Posts

Showing posts from May, 2026

The Absence of a Blog

I am posting this in place of my actual blog for tonight. I needed to write something and it is best not to be shared with anyone. I know it is one of our requirements to blog publicly every 7 days, but it was important for me to write those things out for myself, and I think that that follows the spirit of the requirement: that I write a record of my journey for myself.  I post this to fulfil the public part. Current Total Push-ups 10769 Sit-Ups 9906 AOK 269 Km 779 Blogs 13 Sparring 28 Hand Form 129 Weapon Form 169 Repair Relationship 0

Spear, and Tigers, … and Blogging

We have been focusing on learning the school spear form in blackbelt class recently and I am having a blast with it so far! I have always wanted to learn more of the school weapons forms, but with applying  new lessons to the forms I already know, and still trying to get Mlong Kuen to be a bit more developed, it never felt like the right time to reach out and try to learn some of them, but now I have the opportunity to focus on it.  I am finding it interesting because so much of it is so familiar because of the foundation I have from the stick form, but at the same time time it feels so foreign because the reach, the center of balance, and the blade of the spear all change how I can use it.  Sihing Yitzik Csillag mentioned that I need to do it “less Tiger, more Crane” and I’m really excited to apply this imagery as I build my muscle memory in the form for the first time. I mentioned this in my sword form break-down blog: I really want to investigate how the 5 animals mani...

Failure

This morning I was doing my first set of pushups for the day. When I was done I entered them into my tracking spreadsheet and updated the values for today’s date, and my heart sank. I missed a week. My blogging streak was over, and I have failed. I’m not sure what to do. I don’t want to take this lightly, this is a test, the requirements are clearly laid out for us, this is a black and white answer, either I do it or I don't, and I didn’t .  I don’t know what to do. There are two trains of thought running through my mind, in some places the tracks cross over each other. 1) I have failed, it is over, there is no recovering, no amount of clever words in this blog will change the objective truth that I have failed the blogging requirement. 2) Failure is part of the journey, I knew I would fall off the wagon, now I need to minimize the amount of time I spend laying face-down in the mud. I can’t let this set back discourage me from continuing to work towards my blogging goal for the res...