Cindy had quite the humbling workout for us this morning:

Warm-up: Crossfit style (high knees, fast feet, jumping jacks, cross arms, twists, pushups, squats) followed by 2 minutes of jump rope.

Workout:

1 minute per exercise, 3 sets total:

• Burpees
• Bicycles (I am still sore from Barbara… these sucked)
• Dive-bomber Pushups
• Lunges (in place)
• Medicine ball slams
• Rest

I was able to complete this without feeling nauseas or passing out which is always nice. Doing a minute straight of dive-bomber pushups sucks. It just sucks…

I feel bad today. Just… bad. I am not hurt… well, I’m a little sore from working out, but, mentally, just feel tired and drained… like I want to curl up into a ball, get in bed, and stay there for a few days…

There is just so much “bad” out there all the time and I feel constantly bombarded by it. I feel like it’s time to take the people that I love and move to our own private island away from all of this constant negativity.

The stock market is down again. Republicans don’t know what they’re talking about. Democrats don’t know what they’re talking about. Liberals don’t know what they’re talking about. Conservatives don’t know what they’re talking about. No one’s concerned about the damn bottom line.

Unemployment rises monthly. 10% of Americans are behind on their mortgages. We can’t reward irresponsibility. We have to help everyone! We can’t help everyone! We are spending more money than we have on bullshit programs that are ridiculous. My grandkids will still be paying.

There are chemtrails in the sky. They government is trying to take over my life.

My 401k has lost the majority of it’s value. I am still in debt. Our food is poisoned. Our minds are poisoned. Our culture is poisoned. Our kids are stupid and disrespectful. It is their fault. It’s not their fault. Their parents are still children. Most men’s testicles still haven’t descended after 35 years. Women want manly men but emasculate them at every turn.

People are selfish. They care only about themselves and how much money they make or how much of whatever they can accumulate for themselves. Our culture deteriorates daily. We become more and more base and ignorant with every passing day.

Fuck it, whatever…

My life is good. I have a great job. I don’t see any danger in being laid off. I have the best girlfriend in the world. I have a nice house & car that I can afford and that do the job for me. I have awesome friends that I would do anything for. My family is finally starting to get down here. It’s not all bad.

The world inside my house is fantastic… the world outside seems to be crumbling. I think argument and debate is great and leads to good ideas becoming great ideas, but for god sake, I am sick of it.

“Separation is an illusion”. It’s in my email signature… one of my friends just asked me what the deal with that was. It’s sort of apropos of this posting. I am not sure exactly when people will wake up and realize that everything they do and say has an impact. They may or may not be aware of the extent of this impact, but it is MOST certainly there.

Everything is connected to everything else in same way shape or form whether you realize it or not. What we do today has implications for 10 years from now and was brought about by things that may have happened 10 years ago.

During one of the teachers seminars at my KF school, one of the speakers said “you never tread so lightly that you don’t leave an impression”.

Chew on that for a bit….

Sorry everyone for the sort of randomness and “stream of consciousness” posting. Some of it probably doesn’t make sense. Please do not try and start a political argument with me from this posting. I don’t care to argue with you.

I guess I just needed to get it out.

I am not sure at what point I stopped being a fan of sparring. I used to like it and then well, I just really didn’t anymore. And so, I stopped going to sparring classes claiming all sorts of excuses that were really just that.

I shifted my focus to forms, where I just naturally do much better than sparring. Forms depend on no one else but yourself and your interaction with yourself. If you do a form too hard and pull a muscle, that’s your own damn fault. If you spar with someone and they crack you in the mouth with no gear on (not mentioning any names) well, you should have blocked and they should have pulled it. I don’t like depending on other people to do what they are supposed to and well it’s fighting, isn’t it?

At any rate, this all became apparent to me over the weekend at the 2009 Shaolin-Do tournament. Even before the tournament, I started making excuses to myself about not wanting to spar. “I won’t have my gear replaced in time” or “I’m gonna get my ass kicked” or “I’m gonna get hurt” etc. When I think about why I was making these excuses to myself, it’s really about ego.

I don’t like to lose. Does anyone? I was concerned about losing in front of people especially with so many people around that I think so highly of and hopefully vice versa. But then I thought “would they really like me ANY less if I just lost every match?”. Would I like THEM any less if they lost every match? NO! Of course not! So what are you so afraid of.

That stripped away the bullshit and just lead me to the fact that my forms ability has grown leaps and bounds passed my sparring ability and that is due to the fact that I just stopped sparring about a year ago.

I talked about this on separate occasions with both Victoria and Ben. They both gave me such great encouragement to just go out there and have fun with it. I am so thankful for those conversations because they helped me to get over this sort of silly aversion to sparring. Watching Victoria go out there and take on a guy that was literally almost 2x her size and 2 ranks higher than her in our system while totally holding her own is inspiring. Watching Ben, a guy who also didn’t want to spar, go up against some of the most talented people in our school and hold his own was inspiring. I thank you both for that.

So, to return to the point at hand, does my sparring suck because I don’t like sparring or do I not like sparring because I suck at it? Does it matter which? I don’t think so.

At the tournament, I did really well in forms. I won first place in Chen and black belt forms. I won second place in tai chi weapons. I didn’t place at all in sparring. In fact, as predicted, I lost all of my matches.

At this point, I am trying to get back on the horse, so to speak. I went to Ryon’s sparring class last night which proved to be pretty difficult. I think I got run over by a Yeti, but I don’t quite remember. It’s all a blur.

All kidding aside, I had a pretty good time. I got to spar some people I haven’t in a long time and the five minute rounds were pretty challenging for me. Admittedly, not as challenging as they were 2 years ago, but I still got pretty gassed at times. Ryon’s comments during class were really helpful and encouraging too. Also, I got some good feedback from Victoria who was watching me get steam rolled.

Despite all that, I still was a bit discouraged at the end of class with my sparring performance. I clearly have a lot of room to grow in this arena. I am just happy that I have such an encouraging environment in which to do it.

Thanks, everyone. It’s really appreciated. I am confident that you all will help me as you all always do…