Aftermath

    Tough week. As you all probably saw on Thursday, I may have been in class physically but mentally I was somewhere else entirely. Without going into the gory details, I was struggling, big time. I did not want to be there - at all. I was angry, I was dark, I was on the edge of walking away. I was somewhere I NEVER thought I would be. 

   The one thing you should never let me do is stew over something, even if it had very little to do with me. I have a very active mind, and that is not a good thing. I don't just blow things out of proportion, I lay waste with a nuclear onslaught leaving nothing to live. I thought I had this anger under control because no good has ever come from it, only pure destruction. It had never crossed over into my Kung Fu life before. This time I allowed it to creep in and it sent me spiraling to a very scary place. 

   But I managed to beat it this time, with the help of the best people a person could ever know. Master Brinker, Master Rybak and Master Hayes, thank you for pulling me back in. I need Kung Fu, it is my safe place. It keeps me real, it keeps me calm, it is my oasis in a sea of ugly. 

   My apologizes to the team for my abysmal effort on Thursday, I made a promise to not only all of you but to SRKF when I joined the I Ho Chuan, I will do better at living up to it.

   And my apologizes to my family for me being so dramatic that they fear what I may say or do when I get mad. That can't happen anymore. 

This was a very hard blog to write, I do not want to post it but I will anyways.

49 Days

    49 days. In 49 days it is December 4, 2021. In 49 days it is grading day for this years candidates (congrats both of you, by the way, on making the cut!!). Sounds like a lot unless you are grading, then it is terrifyingly close. 

   Last year I quit on myself and opted out of grading, That was a huge mistake for me mentally, it set me back months on my training. This year I didn't quit but instead gave it everything I thought I had to give. While I didn't make the cut, I learned so much about myself. So while I am not grading this year, I am treating as though I am. I want my progression to continue, especially since I now have some very specific things to work on. 

   As I work towards next years grading, I realize how much I still have to do in that time. That is approx 406 days (assuming grading as Dec 3,2022). Again it sounds like a long time from now but trust me, it is not. That time will fly by so I must utilize every iota of it. 

   I want the year of the Tiger (2022) to be monumental for me, so grading starts now, both for this year (personal grading) and next year (actual [hopefully] grading). 

Go Team Ox, then...

Go Team Tiger

What a Day

    Win or lose, pass or fail, whatever the outcome, today was absolutely awesome. There is no better way to find out where you are in your training than to do a fitness test with 2 hours of forms first. There is no way to fake your level of skill, no way to "oops" your way forward. You are either ready or you need to keep working until you are. 

   I am exhausted but I feel fantastic. My body is very unhappy with me but I would expect no less, IT WAS HARD!!!! And I loved every second of it. I've now had a meal, a rest and now I will think about what I learned today, mostly my stances. Fix my stances, I have been told to do this and I shall. It will take a while to undo years of improper training but that is on me alone. So time to get back at it, mastery waits for no one.

Blink and You Will Miss It

    What a wonderful feeling it is to watch your kids grow up. What a sense of pride it is to see them succeed at life. Then there is the feeling of awe you get when you realize that they are better at something than you, and probably have been for a while, you just either didn't notice or didn't give them credit for it. 

   This happened on Saturday. Kody (my now 16 year old boy) and I were practicing forms together and critiquing each other. I went first, and of course there was a list of stuff that he noticed and proceeded to itemize, piece by piece. Perfect I thought, that is why we are doing this, to help focus our mind's eye (mine might need some corrective glasses). He wasn't mean or overly critical, just honest with me. My feeling were not hurt, in fact my pride in his abilities to see my flaws was huge. We worked together to address my errors, and moved on.

   Then it was his turn. And suddenly I had to ask,"When in the donkey spit did he grow up and turn into a man?!". He was no longer my baby boy (but he will always be). He is a fellow martial artist, and he was good, in fact, better than me - by a lot!! I suddenly realized that it was him showing me what to do, not the other way around. It both crushed me and filled my with an enormous amount of pride. 

THIS IS WHY I WANTED HIM TO LEARN KUNG FU!!!!

   It gives me a perfect sense of pride and peace to see his confidence, his abilities, his joy in doing Kung Fu. I know that my contribution into what makes him "Kody" is not to be discounted or dismissed but what he knows in Kung Fu and the Martial Arts can only have come from our Sifus at Silent River Kung Fu. He has been doing this awesome martial art for over 13 years, basically his whole life. The instructors at the Kwoon are as responsible for who he is as much as his teachers at school, his grandparents and siblings, and of course his Mom, with a little me in there too I guess😊. 

   This has happened in the blink of an eye is seems, poof, he we are. He is in grade 11. He is now a licensed driver. And he is training to grade for a black belt. This is more than I could have ever asked for. Thank you to all who have helped him grow into who he is. It takes a village to raise a child, and Kody's village is an empire of awesomeness.

   Thanks for letting be blog about this, it was important for me to get this in writing while it was still fresh in my mind, now it is in print, forever.

Short and Sweet

    I'm having one of those "I have lots to blog about, I have nothing to blog about" moments. Realistically there is always something to blog about though, right? I guess where I am at is I have so much to blog about that I am having a hard time focusing on one thing. So I will look at the ceiling and grab the first thought that looks back.......

   Sleep, or lack of. I have been sleeping very poorly lately. Don't know why, no real big changes in my life, just 4 or 5 hours of sleep if I am lucky, then up and moving. It is wearing me down. Maybe too much mental flotsam floating around in my noggin. I am going to try some of the meditation we have been working on at SRKF,, right before bed, and see what happens. Thing is, I don't have a problem falling asleep, I have a problem staying asleep. Guess I will see where this takes me, more to follow.

  I just erased a whole paragraph, thought it was something I wanted to share, I was wrong. Kind of amazing that what started as a blog about having nothing to really write about has turned into ideas that I am going to implement, guess that goes back to what a very wise man once (and still) says, "when you don't want to train, go train, when you don't want to blog, go write a blog". So I will and I did.