My Magic Rose Garden

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living.  We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.   - Dale Carnegie

I read this quote the other day and it really hit home.  Not sure if it is how he meant it but nonetheless, here is my take...


I have been struggling with a serious case of unrealistic expectations.  I have a magical rose garden.  In many cases I have what it takes to have parts of this magical rose garden.  I just can't have the whole rose garden all the time.  My list has me mastering my life.  My kung fu requirements are nailed down.  My home and yard looks like it belongs in a magazine.  My business is thriving and my clients are happy.  I have time to sit and read, create or volunteer like crazy all over the community all while loving on my family and friends.  I want it all!  I want a perfect life!


The past six months I have had to work hard at letting things go and lowering my expectations, particularly of myself.  There was a time period during my healing that I wasn't supposed to do anything but sleep.  I had to let the mess go.  I had to walk away from commitments.  I had to accept that my best was what it was.  It was so hard.  I thought I had done it.


Yes, I thought I had...  Until I took a hard look this week.  I had not accepted my best.  I had trusted that I could put it all off and then once I was better I could wave my magic wand and just like that my magical rose garden would appear.  Well, I can't find my magic wand anywhere!  Can you say insta-garden!  Maybe the dust bunnies ate it...  I really don't know.


Anyways, for this week I have been working the lesson of smelling the roses today, the real roses not the imagined ones.  Each day, I put forward the best that I have that day.  I need to accept that.  If it was not my best, I need to accept that as well.  Why?  Once a day is lived, it is done.  I can't change it.  All I can do is learn from it.  If the effort was not my best, then I need to move forward and do my best now.  When I truly search my heart, I know that my magical rose garden does not truly exist.  The cost to achieve it all, all at the same time just is not one that is realistic.  Honestly, if I did start to achieve it, I would just add to it anyway...  True mastery is not going to be found in my magical rose garden.  It is in the journey, in today, in this moment and in smelling today's roses instead of chasing roses that will likely never get a chance to bloom.  That journey is all for nothing if it causes me to be so unkind to myself that I miss the real blessings right in front of me today.

I HAD a Concussion!

It's really hard to sum up the last eight months.  So little has changed around me yet so much has changed within me.  There are times when I feel like I have lost so much.  Other times I can see all that I have gained in lessons.  The challenges have been real, hard and at times all-consuming.


Last August I felt like my world imploded when someone who perhaps should not have been driving chose to.  He did not stop at a stop sign and that mistake rocked my world.  Since that day I have had to work hard to heal.  During this time the hardest thing was not what I needed to do to heal but what I was not able to do.  I never realized how hard it was to do nothing.  Then once healing hit a certain point, it was time to push again.


Yesterday I sat on the floor at the physiotherapist office and she had me say "I HAD a concussion."  I no longer have a concussion.  My brain has officially healed or at least has learned to compensate to a respectable level.  Am I 100% awesome and ready to go?  No, but I have been released into the world to start living a non-restricted life while I work my way back.


Don't get me wrong.  This is AMAZING news.  I just thought that it would be more freeing.  Instead today it fills me with some anxiety.  I have held back for so long, protected myself.  The thought of not having to do that is hard to adjust to.  The people who love me most celebrated and then quickly added to please be careful.  This process has been so hard on all of us.  Our journey as a family through this is not done.  I still have work to do with a neuropsychologist to deal with the PTSD and anxiety that has also resulted from this.


For today my mantra is "I HAD a concussion."  I think it may take some time to truly sink in.

Get Those Fingers Movin'!

Like many people, as a child I took music lessons.  I was so excited when I started.  I remember begging my mom to let me take lessons.  Then as time wore on and the practicing was not as much fun as I had envisioned, the begging changed.  It turned into a battle.  I begged to quit.  My mom begged me to practice.  Finally tired of the fight, my mom agreed to let me stop.


Like many people, I have regrets.  As a child I would have never understood but now I truly wished that I had stuck with it.  Trust me, as a momma myself, I do not hold me mom responsible in any way shape or form for these regrets.  For much of my adulthood I had dreamed of returning to lessons.


Fast forward several years, now I am the momma with the sweet girl begging for lessons.  I put it off as long as I thought I could and then I gave in.  We didn't even own a piano but we found a teacher who agreed to give her some summer lessons on a toy keyboard to try it out.  Perfect!  Two months, not a long term commitment.  Well, would you know it - my sweet baby girl is amazing.  We ended up picking up a better keyboard.  Fast forward two years and I simply can't get over the music she can play.


After we purchased the keyboard, my dream kept nagging at me.  I asked if my daughter's teacher would have room to give me lessons as well.  Taking music lessons as an adult is a whole different ballgame than taking them as a child. I am really enjoying it but at times need an extra little push to practice (and my mom refused to nag at me now).  Enter my IHC personal requirements!  One of my goals this year is to spend 100 hours at the piano.  Sounds like a lot but not if I just keep picking away at it each day (just like every other requirement).


For the last year or so I had been learning these lovely flowing pieces.  Then after Christmas I was marveling to my teacher at the amazing speed in which some of her young students can play.  She went and pulled out this book and asked me if I wanted to learn one of the songs.  I looked at the music.  Didn't look too hard, yet not too easy.  Fantastic!  What I didn't realize is that this piece is to played at light speed!!!  Can you say fast twitch and  coordination (both important kung fu skills)!  I can say it but not fast and not without tripping over my tongue.  Yes, I do stick my tongue out at times.  Each week it gets a little faster and there are less pauses in it but I still have a long way to go to get it to where it is supposed to be. 


