Momentum

A bunch of drunken teenagers blundered through the gardens the other night, as I was stretching. They decided that they wanted to learn Tai Chi... luckily, attention spans are short on a warm night, and they wandered off before things got too awkward.

I would have started back at training in Richmond tonight, but I've realised that I'm not physically up to it at the moment - even the half hour I spent on Liu He yesterday was enough to make my legs shake for hours. This is now the longest break I've taken from training since I started uni ('98), and I really don't want to see that part of my life slip away into the "things I used to do" bit of my past.

I've decided to start a "new year" resolution a month early, and train for at least an hour a day. Meditating, stretching & stancework are the main things that I can do at home, as they don't take up much room - I also need to strengthen my ankles again, as too many years of almost-sprains (plus a few real sprains, and some help from a moving car) mean that my matchstick ankles can snap like kindling. No point waiting until Jan1 to start doing something...

To be perfectly honest, I'm not all that happy with myself at the moment - especially since I got sick. I'm far thinner than I want to be, and I lost a lot of weight while I spent those weeks in bed. I know most people complain about the opposite, but it's still something that worries me. I'm now firmly on the "scrawny" side of the line, and I never really recovered properly. Now I feel like eight years of my life are washing away down the drain.

I have to climb out of this rut. Once upon a time, it was always harder to stop than it was to keep going - I wonder where my momentum went.