Now and Then

With the new year, with change in the air, I wonder how much I have ALREADY changed since last year. To figure this out, I read through blogs starting with the most recent and moving back time, paying close attention to changing tone and attitude from one blog to another.

6 month ago, I believed I was done fighting... hanging up my gloves and focusing on academic pursuits, shifting gears focusing on another art (writing and teaching this art).

Funny, 6 months later and I'm training for fight and STILL passionate as ever towards my many passions: martial arts, writing, surfing and teaching/learning/teaching (education is process for both students and teacher).

So maybe I haven't changed much at all!?
I'm focused on NOT focusing on just one art.

I changed my mind about changing! haha

THAT blog from 6 months ago I was all nostalgic, but now I'm more excited about tomorrow. Though Summer must end, it DOES come back again the next year.

The seasons with ourselves are something to pay attetnion to.

For kicks, here's the blog from 6 months ago RE-posted.


Thursday, August 7, 2008
Transitions
My Summer is slowly fading...

Back to work in less than a week.

My Summer is slowly fading...

2 days ago I made an excruciatingly difficult decision to drop out of a fight that I'd been training for for a little over a month because:

chronic and multiple injuries (body isn't as young and reslient as it once was)...
and I realize these injuries have affected me psycologically and emotionally as well as physiologically.

My Summer is slowly fading...

I understand I'm not a dinosaur facing imminent extinction, but I do feel-- worn from wear, rusty, like a relic from another era defining it's self in modern times.


I've stop sulking (I think) and am moving forward. Let us carry on. I'm dusting myself off, and transitioning to another way of being.

My friend, trainer, fellow fighter and in many ways a mentor, wrote to me:

"stop considering yourself too old. you're only old if you think there's not much more to learn. keep looking at life just how you see this mess we call the fight game, and it will always turnout the way you want it..win or lose. "

In "the fight game" we fighters adapt to any given situation, we are disciplined, we care about our "art" as much as a writer, painter, actor what have you.

In the fight game we adapt...

we adapt to different opponents, we adapt to the changing seasons, and I am fiding out now that we even adapt to changes with in ourselves.

And we fight for passion, not glory, we fight because we love "being" the art, performing the art, living the art.

And with all that said, I am hanging up my gloves and focusing on academic pursuits. I am shifting gears focusing on another art.

Look at me in the middle of nostalgia for "the fight game", and also excited for graduate school. transitions...

My summer is slowly fading, but hey! There's Indian Summer in the Fall! and...it's always summer somewhere on the globe! haha