An apology

I have not always been so kind to those who do not agree with me. On more than one occasion I have been known to point out others hypocrisy. (You say you are Christian, but Jesus said to love thy neighbor, you say you are Christian, but Jesus said to pray in private and you will be rewarded openly. ETC)  This is not my place, nor is it the place of anyone else  to tell you how you should be to be what you say you are. I may see the double standard but I will let it go. There is a problem with "Proving" people wrong. you never really do, at least not with their rhetoric. If I point out that you are Pro-life yet for the death penalty, it does not suddenly make me a better person.
My point is this. It is better for a man to do be in integrity with his word. I cannot make anyone else do that but I can do that for myself. It is not my place to point out where people are not being in integrity, but rather to be a good person onto myself.
I will still disagree with things you say and do. but there is no need to point to them and show you that you are not doing as you say. That will not win me points with anyone, and certainly will not show them the error in their ways. If you want to be a crappy Christian, fine, that is between the God you believe in and you. It is not my place to point out when you are being a hypocrite, that is not going to show you the light. I will stand for what I believe is right, but I will not resort to Ad Hominem attacks to do it.
In my mind it is more important to be a good person than to say you are and not act that way. In that way, I have been wrong. It is wrong of me to judge others and then be mad when I am judged. That is something personal to me, they are my own demons I have to wrestle, but it is not my place to point yours out, nor is it yours to point out mine.
Wouldn't it be great if I did not have to wear my religion on my sleeve for you to think I am a good person? Wouldn't it be great for you not to judge me by what I say I do, but by the things I actually do? Wouldn't it be a better world if I your opinions of me had nothing to do with who I vote for or how I am registered to vote but rather based on my actions and deeds? I for one am done with it these anyway.
Rather than proving to you I am a good person it is far better for me to be one.
If you do not agree, it is none of my business, but I am not made a better person because I wear my faith on my sleeve. I would rather meet a man with a great calm and peace about him and ask him how he finds it. I would rather see the fruits of your labor, then come to you and ask my questions about where you find the strength to accomplish those acts and have you tell me. I do not wear my faith on my sleeve, but if you want to ask, ask and we will talk about it. Either way, I am done letting how I vote be a way for you to judge me, that is none of your business, and it should not be something I have to shove in your face to be worth believing in.
I will keep my faith in my heart, where it belongs. I am sorry for my actions of not doing so in the past. If I am wrong about this, let me be wrong, it is not your job to save me but rather if I need saving for me to seek it out. Let me ask you.
I am done making myself right by making you wrong. It does not work, and makes more enemies than friends, and in a lonely world, isn't it better to have friends who you do not agree with to bounce ideas off of, than to have only friends who just support your way of thinking?  I am done playing the game, you are welcome to continue, but please do not rope me in to prove your point, rather find the truth for yourself and you will find the answers for you that you need.

Make them play your game, or the 3 types of fighters.

Make them play your game

In any match or bout the key to winning is to make your opponent play on your terms make them play your game,  but how do you do that?

In my estimation there are 3 primary ways to do this. Constantly attacking, being passively aggressive and being primarily defensive.

Aggressive: The first way to make them play your game is to be aggressive, that is to say constantly pressing your opponent with attacks or threats of attacks until his defense fails him.  

 In Cod. HS.3227A in verse 18V we are told not to strike the sword; instead go for the openings. 

If you take the initiative (Vor), he has to respond (Nach). If you are constantly pressing, your opponent has to either defend themselves, or do something else to counter your attacks. The challenge with this is that if your attacks are predictable as in you throw the same cuts in the same order with the same timing, it is easy to pick up on it and know just when and what you are doing. If you only press with 2 or 3 things then break they may see this pattern, wait for you to break, and then counter attack. So for this to be truly successful you have to press your attacks constantly without relenting. Aggressive fencing also means controlling the footwork and distance. If you make a step forward, they have to take a step back to keep the same distance the same goes for steps offline to the right or the left. If you move first, they have to counter thus you have been the aggressor in the situation. 

