Sunday came and went following the same rhythm as the rest of the weekend. Not much to do, less to achieve. In its own way, exactly what was needed, something I've come to genuinely appreciate rather than merely tolerate.

Wudang still burns like hell, and I find myself already looking forward to the weather turning. I may regret that thought soon enough; in a few months, I'll be heading north to Chen Village, into cold considerably sharper than anything I felt there last year. Once again, I'll be living out the consequences of my own decisions, the way I have for years now. Uncomfortable, most likely. But there's a strange solace I've learned to find inside that discomfort.

It isn't that I want a hard life for its own sake. It's simply that dreams and desire tend to lead you somewhere demanding, and that seems to be exactly where mine have taken me.

Friday, and the end of a week I badly needed to end. It's been rough, seemingly having as many ups and downs as the mountain ranges surrounding Wudang.

I'm not sure why the body's been struggling lately, but it has been. This week felt like swimming through a sea of stiffness and soreness that took hold early and only tightened its grip with each passing day.

There was still fun in it, sessions where everything moved with real ease. But the week closed looking almost exactly like it opened. Tight. Sore. Aching in the same places.

Visa season comes around fast on a journey like this one, and today was exactly that kind of day — the morning swallowed by faceless offices and paperwork I only half understood. I was fortunate to have someone from the school walk me through it, doing most of the real work while I signed where instructed. Whatever else I might say about the process, China moves through bureaucracy with real efficiency. A few hours, and just like that, the next six months were secured.

The rest of the day passed quietly, a handful of small tasks I'd been putting off longer than I'd like to admit. As the sun dropped, it was time to train again.

The evening session was hot and sweaty, the way they always are, and beautiful in its own right. I've found myself returning to basic training with real enjoyment lately, enough that it shows plainly on my face. That carried straight into a Tai Chi 108 session where everything simply flowed.

I woke feeling grateful today, like I was standing exactly where I needed to be for a day of hard training. It played out exactly that way.

The heat was fierce, the humidity heavier still, but none of it mattered once I moved from form to form, chasing the particular release that comes with a pace chosen on purpose. It was a genuinely fun day, the kind that empties you out physically and somehow, against logic, fills something else back up in the process. Exactly what I needed.

It ended the way these days always seem to. Standing fully clothed under a cool shower, letting the effort of the day slide off and disappear as if it had never happened at all.

Monday started hard, the way it often does. I'm not sure why rest sometimes feels like the worst possible preparation for the day after, but a quiet Sunday tends to leave me meeting Monday with a body gone stiff and unwilling, one that takes hours to properly wake.

That was today. The morning session felt like trying to move a steel door left too long in salt air, the most uncomfortable I've felt in months. Worse than the stiffness was how quickly the mind followed it downward, as if every good week before this one had counted for nothing. Gone the way short affairs go, brief, bright, forgotten almost as soon as they end.

Lunch couldn't arrive fast enough. And with it, the chance to simply get myself back together. I rolled out the mat, took the foam roller to whatever needed it, and it turned out to be everything,  the whole body, one long unbroken exploration of where the tension had been hiding.

This path is genuinely rewarding. It can also be hard enough to make you question the whole journey, and today belonged to the second category.

Nothing in particular happened. But the moment my feet hit the ground, something felt slightly wrong, and the worst part was recognising it. Like an old friend I thought I'd already said goodbye to, showing up uninvited.

Sunday is supposed to be easy. The instant I felt that familiar tightness settle into my hips, I knew the day wasn't going to cooperate. These past months, the body has felt strong, more than that, relaxed — and today that same feeling curdled into tension and pain. I don't know why this particular problem keeps finding its way home. I only know I don't love having it back, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

Saturday passed almost exactly as expected. A quiet day, full of just enough, and yet I can't shake the sense that something — or someone — is missing.

Normally, short breaks from the school never trouble me. I come back, rediscover the flow, settle straight into learning again. This time feels different, and I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it's the lack of anything new to learn right now. Or maybe I'm simply missing someone who left an unexpected mark on me before leaving.

The reason matters less than the feeling itself, and right now there's only one part of this I can actually shape: how I show up to training. I think the answer is to find new within the old. Finding freshness in what I already believe I know, treating every lesson as if it's arriving for the first time, with the same excitement it once held.

For the first time all week, I felt something like myself again, and it was good to train. Far from my best session of the past few years, but a real step in the right direction, and I was happy to take it.

I'm looking forward to a couple of days off over the weekend, not to disappear entirely, but to take stock of how I want the next stretch of months to unfold.

The review process, if I'm honest, has started to feel like it's missing a spine. Some days it feels less like progress and more like spinning wheels in the same patch of mud. So this weekend I want to build an actual system for it, something with enough structure to guarantee I get what I actually came here for.

Back to training after a week below average, good, but harder than expected. Balance felt off, energy low, but I made it through both sessions and counted that as enough for today.

There's something genuinely confronting about noticing your own instability so plainly. Not surprising, given the week behind me, but unsettling all the same.

Tomorrow will bring more of the same, another attempt at finding the simple joy in movement that's gone quiet since I got back to school. I'm not sure why this stretch has been harder than most. Maybe it's the shape of the review itself, unsettling something I hadn't expected it to touch. Whatever it is, I need to get clear on it soon, so the time left here doesn't slip past unused.

Day three of being sick, and honestly, the worst of them. A restless night left me tired before the day even began, and I struggled through Qigong only to find myself flat on the bed, heavy-eyed, right after breakfast.

For once I did the sensible thing and stayed there. Most of the day disappeared into sleep. I suppose the body needed it more than I wanted to admit.

