way too many commas

(I wrote this back in 2021 a bit before I decided to join the Year of the Tiger Team, and wanted to have it on my blog to look back at if I ever needed it) What is a Blackbelt? Kayley Burke 2021 Like most things in my kung-fu, I am overthinking how exactly to begin, rather than just starting, so this might be a bit disorganized, and maybe even poorly written, but the important part is that I’m staring and hopefully it will get better as I go on (wow really heavy with the metaphors right out the gate I guess?).  The very first idea that comes to me is a Blackbelt is a perfect person. Someone who gets up at 6 am after getting 10 hours of sleep to go for a run, do 100 push-ups, and works on their forms for an hour before they even really start their day. This idea extends beyond training too, this person gets everything they planned to do for the day done, lives a healthy, well-balanced life, and contributes to their community. They are able to do these things because they have except...

Less than one week until grading day. Approximately 167 hours (even less now since it took me so long to write this).  I've had lots of people in the last little while, friends, family, classmates, other candidates, ask me things like are you ready? getting excited? got everything ready? how're you feeling? But the most persistent question I've been getting asked has been coming from myself, Do you think you are ready? Do you think you have earned it? Do you feel like a Blackbelt? And they have been some of the most difficult questions in my life to think about, let alone try to answer. Do I think I'm ready? No, but I don't think there would ever be a time I would answer 'yes' to this question. What is that one quote, “ If we wait until we're ready, we'll be waiting for the rest of our lives .” I can think of so many things I need to work on, and fix, and get more reps in, and start … but I need to remind myself that you don't become a blackbelt...

 I am a follower A couple of weeks ago I had volunteered to help out in the Level 2 Young Dragons class and for the first half of class they were running circuits. Todai Ferris was really trying to encourage the kids to push themselves during each interval. While some kids were unconcerned and just moving from station to station, many of them had this intense fire in their eyes that absolutely astounded me. Not to say that I don't expect much from these kids, I've seen some really great efforts and fantastic techniques from them plenty of times but sometimes in class they get chatty or unfocused or goof off, fair enough they're kids, that's par for the course, I was like that plenty of times when I first started too. As much as I try to ignore it, recently a lot of my thinking has been centered around grading day, when we're in class I try to put in as much effort as I can, I try to put myself in that mindset of being exhausted and still having hours left, trying to...

 Another idea that popped into my head while I was on the trip was writing a blog about motivation. While being away from my home training space, and the kwoon I got a better understanding of my motivation, habits, and follow through on promises.  It's been relatively easy to think that I've been motivated and have pretty good will power when it comes to staying on track with my numbers and training, but as soon as I was thrown into an unfamiliar environment and my normal routine flew out the window I found it was so much harder to stay on track and keep trying to fulfil those promises you make to yourself, I even found it harder to get down onto the floor and start doing pushups, I would just stand there trying to psych myself up for almost a minute instead of just going down and doing them like I normally do.  But as disruptive as this was for my training it really helped me to work on my motivation and follow through. I would tell myself, "you're not leaving this ro...

 I have a backlog of blogs that have been floating around in my head since my trip and I want to try to finally get back on track and write them all out. I was considering making them into one massive blog but I decided that if I want to go back at any point I should have them separate so they are easier to find in the future. I don' think they will be as in-depth as if I would have written them closer to when the initial ideas popped up, but some sort of record of what I was thinking is better than none, right? The night before I left for my trip I was up late and excited to leave the next day, but I knew I needed to go to sleep soon so I would be well rested for the 12 hour drive ahead of me. I thought about maybe doing awakening the dragon to try to clear my head, but I was on hard wood floors and I knew I would be falling behind on my forms over the trip, so I decided to try to do Lau Gar in a way that mimicked awakening the dragon, very slow, deliberate, and in some spots, sof...

I am in training. Coming back from my trip I'm going through the all too familiar drop in stamina that I've experienced a couple times this year whenever I step away from the kwoon for a while. I had every intention of keeping up with my forms on this trip, but with little space and even less time and energy than I was expecting (curse you planning fallacy!) it slipped, despite those good intentions (did manage to keep up with my pushups and sit-ups though so it wasn't a complete bust!) Now with less than a month until The Day That Must Not Be Named I get a slow and persistent creep of fear up my neck anytime I think about where I am in my training.  "You've wasted so much time, you should have never gone on that trip, you're back to where you were in the beginning, you're not going to make it, you're wasting time your time doing this right now," the voice in my head whispers.  I feel like coming back from this trip has left me in a very odd place ...