A Beginner's Journey

I've been keeping handwritten karate journals for years. Cool drills, notes on kata (forms), insights from my sensei (instructors), my own insights, and to-do lists are recorded in the pages of a few spiral notebooks.  I even keep a mini-notebook and a pen in my gear bag just in case. I have filled out at least two of those. All paper, all hand-written, and yes, precious to me. At first blush it doesn't seem like these handwritten journals are all that meaningful.  The filled spiral notebooks sit on a bookshelf. I'll transcribe drills or bunkai (interpretation of forms) to a spreadsheet, but that's maybe ten percent of what I write about.  The other 90% of what I write sits in the notebooks never to be read again.  Most of the time I only glance through the last few entries if I've forgotten what I want to work on. So what use is the practice of journaling if I barely look at what I've written? For me the act of writing something down means it'll stick longe...

  "You're lucky I even accepted you as a student." "We guarantee your child will be a black belt in seven months!" "Aw, are your feelings hurt? I don't get paid enough to talk to people like I'm a Smurf on weed. Get over it." "Our instructors are all 10th degree black belts and they are happy to give your preschool child private lessons so you can have bragging rights over those parents who don't care about their children's future." Obviously these are two extremes. And some of you are laughing. Instructors walk a constant balance. We deal with people whose expectations don't match the reality of what it takes to build a good, solid foundation in a martial art.  No matter how hard we try to be clear in our communication, sometimes folks just don't understand even simple concepts like, "Our policy is instructors invite students to test for their next rank." Big retail stores can afford to say, "The custom...

 Hello! It's been nearly a year since I took my blog down from its previous hosting service. There was just too much behind-the-scenes technical work. Moving this blog gives me a chance to start fresh.  I started blogging way back in the summer of 2014 shortly after I'd started karate in my mid-forties.  My intent in blogging was to record what it's like for a middle-aged matron to go from white belt to black belt.  I succeeded in recording my own unique journey. Your results absolutely will vary. In this new blog I hope to give myself some freedom to protect my time and my peace. I've given myself permission to write shorter stories and/or thoughts.  In the past I put too much pressure on myself to produce lengthy posts. For a time, I was cranking those out at least once a week. No more. If the words ain't flowing, a paragraph or two is perfectly OK.  To protect my peace I no longer allow comments. My friends know how to get hold of me. If and when the moo...