Osu

[Urgan]

The voice in your head looks like

 

33 minutes ago, Kishi said:

Tonight should be... just yoga, really? Really? Wow. Can live with it but man. So weird to look at the schedule and see only one thing. Might do my ab wheel planks tonight just to feel something.

 

[Kishi]

18 hours ago, Urgan said:

The voice in your head looks like

 

 

 

Wow, custom meme and an appropriate gif? Gosh. I didn't get you anything.

 

*

 

Wednesday was relatively quiet. I thought I'd get out, go to my friend's place and get away with a beer or two and a couple eps of Star Trek. Instead, they fed me and we stayed up late playing board games and card games. We were beaten by Pandemic, and then they were nice enough to let me smoke them at Wizard, which is sort of like Euchre except no teams and with a couple extra cards.

 

Good times. No yoga of any kind though. Got home really late, ate some dinner, went to bed.

 

Today should be at least BJJ and yoga. I don't think I care enough to stay late and miss Karate, so I might go to do that as well; my only hold up is a psychological hangup about having a gi that isn't standard to the school, which frankly is probably just a me thing. Then again, I do have to make up some time, so. I dunno.

[Kishi]

So, just wound up being a BJJ/yoga kind of night. I've been having trouble getting to work on time and I stayed late to make up for the time. Felt like that was a fair thing to do.

 

BJJ afterward was good. I've not been on the mats in the past couple weeks and I wasn't as smooth as I could be. On the other hand, I was at least able to try to do the things we went over in class (specifically half guard and various attacks and defenses from there). Tapped a white belt, tired out the teaching blue belt, got thoroughly manhandled by another white belt but didn't feel bad about that since he couldn't get a sub to stick and I was about to get him when the timer went off.

 

Was particularly stretchy for yoga last night - lot of back bending and opening of the chest. Was able to get into Camel and deeper Hero Pose than I did last time, which just means it was a good night for that kind of thing. Perhaps I will be better next time, and perhaps not, but it's good to see that the program seems to work, even applied as intermittently as I've been. Did ab wheel planks afterward, which felt good.

 

Today in work news I got a passive-aggressive email from my clock-Nazi supervisor talking about how it's work policy to report when we'll be late if it's more than 15 minutes. I've been late by 20 minutes and haven't been reporting, mostly because when I follow the reporting procedures I get no response, no documentation, no nothing. I've been reprimanded for this before; they say I need to be here in the mornings in order to be available for the claimants, but they've also taken to assigning me cases in the morning and told me to block off the phones for a couple hours in the morning so I can work on them.

 

So, if I get in to work at 09:30 and I'm blocked off until 11:30, I'm 'available in the morning' for half an hour. And we're going to be heated about this? When my productivity is through the roof and documented as such?

 

... uh huh. Okay.

 

Still, if I'm frank about it, it's not like I'm sleeping anyway. I try to get 7 hours but my body refuses to let me sleep 'til my alarm. Apparently this is a side effect of hypothyroidism. But shoot. As long as I'm not going to get any sleep anyway I might as well be up. Save myself a little bit of trouble. It's not like laying about is doing me any good anyway.

 

Should be some strength work tonight. I think I'm off to hang with a friend as well, so it should be fun trying to balance those two.

 

The self-defense seminar got moved without warning to 06/23 in the morning. I am not going to get up for that circus. I'll just play it all by ear and we'll see what happens.

[Urgan]

5 minutes ago, Kishi said:

Today in work news I got a passive-aggressive email from my clock-Nazi supervisor talking about how it's work policy to report when we'll be late if it's more than 15 minutes. I've been late by 20 minutes and haven't been reporting, mostly because when I follow the reporting procedures I get no response, no documentation, no nothing. I've been reprimanded for this before; they say I need to be here in the mornings in order to be available for the claimants, but they've also taken to assigning me cases in the morning and told me to block off the phones for a couple hours in the morning so I can work on them.

