End of the day, end of the month, and honestly, I'm reaching for something good to say and coming up a little short.

Whether it's the school, the weather, or simply me, I can't say. But this week has made it genuinely hard to find joy in the practice. In some ways, I feel further from the truth I came here hoping for, and maybe that's exactly the point, some unseen test waiting at the end, a rite of passage disguised as frustration. I don't know. In the end, it hardly matters what shape it takes. The last two years have had plenty of steep climbs and descents. This might just be another one asking to be ridden out.

The thing I keep circling, confused, is the spiritual side of this whole journey. It's felt thin for a while now, and this week it feels almost entirely absent. That could easily be on me. But the school's attention lately, my class especially, seems fixed on a medal at a local competition. Good for whoever wins it, but set against the bigger picture, the sheer weight being placed on one external goal feels out of step with the quieter traditions this school was built on.

Today was good; a long-overdue break in the weather lifted the spirits of the entire school, enough that you could actually see smiles returning. A small shift, but I felt it clearly in the afternoon session, everyone putting in the work that felt like it was making up for lost time.

Our class feels a little unbalanced right now. A competition sits on the horizon, a handful of classmates are training hard toward it, and the coaches have treated it as the most important thing on the calendar. All the attention seems to be pouring in one direction, and the students not competing are starting to feel a little invisible. I don't know if that's entirely fair to say, but there are always students who feel unseen in a school this size, and I understand the feeling well enough.

Over this past year, I've watched the coaches closely. How they interact. How they listen. How they teach. It's been genuinely instructive just witnessing their different approaches up close; the act of watching skilled practitioners teach has taught me almost as much as the training itself.

Today might've been the hardest day of the past month, and it wasn't training that wore me down. It was the rain, falling without any apparent intention of stopping.

It's been a year since weather like this showed up, my guess is September just carries this with it, a seasonal weight that settles over the mountains every. I know it'll pass. The sun always comes back eventually. But getting through this stretch of it is testing in its own quiet way.

Not physically. Mentally. The whole school feels low on energy, a mood that arrived with the rain and seems to be staying as long as it does. You can feel it in the training yard, everyone trying to stay dry while still giving the session something real, and most days you can see how much that costs people.

Training started on a Sunday this week, which felt slightly out of order. Thought only, though, the body long ago stopped caring which day a routine arrives on, and seems to absorb both the ordinary and the unexpected with equal ease.

The day went into reviewing the Tai Chi Sword form, and I genuinely loved it. Weeks of steady work on this one meant only a handful of corrections needed in the first half, nothing serious, but every correction to one form has a way of quietly seeping into every other form I've learned. It still catches me off guard, this far into the journey, that it should. I've done certain movements thousands of times by now, and yet one more rep still manages to teach me something new. There's something genuinely curious in that, this whole art built on a kind of contract where the depth never runs out.

Not much else has shifted at the school. Days pass without pausing to be noticed. People arrive, leave a brief mark, and then leave a space behind them where they used to be. The rain hasn't let up. My own mood keeps rising and falling, as if riding some current I can't quite see.

Our weekend landed on Friday and Saturday this time, in honour of the Mid-Autumn Festival. Worth tempering expectations when "celebration" and "Kung Fu school" sit in the same sentence, it mostly came down to a quick lunch, everyone eager to put some distance between themselves and the usual rhythm of the school. Though the truth is, we just traded one routine for another. This one happened to be called the weekend.

It passed quietly. More rain, which seems to have settled in for weeks now, just the season this part of the mountains goes through.

I'm looking forward to a full week of training, building on what was already a good stretch. But underneath that, I'm starting to recognise something else, that it might be time to leave. Not for any dramatic reason. Just a quiet sense that a change would do me good.

Rainy days have a way of surfacing that kind of thought. For now, it's time for sleep, and hopefully enough rest to feel genuinely glad about being up at 5 am tomorrow, ready for whatever the week has waiting.

Today felt like the simplest day in a while, maybe because I've largely stopped expecting anything useful from the review process and finally accepted the real work has to happen alone, with whatever's actually available to me.

Two friends leave over the next couple of days. I'm close to both, and their absence is going to leave a real hole. A large group of us went out for lunch, which was good, though underneath it, I had the sense that it's time for something to shift.

Maybe I've always known this and simply never said it out loud, but it seems there's a point in most relationships where the people inside them quietly start holding each other back. As if the shared history that once connected you slowly becomes the thing keeping you fixed in place.

Some days on this path are amazing. Some aren't. And then there are days like today.

Time crawled as the rain kept falling on a space that was never built to hold the crowd it was holding. I'd be lying if I said the frustration wasn't real, moving through me like something uncontained. And yet, somehow, a beautiful day still found its way through it all, starting with the decision to practise Tai Chi 108.

I still don't understand how or why this form has the power to reset everything I'm thinking and feeling, but it does, every time. Maybe it's simply the length of it, long enough to let the mind wander far enough away from whatever problem it thinks it's carrying, and bring it back into the body instead, deeply enough that the imagined trouble just quietly dissolves.

