When I first attended Combat Con on my 33rd birthday I was entitled, whiny, I wanted things to happen without working to make them so.
In the time since then I have grown up as it were. Didn't win more matches? Roll with it. Feel strongly something needs to be done? Work on it, make it happen. I began so much in what my wife calls my put up or shut up moment here at Combat Con. I teach other places, but this one holds a special place in my heart, I have competed and done well other places but this is where the rubber first embraced the road in what was a rough start.
We have come so far together. Last night I performed a wedding ceremony for some dear friends here at combat con.
This is not good bye, at least not forever. Combat Con has become a part of us, and it is in that, that it will live on for as long as we remember and talk about it.
When you have read a book, and it is ended that is the story. You may return to revisit but the story lives on inside you now. This is what Combat Con is.
It lives on in our friendships and the growth we made over the years. We have become a part of it and it a part of us, now and forever more.
We may cry or find it hard at times, but it doesn't end here, because combat con isn't a place, it is the people who have made it happen both in organizing and attending.
So this is not good bye. As Richard Bach once said
What the catapillar calls the end, the master calls a butterfly.