 

So, if I get in to work at 09:30 and I'm blocked off until 11:30, I'm 'available in the morning' for half an hour. And we're going to be heated about this? When my productivity is through the roof and documented as such?

 

... uh huh. Okay.

 

Makes about as much sense as demanding we all be at work at 8:30 when we have a meeting at 9 to put things out onto test environments and I rely on that happening before I can do my job for the day, as I am on top of my crap and 90% of the time have everything tested to the fullest extent by closing time.

 

6 minutes ago, Kishi said:

The self-defense seminar got moved without warning to 06/23 in the morning. I am not going to get up for that circus. I'll just play it all by ear and we'll see what happens.

 

[Treva]

On 6/7/2019 at 1:00 PM, Urgan said:

 

Ouch. What a way to go. Not a risk you think of when using a new neti pot. That must have made for a helluva click-bait title on an article somewhere.... "MAN MURDERED BY MICROBIAL MUG." Errbody do the panic. 

*crawls out of intern year hole to say a thing no one needed to know but proceeding apace For Science*

 

So the thing has been that people used untreated tap water after a hurricane when there were not protections in place, and were killed by a "brain eating amoeba" called Naegleri fowleri.   I found another CNN story about a different strain of amoeba killing somebody else.  These are rare cases; that said, @Mistr   also probably knew this story but here I am saying more things than I should.   Amoebas and your brain do not mix.

 

Addendum: so the thing with Naegleri fowleri is that it is very rare, and the reason why it is bad is because it goes up your nose to your brain, where it eats nerve cells.  Aka the brain.  Sorry didn't make that clear.

 

Disclaimer even though I trust ya'll to not sue me: This does not constitute medical advice, I am not your doctor, please see your primary care provider for all medical needs.

 

 

hanging knee raises sound hard, and well, cheerfully delirious sounds really nice.  I'm glad you had a good time.  And hey, yoga can be feeling things too!  And difficult!!  Balance can be challenging for some people!  

What are ab wheel planks? 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

33 minutes ago, Treva said:

Amoebas and your brain do not mix.

They tend to disagree with starships as well.

[Urgan]

On 6/21/2019 at 6:12 PM, Treva said:

These are rare cases; that said, @Mistr   also probably knew this story but here I am saying more things than I should.   Amoebas and your brain do not mix.

 

Addendum: so the thing with Naegleri fowleri is that it is very rare, and the reason why it is bad is because it goes up your nose to your brain, where it eats nerve cells.  Aka the brain.  Sorry didn't make that clear.

 

I am always down for microbe nerdery, however my point was primarily that the media love to write lurid scare pieces on such things in a fashion about as brainless as if the amobae in question had gotten to them. "Rare" seems to rarely make much dent. It's always a good life choice to avoid drinking from untreated standing water. And water near farmland.

[Kishi]

On ‎6‎/‎21‎/‎2019 at 12:29 PM, Urgan said:

Makes about as much sense as demanding we all be at work at 8:30 when we have a meeting at 9 to put things out onto test environments and I rely on that happening before I can do my job for the day, as I am on top of my crap and 90% of the time have everything tested to the fullest extent by closing time.

 

Oh crap, so it sounds like this is errywhere. That's not exactly great.

 

On ‎6‎/‎21‎/‎2019 at 7:12 PM, Treva said:

So the thing has been that people used untreated tap water after a hurricane when there were not protections in place, and were killed by a "brain eating amoeba" called Naegleri fowleri.   I found another CNN story about a different strain of amoeba killing somebody else.  These are rare cases; that said, @Mistr   also probably knew this story but here I am saying more things than I should.   Amoebas and your brain do not mix.

 

Addendum: so the thing with Naegleri fowleri is that it is very rare, and the reason why it is bad is because it goes up your nose to your brain, where it eats nerve cells.  Aka the brain.  Sorry didn't make that clear.

