A Vice, Turning

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.

Maybe I was expecting too much. I genuinely believed that after this much training, things would have settled by now. And perhaps this is the settling, perhaps this is as good as the body ever becomes, and the version I'd imagined stays exactly that: an image of hope, the kind that gets you out of bed each morning while quietly remaining just out of reach.

Some stretches of this path feel like a grind. Others feel like nothing short of remarkable. I prefer the second kind, obviously. But I'm aware enough by now to know the good days couldn't exist without the indifferent ones sitting beside them.

So, with some reluctance, I land in acceptance. This is today, and today will pass, the way every day eventually does. That thought is enough to keep me facing forward, still moving toward whatever's waiting past the horizon, still out of reach, but never entirely out of sight.