44. intrepid

I am intrepid.

I am about to go on a trip with multiple road trips, plane rides, and hikes in store for me for the next week and a bit. Excluding the breaks from kung fu that everyone takes because of stat holidays or sick days, this will be the first time I'm taking a break from kung fu of my own volition since I started really taking my training seriously this year. Or wait, that's wrong, I'm taking a break from classes (there's kung fu everyday), but that's what I'm most worried about. Not only missing out the valuable lesson we get every class, but also the structure and routine I have now has not really had any major disruptions yet since I got it in place. 

I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about falling behind on my numbers, losing some of my stamina I've worked so hard to build, embarrassed to try to do forms, or push-ups in awkward places, or worried that I'm going to just straight up forget to do things since I'm in a new environment and my brain doesn't have it's usual cues to serve as reminders. I'm scared of what's going to happen to my kung fu in this void of uncertainty. (Thinking back to my "kung fu is a living organism" analogy, how will my kung fu adapt to existing in a new habitat/environment? is my kung fu going to get sick? is it going to become malnourished?)

But I'm also trying to keep things in perspective. Even if every one of those things I'm worrying about comes true, I'm only gone for about a week, and one off week will not break the entire rest of the year, nor will it erase everything I've done up until now. I'm also trying to be excited by this new opportunity and challenge myself to use these unfamiliar circumstances to find out new things about my kung fu that might not come to the surface if I stay in this established routine, or familiar environment. 

Like I said in the first line of this blog, I am intrepid so it's inevitable that my routine will get thrown out the window at some point in the future. I'm not going to be in these exact circumstances for the rest of my life, so I might as well use this trip to start getting used to wrenches getting thrown in my plans. 


9/30

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Or can I...?

Between it floating around in the back of my mind for almost a week, reading sifu Brinker's blog post about it today, and sifu Rybek encouraging us to write a blog after tonight's meeting, I think all three created the mental conditions that were just right for me to have a lightbulb moment about the knifehand-long punch-open roundhouse/(dragons whip)-spinning back kick section in da mu hsing II, and I'm very excited about it, I mean, jumping up and down punching the air excited.  My initial question about this sequence that kind of kickstarted this whole thing was that I was having trouble feeling any flow or power from that spinning back kick at the end of the sequence. When sifu Brinker explained that the energy flows just like it does in the knifehand-punch 1) it blew my mind that the spinning back kick was meant to be connected like that!! and 2) I thought I had an answer to my question and all it would take would be to practice with that intent in mind.  However as I ...
Read more

I don't want to write this blog

 I don't want to write this blog. Which is exactly the reason I'm forcing myself to write it. It's only the second month and I've already started to fall behind on my monthly goals (which is one of my personal) requirements for this year. I thought I would have made it a bit farther into the year before something like this happened, but lo and behold all it took was the switch from one month to another and it started to crumble. For the whole first week of March I didn't even have it on my radar until I went to input my numbers for the week and realized I made zero progress. Swallowing my disappointment, I resolved to do better next week. Still no change and another bout of shock when I put in my numbers for the week. On the 12th I wrote in my spreadsheet where the hours should have gone "doing absolute terrible with this one need to address it in a blog ASAP" next week, no hours logged, no blog and just like that mediocrity swiftly snapped it's jaws c...
Read more

Could a Robot Do Kung Fu?

During one of our discussions in the second degree brown belt class last Saturday my brain threw a question completely out of left field at me. Sifu Brinker was describing how flow and power does not come from executing a technique with overly specific instructions (i.e. "ok I'm going to move my arm 98 degrees to the left then extend my elbow in 3.5 seconds then...") and my brain grabbed that idea and ran with it, almost immediately asking "COULD YOU TEACH A ROBOT KUNG FU?????" I made a note of it then left the idea alone because I knew as soon as I started to think about it there is no way I would be able to refocus on the actual discussion (which I very much wanted to hear). Once I allowed myself to think about it my first answer was:  probably , and it would most likely be better than us at it because you could measure out the timing and distancing, all things we have to constantly adjust and practice, to a microscopic level, and the robot would be able to ex...
Read more