Passive Aggressive: The second way is for you to lie in wait for their openings before you attack. The passive aggressive fighter allows their opponent to attack and then relies on counters to those attacks to successfully land their blows. They know how to counter a particular attack so simply parry the attack and counter it to land their blows. They are frustrating to fight as they study the ways to counter an attack and simply use your attack and openings against you. One of the major disadvantage to this style of fighting is that you have to know how to counter things and feel comfortable with it or else it is ineffectual in practice and you can be overwhelmed very quickly. A huge point to this is if they are constantly pressing you and you counter only to have to counter again, and again, it is not as easy to get your counter attack in. If I was going to place a style to this and tie it to the German technique I would say that this is much in the style of the Indes. This is something that you do when they strike to immediately gain the advantage. 

Defensive: Defensive fighters are less likely to use counters as much as simply defend the strike, or in some way get out of the situation. They are looking for an opening, something they can take advantage of quickly and easily but will wait for as long as it takes to get it. Sometimes this means you have to chase them all over as they are controlling the fight by making you come to them. They are patient, and willing to defend themselves as often as they need so they can get the right opening, at the right time for what they want to do. What this translates to is simply never being able to get anything in as they are only looking to continuously counter your attacks until they get the opening they want. They are not always the highest scoring fighters but they are some of the most frustrating as a key is to thwart all of your attacks and get you off your game enough that you miss something.  Fighting someone who does this well is not unlike fighting either a steel girder, or a wisp of smoke as depending on their speed and how they want to fight, they can be both. Defensive does not mean that you take all attacks with back steps, some of the best steps you can take are forward with the defense, but the key here is to be patient enough that they get the best strike they can, often after you have struck and missed. (Nach). 

No good fighter fights just one way all the time, a successful fighter combines a bit about each in some way, and knows when to be aggressive, when to defend and when to set a trap for their opponent to hide their true intent. The key however is to make your opponent do what you want them do to. Retreating so they have to close distance to attack you is making them play your game. Holding a particular guard so they attack what you have open is a way to make them play your game. Feinting to something and watching their response to your attack is a way of making them play your game.  Even attacking the same place 3 or 4 or 5 times so they think you are just going to do the same thing over and over then switching it so they block an attack that is not coming and giving you the opening you want is a way of making your opponent play your game. All of them are useful but each has the right time and place. It is up to you to learn when to use each and how to use them so you can make them do exactly what you want them to. In this art the one who wins is the person who makes their opponent play their game the most, can get in their opponents head and at the end of the day make their opponent play the way they want them to. The key is to make your opponent play on your terms and make them play your game.  

What is my work? My ideal job.

I have now been out of work for longer than I wanted to. In fact, I have been out of work longer now than I ever have before. But what kind of work do I want to do, and what do I feel is my passion and where I want to go?

Let me say that not all of these are hard and fast rules but this is my ideal this is what I am attracting to myself, this is what I am going to bring into being for me.

I will start at the beginning.  The thing most central to me is making sure I am taking care of my family. To that end, I need to make enough money to pay the mortgage and the other bills we have. I have to be bringing home at least $15 dollars an hour to do this with one full time job. If I have a job and then have to add a part time something that is time away from my family, this I do not want to do.
I want to work Monday through Friday or Sunday through Thursday. I would prefer this so I can continue to teach sword, which is something that I love to do, and really gives me a lot of joy. I would prefer to work 7-3:30 or at the latest 5 or so. That is not hard and fast, I am willing to work some holidays or Saturdays or overtime, but I would rather not do so on a regular basis.
I would prefer to work some place with benefits this means paid time off, so I can attend HEMA events and go on vacation with my family.

Now to the big one. What do I need from a company?
I want to work for a company I believe in. A place that I believe in the mission and and purpose behind what they do. A place I am proud of telling people I work for and who provides a service that people need, not just selling them stuff they do not want. I want to believe in the place I work, but feel like I have a place in that, and that the work I do makes a difference. Not just on the bottom line, but to the people I serve I want to go to work and feel like the things I do matter not just to the company I work for, but for the people I serve.