 

On ‎6‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 7:23 PM, Urgan said:

 

I am always down for microbe nerdery, however my point was primarily that the media love to write lurid scare pieces on such things in a fashion about as brainless as if the amobae in question had gotten to them. "Rare" seems to rarely make much dent. It's always a good life choice to avoid drinking from untreated standing water. And water near farmland.

 

I'd be willing to believe it's both. On the one hand, people definitely do just read the headlines, and in a profit-driven media culture that's not enough, so the headlines have to be worse and worse in order to draw attention.

 

On the other hand, the WebMD cancer diagnosis is practically a trope at this point. That's a side effect of all of us being special - we all get to have special diseases.

 

On ‎6‎/‎21‎/‎2019 at 7:12 PM, Treva said:

hanging knee raises sound hard, and well, cheerfully delirious sounds really nice.  I'm glad you had a good time.  And hey, yoga can be feeling things too!  And difficult!!  Balance can be challenging for some people!  

What are ab wheel planks? 

 

Yeah, and the dude I'm practicing with says the same thing. "Don't worry about the emotions this releases," and I'm like, "My dude, I'm dead inside beyond the background radiation that is my rage, and this doesn't touch that, so."

 

Ab wheel planks are pretty much what they say on the tin. Get an ab wheel. Put it down in front of you. Hands on the wheel. Get in a plank. Hold for time. This page has video of what I'm talking about to give you some idea.

 

*

 

So, my weekend. Gosh, what happened on it? Let's see.

 

Friday was gonna be a training day, but training plans ran up against hanging plans (which I'd already made) and ultimately fell through. It worked out okay, though - I now have a copy of FF XIV on my computer, and we watched John Wick. It was good; I'm actually planning to see the second with this gent tomorrow. He was also kind enough to buy me dinner.

 

Saturday I wound up getting out to go lift weights and such. It was good times. Think I'm gonna try harder to stick to instructions and see if I can't condense some of this stuff down like the original program calls for. It's a long time to spend in the gym otherwise, and I'm kind of finding that I like not having to do more than I have to.

 

Went to hang with friends afterward, because they needed someone to move heavy things. After that was dinner and a double feature - To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything Julie Newmar, and Kingsman 2.

 

How were they? Eh. To Wong Foo is like a feature-length episode of Queer Eye only not as good. It was interesting to see Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes, and John Leguizamo in drag, and Leguizamo actually did a really good job, good enough that I couldn't see how his character was considered to have weaker drag game in-universe.

 

As for Kingsman 2? I hadn't seen the first but the second is apparently about the same. Really didn't feel like I was missing much, although it does have Elton John doing a flying kick in his feather get up, which wasn't a thing I knew I needed until I saw it. But, uh, yeah, a lot of it just didn't land for me. But that shouldn't necessarily be taken as a problem; The Big Lebowski didn't land for me the first time I saw it, but the second time I found it to be uproariously funny. Sometimes, these things just don't click; I might go back and see it another time and a lot of it suit me just fine.

 

So that was Saturday.

 

Sunday I pretty much just vegged and did boxing/BJJ. I did some headstands and such to keep up with it, but it really wasn't a very strong training day. Then again, they don't all have to be, and BJJ and boxing went pretty well. Lots of footwork type stuff and then I went on the mats as a dummy to help the kids out. Then more work on half guard before randori. My defense was as stellar as ever and I managed to work my way out of an Ezekiel choke using stuff we'd gone over in class, and then managed to reguard in time for the buzzer to go off. Went from standing with the other guy; got him with osoto gari and that was the last thing that went according to plan. Dude kvetches about how he can't land his chokes on me, but he got pretty close to Guillotine three or four times and I was stuck playing defense the whole time as opposed to getting something going. That's a win of its own; I wish I'd taken the time to reinforce that for him.

