september’s end

The world is changed; I can feel it in the water, I can feel it in the earth, I can smell it in the air.

—Lord of the Rings

autumn is upon us, and as always she brings change. on many levels. i feel myself borne upon her cool winds…i wonder where she will set me down. it’s a good time. and i feel that next year will be an amazing year, unlike any other in my life. of course, the thing about change is that one cannot predict its outcome! yet, i feel full of good energy and am inspired.

meanwhile, i’m a living embodiment of the unsure state of transition, at least at the moment. well, that’s my romantic way of saying i have a cold. which is a tiny bit of a drag. granted, many people have much worse ailments (and i even have more painful persistent conditions in my body), but it knocked me off my square a bit. i had planned to attend this four hour sparring seminar held by great grand master lee today, but at the last minute i just had to ditch it. i went as far as eating, dressing, and getting ready to get on my bike…but as i stood there deliberating, i finally had to admit i didn’t have the energy in my body to bike down there and endure four hours of sparring drills, and sparring, and give it all the mental focus and attention it would require. also, to be frank, i had no food to pack a lunch with or cash on hand to buy a sandwich to bring…which may have been the ultimate decider. even if i could push it, i’d need food to do it.

eh. as much as i feel irritated to have missed out (direct instruction from master lee is never to be passed up casually), i have to admit, my body just feels like it needs the rest. anyway, the demo team keeps racheting up energy and challenge, and if i’m to be on top of that, i need to rest between now and next week’s training.

the little software/gaming startup company that me and some homies have been plugging away at behind the scenes for years rolls into a new phase as we approach 2012. we’ve been working on a number of things over the last two + years. a lot of time spent on carefully and conscientiously shaping the infrastructure and internal organization that allows us to communicate efficiently, and to delegate duties, and maintain respect for all the partners and our contributions. we’ve spent time on creating the look and feel of our website, as well as creating our initial array of site and game art, as well as our logo. additionally, we’ve done a lot of brainstorming on everything from our approach to gaming, to the games we want to produce, to where we see ourselves fitting into the market as well as the world, and even specifically on many games. garden day is one of those games, and we’ve put in a lot of hours as we sketch out narrative, the backstory of the characters involved, the game mechanics, the themes, the philosophy, and the art. it’s pretty exciting and fulfilling to be part of such a project. i’m looking forward to what the coming months and years bring us as we continue to infuse our heart and mind into this project.

little luna continues to plug away at her training in taekwondo. she recently passed her green belt test, and so now attends a different set of classes. (they are split into white & yellow and then green & up). i will still definitely take her to some white & yellow classes in addition to the green and up classes, because the beginner classes have a different focus, and do a lot of work on foundational technique and behavior and aerobic conditioning.

but now luna is in classes that specialize a bit more. her mondays are heavier on sparring than before (tho mondays are sparring days anyway), and now on wednesdays she has sword training. (this thrilled her to find out about).

she’s as happy as ever, and i feel good about how much her confidence is growing. this was the first test that she felt wholly ready for and volunteered that she felt ready to test. this is a huge contrast from her last test where she wanted to back out of testing, and then wouldn’t go up to get her rank for weeks after testing due to feeling too nervous about the whole thing. it’s very gratifying to see the progress she has made, and the effort she continues to put into training. i still have not bought her the new dobok i promised her i would buy when she passed green belt, but she is not angsty about that. she is fine without it. it’s just something i wanted to do, and i will, in the next week or so. and then, i’ll let her work for a while at this level. spend some time on that green belt. learn her new techniques and self defense moves. grow comfortable with them over time. i really do think it important to spend lots of time on your foundation. everything will build more beautifully and comfortably atop that, if you do.

i want to spend some more time with her here at home, give her some one on one instruction on a few things. one is her new techniques, the jumping front kick as well as the hook kick. in class, you just can’t always get extended personal and focused instruction on areas of a technique you are studying. that is why you need to augment dojang time with home training time. you are shown the correct technique at the dojang, you are supervised on it over time as you try to progress, but for drill-down focus, you need to invest personal time. and i want to give some of that to her here, at the beginning of green belt. just a note to myself.

 to the left of this paragraph you see a photo of a bolt. there are many of these at the base of my kicking dummy. there used to be a flimsy plastic cover that went over this part of the base, but paloma kept taking it off, so i just threw it out.

later, i broke a bone in my right foot on this very bolt. i was practicing a jumping reverse turning kick, for the hundredth or whatever time, but it was at night and i was tired, and i think i lost track a bit of that line between “push yourself through the pain/exhaustion/will to give up!” and “hey, i’m starting to fade and i should be careful because when you are tired or weary, you are more likely to injure yourself.”  one of the kicks, i came down and retracted my kicking leg too slowly (something i’ve had to work on a lot in my technique, as well as keeping my arms in, as well as jumping high enough, as well as quickly turning in the air, rather than slowly corkscrewing from the floor up, and so on and so on…) and my foot (instep) came down hard on this bolt. very hard. it basically smashed down into the bolt. when i was done hopping and wailing or whatever i did, i put some ice on it. and sat there for a while. i had no idea it was broken at that point. or cracked. or whatever i did to the bone.

all the pain is gone by now, but on my right foot there is a hard knot of bone where on the other side, it is relatively smooth. whoops! it feels a little freaky, to be honest. but im getting used to the gradual reshaping of my right foot! it reminds me of playing guitar for years. your hand stretches, gets more limber, probably actually gets bigger a bit, the muscles beef up, and you grow calluses. my right foot has been injured so many times that i think it’s probably gonna be pretty ugly in a few more years, tho perhaps somewhat impervious.

and i am feeling hungry. so i’m going to go take care of that. then, later i’ll do some housecleaning and come back to hit a little artwork and writing that needs to be done. it’s a saturday and as it’s one of my days with the most free time, i’m tempted to just sit and watch movies. but there’s time for that later.