The week has finally come to an end, and I feel as tired as I ever have here. Body, mind, spirit — all of it feels worn down. Not injured, just deeply worked. The kind of tired that comes from sustained effort rather than any single blow.

I know this feeling well enough to trust it. It’s the residue of hard training, the kind that only reveals its value later. Still, in the moment, it carries a hollow edge — like reaching a well after a long crossing and finding it dry.

The rain has settled in. Heavy, constant. In what feels like a single shift, summer has stepped aside, and winter has taken its place. I don’t remember the rain being this persistent last year, but memory has a way of smoothing things out.

This will be a small test for me. I don’t love the cold, and training becomes harder when the rain never really lets up. Space disappears quickly, and there’s nowhere fully protected once everyone arrives.

The rain was relentless today. Heavy enough to shape the entire morning. I find it slightly amusing that, for someone who claims not to care much about the weather, I write about it so often. Still, it does have a way of seeping into everything — especially training.

Each session lately feels as unpredictable as the mornings themselves. Wet, windy, unsettled. The weather has shifted, and with it, something in the mood of the school. It shouldn’t matter to me. And yet, it does — at least a little.

I woke beneath a thick blanket of cloud, the sun hidden but still present, turning the morning into something close and heavy. Training felt like stepping into a greenhouse — heat held in, effort amplified.

I skipped basics again, intent on finishing the sword form. That part went as hoped. I reached the end, soaked through, standing in a small pool of sweat. Finishing always brings a quiet satisfaction, though it’s already clear that this moment is less an ending than a doorway.

Monday always seems to arrive a little too quickly. Work waiting, rhythm resuming. The school keeps changing — people leaving, new faces arriving, small gaps opening where friendships used to sit. Those spaces are always filled eventually, though sometimes with people who seem to test something rather than complement it.

Over the weekend a young woman arrived, a close friend of Blair’s. Knowing I live in Bali, she made the effort to introduce herself. She was pleasant enough. Then she described herself as a content creator — an influencer — and I felt my attention drift.

I asked what that meant to her. Like many, she struggled to answer. It felt as though the question itself had never really been considered. When I asked whether her work was shaped by what an algorithm decides people want to see, the pause that followed suggested the thought was new.

That was more or less where the conversation ended.

The weekend arrived with a faint edge of sadness. It’s Fabio’s last one here. There were no big plans to mark it — just coffee, lunch, and conversation kept deliberately light.

When long-term students leave the mountain, there’s always the quiet ritual of clearing out a room. Fabio was no different. He handed over the things he couldn’t take home — washing supplies, hangers, small objects that once mattered and now didn’t. Items passed on the way a dream moves from one person to another, already fading.

Then there were the bracelets.

Rain fell steadily today. Not unwelcome, just arriving with a weight that feels different somehow. Like hearing from a familiar presence when your attention is already elsewhere.

Fridays always carry a sense of movement. Another week closing, another page turned. This one felt good. Not because anything dramatic happened, but because I can sense the smallest shifts taking place. Things I doubt anyone else could see, but that I can feel — subtle changes, settling somewhere deeper than form or effort.

The training feels like it’s beginning to leave a trace. Nothing obvious. Just a quiet sense that repetition is doing what repetition does, even when it doesn’t announce itself.

The morning opened under steady rain, the light still struggling to separate itself from night. Standing there, watching it unfold, an unexpected thought surfaced — quiet, but persistent.

This journey I’m on has begun to feel like a purpose of sorts.

The thought caught me off guard. After years in Bali, listening to endless talk of world-changing purpose, I’d grown tired of the word. Too often it seemed tied to ego — the larger the purpose, the more important the person claiming it. Eventually, I stopped believing in it altogether.

And yet, here I am, turning it over again.

It’s been about a month of practice now, and today felt like a natural moment to look back and take stock. Not to measure anything too closely — just to notice where things are sitting.

The first couple of weeks were mostly revision. I’m carrying six forms now, and the truth is they all demand time. Keeping them alive, let alone improving them, is work. Still, it’s happening, slowly, steadily.

The month has brought all the expected fluctuations. Good days, off days, moments of quiet momentum followed by stretches that feel flat. What stands out most, though, is how gradually improvement arrives. Training here feels a bit like watching a turtle migrate. Progress is real, but patience is required. Nature doesn’t rush.

It’s Tuesday, and my arm is making itself known. After a long session of self-massage, I think I’ve found the source. Just below the elbow there’s a tender knot — dense and unmoving — the kind of place where everything seems to stop. Pain, or perhaps simply a blockage. Either way, it feels informative.

I like these small discoveries. They suggest something is being learned, even if it’s happening slowly. Little by little, I’m finding ways to listen more closely, to work with the body rather than pushing through it.

Slow productivity feels like the right phrase today.
Doing less.
Fewer things.
Working at a natural pace.
Trying to do it better rather than faster.

Monday arrived with rain. Heavy enough to shrink the available space and make training a little awkward. Not a problem exactly — just something to work around. When the weather closes things in, it asks for a different kind of attention.

Still, it’s Monday. A full week ahead. Time to learn, to move, to enjoy the work. It may not look like fun from the outside, but it feels like exactly the right way to begin.

The intention for the week is simple: train hard, laugh when it happens naturally, and stay open to whatever shows up. No need to shape it further than that.

Many things seem capable of making me happy, just as many can pull me the other way. More and more, it feels less about the things themselves and more about how I’m standing in relation to them.

I see it play out often. Last weekend I made a video and shared it across my usual channels. As expected, there was very little response. No real praise, no criticism either — just silence. That familiar absence landed harder than I’d like to admit, especially because I’d tried something different and shared something that felt meaningful to me.

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.