I don't have a better explanation than that. I only know I appreciate whatever this form does more than I can properly put into words.

The school schedule's shifted, evening classes are gone now, replaced by afternoons, which suits my sleep far better. It also gives me an hour I didn't have before, spent simply watching the coaches practice, something I've always loved doing.

Today ran long, full of the kind of familiar frustration I've stopped expecting to see fixed, or worse, even properly seen. I knew a wet week was coming, so I braced for it in advance, looking for the good in every moment, finding whatever way I could to still enjoy training. That worked, in places. It also failed, as the number of students swelled and real-time with a coach became rarer than it should be.

To be clear, this isn't unique to me. I'd guess most students went home today feeling a little underwhelmed. But I have to admit, today I care less about the shared experience than I probably should. I just want the service I'm actually paying for, and that's becoming harder to secure.

From where I sit, I don't see this getting fixed anytime soon, and I'm reluctant to raise it with the office. I already know it would land squarely on the coaches, unfairly. No coach wants twenty students spread across different forms at different stages, all competing for the same few minutes of attention. But we exist inside a system where volume outweighs depth, and for most students, that makes the whole thing feel closer to a Kung Fu holiday than a real education.

A beautiful girl told me today she's ugly. Zoe, if only you could see the world through eyes with no judgment in them at all. I thought that was the whole point of being here. To see nothing and feel everything instead.

Saturday arrived wanting quiet, and I wanted to give it that. More than that, I needed to be alone with it; the collective noise of everyone's own importance has been getting loud lately. It always sounds the same underneath, whatever shape it takes: fear wearing the mask of self-importance, drifting past like clouds with nowhere to be and nowhere to actually land.

I spent the day doing work that had been waiting, editing a video for the company launch. It went well. Familiar, in the way an old pair of jeans is familiar, except these jeans seem to have worn thin in places I didn't expect. I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it's the feeling of stepping backward into a place I've already left, one I'm not certain I want to visit again.

The rain came down hard enough today to send everyone hunting for an indoor space to train, which always brings its own small complications. I woke with a busy mind and didn't have the appetite for crowds on top of it, so I took myself to the café instead, working through some photos that still needed finishing for the business.

It went smoothly. But once they were all done and I finally sat back to look at them properly, something in me went a little numb. I didn't love the look we'd settled on. It felt like we'd stepped onto a well-worn path toward something currently popular, and popular, more often than not, doesn't age well. I have a feeling this will all need redoing before too long.

I closed the laptop around six and went to train, which was exactly what the day needed. Good to move after so many hours folded into a chair. The session was easy, unhurried, the kind that lets the mind settle back into the body without any real effort involved.

Today I spent the morning chained to a computer, and honestly, it had its own kind of enjoyment in it, working deep on the visual language for the business we're building. It went well. We each bring different instincts and languages to the table, but somehow we listened well enough to let the whole thing move forward without stalling.

Time slipped by quickly, and by the time we finally left the office, real ground had been covered. All that remained was to actually do the work. But riding back to school in the cab, I noticed something following me, a familiar kind of tiredness I hadn't felt in years.

Not physical. Mental. The kind of dull weight you'd expect from a hangover that refuses to lift, minus any of the drinking that would've earned it. Pulling on my gear for the evening session, I knew I had two options. Take it easy. Or train hard, and let the body do what it does best, pull everything back into balance.

Today may have been one of the hardest days I've had in the last two years, and not for the usual reason. It had nothing to do with training. It came from a day spent filming.

I've spent a lifetime working professionally on film sets across the world, and yet, standing on the set of our own project today, almost none of that experience seemed to count for much. I know things have changed, and the industry moves differently now, but I still believe good work comes from systems built well ahead of time, structures that give you room for real, focused freedom exactly when it matters most.

Pre-production is never the exciting part of making something. But skip it, and there's no foundation left to build on, just days spent chasing your own tail, or chasing trends that will feel dated the moment they've passed. Not a great way to build a brand meant to last.

I woke early in a beautiful bed. Large, soft, comfortable, things I haven't felt in some time. These past few years have taught me to live well inside discomfort, until it stopped feeling like discomfort at all and simply became the baseline. But every so often, a moment like this arrives and reminds me of a life I didn't realise I still missed. And in that old life, if I'm honest, there was plenty I still find real joy in.

The filming went well again, more laughing while we worked, more good footage stacking up into something that's starting to feel like an actual shape. I've always known roughly what I wanted this business to look and feel like, and it was good to come back to my small room afterwards, sketch out a few visual ideas, and put them in front of Louis and Bling so we could all start seeing the same early picture forming.

Saturday needed to be simple, and simple is exactly how it went.

It opened the way most Saturdays do, the traditional class performance, coaches and a few students stepping forward to show their form. I've never joined that lineup, but I always enjoy watching the coaches perform for the Master. They're good, consistently, and it's been something to watch them sharpen further over the years. This path really is the same for everyone underneath it; it doesn't end, and whatever you gain only comes from the kind of dedication that proves, on its own, that the sacrifice was worth making.

