A new day dawned in a different place. I woke early, simply because I’d fallen asleep early the night before. By 20:30, I could barely keep my eyes open. No clear reason — just a body that decided it was done for the day.

There’s nothing planned. Eat. Drink. Practice. Enough, but not too much. Days like this still take some getting used to. After a life shaped by doing and achieving, simply being can feel oddly unfamiliar.

I’ve been turning over a thought from yesterday — the idea of living more in line with a Daoist way of seeing. Of sensing what’s coming before it arrives. Not in a dramatic sense, but through the quieter idea that thoughts shape the world we move through. It’s a notion many have held before me, and I can feel why. The idea itself brings a certain calm.

The time has come for the first break of this trip. I’ve enjoyed the stretch of work so far, but I’m ready for a few days away. Not as escape — more as a change of rhythm.

The training itself isn’t particularly hard, but it can be relentless. A steady grind that tests commitment as much as desire. There are good days and difficult ones, often side by side. It’s always a study in contrast.

That’s something I’ve come to appreciate about China, and about learning Tai Chi and Kung Fu here. Everything feels clearly defined — effort and rest, strength and softness, ease and resistance. Living inside constant contrast feels like a physical expression of yin and yang rather than an idea to be understood.

Thursday morning arrived with sore legs, a tingling hand, and bright sunshine. A good combination, all things considered. It felt like the kind of day that invites practice rather than demands it.

My hopes were simple. Stretch with ease. Train with a smile. Take small steps forward. Nothing ambitious. Just enough to feel that the day had been lived on my own terms, moving quietly toward whatever comes next.

Wednesday morning arrived bright and calm. Sunlight instead of rain. One of those openings that makes the day feel possible before it even begins.

There was only one real choice to make — train at the school or head to the park and enjoy the quiet. Part of me wanted to carry yesterday’s lightness forward and soften my relationship with training here. In the past, this place has never been a problem. It’s only the current conditions that have stirred these reactions.

Tuesday morning arrived with a quiet sense of counting days. Just a few more sessions before I head off to see RiRi. That thought alone feels like a small pocket of light.

Lately, I’ve felt ready for a change. Nothing dramatic is wrong here, but something has felt slightly off. Training continues to progress, yet my smile has been thinner, my energy lower, my outlook a little clouded. The school hasn’t changed. Which suggests that I have.

Monday arrived with rain again. At this point, it almost feels routine. I’m a little tired of giving the weather so much attention, even if it continues to shape the day. Energy is still low, but experience has taught me that it often shifts once training begins.

There are things I’m quietly looking forward to this week. Mostly the chance to spend some time with Ri and create a little space. This trip has felt more tiring than the last two, and I can’t quite place why. Maybe it will change. Maybe it won’t.

Sunday sleep-ins seem to be a thing of the past. My eyes opened well before the alarm had any intention of going off. After a few moments staring at the ceiling, it was clear there’d be no drifting back. I got up and headed downstairs to work on the sword form that continues to resist easy recall.

Training alone in the yard, without obligation, has its own quality. The atmosphere is different. I’m there by choice, working through something that isn’t really a problem — more a matter of patience and memory finding each other in their own time.

Saturday arrived in a slightly unfamiliar shape. Normally it’s a day for performance or rest, but today training carried on as usual. Still, I knew I needed to approach it lightly. A short, gentle session with the sword felt enough. The tiredness this week has settled deep.

Rest — real rest — doesn’t feel like a luxury here. It feels necessary. By the end of the week, I’m often worn down and quietly searching for something other than what I’ve been doing day after day. That awareness of limits seems to arrive with time. Both a privilege and a burden.

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.