Returning to the Dojang

I have finally done it! There is a saying, "If something is important to you, you will make time for it"and I decided that getting back to doing Tae Kwon Do was important. I got tired of making excuses for not doing it -- excuses like "I need to heal", like "I'm waiting for my son to be ready to restart with me" (he decided to do Kung Fu instead), like "I need to get back into better shape first" -- and bit the bullet and went to my first class, again.

Of course, being me, I overdid it that first day back. While I had made it to Orange belt before I left, I decided to wear my white belt. I need to begin again. But knowing that didn't stop me from trying to keep up with others in the class. Laugh. One of my besetting sins has always been the tendency to overdo things -- that and the bad habit of ignoring the hints my body was giving me... so three sets of thirty push-ups later (done improperly, as it happens), and I had tendonitis in my elbows. Groan. So... I rubbed some Voltaren gel on my elbows, used ice and warm showers, did some stretching and went back to the next class...

Discipline is a day to day thing for me.  It is all very well to have a lofty goal -- the black belt or the finished project -- but I tend to have so many projects/goals all running simultaneously that if I tried to keep my 'eye on the prize' I would soon give up, exhausted at the work ahead of me.  And there are days when that happens -- when I look at the house, for example, and I just feel overwhelmed at all that needs to be done. Too much. Too hard even to start. So... one day, one task, one thing at a time.

On the other hand, Tae Kwon Do (and running) have a built in reward: though I may be sore afterwards (and sweaty and sticky), I feel energized afterwards. Weird but true. Having beaten myself up, I feel ABLE to do something less challenging. Laugh.... 

And then there is the fact that I really like doing Poomse. I am not good at it, not yet. I may never be as graceful as some of the folks I have seen but I like doing it nonetheless. It reminds me of dance. The movements are a kind of meditation -- and doing them properly, well, that is why I am back at the white belt level. If I am going to do this, I am going to do it right. I am not concerned about my belt color. I want to truly MASTER the forms... 

But mastery is still in my future. For now, it is a matter of practice and practice and more practice.  Stretching and patience and breathing and remembering that 'if something is important, you will make time for it.'  I am finally making time for it.

Hullo -- First Posting

Hullo and welcome to my new blog. I write this NOT as an expert in any given martial art but as the mother to two boys -- one a High Red Belt in Tae Kwon Do, one a beginner (at 6), as the wife of a Bodan (nul degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do) and as an off again, on again student of the same. I have come to this particular study late in my life -- just in time for all the damage done in a life time has begun to add up (hence the off again aspect!) but I find the entire thing fascinating. My hope is to track our adventures in this process, to offer suggestions as to sources for study and training as I come upon them and to provide a record that my children may one day appreciate.