The moment it wrapped, six of us packed overnight bags and headed up into the mountains to scout a potential retreat location. An hour of slow, winding road through the ranges surrounding Wudang led us to a small hotel perched on a cliff above a cascading valley, deliberately weathered in its design, but unmistakably modern underneath.

Today moved slowly, and it gave me exactly the thing I keep asking for from every day, the full range of what it is to feel human, all of it, without editing.

It began with soreness, real pain, from the moment I dragged myself out of bed. Legs tight like springs left too long in salt air. The hip pain that had kept waking me through the night hadn't gone anywhere, joined by a tiredness I couldn't name but recognised instantly, the way you recognise an old visitor.

Not the easiest opening to a day, though I wasn't worried; usually, that kind of stiffness fades once the first session begins. Today it didn't. No relief showed up no matter where I looked for it, so all I could do was put my head down and get through it, the session feeling closer to trekking through deep mud with a heavy pack than actual training. By the time Louis called it, I was genuinely glad to see it end.

Some days drift by without asking to be noticed, and today was exactly that kind. Training was good, simply one foot in front of the other, time moving past without offering anything more or less than what was actually there.

The real moment came when an old friend returned to school just to say hello. Always lovely to see her. And yet the brief chat we shared left something like loss sitting quietly behind it. I couldn't place why at first, but it makes sense enough now,  two years of a life spent in this one place, and that stretch is starting to close.

I sat on the steps above the training yard afterwards, watching shapes move through the night, caught in flashes of harsh overhead light. A strange thing, sitting alone with that view, the students below twisting themselves into unlikely positions, reaching after something in nature none of us can quite become. I loved the moment for what it was, my mind drifting between that odd, beautiful sight and everything I've lived through here, and everything I haven't.

Some days are good regardless of weather or circumstance, and a decision made a few weeks back seems to be letting more of them find me.

Simple, in principle, and honestly a little overdue: find the best in whatever moment is actually in front of me, enjoy it, and let it carry me toward the goals that started this whole thing. Simple on the surface, but underneath it, I've had to consciously watch every moment, catching myself before old patterns quietly take back over. Like training a muscle that hasn't yet learned to fire on its own, until the new way of seeing becomes the automatic one.

It hasn't been easy, though it's less difficult than people tend to assume. In the end, it seems to come down to two things: a goal worth genuinely working toward, and the ability to watch your own reactions from a small, useful distance. Nothing complicated about either one, but together they're a surprisingly powerful way to find your own voice and stay pointed at whatever mattered enough to want change in the first place.

And just like that, it was over.

The review of Tai Chi 13 took little more than three days, and in the end, it gave me exactly what I'd hoped for, as simple as I'd imagined it might be. Over those three days, with Louis watching every movement with a critical eye, we worked through the whole form, stopping wherever something needed fixing. Fun, rewarding, and more than a little eye-opening, I hadn't realised how many small details had drifted quietly off course.

Thirteen was the third form I ever learned, back on my first visit to Wudang, and if I'm honest, it never quite earned the depth of attention that let it settle fully into me. So I'm genuinely glad to have gone through it detail by detail. It feels different now, closer to a new friend than an old habit, greeting me fresh every time I shift onto the left foot, breathe, and let my hands rise toward the sky.

A long day of simple lessons.

Maybe it's true that in a life this complicated, the plain fact underneath is that you get what you ask for. That's exactly how today felt, plunged headfirst into a proper review of Tai Chi 13. A form I love, though one that still asks for more before its deeper lessons will fully reveal themselves.

Thirteen is a different animal entirely from the original forms that came down through the Wudang Masters. Sharper. Straighter. Less a river finding its way toward the sea, more an arrow already aimed at where it's going. I love both, but 13 has always been harder to fall completely for, until today, when the details I'd misplaced somewhere along the way started surfacing again, deepening the whole experience toward something I suspected was there all along but hadn't quite reached.

The class is full these days, so I've started skipping basics to make room for this kind of focused work. Nothing arrives free. But ask clearly enough, and it seems you receive, which is exactly how this stretch of training has felt.

Sunday led me into a deep dive into my own mind, genuinely fun in places, quietly revealing in others.

The reason was simple enough. These past few months have carried a low hum of slow and tired, tangled together with stretches of real freedom, moments where everything just flowed without effort. On an otherwise unremarkable Sunday, I decided it was time to work out how much of that swing was physical and how much was simply the thoughts I kept letting myself indulge.

A day like that can go one of two ways: hard and gruelling, or fun and revealing. I chose the second, since the first holds little appeal when the other is available.

What I found wasn't dramatic. I put myself through ordinary situations and watched my own reactions play out, the typical ones, the automatic ones. Both directions, good and bad, got their turn. And exactly as you'd expect, how I felt inside shifted enormously depending on which one I leaned into.