Thoughts from the deep

It's been very busy the last little while with the after math of a challenge and life. Spending three quarters of the year working everyday and trying to maintain all, has left behind a whole pile of items that need to be completed. Items that were set aside so I could take my Kung Fu and the discipline of mastery to a higher level in my career. I didn't choose a career to stay at the same level day after day. My focus has always been to excel, the sky's the limit only if you let it limit you. The same should follow suit for anything you are passionate about. If your ambitious and enjoy challenges and not scared to march to your own drum, this should never be an issue. If you don't, you become stagnant and in some cases resentful. A poor attitude develops and you tend to become judgemental and focus on finding fault in everyone and everything around you. You become an excuse master and accomplish absolutely nothing. Things around you are piling up and you are doing nothing but waiting for the perfect moment to get yourself together and have the perfect productive day. Guess what? The word perfect is a myth, from any angle, period. You steer your own ship and right now you are in the haul chipping away at what is the very thing keeping you a float. The very thing that is a complete composition of everything you are about. Everything you have respect for and gifts you were given by others to make you solid. Soon your journey will cease and you will go down with your ship. Then as you plunge to the bottom of an ocean of self pity, that you created, you sit. Looking up you see many hands reaching down to pull you back up. To help bring you up to heal and rebuild you and your ship. Instead of reaching up and accepting the help and being reminded of all the things you should be grateful for, you kick, punch, and bite. Pushing away the offering and isolating yourself further. You look up again and there are no hands there. Tolerance for the selfishness you have displayed is depleted. Trying to raise yourself to the surface is almost impossible because of the over bearing weight you decided to load your shoulders up with. These are your problems and your weight. You chose everything you decided to carry and now you must shed in order to surface. Some things are easily shaken off because you have come to the realization they are useless to you and you can't change what you can't control. As you throw those things off you begin to slowly rise to surface. Some things are not possible to shake off, they are in grown into your composition so you must find a place for it and continue to rise. Some things thrown off have many attachments that entangle themselves around whatever you leave vulnerable. Cut them off and get your point across in an aggressive matter if that what it takes. If things work out this way you should come to the surface and find all that you are made up of floating beside you and are completely salvageable, and what you don't is at the bottom where they belong. Looking further you see the same place you left off. The sea of anger and self pity has now turned to a sea of  peace and a goal driven charter. You see so much ahead that you should be grateful for and things that are going to make your journey fresh and fulfilling. Traveling with people that care about you and people that are willing to share what they can is all the back up you'll ever need. Don't make jerks out of them and isolate yourself. Embrace them and slap your ego and pride around a bit if that is also something you need to do. So fire up the drums and get back on the path where you belong. Most importantly ditch the self pity and the blame of others, you are the one doing the navigating. And if your not, talk to someone that's not afraid to tell you how it is and learn from them, instead of firing back with excuses.

One last thing to put out to those from the I Ho Chuan team that made it this far without scrolling ahead. I have an announcement to make to the team this Friday. It is something that is weighing heavily and must be mentioned face to face. I refuse to hide behind a computer screen and post it. Out of respect for the team and myself this must be done in person. See you at the Kwoon.

This years gifts

Being on a the snake team this year was a benefit on so many equations. I had many highs and although smaller low's, they hit very hard. The highs were being able to achieve a level of form with the sais. I really enjoyed working with the sais this year. It was my chance and a challenge to come up with a display of creativity on my behalf and from the input of others on the team. Even if they don't realize it, they're a big part of it and I feel pretty good about where the weapon form is. The demo we did on Canada Day was an awesome day and I felt humbled among the skill level that was displayed by the team that day on all fronts. It was great to be able to show up and help out the team whenever I had the chance to do so. Meeting people and working with them on a different level than Kung Fu is always beneficial and it feels better to step up to respect your commitment when an opportunity arises. Next up was the Tiger Challenge. This was the best day of the year. On this particular event you get to see all the hard work and training come out. It was probably the most casual and humorous sparring/ point sparring I have ever witnessed at a school tournament. People were laughing and the atmosphere was just cool. It was extremely difficult for me to do my forms this year. Probably the most nervous I have ever been at anytime doing Kung Fu publically. Usually I can go into a zone and before I know it I'm done. This time my heart was beating like a Mac 10 and I thought my head was going to explode, I could sense a number of mistakes and felt very uncomfortable. But I did it and I feel good about it. Certain areas in my training have matured to a better understanding. I'm starting to see how things come together and  how to troubleshoot my Kung Fu. The awareness to what I'm doing has multiplied. My quantity is not as high as it should be, but the quality to what I'm doing is getting better. What little time I had for most of the year was spent breaking down everything I needed to fix in order to continue. This year has really given me a lot of difficulties but a vast amount of training and life knowledge by overcoming obstacles and making mistakes. I think the last thing I really liked, for the most part, was the board breaking. The public failings make you feel like you suck, but every time a board didn't break I learned something. That's all I can really think of for now.