And 2015 is here

I had forgotten I had a blog. Something reminded me and I hope to write about it in a later post, but I found this draft from 2015 on the blog and decided to press publish. I read the post I wrote at the end of 2015 -- the last one on this blog and this one is the beginning of 2015. It wasnt the year I thought it might be at all... Just like 2020, for all us.
Added today -- May 25th, 2020

Old draft

And 2015 is here. It slid in slowly and seamlessly without much that announced it's arrival within myself.  As usual there is a need to look back, make sense of the previous year, find patterns and even label it in some way. Yet, 2014 defied being pinned down in the usual ways i look back and describe years even though there are months that i can group together and say yes, this was the essence of those.

January to March the theme was bodily healing with the goal of getting through the annual Koh Samui gasshuku and getting my nidan.  2014 began with debilitating back aches and knee pain that lead to days when i dreaded getting out of bed. Visits to the physio, daily exercise for both and slow, ever so slow training characterised the days. I achieved both goals eventually but my biggest learning of this time was something so unexpected. 

It was saturday, the second last day of the gasshuku and we lined up to do our test at 5:00. Sweat threaded down my neck even though the sun and the heat were slowly setting Of course I was nervous but i also knew that the week had prepared me and all i had to do was be present now. I did the best i could do, even relaxing and having fun by the time we arrived at the bag work, the kicks and hiji's seemed easy now. We finished our hundred crunches, push ups and samui star jumps and lined up again, heart thudding i stood there, full of hope just wanting the tension to end. Pass or fail it needed to be done. 

But Sensei had other plans, he announced the results of the kyu grades but held back the dan grade results. I was gutted, i needed to know where three months of perseverance had got me and i spoilt the evening for myself. Tormented all night with all kinds of emotional devils - hopelessness, doubt, anger - i could barely smile in the morning. The training shifted my mood and eventually the tension ended but i hated myself for the places i had allowed my mind to roam during the night and exhaust me so that i could barely enjoy my achievement. Something flashed through my mind - i could have made the choice of just feeling satisfied that i had done what i had set out to and had a great evening. in the end really that was what really mattered. It would have been a different last evening. 

The next six months were for emotional healing. I dug deep, wrote and rewrote my memoir of therapeutic abuse. The focus just finding my story and i found a deadline for myself, vowed to enter it to a memoir competition. Months of reconnecting to people and parts of myself that i had cut off - either fully or partially, allowing myself to be vulnerable, apologising, forgiving and recognising when there was nothing to forgive. A time of really knowing who i was, who i had become and the values really important to me. When the date to send the memoir arrived, i knew that though i had got what i needed from it - it was still far from being ready for a competition. Yet i sent it off as a symbol of both being done with it and of acknowledging my achievement. 

The last quarter was the richest, bringing together elements from the past and launching me into the future. Karate camp in Jaipur tied up the karate thread of the year, i trained, i met friends, i could acknowledge that i had managed to keep the club going after Sensei left. I had been able to tap into the collective knowledge and people were still enjoying the training. I finally found an indoor space once i returned. 

But i also got a glimpse of the possible future of bringing together my creativity and my activism. Re-writing myths really began to look like it could begin to be a bigger movement. In Bombay i found the group i needed to go deeper into the work and after wider. Here i found a way to start getting people to think about myths and who they have unconsciously seeped into their psyches and defined who they are.

Rifal got new life. slow, uphill task this improving.

The warrior got a quest, the owl a deepening. 

And the year ends with a slow, slow looking back - not so much looking forward yet. Have a few hopes, a few dreams but mostly it is about believing in the moment and the connections between moments that will create the flow. I think it might be a very interesting year.