Random Thoughts From My Couch

Things I've changed this year; An oven can be used for cooking things. Who knew? I buy alot less microwaveable things. I listen to my body and find out what it needs instead of ignoring it. I don't shop when I'm in a hurry, it causes me to be rude to people. I don't give up when things get hard, I set my boundaries and work to push past them, setting the bar a bit higher as I progress. I'm not as nervous to speak up and try things. Things I need to work on; Creating smaller, more sustainable goals. Work past the nerves so I can do public performances. I know you are supposed to keep going when you mess up but I freeze completely. LOGGING - Total epic fail this year. Practicing at home, I have a hard time motivating myself to practice at home, I find a billion other things to do. Knowing that I'm like that, maybe I'll look into the YMCA down the street for next winter, that way when the roads are to icy for me to go to Stony, I can do a class there so I'm at least doing something. Things I said I'd do but I didn't; Go to San Sao. I really was going to start this class but it was getting too much to travel to Stony so many days a week. Blog when I missed class, I stopped doing this because I started missing alot of classes during the winter, always because of road conditions. Things I want to change with next years team; COMMUNICATION. I want to stress the importance of this. If you can't commit to something, don't. It drove me crazy this year to have to keep having to start over again with dragon dance basics because we kept having different people all the time. I also found it frustrating planning my schedule around practices and ending up not having enough people and finding out everyone went camping. Well, I could've gone camping too. This is the same with everything else, including the renovation projects, tiling, Pandamonium, etc. If you say you're going to be there, be there. By just not showing up, you leave all the work to everyone else. The hardest things I've done this year; Blogging, I'm a very private person. Asking for help, I never do that. Forms Seminar, Bootcamp, organized a demo, doing my form in front of the class, leading warmups, speaking up when I disagreed with things and failing and starting over many many times. Sorry for the long rambling blog post. If you are still reading this, you must be bored. :)

From Outside to Inside

Watching the Dragon Dance practice on video was a bit unreal to me. 3 or 4 years ago (can't remember when I started) I came to a Chinese New Years banquet with Josh. I was immediately mesmerized by the weapons demos and thought it was so cool. Not long after I was talking to Sifu Brinker, and signed up for kung fu. The past few years around this time, I'd sit in open training watching the lion dance practices and thinking how awesome it was and I wish I could do something like that, and now...here I am. I struggle quite a bit with a lot of this stuff. I was more of the artsy type rather than athletic growing up and suddenly my more active life style has made me extremely conscious of hurting myself and issues I'm having with my body that I probably should've resolved years ago. I wish I had done this a long time ago, instead of in my 30s, but someone once said "the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now" So I guess I'm doing it now. I hope one day I become good with my ropedart and inspire someone else to try. My goal is to have a form that looks fluid and beautiful like some of the forms I've seen on the internet. I think the biggest compliment would be to have someone ask to help them learn.

Just My Opinion

I'm not really sure how to articulate this, it might end up a whole bunch of jumbled nonsense. We'll see as I write. I'm extremely disappointed that I haven't progressed with dragon dance. I still struggle quite a bit with the running and the jumps and I've spent since spring coming to practices. Why am I not getting better? Well, maybe I just plain suck, but there's a lot of things that I've noticed that's been quite frustrating at my level. Like, where are you guys? I'm not talking about the people that have spoken up and said they'd be out of town working, or sick, etc. I'm talking about the people who committed and just plain don't show up. Maybe you think, "Meh, It's easy, I know dragon dance and it'll be easy to catch up."...but what about that person learning behind you? I've been trying to learn and get better, but how on earth can I do that when we're always practicing with new people and having to start over with basics every single class? I feel like I'm still at the level I was on day one of practice. Also, there have been other people that have worked their schedule around practices since spring too. What about them? If they can't make the extra practices we need now because of people not showing up earlier...that kind of sucks. Horse Team - Communicate with each other! If you've committed to something and can't make it, let everyone know and find a replacement. You affect those around you by not showing up, whether you realize it or not. Just be honest, if you can't commit, say so. If you want to commit but there's certain days you can't, say so. Communicate! Lack of communication seems the root of a majority of any problems being on the I Ho Chaun team. Snake Team - Same thing as I said to Horse Team, we have roughly 6 weeks left, lets make the best of it and start talking to each other. Just my opinion.