All Right With Limbo

For better or for worse, it seems I don’t have as much to say these days.  I’ve inadvertently taken to posting every other day for about a week now, and I have conflicting feelings about it.  I’m busy giving time and attention to other projects, like further indulging the baker in me, and enjoying it. I’m also spending some non-kung fu time screaming at the television as the latest overpaid pitcher gives away the game with one strike left in the inning.  (Pick a team, and it seems to apply.)  But the overachieving student I always was equates not posting with ignoring homework, and that’s just not something I did very often.  So it feels strange.

Perhaps the exact nature of my blogging state is that I’m locked in limbo – and thus lacking the source material that once came in daily like the tide.  I’m waiting to teach again, waiting to learn more of the new form, waiting for the next competition.  Waiting.

But here’s the thing: there’s an upside to waiting that this lifelong monument to impatience finds pleasantly surprising.  In between training, spinning myself dizzy, mother duties with the adolescents and – oh yeah – working the job that pays the bills, there’s more time for chats in the kitchen with my boy and planning a summer camp week with my girl…

and noticing more life on the streets in a neighborhood I spend as much time passing through as actually living in.

There’s something to be said for waiting.  But only when I take the time to do it right.

And only when it doesn’t last too long. 🙂

Letting Go & Logos – Part 2!

Email from the gym today on me teaching kung fu: “…I think it would be awesome to try it out here if you are still interested.”

There is most definitely something to be said for letting go!

The Real Drive

For a few brief moments today, I actually tried to calculate how long it would take me to drive to Miami.  The answer is about nineteen and a half hours.  That’s if I’m driving the speed limit and only stop for gas and bathroom breaks and eat in the car while I’m driving.  Not going to happen – any of it.  The only reason such insanity was even batted around was because I did additional research on this weekend’s martial arts tournament and discovered it’s almost exclusively for karate.  It would be a complete waste of time and money to make an appearance.

So I decided to reconsider going to the tournament that I know is a kung fu competition – the one I also know I would need to buy a plane ticket to get to.  That one’s in Houston three weeks from now.  At the moment, it costs about five hundred roundtrip to get there and back.  That price is only going to go up the closer I get to the event, and that’s just the plane ticket.  It doesn’t include registering for the competition, two days of meals and sleeping somewhere.  I guess I could save some money by just renting a car and driving out to the Houston suburbs to crash and eat at my former in laws’ house.  But since I’ve never set foot in their house without being accompanied by their son or their grandchildren, I’m thinking it’s probably not a good idea to rely on their southern hospitality.  Scratch Houston, look to the next city on the circuit.  Which brings me to my imaginary marathon drive to Miami.

Now, the real drive to Miami, particularly if I’m driving alone, would require two overnight stops going and coming home, plus the night spent in the city itself.  So I’d need a week’s vacation for a one-day tournament that, for me personally, would last all of about three minutes.  Scratch Miami.

I’m starting to see why the bachelor with the disposable income is the only member of our school who regularly competes in tournaments that are more than a couple of hours drive away.  Like it or not, I’m going to have to wait until March for a tournament I can afford to get to.

I’m not good at waiting.  That’s probably why I’m always forced to do it.  The universe insists on giving me lots of practice.