Category: Martial Arts

Walk Away And Keep Your Hands To Yourself…

De-escalation. It’s a word one rarely thinks of, when faced with a potential threat against one’s safety and well-being. For the most part, our survival instinct (fight or flight, if you will), will kick in and unless you’re some kind of macho jerk with a point to prove, you’ll do whatever is necessary to bring conflict to an end.

All that being said and without getting into the details of whatever self-defence laws your local jurisdiction may carry, every person has an inherent right to protect and defend themselves. And in most cases, others. But the ability to de-escalate a situation is one of the most effective resources in a properly trained martial artist’s toolbox; one that is usually and widely overlooked. There are tons of quotes and passages from martial arts’ reading that explain how the best victories are from the battles you didn’t have to fight and I would be inclined to agree.

As children, our parents were always very quick to tell us to “just walk away” and to “keep your hands to yourself,” when faced with confrontation. Speaking from experience, that rarely EVER worked during my childhood. Surprisingly, it works a bit better as an adult and it may be because adults are sometimes prone to actually consider another person’s words as opposed to being a kid hopped up on hormones and lack of sense. I say sometimes because I’ve definitely encountered adults who basically act like children. But I digress…

A colleague of mine recently clued me in to a YouTube channel that discusses and covers de-escalation and examines confrontations and what may have caused them. The channel is called Active Self Protection and it’s pretty good. I have to agree with my colleague, once you start watching some of the videos, it can get pretty addicting, especially from a martial arts perspective. It provides the opportunity of examining the question “what if,” without having to get into the actual situation.

The point is, a big part of learning martial arts the proper way is understanding that physical force isn’t always the way. I would personally push it one step further and point out that getting into a fight should ALWAYS be the last resort but I’m realistic enough to know one does not always have the choice. If someone attacks you, you can find yourself on the defensive trying to ward them off and likely answering their attack before you reasonably have time to try any “verbal judo.”

Throughout my personal and professional life, I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve managed to avoid a physical confrontation, simply by using my words to de-escalate the situation. Remember that there’s no shame in preferring not to fight. And it’s always amazing to look at a given situation after the fact and realize that it could have been avoided if the parties involved had tried to talk it out, rather than beat the snot out of each other. Build that verbal judo. It can be a life-saver. Food for thought… ☯️

You Can’t Walk A Mile In My Shoes, They’re Too Worn Out…

Most people who know me would agree that I can have a stubborn streak. And while dealing with someone stubborn can be tedious and even exhausting at times, there’s a lot to be said for stubbornness. I consider it to be one of the deterring factors that’s kept me alive for as long as I have been. If I were never this stubborn, I never would have overcome Diabetes complications as was child. I never would have reached the level of martial arts training that I have. And I definitely wouldn’t have made my way through basic training and enjoyed a reasonable foray into law enforcement over the past decade and a half.

But there were a lot of nay-sayers along the way. People who didn’t believe that any of those things could be accomplished and that I shouldn’t have been attempting them. In some cases, a lot of cases, I wish those people could be here to SEE what’s been accomplished. But such pride-filled fantasies are not only unnecessary, they accomplish nothing. But it’s always difficult when you have people who seem to want nothing more than to watch you fail. And I’ve seen this happen a lot.

The most classic scenario involves being at the gym. You walk in, change and start working up a sweat. Public gyms have a lot of positives and negatives, as I’ve often written about. But at one point, you look up and see a heavy-set person on a treadmill or elliptical machine. You can see that they’re soaked with sweat, breathing heavily and are doing their damndest to push through the inevitable fatigue that comes with moving a vessel that large. But they’re doing it. And then the inevitable happens: a couple of snooty bitches (male or female) will come by and “subtly” say something about the person on the treadmill. Maybe something to the tune of, “Wow, you can tell that they sure don’t belong here..” or “Why would they let someone like THAT in here? I didn’t come here to see someone fat in my gym.”

I wish I were making those sentences up. But these are ones I’ve personally heard while USING a public gym. It ties into my whole concept about how some people just want to watch the world burn. Folks, obesity and excess weight is no joke. But setting aside the whole concept of body-positivity and loving yourself as you are, excesses weight can have serious health repercussions and shortens your life in a plethora of ways. So, it would make sense that a person in that position would WANT to work towards getting into shape. And last time I checked, wasn’t the POINT of a gym to GET in shape? By that logic, it stands to reason that everyone in the locale isn’t going to look like a bad scene out of Baywatch.

