Big Decision

I have spent the last month doing some consulting work in Nunavut and the North West territories with only 5 days at home in that time. This last 2 weeks have been spent in Fort Good Hope, Norman wells and Tulita in the NWT. The problem with training is it has been long days with no access to a gym so I have done a lot of push-ups and sit-ups in my room at night with a few burpees thrown in. Internet has also been not so good so I have fallen way behind on reading everyone's blogs as well as my own. I get home tomorrow night but there is a good chance that I may have to leave again Tuesday for two more weeks as the one client would like me back specifically.

On the topic of travel, the company in Nunavut would like me to continue until the end of 2019. This is a big decision as it will affect my how life and my Kung Fu life. This means I would be missing half the classes that I am supposed to teach, mandatory I Ho Chuan classes and I may miss the banquet. It would also be a huge adjustment for September and I dont know how she feels about it yet. This will be the biggest deciding factor for me. Anyway, I will let you all know when I know.

Being Away

Being away for an extended period of time has been an eye opening experience. There is limited things you can do to train while at a camp so I was down to going to the fitness room every night to at least work out. There is no open floor space so you either lift weights or use a treadmill or stationary bike. I was able to go everyday so I am happy about that but that was all the training I was able to get in.

Being able to adapt to your situation is something that I have been working on for the last couple of years as I seem to be constantly changing where life is taking me. I think if I do end up going back that I should be able to do a better job of maintaining my training while away again. I will find out in the next couple of days so we shall see what is next for me.

I have attached a link below that shows you were I was if you are interested.


https://goo.gl/maps/32yy3FaJ1FG2

San Shou

I was going to write about my leaving for work but I want to talk about the San Shou seminar instead.

The goal I had for this seminar was to give people some insight into how San Shou is different from normal sparring and I also wanted to give the students some techniques that they could use in matches. Mostly though, I was hoping that this would help with there confidence and help them improve there normal sparring.

From what I saw over the last 2 classes, I would say that it was a success. I am not bragging about what I did but I am applauding the participants because all of them showed immense amounts of improvement from where they started. That is not saying that any of them were bad to start, but the execution of technique and the confidence in their abilities improved greatly.

I want to thank you all for allowing me the opportunity to be part of this and I also want to thank Sifu Brinker because his insight and experiences made it much easier for me to teach the techniques.


A couple of students have continued to work on this after class and on Saturdays which I hope will continue into the future.

Stress

It seems like a recurring theme of mine for the last few months but it is still an issue. My work situation has not yet stabilized and the stress is starting to wear on me a lot more this last 3 months. When you have a small client pool that you rely on and they all slow down at the same time, this leads to a loss of income quickly. This has led my focus lately on trying to secure a more reliable income (Job search) but so far I have had not much luck. As I am sure most of you are aware, stress has a way of taking most of our focus and from there things start slipping by the wayside. I am trying my best to keep engaged and focus on my training but I am focusing most of my efforts lately on securing work.


With that being said, I do have some work lined up but it will take me to Calgary for the next week so I will be missing class starting tomorrow and I wont be back until Saturday the 28th. I am going to be back this Saturday for the San Shou Seminar as I have the weekend off and this seminar has been great so far.


I dont know what the future holds, but one of the things I am looking at doing may involve a lot more travel and that is something that will require a lot of adjustments and priority reshuffling. I will worry about that though when the time comes.

Grateful

When I was thinking about what I was going to write about this week, I never imagined it would be this. Do you ever get some news that you are at first shocked and then can’t wrap your mind around it? Well this happened to me on Wednesday afternoon. The owner of the company I am consulting for was killed in a motorcycle crash late on Tuesday. He was on an annual tour he does with some of his friends/co-workers when he lost control in Utah. Not only was he someone that I worked for/with for the last 7 years, but we were also friends and the guys he was with were also fiends of mine. I dont know how they are dealing with being there while it happened and I can't imagine how his family feels.

This got me thinking about what Sifu Freitag said last night about being grateful. I am grateful for everything that I have and no matter what is happening in your life, you need to look at what you do have and that is the people that you care about being with you.

More Changes and Challenges

It has been a long two weeks since my injury and I can say I am glad it is over. There are no lasting effects from my fight with the tree except that the tree is now in a lot of smaller pieces. The worst part was waiting to ensure that the brain was fine and I can tell you that at that start I wasn't sure if it was. It was not something that I was wanting to go through again. Anyway, all good on that front.

On the personal front, I have started looking for a full time job again as the consulting business is to up and down and the stress of not having a steady income is beginning to wear on me both emotionally and financially. Being able to work for yourself is great in that you have more freedom and can set your own work schedule but if things don't work out or plans change, then the big downside is there is no money coming in. I have had some success at it but there is not even reward for all the risk in my opinion.

Finally, i am excited about the San Shou seminar coming up and I have broken down into sections that I think will make progressive sense for all the attendees. This is something that I am really excited about and I believe it will be an exciting challenge for not only myself but the participants to be able to modify what we are working on to make it work for them no matter there ability.

Anyway those are my thoughts for the week.

Great to really bad (well not really bad but bad).

This weekend went from being a great weekend to becoming a bad weekend in a short period of time.

So I will start with the good. On Saturday after open training, we went to a movie and then went for dinner after. The movie was highly entertaining and the meal was awesome. On Sunday, we went to the in-laws property and were helping them clean up some dead trees. The weather was perfect and things were going well until....

The bad. There was a dead tree that was hung up on some other tress and while working around it, it slid down and hit me. Do you ever get that feeling of dread because you think it could be bad and then you get confirmation that it is bad. I will spare you the gruesome details but I now have 10 stitches in my head and am supposed to stay fairly inactive for the next few days.

I have to admit it sucked and I keep trying to figure out how it happened but I don't think I will ever know. The one thing I learned is always be aware of what is happening around you and never take anything for granted. Oh yeah, I have a really hard head.