A Way Of Life.....

....karate has become a way of life. Four of the Byers Five are now involved. And for the most part, we love it. Erin, however, has a perfectionist streak a mile long in her (have NO clue at all where she gets that from....*darts eyes, whistling*), so she frequently cries herself off the mat. Yep. Finally captured it. But what stinks is that I can't get her to realize that it's OK. And when she stays on the mat, she's very good!





....Griffin has been doing very well with staying on mat, and has been coming a long way with his skills. At their first gold belt class, Sensei actually accused me of teaching them stuff on the side. Which I'd honestly thought about, but hadn't done. Time so gets in the way.








.....So tomorrow is another tournament. I have convinced my buddy to come up with me, and in preparation, we climbed down into his wicked-cool basement to practice. We stretched out a bit before beginning, and then got our head-gear, hand and feet pads on to start sparring. We're getting into the groove and getting some good hits in on eachother, when he beans me in the eye. I shake it off, laughing. Is occupational hazard to get beaned when your mode of fun is hitting and kicking your friends. It doesn't hurt, really. So I take a breath, and we go at it again. We're working up a sweat, encouraging eachother on what we should do. He then hits me square in the nose, and I get my first bloody nose from sparring. It took me a bit longer to recover from that. We ended the sparring, but did a bit with the chanbara swords and kata. We shall see what happens tomorrow. My buddy is actually a lot better than he would ever give himself credit for. And what's funny is that he helps me see that in myself as well. Over the past few weeks I've learned that no one is going to push me as hard as I'm pushing myself. I really wish it were a bit different, but I think what I'm going to have to do is to figure out the right ways of getting others to help me be able to push myself in the right direction. I honestly could care less on whether I get my black belt two months from now or a year from now. I want someone to let me know how I can keep learning and bettering myself. If I can't get that, then it's tough for me to feel satisfaction from it.