I'm hoping the worst of this stretch has passed. Sitting on the sidelines inside a Kung Fu school, resting while you're meant to be training, is never an easy thing to sit still for.

Today was a slow, painful mess. Something like watching a small fruit truck clip a wall and quietly spill its load across the road — not dramatic, just a mess that had to be dealt with.

Day two of the bug, better than the first but still far from fighting fit. I made it through the morning session and the lunch meetings, and by the time the afternoon rolled around, I was dizzy and spent. Time to stop pretending otherwise.

Practising Kung Fu or Tai Chi while genuinely unbalanced is nothing like the version you imagine when you're well. It asks for a steadiness the body simply didn't have today.

Looking back, I gave it everything I had, and something still moved forward despite the fog. Tomorrow will bring its own shape. For now, the tired soul gets its rest.

It had been a long time since a whole day had gone by while I was sick, but today was that day; the flu arrived and pulled me out of class, forcing a kind of stillness I hadn't chosen for myself.

There's a strange feeling in being laid up inside a Kung Fu school, hearing everyone else training just beyond the door, the sounds of effort carrying through walls that suddenly feel thinner than they should. I can't say I enjoyed it. But it was needed, and I'm hoping tomorrow brings enough strength to ease back into things slowly.

For now, it's bed. The body's asking for rest, and for once, I'm not arguing with it.

Sunday went to business. Bling, Louis, and a long list of things to decide. It felt like the right day to push ahead, so we did, in our own fashion.

I'm learning not everyone moves through decisions the way I do: fast, committed, unafraid of being wrong later. I think the speed unsettles some people. Committing to an idea can feel like signing something permanent. To me, they've never been final destinations, only moments meant to keep things moving. And when a deadline is closing in the way ours is, momentum matters more than certainty.

Saturday passed without much fanfare, which is exactly what a good, simple day should do. The sun was out, friends were near, and I let the hours drift by mostly untouched. What made it genuinely good were the long overdue conversations with old friends from Bali.

It had been a while. Longer than I realised, until I heard their voices again and felt how much I'd missed them — more than I expected to admit.

I shouldn't be surprised. Looking back at the memories we built together, there's a joy in them that clearly left its mark somewhere deep. That version of things will never come again; those days belong entirely to the past now — but I'm grateful, plainly and simply, that they happened at all.

A slow, tough morning was the only way to describe the session, but the longer it went, the better it got, and the fix, when it finally arrived, was one I'd already been taught years ago. Tai Chi wasn't helping me today. I needed to stop thinking and move fast.

So I did, and it worked the way it always has. The forms came out rough, under-practised lately, but their speed and power swallowed everything else almost immediately. There's a particular truth in that whirlpool of hands and feet circling at pace; you literally don't have time to be anywhere else. No room left for the mind to wander. Simple, and completely effective. The session turned from struggle into a hard-earned pool of sweat, whatever had been holding me back burning off with the effort.

It's been a hard week since returning to school. Whether that's the rain — constant, testing — or simply the weight of doing this for as long as I have, or a heart still half in Shenzhen, I can't say. Maybe it’s all three.

Things have just felt off. Low energy. Not enough laughter. A balance that at moments seems to belong to somebody else entirely.

Underneath it, I know this is only a different phase of the same cycle, the amazing stretches and the flat ones both belonging to the same turning wheel. My selfish wish, if I'm honest, is to master that cycle well enough to feel the downside without ever getting stuck inside it.

Today wasn't the best. I spent what felt like the whole day hunting for change that never quite showed itself — or maybe it did, small enough to pass by unnoticed. By the time the day ended, it felt disappointing, a feeling I don't particularly want to make room for.

I know the improvement is there. I can feel its shape even when I can't see it. Looking back at where I started against where I stand now, nothing about the distance is in doubt. It's only that the further I go, the slower the movement seems to become. Some days it feels like living inside winter, aching for a summer that refuses to hurry.

Summer has kept its heat, but I somehow forgot how much rain arrives alongside it, and how little I enjoy training in it. That needs clarifying; I've never minded rain itself, never let it stop me from anything I wanted to do. The trouble here isn't desire. It's geometry.

I'm a tall man. I take up a generous share of space when I move. And when the rain comes, three hundred and fifty students all need somewhere dry to stand, which means what little indoor space exists gets divided into something far too small for what's being asked of it.

The first day back at training felt like pulling on a favourite worn pair of jeans, the kind that make you feel better the moment you're in them, before you've even done anything. The heat was heavy but beautiful, and both sessions moved without friction. Still, something in the school has shifted, and not entirely for the better.

Basics have gone back to being basic in the wrong sense of the word. I'm starting to genuinely wonder if it's worth showing up for at all. I still find something in it, but the edges that once made this practice demanding, the parts that actually built you, have quietly gone missing.

I don't know exactly why. My guess is that somewhere along the line, a few voices found it too hard, and the whole room adjusted downward to meet them. Not ideal. Not the end of the world either. I'll keep showing up for the next six months and pull whatever I can out of what's left.

The last day of the break, spent doing almost nothing, and I loved every minute of it. Training in the morning came slowly and easily, a little lazy, if I'm honest. Not that I didn't want to move. Just that other things pulled harder.

Breakfast, unhurried, knowing it would be the last of its kind for a while. A slow walk along the water that separates China from Hong Kong. And mostly, the company of someone who stopped being simply a friend some time ago without either of us quite announcing it.

A day full to the edges with not very much at all. Tomorrow that changes,  back to school, back to the grind, the final push beginning in earnest.