It has been a CRAZY few months! As such I have missed a lot of the posting I really should have. So here is what is "Relatively" new in this Swordsmans life, it has been so packed the last little bit I will limit to mostly sword related stuff here, there is much more to say but this is the sword related stuff.
I have been very much hit and miss on going to classes for the last few months but that does not mean there has been no sword, in fact even missing classes there has been a lot that was awesome going on.
September saw my first Renaissance fair playing the part of Henry VIII with the House of Tudor guild. This was a great event, and though it rained for the 2 days of the event, I met many great people and feel like it really helped me expand my focus a bit from just sword, to things like this which I feel fall under the same umbrella.
Not only was this a fun event, but as it happened a couple of weeks before our competition it was a big step forward for me personally.
I always get psyched up, (Sometimes too much) when a competition is coming up. I fall into a trap of building so much into my performance that if I make a misstep or do not do as well as I feel like I should, I quickly slip into self criticism and doubting my own skills. I am not the best out there, I know I have room to get better, but I feel like I am not as bad as I could be. This time was different. For me it was OK for me to take the week off and play a part, and know that one week of practice was not going to make or break my skill. If I won, I won, if I lost though not 100% OK with it, it was better than it has been for awhile.
This event was a bit different, instead of the matches going to a certain number scored for one person it was based on cumulative score so once the points were scored, no matter who did it, the match was over. We got this idea from a friend of ours who came to study abroad from Germany last year. There were ups and downs about all of it but ultimately the great part was when the match ended, unless you counted points you did not know who won since the last point scored could bring it to 5 to 3 in your favor but that could have been scored by you, or your opponent so just because they hit you last did not mean it was the winning blow. It also meant that when each round was over (we had a lot more of them), all you could do was go into the next one and do your best to defend yourself and do well, wins did not matter as much as simply doing your best. I was a huge fan of that idea.
After the competition was over we went to California to visit Disneyland, take a vacation, and for me at least get a little sparring in with my friends at Kron. I say just after but this is literally how it happened. We got home, I showered and changed clothes while my wife emptied and repacked the car and by the time I was dressed we left. It could not have been more than 30 minutes between pulling up and leaving again. We drove through the night, spent some time at the beach a few days at the park then on Wednesday night I had an opportunity to visit my friends at Kron in Fullerton.
That is the thing I am learning about this community, no matter where you go, there are new friends to meet and seriously some of the best people I know. This visit was no different. I went to their class was treated graciously as a guest and of course got in some sparring. I used to think that I rested on knowing who my opponents were too much, Knowing their tricks, what they did not do well instead of reading them in that moment better. If nothing else I have found out this year it has been that some things are universal, but that skill, the ability to read your opponent, to get in their head and see what is coming or what you need to do to counter is so important. I cannot say I know how my free sparing with these awesome people went, I do not know who scored more points, who won, or who lost. but I felt like I was able to keep up, and hopefully taught them a bit of the bit I know about this art I love so much.
Since last I wrote about things I have had 3 classes with the study group I am teaching. I am finding it a long journey when I go up there, It is 160 miles round trip, but it is sometimes meditative to get in a car and just drive. I have seen some beautiful things along the road, and watched summer turn to fall, and then winter along the road to Logan. I can say with all honesty that I feel like I have a great group of students who are excited to learn so much so that it has not become unusual for me to stray from my plan when they brought up something really good and I felt it needed to be covered.
I have not taught a lot, here or there in the class I attend, Once in Puerto Rico to a great bunch of guys there while I was on vacation, but to me teaching helps me see the world a bit bigger. I find that I learn things or think differently about some things by observing others and to see them get better, is a moment I can only call being proud of the hard work they are doing to learn and get better with it.
Many other things have happened in the last 3 months. I attended the first Highland games to happen in Moab Utah, I broke a caber, was voted by my peers the Athlete of the day, and have had some great adventures while I have been on and off with sword, sometimes teaching, sometimes doing something else, but it is always with me and always a driving force for me. I reactivated the membership I had at the Recreation center and have been exercising more often, have been fencing on and off while helping some younger guys learn how to use a sabre, but all the time it has been in my heart.
One of the last things sword related that I did for myself came in the form of a lifetime membership to the HEMA Alliance. I have been a member for a number of years now, in part initially to help my class become a part of it, but in recent years it has been my way of saying I love this martial art, and it is important to me that I support the things I love. So after years of debating it, I finally decided it was time. It was time to sign my name and say that I believe in this community, this crazy sword family I have adopted, and that to me at least it matters. There may come a day when I may not love it as much, when it is OK to go months without sword, but you cannot take that love away from me. I am a member because to me it matters.
We put our money and intention into the things that matter to us, for some it is volunteering somewhere, for some, it is putting their passion into their work, for some it is doing nothing at all. To me, it is about this martial art I love to practice. I may not love all of it, I could do without some of the drama, some days I could do without some of the practice that I do not like, but at the end of the day, this matters to me. It is something bigger than just the practice though. We are a community, with all the ups and downs that entails, but when it comes down to it, when I go on vacation I love to meet people who share this passion, and it feels like family, and to me, that dynamic is every bit worth standing up and saying that I wish to be a part of that for life.
