Bystander

I'm hitting that mid-January funk.

Except instead of a new gym membership wearout, it's this musings column.

Perhaps a little bit of the enthusiasm and luster has been lost since restarting this whole writing thing in October of '25.

A smidge.

A sprinkle.

Writing everyday is perhaps too much. Or too frequent. Or both.

It's in these days where I have nothing to say that all the growth comes from.

The hard reps.

I use hard in a very narrow sense.

This sheet easy.

What can I pluck out of thin air and make something out of nothing?

One of the basic tenets of martial arts is rhythm. 

When you see two people trained to fight, it's almost like they're dancing.

One, two. One, two, three. One moves forward, the other back.

There's an order there. 

That's why some wise folk say fighting a newbie or an untrained person can be very difficult. 

Rookies tend to be spastic. Unpredictable. Muscly. Tight. And just chaotic.

You know what I mean?

Crazy.

And so, when you get really high up in this type of training, you learn a very advanced technique.

After you have all the moves down, you're ready to start all over.

Once you have rhythm, you must break it.

Re-introducing chaos into the order of advanced combat.

You spend years first mastering order to only then keep it spicy through mixing in chaos.

One, two, one, one, one, two, three, four, one, high kick!

Bad form, bad form, bad form, perfect execution!

I always found that funny.

At the height of controlled technique, liquid flow, of true mastery, is the most noob of tactics.

Life is like that.

In so many ways.

An apex leads you right back to the beginning.

Flailing, flailing, slap, slap, crisp cross.

Bing!

Don't try that ess with me, though.

I'm so advanced I lock my arms out to my sides (T-pose) and just start spinning.

Fools be running into these fists.

Like a top.

But, as I've said many many times, I am a man of peace.

I just like to keep things spicy.