Old Jeans

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 school feels quiet these days too. Summer holidays, maybe, the courtyard filling with children instead of the usual faces, or maybe just an ordinary slow week. It hardly matters. I'm not here for the noise of the place. I'm here to keep building what I came to build: the training, and the quieter work of staying close to myself.

So today: head down, attention on whatever still needs fixing. The list is long enough that finding somewhere to start was never going to be the hard part.