Seeking the Secret Sauce

This blog is later than I planned.  This blog is also on a much different topic than I had planned.  

The last little while has been a crazy full rollercoaster.  There are highs.  There are lows.  There are moments when all I feel like I can do is hold on for dear life.  My calendar looks like a warzone demanding my every minute.  I have so much I could blog about.  The biggest obstacle was finding the moment. 

Monday I had a general road map of where I wanted to go with my blog.  I was thinking through the approach of how I would express myself.  It was going to be a blog about building my vocabulary.  My journey the past few weeks has had me learning a great deal and finding some wild extremes in thought but I will save that for a future blog.  I've had a great deal to chew on and to work on processing. 

So back to Monday...  I have a super full day planned but I figured I could perhaps find a moment to blog in the afternoon.  Then my best laid plans took a detour...  First of all my topic was dramatically changed in the blink of an eye.  We had just lined up to bow out at the end of class on Monday and Sifu Hayes called me to the front.  And this happened!!!!

I was utterly and completely surprised.  Our morning class seems to do things a little differently.  I've watched in the evening classes people being pulled off to grade for their next belt.  Perhaps due to class size or due to the fact that many days there is only one Sifu on deck, we don't tend to do a formal grading.  There is a definite bonus to this.  I have learned to approach each day on the mats in class as if I were grading for the next level.  You give it the best that you can each class, you listen, you ask questions.  So there was no warning.  I must say it was a pretty fantastic surprise.

So back to the title of the blog...  Just last week in the car on the way home from kung fu, Waylon had asked me when I would be grading for my second degree brown belt.  I had told him I wasn't really sure what that process looked like.  I had asked what to work on and received the answer of everything.  I was approaching each class with everything I had to give in that moment.  I told him that really what I was looking for was the secret sauce - there must be something that I was being watched for, I just did not know what exactly it was.

Did I find the secret sauce?  That is a question for my Sifu's.  Do I know what that secret sauce is?  No, not really.  Where do I go from here?  Just keep giving it my all and see where the next phase of this crazy journey leads me.