleagues have no basis of confidence in my programs, long since used to my composure collapsing for some mis-communicated reason or another.

As my sensei's guidance implies, composure builds as you practice. No one can be reliable on day one, as sure as no one reliable could have passed on their first day of practice.