After updating my previous journal once in five years, it's time to start afresh.
I write, create content and post online on a daily basis for work - a fact which has, over the last decade, wiped out my ability to maintain a personal blog. Nonetheless, I miss it. I made use of Facebook for a while, but I'm decreasingly interested in giving my content to Zuckerburg, so have taken a conscious step back from that. Time to return to my open source roots. The new account is a must: my previous one dates back to my first year at university, and while I'm not ashamed of my past selves, I have no desire to drag them with me more than I can help.
I went to my first ever Kung Fu class on Saturday, and I ache. I've been practising Tai Chi for nearly three years, and just swapped from Yang to Chen style a few weeks ago after losing faith in Mei Quan, my previous Tai Chi school (a long and gnarly story which I might share at some point). The new school is a Shaolin Temple Cultural Center, entirely different from what I had before: it's a tiny dojo in an industrial unit behind Tesco, with foam mats on the floor, a buddhist altar in the corner, and mixed adult and kids classes in Tai Chi, Kung Fu and Kickboxing, all taught personally by the Shifu, who is a direct discipline of Shaolin Temple China. The center explicitly aims to provide martial arts training to people from disadvantaged areas, the quality of the teaching is excellent, it's friendly and unpretentious and I love it. The classes are small and personal - between 4-10 people.
A good thing too, because switching from Yang to Chen style hasn't been effortless - new forms, new details, a movement vocabulary that's similar but subtly different, and if I'm not paying attention I find myself lapsing into old ways. The classes are only an hour long each, but follow on from each other, so it seemed worth trying Kung Fu so I could make the most of being there and do two classes back to back. Although I've never done an external martial art, Mei Quan taught Tai Chi as if it wished it was one, with day-long intensive martial workshops drilling striking forms and working on applications. So I thought I had enough martial experience that it wouldn't be a terrible idea.
How naive I was.
The hour-long Kung Fu class on Saturday morning basically killed me. Well, that's an exaggeration. I came home, ate, bathed, and then slept for three hours; the next day I was hobbling around, sore all over, and wasn't much use to anyone. Today I'm still sore, particularly around the quads and knees. I've reluctantly concluded that it would be unwise to go back to Kung Fu tonight (there are classes most nights of the week, so I can take my pick, and Monday evening is one of my regular Tai Chi nights) until I've fully recovered.
There's a big part of me which wants to be fitter now damnit, and is determined to stubbornly throw myself into training until it happens. There's another part of me which is aware that these things take time, and has no desire to re-cripple myself again so soon. So my second dip into the Kung Fu waters will have to wait until next week. I'm honestly not sure whether I'm disappointed or relieved.
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