This beautiful song is Sonatina in C major, opus 36 number 3 by Clementi.  I did find a very talented young lady who plays it absolutely beautifully on youtube.  After working on this piece for over  3 months, the talent in this child amazes and inspires me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIKiRH-fRx4

Rainbows, Puppies & Kittens! Oh My....



There are so many things about kung fu that I truly enjoy.  Honestly one of my favourites is forms.  I love the structure.  I love that I can slow it down and really pay attention to the details.  I have a love/hate relationship with the fact that there is always something to fix.  Love the challenge, sometime struggle with frustration with myself. 

Then there are things that I have struggled with in kung fu right from the get go.  The number one struggle that I have is the internal harmonies.  I hear the words "now do it full power and full speed" and what you get is the picture below....

Yes, that is me.  I bring puppies, kittens and rainbows to class.  It has been a long standing joke actually.  I saw this picture for the first time a year ago and thought I have to blog about this.  Well a year later, the mental picture has stuck with me.

So what am I doing about it?  I just keep trying.  I think I am starting to make a little head way.  On Monday in class, I was told that my puppy had grown into a lanky teenage pup.  That's a long way from fluffy kittens.  Maybe someday I can be a Rottweiler (as long as I'm not like the one next door that I call kitty - that's just the same fluffiness in a bigger package).

Shaking Up the Routine

Last week I focused on avoiding the "laters" in my life.  My numbers were much better than they have been in weeks.  I could feel the momentum building, good routines forming.  All very exciting stuff.  Then...

SPRING BREAK!!!!

Routines, especially new ones, are such fragile things.  I have already noticed a huge difference in the past couple days having the kids around all day long.  We have filled our days with sunshine and playdates (even one for mama).  It has been great.  I can't say the same for my numbers. 


The issue this week has not been so much the dreaded word "later".  This week the enemy is pure busyness.  It's not that I've been putting off my training.  It hasn't occurred to me to do it, that is until bedtime when I go to record my numbers and I realize how quickly the day has flown by with not much to record.


This issue is about to be compounded with a quick trip to Calgary to visit family.  My routines are going to be completely shot!  I think for this week the plan is squeeze in as much as I can remember to do while I enjoy my family.  Weeks like this are a great reminder of how important incremental progress and consistent action are to ever fragile routines.  It would also have been helpful to have had a little padding on my numbers too but alas, this is not the case. 

It's an Epidemic!

The past couple weeks have had a great deal to ponder.  My numbers have been slipping further and further in a direction that needs to be redirected immediately.  I did have a couple bad days that were a result of illness but not all of my days with blank squares can be attributed to a valid reason.  Bad weeks can be great depending on what you do after them.


So back to the epidemic!  Our goal is mastery or, as Sifu Brinker encourages us to define it, as eliminating mediocrity.  My past couple weeks have been filled with mediocre living.  Our world is full of mediocre living.  It is an epidemic!


In my ponderings, I have discovered what I believe to be the number one public enemy in my life to the elimination of mediocrity.  I have been watching my family - same issue.  Public enemy number one is a simple word, a word we all us each and every day.  "Later....."


I will do my pushups later...  I will do my situps later...  I will practice my forms later...  I will write that blog later...  And on and on it goes...  And that is just my kung fu laters.


So when is later...  I have actually started asking my kids this when they give me that answer.  Lucky for them, they have someone who is starting to figure out this trap.  Don't get me wrong.  Later truly has a place in our lives.  We all have extremely full lives and not a single one of us can do everything we have on our plates right now.  Later is a fact of life.  What is dangerous is when later is left undefined - it just never comes.


So what am I doing with my laters...  I am starting to ask myself the same questions that I've been asking my kids.  First I'm trying to determine if what I am doing in the moment has a valid place in my journey towards mastery and then I'm trying to define when that later will actually happen.  I am waging a war against this epidemic one question, one step at a time.

One Step at a Time...

With the start of a new IHC year comes new goals & new challenges. Personally, the start of this year has not been easy. I am so grateful to have Kung fu. I have used it as a distraction and definitely a coping mechanism lately (my kung fu family is one of my greatest support networks).   Thank you all!

Sifu Brinker asked at the meeting how our weapons forms are going. This year I chose the Tai Chi Broadsword form. I am really enjoying it. It has been really therapeutic and a wonderful change of pace from last year. I think I have most of the moves learned. There is a lot of tweaking left to do but I'm feeling pretty good about where I am at right now.


Now for a funny story...  I actually wrote that last paragraph last week before our IHC class.  At that class I found out that I was indeed doing a form, we just were not sure what form it was...  Many, many thanks go out to Sifu Hayes and Ms. Tomie.  After two more hours of instruction, I believe that I now indeed have most of the moves in the right order and in the right places.

My hand form is a completed different story. The Beckett's recommended Tai He for me this year. It is a very cool form. The learning on this one has been much slower though. It is a completely different style of movement than I am used to and the adjustment is proving to be a challenge.  This has the potential to be it's very own blog post in the near future, so I will leave it be at that.


I also have some interesting personal goals that I am working on.  Right now the biggest personal challenges are in the areas of mending relationships and piano.  Also blog posts for another day.


All that said, I do have a ton going on.  My world has felt very upside down and crazy.  To be honest, since the accident I have felt like I've been living in survival mode most of the time and that is not where dreams are dreamed and achieved.  My numbers this week really reflected that struggle.  Today I will chose to put those not so stellar numbers behind and start fresh - an exercise that I need to do each and every day.  I have some dreams to chase and goals to achieve!