way too many commas

Since I started my new job I have found it really difficult to set aside time to blog. It's not that I don't have anything to blog about, in fact I have too many blogs that I want to write, cataloging progressions and insights in my training, recounting events of the Tiger challenge, and of the events that I have had to miss like the parade, details of my progress on repairing a relationship, talking about how kung fu threads through different aspects of what I do at my job, exploring ideas brought up in team meetings, discussing progress in my weapon form. My brain is too full of all the things I need to remember I want to write about so it's harder and harder to start thinking of new ideas to explore because it feels like I don't have the mental space as these same ideas spin around and around in my brain, instead of getting them out and into writing.  The problem hasn't been that I'm not thinking about these things, I realize I'm thinking in the pattern o...

Like I mentioned last night many of my numbers have taken a hit this month due to the chaos of starting a new job, getting sick, the smoke, and wisdom tooth pain; each week I would tell myself that I wasn't too far behind, that I would catch up next week, and inevitable each week had something new to throw at me.  I think a big part of the problems I'm having come from trying to bend my old routine to fit my new reality instead of adapting it to fit, so going forward I'm going to try some new things including setting aside 10 minutes everyday to take care of my non physical stuff (blogging/logging numbers/personal requirements/etc.) I also want to try blogging (voice to text) on my one long stretch of highway driving. (this was my plan from the start of my new job, but I hurt my throat quite bad at the start so I never got the chance to test if it will work or not) I am also going to try to be extremely mindful about how I am "catching up" on things. I want to fo...

I have started to let some of my numbers slip, mainly my sit-ups and broadsword form reps. I have been trying to, and will continue to do a handful of extra sit-up reps each day so that I am keeping my training sustainable, but also not allowing the slips up to be excused. I know my focus on the tiger challenge will help with the form reps too. I am also expecting to be doing a ton of walking at my new job so it will be nice to get my km's in the green, but even more than that I'm hoping to have numerous opportunities for AOK at this new job and I want to seize as many as I can! I am really liking how I've been approaching the Mastery requirement this year, writing little excerpts relating to each line each week always gives me a new lens to view my training through that I often don't think about when I am doing a regular blog. But like I mentioned last month it's not really helping me memorize the exact poem word-for-word, so I would like to ask the team: what sort...

I have been not where I want to be with my pushups for a while now. It's not that I haven't been reaching my goal everyday, I have, I just seem to always be doing them much later than I intend to. Ideally I like to spread them throughout my day so I can have multiple opportunities to think about my kung fu, and more practice taking said opportunities. Since they are so spread out I like to have a benchmark of thirds, roughly 1/3 in the morning, 2/3 in the afternoon, and the last third in the evening, however that looks day-to-day. I know lots of people like to get their numbers done in the morning, describing it as giving them a head start on their motivation, but I get that same sort of motivational boost by knowing I'm on track through the day.  The problem is, at some point I stopped being on track. Most days I've only done a handful in the morning and then I am scrambling once I realize the clock has struck 10pm and I'm nowhere near my goal. Last year I made mys...

 I've been meaning to write a blog about teaching for a while now, but as I'm sitting down to write this, I realize I never fleshed out the idea beyond "write teaching blog". Usually I go into a blog with a pretty good idea or a list of bullet points of what I'm going to write about, and it always ends up longer than I intended as I discover things through the process of forcing my ideas into written word, but in this case I really have no idea where to start , (so that's exactly where I'm going to start I guess,) Anytime I am given a group of students, whether it be a small handful or the whole class, I don't know how to go about instructing them, or where to start breaking things down. When I am given the gist of what the lesson should be, the concepts feel so large, and so complex, and each student is at a different stage, and there's so many important things I want to emphasize, but I don't want to overwhelm. Even if I manage to pick a fo...

This past weekend I was visiting some family for Easter. Usually these visits consist of small talk and plenty of silent pauses when I try to answer the infamous " what's new? " Nothing all that drastic has usually happened, except this time, I haven't seen any of them since I started my grading year and earned my blackbelt so I was very excited to relive the moments of my journey last year, and felt confident I would not run out of things to talk about when they asked me what has changed since my last visit. However I quickly realized that nobody was even remotely interested and when I brought it up it was quickly passed over by other questions or swift redirections of the conversation.  Now I'm not saying I expected everyone to spend the entire weekend talking about only me , eyes growing wide as I elaborated on different aspects of my training and journey, that's not it at all. What I did expect was maybe a sliver of interest from my family about this huge...

All the sparring we did in class this month definitely helped my numbers, but I know I still need to work on consistently integrating it into my own training instead of relying on what we do in class time. Also although I am behind in my Km's requirement I have been making consistent choices to go for walks more often so although I'm not quite where I want to be, I'm heading in the right direction.  Requirements  (where I am/where I should be/where I'm trying to go) Push-ups: 11590/10800/50000 Sit-ups: 11240/10800/50000 Hand Form: 213/200/1000 Double Broadsword: 167/200/1000 Sparring: 183/200/1000 AOK: 288/200/1000 km: 210/310/1609 Mastery: Last month I started focusing on one sentence each week and writing a short thing about how the sentiment of each line relates to my current training and so far it's been going well! I might need a new strategy in terms of memorizing the excerpt one-to-one, I'll have to check in next month about that. 4/5/21 Personal Requirem...