That’s only one example of such a scenario and it’s a classic one. One I dealt with was actually from my parents. Yes, you read that right; the first people I had to deal with being negative about a choice I made was my mother and father. During my childhood, complications resulting from insulin resistance didn’t provide much of a positive outlook on the possibility of living to see my teens. When I took my health into my own hands and decided to join the martial arts, I was told that I was too weak, too frail, to join karate. They’d hit me and hurt me, and I’d never make it through a class without my blood sugars bottoming out. Ultimately, my parents and family at large were of the opinion that it would be contributing to my early death to join karate.

As a result, I wound up doing what a number of people have done through the centuries, in my situation. I joined in secret and did it anyway. The result was not only improved health, reduced insulin sensitivity and a lifestyle I never would have been exposed to otherwise but I went on to excel and teach others. Not too shabby, for someone who was told they could never do it. And that’s something that unfortunately happens far too much. This example involved my family, but I’ve faced this sort of negativity from friends and associates through the decades, as well.

Folks, one of the worst things you can do in this life, is knock down someone who‘a trying to climb. Everyone has a story, everyone has a journey and it’s far better and easier to help lift these folks up than try and knock them down. Imagine if I’d actually listened to my nay-sayers (parents notwithstanding) and stepped aside from martial arts? Maybe I wouldn’t be here today. Or if I was, maybe I’d be in much worse health and unable to enjoy life to the level that I do. I was lucky enough to have people who pushed me and encouraged me. So when you see someone working towards something amazing, be one of those people. ☯️

Hungry For Some Facts?

I was having a conversation with someone from work yesterday who had an unfortunate incident involving his lunch. Since he typically works out during his lunch hour, we were discussing whether he would walk to somewhere nearby and purchase some food or if he would simply go to his workout as usual. The conversation led to the benefits and disadvantages of working out on an empty stomach. And as with all things in life, there’s a case to be made for either one.

Sometimes, it’s more about HOW you do something than the actual WHAT. In this case, there are times when exercising on an empty stomach is fine. In fact, I’ve often heard that exercising on an empty stomach can lead to a better fat burn, since the only energy the body has to depend on is one’s fat stores. Unfortunately, this isn’t correct.

According to an article on WebMD, working out on an empty stomach will cause your body to use a source of energy that’s readily accessible, which may include breaking down sugars from the muscle tissue, followed by the production of sugar by the liver. Fat stores simply aren’t the go-to secondary fuel that many (myself included) believe it to be. By that logic, training heavily on an empty stomach may inadvertently cause you to sacrifice your own muscles in order to fuel them.

The article goes on to explain that if you’re doing a consistent form of aerobic exercise like running or cycling, doing it on an empty stomach can work. But the overall risks of a fasting workout aren’t worth it. The article suggests consuming small portions of low-glycemic, complex carbohydrates, like steel-cut oatmeal, apple slices or whole-grain cereal without the milk. Click on the article link for more of those suggestions. I won’t list them all here.

From the Diabetes standpoint, a fasting workout can be difficult at best. This is especially true since different types of workouts will affect different people’s blood sugars in different ways. Ain’t Diabetes grand??? It’s a wonderful kaleidoscope of bullshit. For example, if I head out on a long bicycle run and may blood sugar is normal, I can expect to hit a high before I get home. Unless my ride is wildly inconsistent in terms of speed and resistance. Then I’ll have a low. Working out on the punching bag or doing heavy weights will almost always make my levels drop. Unless I suspend or remove my pump, then they’ll sky rocket.

See what I mean? And those conditions may be different for each person. So if we add an empty stomach to the mix, it makes things all the more complicated. Not least of which is the fact that hunger can be extremely distracting. Try focusing on lifting weights or working the bag properly when your stomach won’t stop rumbling. It ain’t easy. Plus, hunger can cause fatigue, dizziness and/or nausea, none of which are ideal during exercise.