 

Anyway, today my hope is to work the new abbreviated strength routine in tonight as tomorrow like I said, I'm off to see John Wick 2. Per my friend, it's a touch weaker than the first, but it sets up the 3rd extremely well and 3 is apparently super good. So. Them's my hopes for the next couple of days. No karate, but it's a friend who's well-adjusted and seems to want to hang with me for my sake, which is refreshing.

 

(although, I have to admit, the Boiling Kettle of Issues that is my other friend group seems to be doing better. The Jealous Friend is at least a touch more honest with his own issues than he has been, and it's been reinforced that I'm liked because I'm cool people that they want to hang with. That's... honestly, that's something I could stand to hear more of).

[Renate]

I like following your threads because you are cool people .  

[Kishi]

41 minutes ago, analoggirl said:

I like following your threads because you are cool people .  

 

Thanks! I owe you and the other cool people who follow me much of the same.

 

*

 

Monday went great. Pretty much everything went right that I needed it to.

 

I ran out of meds on Saturday, was out on Sunday, but was able to pick some up on Monday. Noticed that they gave me actual synthroid this time versus the generic and I'm not sure if I've just placebo'd myself or what but I feel different on the name brand stuff. Better. A quick search seems to indicate that there's some controversy over the effectiveness of the name brand stuff versus the generic, although I don't want to put numbers to it.

 

Anyway. Got my meds and feel better, which is good. Um. Let's see.

 

Gaming was good. We have two GMs for Harnmaster right now and I got to play the bard game yesterday. We spent the whole night laughing. It was good stuff.

 

Afterward I went and did the abbreviated strength routine and this time it was short. Very short, which was quite in keeping with what I'd wanted out of it. Managed to superset everything and still managed my shadowboxing. Did KB snatches as a finisher with the 16 and managed 100 in five minutes, and that was quite enough for me.

 

Today and tomorrow should both be rest days; I want to yoga but I'm not sure how it's gonna play out. Pretty sure I can get it tonight, but I generally don't work out after drinking and that's pretty much a thing I do on Wednesdays now. Either way, a restful couple of days will be nice.

[WhiteGhost]

18 hours ago, Kishi said:

I'm liked because I'm cool people that they want to hang with

You certainly seem like the kind of people I would like to hang out with

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

1 hour ago, WhiteGhost said:

You certainly seem like the kind of people I would like to hang out with

I have hung out with WhiteGhost, so by the Transitive property of willingtohangoutwithness I am willing to hang out with Kishi.

 

Of course, I was already willing to hang out with Kishi, but how often do you get to work the phrase "transitive property" into everyday conversation?

[Teirin]

Good news in general :-)  What FFXIV server are you on?  Glad you made it through the horrible install process!

[Kishi]

23 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

You certainly seem like the kind of people I would like to hang out with

 

22 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

I have hung out with WhiteGhost, so by the Transitive property of willingtohangoutwithness I am willing to hang out with Kishi.

 

Of course, I was already willing to hang out with Kishi, but how often do you get to work the phrase "transitive property" into everyday conversation?

 

Oh no, I inadvertently began a positive cycle of reinforcement! I thank you for that, although I didn't mean to make you go out of your way.

 

Still thankful.  Also, thanks @analoggirl, didn't know we were starting something!

 

13 hours ago, Teirin said:

Good news in general :-)  What FFXIV server are you on?  Glad you made it through the horrible install process!

 

Yeah, it was pretty horrid, but the results thus far are pretty great. I'm on Goblin server. Need more time in the day for playing, tho.

 

*

 

Last night almost went according to plan.

 

I hadn't planned to train, so I didn't. I had planned to see John Wick 2, but we changed that at the last minute and went to see Dark Phoenix instead.

 

Bit of a change of pace, that.

 

So now you want to know: is it as bad as they say?

 

Well, it's not as bad as they say, but it's still pretty bad. Although, given that I'm not as versed in the comics as the others were, I think I concluded that it was bad on different grounds than they did. Most of their complaints were based on how many action figures characters were brought on to the screen and the relatively shallow nature of the story on screen as it compared to the comics.

