The weekend arrived with a change in the weather. Rain, cooler air, just enough cold to consider a light jumper. Winter is edging closer. It will test my thin, tropical blood.

Before drifting too far into thoughts of what’s coming, it feels better to stay with what’s here. Today feels like a gift in its own right.

The plan is simple. Breakfast. A little work. Then a trip into town with no real agenda. Coffee, cake, and the quiet pleasure of photographing a small project that doesn’t need to mean anything to anyone else. Just the act of making it feels enough.

As life continues to simplify, it’s teaching me how to enjoy the moments as they come — and the things already within reach. Nothing is perfect, but it’s hard to deny that things are more than good.

Yesterday was a good day. Not perfect, but full. There were ups and downs, moments of effort and moments of fatigue, yet it carried the feeling of being lived properly.

That was confirmed during a hard session of kicking practice. Today my legs are sore, a little beaten up, but unmistakably alive. The kind of soreness that doesn’t complain — it just reminds you that something real took place.

There’s a quiet intention forming to keep working without noise. To show up. To try again. To see what can be done today without measuring it too carefully against anything else.

I find myself wanting to compare only to yesterday, and even that feels secondary. The outcome matters less than the act of turning up and trying. Nothing more than that. Nothing less.

Yesterday was unexpectedly difficult. It was the worst session I’ve had since returning to the mountains. After a solid week of steady progress with the Tai Chi sword, everything suddenly vanished. I stood there unable to remember movements that, only hours earlier, had felt completely accessible.

The frustration arrived quickly. Then disappointment. Then a quieter kind of dejection. It felt like moving backward after finally gaining some ground. Not a new experience, and certainly not the last, but still unsettling when it happens.

Looking back, what stayed with me most wasn’t the forgetting itself, but how I responded to it. I kept repeating the same approach, pushing against the same wall, expecting something to change. It’s strange how familiar that impulse is, even when I know better.

I woke feeling better than yesterday, and still found doubt waiting for me. It’s a strange pairing. All I’ve really tried to do is show up and do a little better than before. Nothing heroic. Just honest effort.

Today, the intention is to train with more ease. To move steadily, letting tension fall away where it can, and allowing moments of flow to appear when they’re ready. Whether they do or not doesn’t feel as important as it once did. The attempt itself feels sufficient.

There’s something reassuring in approaching practice without needing it to prove anything. Moving slowly. Paying attention. Letting the body lead rather than pushing it toward an idea of how things should look.

Change doesn’t announce itself. It moves quietly, almost imperceptibly, the way it does in nature. You only notice it later, when you realise something has shifted.

For now, it feels enough to let the day move through me as it will — without demanding an outcome. Showing up and trying seems to be more than enough for today.

It feels like I’ve slipped into a muddy state of mind, and I can’t say exactly why. Sometimes this place is workable — even useful. Other times it carries a heavier pull, like drifting into something darker that takes more effort to climb back out of.

Today, it seems closely tied to how my body feels. I’ve been training hard. Nothing is wrong exactly, but I’m sore, a little depleted, not as strong as I’d like to be. On its own, that wouldn’t matter much. Still, it was enough to let a cloud settle in yesterday — not dramatic, just dense.

It feels like a day to take stock. Not in a grand way, but honestly. To look at how I’m moving through things, and where small adjustments might be needed. There’s a sense that some recalibration is due.

Morning practice felt off, and I couldn’t quite place why. I blamed the construction noise, the growing crowds at the school, anything within reach. All the while knowing that what I was reacting to had very little to do with what was happening around me, and much more to do with the stories moving unchecked through my head.

The discomfort wasn’t imposed on me. I gave it shape myself. Not for any clear reason — it was simply the way the morning arrived.

Seeing that doesn’t instantly dissolve it. It does, however, soften the edges. There’s no need to argue with the feeling or turn it into a problem to solve.

I know the impulse to correct it, to demand a better session later, to frame it all as part of learning and move on quickly. That voice is familiar. Sometimes useful. Sometimes, just impatient.

I may have stumbled onto something I’ve been quietly looking for — a way to stay connected to Wudang while beginning to edge toward the role of a coach. Kung Fu, Tai Chi… I’m not certain which shape it might take yet, only that the idea feels worth sitting with.

Training with Jake has started to sound less like a possibility and more like an opening. Not a promise, just a door that doesn’t feel forced.

For now, there’s nowhere else I need to be. No fixed destination pressing in. That absence has a strange clarity to it. It makes space to consider working toward something steady — something that could support a life I already know I value, rather than pulling me away from it.

The thought brings a quiet excitement, though I’m trying not to rush ahead of myself. These things tend to reveal their shape in their own time.

There is always a beginning and an end to every journey. The only place I seem to have any real say is in the middle — the ordinary days, the present moment, the part that keeps unfolding whether I’m paying attention or not.

Learning a new Tai Chi form has a quiet way of reminding me of this. There is a clear start. There is a clear finish. And whatever happens between those two points is mine to meet as it comes.

Some days the body listens. Some days it resists. That feels less like a flaw in the process and more like the process itself. The rhythm of good days and bad ones has a way of following you into practice, turning each step into a small reflection of everything else.

I’ve never been particularly drawn to sword form. But at the school where I study, it’s almost unavoidable. Everyone eventually picks one up. I found myself wondering if I was sidestepping something important, so I decided to stop avoiding it and see what was there.

As it turns out, that decision was enough.
The form began to speak for itself, and somewhere along the way, it quietly took on the role of teacher. What I thought would be a brief experiment started opening into something more — not dramatic, just unexpectedly alive.