The next perspective is the martial arts. If your karate classes are anywhere near as intensive as mine are, the last thing you want is something heavy sitting in your gut, sloshing around and making the bile rise in your throat. This is where that small portion of complex carbohydrates comes in. Give yourself the fuel you need to get a more intense workout in, without the risk of throwing up all over the dojo. Contrary to SOME opinion, projectile vomiting is not an effective means of self-defence. That’s a story for another time…

Bottom line, fueling up before a workout will still allow you to burn fat. In fact, that WebMD article linked above indicates that “If you’re doing a killer workout… non-fasting is better. You’ll get to the fat burn because you’re going to deplete carb stores quickly by working out so intensely. You’ll start burning fat within 16 to 20 minutes.” Since I average workouts at 30 to 60 minutes, I’m getting a burn no matter what.

There you have it; empty stomach = not good. More or less. Some people just flat out can’t exercise with food in their stomach, so there are exceptions to any concept, right? For us Diabetic martial artists, eating the right foods at the right times in the right circumstances is all that it takes. Sounds easy enough… (rolls eyes sarcastically) ☯️

Hay, Don’t Be A Maker…

There’s nothing like a good, solid workout on a punching bag. Some motivational music on the Bluetooth speaker (I like instrumentals, personally. Audio Machine or Two Steps From Hell are pretty good), a thin pair of bag gloves or bare knuckles and the sweat dripping off my nose as I hammer combination after combination on the bag. I usually use a workout timer app called Seconds Pro, which I’ve written about in previous posts. But if you’re on the iOS platform, you can check it out on the App Store. I don’t know what the Android translation for that would be. But I digress…

I’m a big fan of using striking surfaces of varying types, as it allows you to build and develop your strikes against an actual surface/target as opposed to simple shadow boxing, which can only provide so much. I’ve seen people train for long years and become extremely fast and efficient in their strikes, only to falter, sprain a wrist or have no impact strength when it came to striking an actual object/opponent.

I’ve described different methods of striking such as using the punching bag, which carries the weight and yields somewhat like a live opponent would (and moves, so it challenges you to adjust since opponents don’t sit still). There’s also wall-mounted pads, which still allow for some solid striking power while providing a specific target, which one does not typically worry about on the punching bag. The last is the makiwara. Really, any hard, static striking surface. This would apply for specific targeting, certainly. But mostly, I use the makiwara to develop proper striking posture and knuckle development. As you may have heard, we Okinawan karate types are pretty nuts about our knuckles.

Although I favour the punching bag above all these options (having someone hold a pad for me in the dojo, notwithstanding), I’ll sometimes find myself using a technique that isn’t really favoured in my style and that I consider to be something of a risky proposition in an actual fight situation: the haymaker. Ahh, haymaker…. The go-to for drunks looking to end a fight quickly…

For those of you who may not be familiar with the fighting arts or who don’t watch boxing, a “haymaker” is basically a wide, whipping punch that’s thrown from the shoulder, coming from the outside in towards an opponent. There’s very little bend to the elbow and it has the potential to be a very strong, devastating blow. If you can land it. And under the right circumstances. Enter: my opinion…

Many of you may never have experienced a situation where you’ve gotten into a real fight. Consider yourselves lucky. As Dalton said in the movie Roadhouse, no one ever wins a fight. There have been many times when I’ve been stuck in a situation, both professionally and personally, where despite my best efforts to talk my way out, a fight was coming. And although I haven’t really made much use of the haymaker, I’ve seen others foolishly try to put it in action. Although it has the potential to provide some power, here are the disadvantages:

1. It Causes You To Telegraph Your Movements: There’s nothing worse in a fight than giving your opponent information about what you’re going to do next. That’s what telegraphing is, as it relates to a fight. The problem with a strike like the haymaker, is that you need to blade your stance in order to do it. Try executing a haymaker from a normal, standing position. Go ahead, I’ll wait…. You’ll notice that you’re able to swing your arm in the arc that constitutes a haymaker, but it will cause your entire body to twist and there’ll be no power behind the punch. This means that if you’ve reached the point of no return and it becomes either them or you, you’ll need to back a foot up in order to blade your stance to throw this bad boy out. And nothing quite lets your opponent know that something’s coming like blading your stance…
2. It Leaves You Exposed: It’s no secret that Uechi-Ryu Okinawan karate favours strikes kept within the boundaries of the practitioner’s body, so maybe I’m a bit biased in this regard. But it’s for good reason. If you ever see someone execute a haymaker (I was unable to find a stock photo of one) you’ll notice that their entire rib cage and the side of their face is open and exposed. An opponent who knows it’s coming will definitely take advantage of that and deliver a strike themselves, before your haymaker has the opportunity to land. One of the concepts behind striking while staying within the outer boundaries of one’s body, is to prevent opening up in such ways
3. It Takes An Eternity: Fights are something akin to a horse race; the ending is calculated in seconds or less. One of the biggest problems with a haymaker, besides the telegraphing and exposure, is that it takes far longer than other strikes. It should come as no surprise that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. A haymaker is pretty much the antithesis of that. It’s wide, far-reaching arc combined with the additional distance it must travel before making contact, makes it less-than-ideal if you’re facing an opponent who may be on the ball and has any level of fight training as well.

