way too many commas

 I mysteriously hurt my wrist two days ago, so I opted to stay home from tonight's class since I had a sneaking suspicion we would be practicing the dragon again. I did not have a sneaking suspicion that we would be throwing flying kicks against the hanging bags.  I. Love. Flying. Kicks.  All the jealously at not being able to do them with the class got directly funneled into excitement to do my practice kicks à la the fitness test.  Now normally I do these kicks at the end of the night, and more often than not, quite late at night, (see my last blog post) so I'm normally pretty tired before I even start. (I try to rationalize this by saying, I'd be tired from the rest of the fitness test at that point to so this just adds a layer of realism to the practice). But tonight, I was amped up from the start and I noticed something. 1) I went into the kicks with the mindset of "I saw people throwing some good kicks tonight, I want to throw really good kicks tonight too" ...

 its 11:34 on a Sunday, and I just finished throwing almost 300 kicks. did I mean to start them significantly earlier in the evening: yes but that doesn't matter because I still did them. and they were good too, tonight was the first night since I started doing them that I broke 50 of one kick in a minute (I actually got to 51, and all my other kicks were also improved, if only by 1 or 2, but positive trajectory nonetheless).  so I figured that if I can do that I can FINALLY stop telling myself, "oh this is the week I'll pick back up on my blogging, because although it's almost midnight, and this post isn't incredibly insightful, or particularity well-written, it doesn't matter because I still did it.   I figure I need to get into the habit of writing anything at all, and then once I have that down pat, then I can worry about making them worth reading. I need to change my thinking from "I need to wait until the writing conditions are just right so I can t...

 I am participating. This is the most engaged I think I have even been in my kung fu, and so far (knock on wood) its amazing, and wonderful, and surprisingly easy.  Between regular classes, the second degree brown belt classes, the I Ho Chuan meetings and classes, training outside of class, working on my requirements, writing in this journal, I am doing so much more kung fu than I even have before, and I simultaneously feel like I am making leaps and bounds more progress than I have in the past, in just this short amount of time since I started all this Year of the Tiger stuff, and also like I have more to learn than ever (in a good way, I am so so so excited about all the avenues of kung fu opening up in my brain that I never though to explore before). I am asking more questions and thinking about things in different ways and just doing more kung fu than I'm used to.  And I think most of why all of this is happening, (besides me finally getting off my butt, I won't compl...

 Last Monday I took part in challenging myself to do 1000 sit-ups in one day and here's what I learned from it. (Gosh that sounds like the intro to a poorly written essay, but this is my casual-writing-style blog, so get off my back "me") 1) it is VERY easy to make goals, but creating a plan to actually achieve those goals can be much harder ("I'm going to do this!" Yea ok, but how?) 2) the speed of progression can have a huge influence on how you look at the goal, and also how you view each individual step (this can be a double edged sword: "oh god I have to do this many", or "oh look how far I am already because of how many I've been doing each time") 3) hyperawareness regarding mediocrity and understanding how not completing this goal now could lead to a mental pattern in which mediocrity is the default setting in your brain (like ruts in a dirt road, the more your wheels drive over it, the harder it will be to drive somewhere els...

I really can't believe it has taken me this long to start blogging about my kung fu, but how does that phrase go again? "the best time to start was 10 years ago, the second best time is today"? Something like that. So tonight is Lunar New Year's Eve and I'm staring down the upcoming I Ho Chuan year ahead of me head on. 2022. Year of the Tiger. Blackbelt Grading year. And I'm excited, I'm excited to seriously start down the path of mastery, I'm excited to improve my kung fu, and to DO more kung fu than I ever have before, I'm excited about starting to scratch the surface of the number of reps I need to do to start to improve my techniques and I'm excited to be in better shape than I ever have before and to get more involved with the kwoon, and get closer with my fellow teammates, and my fellow classmates, I'm excited to start blogging, and to start building my lion, and to work on my broadsword, and, and , and, and I'm scared out of my m...