Of course I will waive on these if I got a phone call tomorrow offering me work, but this is what I desire, this is what I believe I deserve and something I am willing to work with to get there but this is my vision, and this is what I am going to bring to me in the next bit so I can get back to work.

Building a class, building a curriculum, and having my best turnout for class yet.

Yesterday was awesome.
I have now been an instructor in my class for a total of just short of a month, but yesterday we had the largest turn out we have had in quite some time.

When I was handed the class, I had some thinking and some working to do. How would my class look? What were the big lesson plans for the weeks? How did my progression look for my students? Was there anything I wanted to add into what we teach that would help people or change the way we do business?

To that end, I wrote out a lesson plan that covers every week between our local competitions, with one week a month being a beginners class where we teach our basics as a class. There are also some weeks added in like snow days in a school calendar so if we have to cancel class or move things around, we can do it without throwing everything off.  Each week has a central idea that we will be covering, but they are their own lesson alone, so if there is progression of an idea, it is happening in that week versus happening over several weeks. The best students will be the ones who show up every week and learn it all, but if you have to miss a week or 2, you are not lost when you come back. Some weeks we set out to cover so much material, and we just to not get it all so I have to prioritize what the most important things are so we cover what is central and most important. Added to it is the weeks of basics classes where we just work on what is central to our system so new people and those who have been around for awhile have a chance to work on just the fundamentals.

I have been asked many times when is a good time to start class with no real answer I could give new students except to say that they were welcome to start any week and we would pull them aside and show them the basics. As I was building the curriculum for classes though what struck me was that if I added in 1 week a month doing a class that was just basics it was an easier answer, and something I could have my students tell their friends or family to come and check out if they were interested on those weeks. In the past, we have done this as something that if a new person shows up to class and wants to learn the basics, we teach them basics off to the side. We are still doing that, but this new class is a way of saying, if you are looking for a good week to start, this one is it. We as a class feel so strongly that our basics are so important, we will spend 10 weeks out of 52 teaching just those basics. (Really 5 out of 26 as we repeat the curriculum every 6 months)

Yesterday was awesome. We had 21 people at one point in time, which is more than I have taught in a long time, and of those, 6 or 7 were new or relatively new. Added to that were a few who were interested, but who could not make it last week so may hit the next one in December. As we go along I am finding that I am working on the lesson plans intently, and it is my hope that in so doing I am teaching my students the best way I know how with the materials I can teach them with. I have not been above looking at other peoples lesson plans when I have seen them and gleaning from them big ideas I can work with, even if the lesson does not look the same at the end, and ultimately I am trying to avoid the trap of things being X way no matter what, as if I can't be flexible, I am not teaching my students in the best way for them based on what they need.

In the last month, I cannot say I have lost students. I hope what that means is that they like my classes enough to continue showing up, and with time I can help them reach their goals in class whatever they are. Not everyone wants to teach, not everyone wants to compete in the international stage, and not everyone wants to compete locally. To that end, I have to do all I can to support what it is they want to learn, and the goals they have set for themselves even if that goal is to be able to better fight X person.

I was asked a question in an interview the other day where do I see myself in 5 years? I had a moment of clarity and I realized that I see my lot in life to help develop people. Help them reach their goals and dreams. To me, that is what teaching sword is. Teaching this art is a way to help my students reach their goals and dreams.  I cannot give them the will to reach them, or hand them the goal on a silver platter, they have to do that themselves, but I can be an aid when they are looking for some direction. I may not have all the answers but I know where to look to find them, and will do all I can to help them find those answers. If they want it, they will have to reach for it, but I can offer some guidance and some direction if they are unsure or are looking for help.

I help develop people, and to that end, even without a full time job right now, after class yesterday, I feel like I am doing what my calling is to do. I teach, because I can't help not teach, and that is reason enough to do what I am doing in sword.