I absolutely believe that there’s no such thing as a bad technique; simply how one uses it. So, I think the important detail about this technique is that it shouldn’t be used at the beginning, or even during an actual fight. Perhaps as a Hail Mary move or a finishing move when the fight is over. But then one needs to ask oneself: should I be striking an opponent with that much ferocity if the fight is all but over? The totality of your circumstances may dictate that. But this is a good time to point out that fighting should always be considered ONLY as a last resort. Be safe. ☯️

A True Warrior’s Bike Runs On Muscle…

Last year, I managed to log almost 1,100 kilometres, over 850 of which were on the bike. The remainder was walking and some foolish attempts at jogging. I hate jogging. It’s bullshit. Prove me wrong… Seriously though, I absolutely hate running. But I lOVE cycling, and thanks to all the free time I had during the pandemic, I logged quite a lot of time on two wheels. Since the snow has disappeared, I’ve been a little slow on starting up this year, but I’m slowly starting to catch up and I’ve decided on some pretty fun goals.

I had grand ambitions to be out of bed by 6:00 am and hit the road after some brief preparation, but as you can see from the time stamp in the image above, it didn’t quite work out that way. Caffeine was singing its sirens song and I couldn’t resist the pull of my arm chair as I sat and sipped while doing my daily crossword puzzles. By the time 10:00 am struck, I recognized that if I wanted to use this particular day to get some mileage in, I would need to get at it.

I should point out that this was last Monday, which was a statutory holiday in Saskatchewan. This meant that my wife and I both had the day off, facilitating my ability to take off on the bile for a couple of hours to try and get a solid sweat in. I peddled my way down to Wascana Lake, one of my favourite spots for cycling. The reasons are quite simple: there are paved paths that allow for a smooth and measured ride. there’s also a lot of trees and water, lending a small reminder of my home Province of New Brunswick.

However, with the recent lessening of restrictions and conditions in regards to the pandemic, the walking path has become less than ideal. During the pandemic, foot traffic was restricted to one direction AND social distancing was required. Now, not only is there two-way traffic, making it more difficult to navigate, but people are walking and filling the paths with impunity. You wouldn’t believe how easily two people can take up the entire width of a public path and seem oblivious to the words “excuse me.”

As the morning wore on, the temperature began to increase. The day was blessed with a light overcast, a combination of clouds and smoke from recent wild fires in neighbouring Provinces. The result was that I wasn’t TOTALLy exposed to the sun, but the heat was still mounting enough that I was dripping onto my handlebars. Luckily, I brought along a bottle of sugar-free electrolytes and my glucometer, so I was set in terms of hydration and ensuring my blood sugars were level. Insert a PSA here about how extreme heat can affect insulin pumps and CGM…

By the time I got home, my legs and arms were killing me, my shirt was soaked to the point you could almost see through it and I looked like something the cat dragged in. The mileage shown above is what I managed to complete by the time I got there. I took a short period of time, sitting in my garage and sipping the remainder of my electrolytes and some water before hammering a half-dozen jellybeans to regulate my blood sugars.

Remember in the opening paragraph when I mentioned that I was working on some pretty fun goals? I’ve decided to try this app called The Conqueror Challenges. Basically, (and I’m not endorsing this app, I’ve simply installed it for personal use) these are virtual marathons that you can sign up for, pay a fee and it tracks your distance until you’ve reached the goal. You can choose a package where they issue you a completion medal when you’re done or a package where you get the completion medal as well as a t-shirt. They have some pretty cool ones, like climbing Mt. Everest or crossing the English Channel.