 

Myself, given my own casual relationship, I actually thought they handled the comic aspects pretty well for the amount of time they had to work with. Admittedly, they didn't bring in the Shi'ar, opting instead for some kind of token villain to do the work, but TBH I didn't really mind that. This wasn't some multi-issue TPB epic nor was it a weeks long TV special. They had about 114 minutes to make something happen, so they did the best they could. I don't fault them for trying to adapt the thing.

 

My problems with the film come from some really poor dialogue and a lot of really confused and confusing motivations on the part of the characters.

 

To give you just an idea of it: Jean Grey encounters the Phoenix Force very early on in the film. It quickly takes control of her and starts mucking about with her head. Charles Xavier of course tries to help her and it doesn't go well. Jean gets a flash of memory and decides to peace out to follow up on it. The thing is, this memory winds up being a key piece of the puzzle in terms of stabilizing Jean towards the end of the film, and it doesn't make sense that Xavier would keep that from her.

 

I mean, Jean's crazy. She's not stupid, or at least she shouldn't be, but no. The writer didn't want to grapple with deep and heavy themes like mental health and self-acceptance. He just wanted to push this thing along to the action scenes.

 

Or how about when she goes to Genosha to meet Magneto to get help with her need for vengeance? He tells her that he stopped because he found that vengeance did not bring peace. Then, after she leaves, Beast shows up and is all, "Oh, BTW, Jean killed someone you cared about," and it's on with the helmet and off to seek vengeance once again. Like, really dude? Really?

 

Oh, and let's talk about how garbage the dialogue is. If you walk away from this film knowing one thing, it's that Jean Grey doesn't know what's happening to her, because apparently that was all the writers could think to have her say.

 

Still, it's not all bad. I thought Sophie Turner's performance was really striking, and she wears the aloof expression of a cosmic being extremely well. The music's good; I later learned that Hans Zimmer did the scoring on this one, and I should have known because it's trademark Zimmer, but in all the best ways and it really suited the film well. I thought the visual effects were really cool too, and in particular the "Dark Fire" effect that manifests around Jean. Fight scenes were kind of meh, but that's what happens when most of your principal characters have power sets that involve waving their hands at things. There was a scene with Nightcrawler being a BAMF by going BAMF (hurrrrrrrr) which was an awesome callback to X2.

 

So, yeah. On the whole, not really a movie I cared to see, but inspirational in the sense that one thinks to oneself "Surely I could have done better."

 

Anyway. Got home and did yoga and suitcase holding. Good day.

 

Today is more than likely going to be purely a rest day given that I'm going off to hang with friends and drinking is a certainty. I've got some gym clothes along in case I get a call saying that we're off tonight, but that doesn't seem likely...

[WhiteGhost]

My complaint about the film was that it was an almost scene for scene remake of Captain Marvel

[Kishi]

15 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

My complaint about the film was that it was an almost scene for scene remake of Captain Marvel

 

Gah, now that you bring it up, I can't unsee it. Gah!

 

*

 

So, yesterday wound up being an off day as I thought it would be. I went to hang with my friends and drink and be companionable. It was a good time.

 

We also wound up watching night one of the Debates because we're living in interesting times here in the USA, and my friends and I are those people. I've been invited back to watch night two and I think I'mma take them up, especially seeing as I'm behind on laundry again and cleaning gi is the Lord's work.

 

Only thing is, I'm kind of itching to hit the gym first, as it was a junk-foody night for all that my calories were within reason, and there's gonna be more junk food today as one of my co-workers is leaving and we're sending her off. So. I'd like to get something in; I think they'll be cool with it if I get out and do some things first. Depending on how full the gym parking lot is, I'll either be doing weighted work or I'll be doing Yoga with core. Either way, need to figure out something constructive to superset with front squats - doing abs there is a poor strategy, or so I've heard.

