2012-366 Day 19 – Sadness

Warning up front: This is more of a brain dump than a blog post, detailing my feelings and my working through them. I cannot for the life of me imagine that it is interesting to anyone outside of a handful of the handful of people who read this blog. You are more than welcome to read on (why else would I post this publicly), just know that I don’t really know where this is going to go and I make no guarantee that it is worth your time. (Hmm, there’s probably a large portion of the internet to which this disclaimer could be applied.)

So, I strained my hip and back in Karate last night. Nothing major, just a definite tweak I knew I’d be feeling later. We were having a white stripe night, which are the nights were we practice the individual moves and kick progressions. As the first white stripe night as a purple, I was introduced to the side kick progression and the back kick progression, both of which require turning one foot 180 degrees from the direction of travel of the rest of the body. I was having a lot of problems as this required a lot of balanced shifting of the vast majority of the body, and I currently still have a majority of body to deal with. It didn’t help that I was overextending on the kicks, which threw my body even more off balance. Watching myself in the mirror, I could see how awkward and. . . heavy I looked.

I sat down after class and looked at the belt progression on the wall, counting the ranks in two month intervals for the early going and switching to four month intervals for the remainder, calculating just how far I was from my ultimate goal of Black Belt. I thought also of my weight and running goals, and just how far away I was from those, and how they all intertwined. I felt a sort of sadness settle over me like a blanket, but one which did not provide any warmth.

In general, I go through life like I go through my runs, my vision fixed five to ten feet in front of me, scanning for obstacles and charting a path (the reason I trip and fall every few months is that even though I have cataloged an obstacle five to ten feet out, that doesn’t mean that I will have picked my foot up high enough to clear it once it arrives, and I’m still looking five to ten feet down the road). Sometimes I look further ahead and, depending on where I am in my progress, am either appropriately heartened or somewhat steeled against the remaining track. Rarely do I have the reaction I had last night, and I was very quick to realize it for what it was, a temporary glimpse of something that would require many steps to achieve. I know I am going to get there, but that does not mean I was angry with myself for the sadness nor dismissive of it. I allowed it to linger for a time because it was an acceptable reaction, and, as long as I did not wallow in it, a reaction that would only serve to make the final accomplishment sweeter when I could look back on this time and say, “I may have been disheartened, but I pushed on and still accomplished my goals.”

Weight: 234.4 Max: 240 Min: 234.4 Body Fat %: 24.9
Yearly Mileage: 6.5 miles
Current Belt: Purple – Next Belt: Orange (Blue?) – Next Test Date: 3/12
Fitocracy Level: 8 (6189 points, 839/1750 to next level) – ID: disciplev1