Just about anything can be virtual, nowadays. So, why would marathons be any different. I’ve completed a couple of challenges already, so I’ll keep y’all posted when I receive a completion medal. But for someone try to set goals and achieve them without getting involved in something according to someone else’s schedule, this can be it. And that’s pretty much where I find myself; between work and home life, I don’t really have the time to sign up for scheduled marathons or join public events. I’m just waiting on baited knee for karate to open up again. I don’t know, it’s something different and helps to keep me on track. There’s one medal that’s 4,000 kilometres! That’s crazy! I could basically cycle my way home to New Brunswick! That would certainly be a strange and wonderful adventure. ☯️

Let Time Be The Judge…

If you walked into a karate dojo today, it would be pretty fair to say that you wouldn’t be proficient the following week. If you joined ballet or dance today, you wouldn’t be able to stand on point or start competing the following week, either. Important things take time and this is especially important as it relates to one’s health.

People these days are all about the right here, right now. Immediate gratification is often the expectation, and we live in a society where everyone is plugged in and always looking for something that will help them melt fat, slim down or build muscle. But like endeavour, the results won’t appear quickly. And even when do appear, it’s important to keep at it.

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of getting home after a long day and flopping down on the couch with a cold drink and binge-watching something on television. It’s easy, right? Humans as a whole will usually prefer to take the path of least resistance, much like the course of a river. But health and fitness REQUIRES that you step off the path of least resistance and persevere on the harsher path.

Recently, I started to dislike the way I looked. This can be attributed to a number of things, including indulging in a less-than-favourable diet, consuming beer and alcohol and allowing my fitness trends to slide off the rails, where I would go full weeks without working out. It’s okay to take the occasional break, but not when it’s to the detriment of your overall health and fitness. And not least of all, is the constant adjustment to my system from exercising consistently to being more sedentary and vice versa…. It plays hell on the blood sugars!

My point is, I took a few very simple steps to start doing something to slim down a bit. I don’t think I need to explain that as I get older, weight becomes harder to shed and Diabetes control becomes more important. But all I’ve done is chit back on my carbohydrate intake and alcohol consumption, increase my intake of fluids and have started working a few small fitness challenges. It’s taken a while, but I’ve managed to shed almost ten pounds over the past couple of months, the results of which I’m starting to see (in small doses).

A pair of pants I purchased four months ago that fit decently are now loose enough that the waist band folds over when I cinch my belt. A golf shirt that six months ago pretty much drew the eye directly to my gut now fits comfortably and I’m wearing it right now, as I type. It’s small difference that come from persevering and not giving up. There will always be days when the couch is calling, but if you push through and get that workout in to maintain your consistency, you’ll eventually start to see the difference. Slow and steady wins the race on this one…☯️

You Ever Try To Kick The Sky?

Martial arts is comparable to your favourite recipe; many will have a similar process in preparing their recipe, but most will have some slightly different ingredients and amounts that make their recipe unique and specifically theirs. The same can be said of martial arts. Different styles will have different ways of accomplishing the same goals and/or executing the same technique. As an example, what my style calls a crescent kick and inside crescent kick is referred to as the opposite in the Kenpo dojo I currently train with.

It can be a bit convoluted and even confusion to the non-practitioner, especially if they’re trying to choose their own style. But what’s important to a practitioner is to refrain from judging or evaluating another style’s methods, even if they may seem odd or useless from ones’s personal style. I’m certainly guilty of this; I’ve written entire posts on why I WOULDN’T train a certain way or use specific techniques. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work for THEM.

I follow a certain number of martial arts pages, mostly because they’re fun to follow. But once in a while they lead to small nuggets of wisdom or open my eyes to something I may not have considered before. The reason I bring this up is because of a couple of posts I saw yesterday, where a young woman in a black shirt and yoga pants executed several kicks straight up above her head, and a second post with someone in a karate gi doing the same. I made the mistake of visiting the comments section. Big, big mistake.

Setting aside some of comments related to the first practitioner who was wearing yoga pants (who the fuck cares? You should be able to execute your techniques in any clothing you wear), some inevitably commented how useless the kick was, as there’s no practical application to kicking straight up. While I can admit that I would never, in a real-life scenario or in the dojo, execute this technique, I can also freely admit a fact that most of these armchair commentators won’t; I couldn’t execute that kick to save my life!

Okinawa Karate is a pretty low-technique style. We don’t employ many high kicks, favouring kicks at or below the belt and using punches and arm techniques for anything higher. But there’s no denying that there are a number of measurable benefits behind executing such techniques, even the practical applications are few our far between. Unless you happen to be fighting against a giant or someone twice your height. Which could happen. I guess. If you’re living in a video game world.

