I am mostly better from the cold I had, but I feel as if I’m on the cusp of something else. I know it’s a vicious cycle, but any time I go out, I get something that makes me feel worse than before. It’s one of the problems with not interacting with people on a regular basis. I have a shitty immune system, and it has no chance to improve because I don’t allow it to interact with bad things on the regular. On the other hand, I am allergic to everything under the sun, so my instinct is to wrap myself in a bubble so I won’t get hurt. The reason I got my cats in the first place was because I decided since I was allergic to everything and miserable all the time, I might as well get cats. Yes, I was allergic to them, but they would make me less miserable. I’m actually not that allergic to my cat now unless he decides to sit on my face, which he does from time to time when I have a pillow over my face.
I’m really frustrated right now. I’ll be real with you. Why? Well, I’m going to tell you. One, depression. It’s low grade, but persistent, and it saps much of my energy to do anything. Two, my physical health. I’ve been sick more than healthy it seems in the past year, and it’s just draining as well. Three, the intersection of the two and how it makes me not want to do anything. I’m trying to push past it and change the way I think, but it’s not easy. It takes a tremendous amount of willpower to even get me out the door, not to mention driving to the place I need to be. I haven’t even gone to the co-op since I got sick, for example, because it’s too much effort. It’s fifteen minutes away, but I can’t make myself do it.
I have a hard time not castigating myself for doing more, which is not the best motivation. The taiji demo showed me so many things I want to do, but I just don’t have the capacity to do them all. I set the goal of learning the Sabre Form this year. I am at the end of the fourth row (there are six), and this is where I stopped the last time I was learning the Sabre Form. Two years ago. The end two postures of the fourth row are insane, but in a good way. Part of the problem the first time I learned the Sabre Form was because I was fully expecting it to be like the Sword Form. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea that it wasn’t, and it made the whole experience sour for me. This time going in, I fully realized it was a very different beast, and I fell in love with it immediately. I had to have that extra experience under my belt before I could really get the Sabre Form.
Side note: I find it fascinating what people are attracted to in taiji. I have a classmate who is not into weapons at all, but he loves the hand-to-hand combat. He and my teacher did the San Shou Form or the Two-Person Form (roughly) in English. Watching them, I thought, “That’s really cool,” but it was not at the top of my list of things to learn. Which surprised me because when I first starting studying taiji, I was all about the martial arts applications. I still am when it comes to the Solo Form, but I skew heavily towards the weapons. I want to learn the Double Sabre Form, the Karambit Form (the Two-Person Form of this is pretty cool, too, and this is not taiji), the 6-Harmony Staff Form (also two-person), Deer-Horn Knives (bagua, not taiji), and the Fan Form. All the weapons, all the time.
Back to the Sabre Form. Another reason we stopped was because my teacher wasn’t sure of her own form at that point. The fourth row was right about where she started feeling not as confident, so we had to put it off so she could work out the kinks in her own form. Then, real life happened in a lot of different ways, and we did not return to it for the next two years. Now, we have a private lesson every other week, and I am back to where I was when I last studied the form. So, yes, I think it’s reasonable to assume I can learn the Sabre Form this year. I would also like to learn the Cane Form, but that one is less assured because I’m learning it in class. Two problems, I have been missing more classes than attending them, and we don’t always do the Cane Form in class. I could conceivably pay for private lessons in the Cane Form as well, but I think that’s a bit too ambitious of me.
Another issue is that my teacher isn’t comfortable teaching all the forms I want to learn. It’s not really a problem right now because I can only learn so many weapons at a time. The thing is, weapons is not her strong suit. She doesn’t love them even though she’s very competent with some of them, and I’m wondering if it’ll ever reach a point where I need to find another teacher. Watching her teacher do the Sabre Form at the demo really made an impact on me. It was immediately clear that he had a mastery of the weapon that was above and beyond what any of his students could do. The only one of his students that I have seen exhibit something anywhere close to the same deftness (and it’s still far and away nowhere near it) was a weapons enthusiast who does not attend the studio any longer.
I am loyal to my teacher, but I also have to be realistic and pragmatic. My passion is the weapons. Her passion is not the weapons. I want to learn all the weapons to the best of my ability. That may mean expanding my teachers. I’ll have to think about it because she is a friend as well as a teacher, and I do not want to offend her. I don’t think she’ll be offended if I seek out other teachers, but I’m not sure. Especially when I’m not able to make it to classes as often as I should.
This is all in my head right now because I have to figure out the lack of energy problem first. Or at least accept that I am not going to be able to do everything I want to do within the time frame I’d like to do it all. In other words, I need to make a mental shift, but I’m having difficulty with that. I’ll have to do some research into chronic illness and the limits of said illness. Once I get over my shame at not being able to do it all. I should set that as one of my goals because I have a hunch it’ll make a difference to my emotional state.