[WhiteGhost]

35 minutes ago, Kishi said:

Either way, need to figure out something constructive to superset with front squats

Pullups?  

[Kishi]

1 hour ago, WhiteGhost said:

Pullups?  

 

Nope. Those are already a strength move. Maybe bar hangs, though? Depending on what racks are open where.

[Urgan]

7 minutes ago, Kishi said:

 

Nope. Those are already a strength move. Maybe bar hangs, though? Depending on what racks are open where.

 

You said constructive, man....

 

[Kishi]

So, wound up going with bar hangs as my superset thing, as even though the racks were all taken the "HIIT ZONE" has both barbells and hanging bars. So it worked out. Supersetted push ups with full contact twists and did the armor complex after. Good times. Putting things together into supersets was a good idea, and then I used my rest periods completely on shadowboxing. It still wound up being a long night, but nowhere near as long as it could have been and I walked off feeling energized rather than tired. So. I do think this is a good thing.

 

Afterward was Night 2 of the Debates, also known as the Twoening. That was fun. Also, my friend there had told me a while back about a writing class he was wanting to get into and I remember being kind of envious about it. Then he told me yesterday that they needed more people and invited me in and as I was already on the fence about doing something like that, it kind of pushed me over. So now Tuesdays for the next month will be about writing. I'm actually really stoked about it; I could stand to have more of a life off the mats and doing other artistic things.

 

Tonight... I dunno what I'm gonna do. I'm kind of veering towards going for a long slow run just to get something in. Could stand to do yoga as well. It's kind of nice to not have something planned, though.

[Renate]

On 6/26/2019 at 8:05 PM, Kishi said:

Still thankful.  Also, thanks @analoggirl, didn't know we were starting something!

You are very welcome! 8-)

[Kishi]

So, Friday was gonna be a run at the gym until I remembered that Friday night is a super busy night there as it shares parking space with Chick Fil A, so no room. I wound up going home to do yoga instead. Yoga that night wound up being a Yin session, so lots of relaxed stretching. It actually felt pretty good, so I'm not tore up about the loss of road time.

 

Saturday was gaming with the family. We got our butts kicked again, although this time it really wasn't due to anything we did wrong. A lot of things went right; just not enough things when we wanted them to, and discretion wound up being the better part of valor. As happens from time to time.

 

During family catch up afterward, learned that brother hasn't been going to train as much. He's found himself in a weird position where most of the people who are in his skill bracket are too old to go with him and most of the people are young enough to go with him aren't in his skill bracket. As a result, he's been spending more time teaching than doing anything else. He's not quite realized that he's actually in a very good situation for getting better - teaching forces him to really dig into the technique, and when he goes with people who are less skilled he has an opportunity to practice more advanced concepts. As it was, I offered to be a sparring partner for him; he was noncommittal as usual but I would have felt bad not offering.

 

Anyway, instead of going off to Kali, I elected to stay back and hang with my folks for the rest of the day. Haven't taken a truly lazy Saturday in a while and it felt good to do so. I could have gone to Kali but to be honest I've lost a lot of faith in the pedagogy as I've studied knife fighting more in depth. Nobody's going to get their helmets, nobody's going to actually pressure test anything, and they're all gonna keep wasting time, and I'm just not interested in it anymore. We decide to go ahead with pressure testing, I'll go back, but as it is I'm kind of sick of being the one agitator for this when no one else seems to have an interest. I have better ways to spend my time.

 

Sunday, I watched my brother's stream and then went to BJJ. Had some new people on the mats including a "stealth" white belt who had a lot of grappling training. As a result, I spent the night getting crushed, but I didn't feel bad for all that that was a thing, and I learned a couple new ways to approach passes that I really liked. Just need to get sensitive about it.