Here’s the thing: Doing high kicks may not serve a practical application. But what they do provide is the ability to work on precision, balance, muscle strength and agility. These are important benefits to someone studying the martial arts. In Okinawa karate, we always focused on doing halfway splits to help with flexibility and reach for the kicks we DO perform. But to this day, I still can’t do a full split, whether this means lowering myself to the floor or doing a high kick. In my hay day, I could execute some pretty solid roundhouse kicks against someone’s head, provided they weren’t three feet taller than I was.

What surprises me, is how any time someone posts a video of them selves doing a kick straight up in the air, there’s always some negative fucker who needs to comment about how it’s a useless kick. Agreed, it may not be useful in an actual fight, but consider how flexible this person is and how precise they may be while using an actual kick against an opponent. You don’t learn to punch properly by striking a punching bag once. By the same token, your flexibility and reach isn’t accomplish simply by kicking ONLY as far as you want to go. One will usually train to exceed that reach in order to allow for a more efficient technique. To most martial artists, this is what would be considered a common training practice and also “common sense.”

I continue to be impressed by practitioners who execute high flying techniques and show remarkable flexibility, a flexibility that I’ve never had. I can easily say that I would never use fancy spinning kicks or use a kick where one strikes straight up above one’s head. But that doesn’t mean these techniques aren’t impressive and useful in their own way. It’s important not to judge too harshly, when one sees some of these techniques. Although they may not be included in your style, they still hold some use and practicality from a training standpoint. Instead of commenting on how useless the kick is, why not recognize the balances, strength, precision and agility involved. This is the true martial way. ☯️

Carry The Torch For Too Long And You Could Get Burned…

We all get older. There’s no getting away from it. And as we get older, our muscle tissues become less flexible, our joints a little less loose and our energy levels can deplete. This is why it’s so important to maintain one’s fitness throughout one’s entire life in order to ensure that we can maintain our best form throughout our later years. This includes proper diet, regular exercise based on one’s capabilities and in my case, proper Diabetes control and frequent blood sugar testing. Staying abreast of newer therapies and exercise routines definitely helps.

Most people with Type-1 Diabetes have difficulty keeping their energy levels above nap time at the BEST of times. But once we get older, we tend to have a little less get-up-and-go. So long as one has a strong sense of determination, one can push through the apathy. But so long as you keep moving and pushing yourself forward, there’s no shame in altering your fitness routines and lifestyle to accommodate one’s life, despite energy levels.

I can admit that in recent years, my motivation towards daily workouts, pushing myself to the point of exhaustion and cycling for 100 kilometres in one sitting seems to have taken a back seat to taking care of writing, doing forms, yoga and light calisthenics mixed with the occasional venting of negative energy on the punching bag. Where the cheese has definitely slid off my cracker is my diet. Battered proteins and starchy foods have become a little too common, lately. And although I’ve enjoyed the benefit of shedding a few pounds in recent months, my diet could certainly use some tweaking. this doesn’t mean you can’t indulge or allow yourself something enjoyable on occasion. But moderation is key.

The extreme heat that we’ve experienced over the past month has definitely put a damper on my ability to push through. I always like to think that my ability to push forward and push through will always be there. But the fervent zeal I experienced in my teens and my twenties no longer exists (I’m well beyond that point, in case I haven’t dated myself enough in previous posts). Sometimes we need to evaluate where our motivation lies in order to be able to tap into it. In previous years, I was attempting to save my own life from the cruel ravages of Diabetes. Dramatic, I know. But accurate.

Throughout my twenties and thirties, I had a point to prove to myself as I continued and excelled in my martial arts studies. Then I had the benefit of my job requiring a certain level of physical fitness and a combat acumen. In case no one has guessed from my initial posts from years ago and some of the hints I’ve dropped, I used to be in law enforcement. And although I still have my overall health and fitness to maintain, I’m finding difficulty in keeping that momentum going. It’s been noticeable. I DON’T like it, haha.

I’m sure that I’m mostly in a slump and I’ll fight my way through it. I always do. And that’s the important thing; to keep fighting for what’s required to ensure your health and happy life. Everyone’s capable of it. One simply needs to do it. ☯