 

Today marks the 4th week of the training cycle. Not sure how I'm going to approach this week. The program as written says to complete three cycles before taking a week off, but the GB progressions say to cycle to a rest period once every 4 weeks. I'm actually kind of leaning toward the former rather than the latter as I'm spending so little time relative to what I used to do that it doesn't feel like I need the break. This whole thing is way easier to balance and I'm having to fight the urge to make it complicated since that's what I'm used to.

 

So. Plan tonight is to hit the weights after gaming, but that might not be doable, so might end up just doing yoga and suitcase carries. Either way, I'm pretty chill about it.

[Mistr]

The writing class sounds like fun. I hope you get some good feedback out of it.

 

I'm with you on supersets. I have better things to do with my time than sit around in the gym. And lots of muscles that can use stretching when I have a spare minute or two.

 

Good for you spending time with your family. Can you go to more BJJ class sessions if you aren't doing Kali? I seems like you are getting more of what you want in BJJ.

[Kishi]

1 hour ago, Mistr said:

The writing class sounds like fun. I hope you get some good feedback out of it.

 

Me too. There's apparently some possibility that it's gonna be cancelled after all as some folks dropped out after I signed up? So we'll see. I wanna see if I can get some kind of thing moving with people back here though.

 

1 hour ago, Mistr said:

I'm with you on supersets. I have better things to do with my time than sit around in the gym. And lots of muscles that can use stretching when I have a spare minute or two.

 

Right. Shadowboxing's a good all around thing to do for me because it keeps the heart rate up and allows me to work on mobility and visualizing and combinations. So. Superset buddies! *fist bump*

 

1 hour ago, Mistr said:

Good for you spending time with your family. Can you go to more BJJ class sessions if you aren't doing Kali? I seems like you are getting more of what you want in BJJ.

 

Not really. BJJ is on Thursday and Sunday; Kali is Saturday. Although, now that the Professor is back from his travels, there's talk of Friday nights going full open mat, which would be good to go to. I'm hopeful; as it stands, though, Kali has no impact on grappling one way or the other.

[Urgan]

3 hours ago, Kishi said:

During family catch up afterward, learned that brother hasn't been going to train as much. He's found himself in a weird position where most of the people who are in his skill bracket are too old to go with him and most of the people are young enough to go with him aren't in his skill bracket. As a result, he's been spending more time teaching than doing anything else. He's not quite realized that he's actually in a very good situation for getting better - teaching forces him to really dig into the technique, and when he goes with people who are less skilled he has an opportunity to practice more advanced concepts. As it was, I offered to be a sparring partner for him; he was noncommittal as usual but I would have felt bad not offering.

 

Realizing the people he was doing this thing "with"...aren't now, has been known to shake people right out of commitment. I'm not a "this would be better with more people" kind of person, to put it mildly, but if I were ripped out of my group and forced to do martial arts with some people I don't know well/strangers or quit, I might quit if it were jarring enough. 

 

4 hours ago, Kishi said:

Anyway, instead of going off to Kali, I elected to stay back and hang with my folks for the rest of the day. Haven't taken a truly lazy Saturday in a while and it felt good to do so. I could have gone to Kali but to be honest I've lost a lot of faith in the pedagogy as I've studied knife fighting more in depth. Nobody's going to get their helmets, nobody's going to actually pressure test anything, and they're all gonna keep wasting time, and I'm just not interested in it anymore. We decide to go ahead with pressure testing, I'll go back, but as it is I'm kind of sick of being the one agitator for this when no one else seems to have an interest. I have better ways to spend my time.

 

I suppose you've gotten the idea in mind that they were definitely going this direction as in, a promise was made? In that event, if you aren't getting what you need there, better to spend the energy someplace else. I can't quite get upset with them for having performed a risk analysis and decided they don't want to take it to Next Level, so to speak, if that isn't their primary discipline or hobby. And if they can't find that confidence to take the risk.... giant shrug. I can understand you feeling cheated out of the experience. Signs point to using the time for something else.