I am very very tired.

Tired in the manner of being unmotivated and just general down and out.

Reasons why:

Life is changing, and it has happened so fast that I didn't start feeling the implications of things changing until yesterday/today (which is about 3-4 days after it started).

That change is that I might move to Vancouver for work, which means abandoning college here, means abandoning any plans I had here with my heavy involvement of extra-curriculars, and from my previous track record of things, dropping off a lot of connections I have here. Some of which I spent time to actually work in.

Now it's not going to happen immediately, and it's not even guaranteed, I'm only on the 2nd level of screening, and there's more after it. So there's still a pretty good possibility I'm not going to even get in. Plus from what I checked, I'm spending 1200 on plane and hotel to do the 2nd screening test (not even counting food yet). So it's a big gamble of all or nothing considering that's all I have left for money too.

The other thing is that I lost 15-8 to my student in a proper fencing duel. Did my best, started to panic, started to do crazy things (which worked better than some of my usual stuff, and I got reprimanded for it to not do crazy things), but basically I lost and cracked under the pressure of the fear of loss before it even ended. So what's so significant about it? Well, this duel was suppose to be at our true best, our 100%, everything we've got, and I put everything I got into it, and I couldn't change anything. The challenger did the same things over and over again, the same bad habits they were doing, that they do best at, the same weakness that I never amended. It was a match of who could poke each other closer distances, and the shorter one always wins. Well, now I've lost confidence in my teaching, whether I'll still be respected as a teacher, and I can't see anything good in me about fencing anymore, why should I stay if I can't teach that much? Why should I stay if I can't even perform well?

I feared that a non-friendly "Go all out" duel would do a number on the loser, be it my challenger or I would get hit hard emotionally/mentally from this. AND IT HAPPENED! I feel like utter shit. I never have duels, I just spar, and play around because I don't want to hurt people or myself mentally/emotionally. I've lost control before, and it has REALLY BAD outcomes as a) we know from previous posts here about me wishing death on family members, and me actually hurting people (giving cuts to people) when it was the wrong time and place for things. When I'm in tournaments, I'm still not "serious." I'm still just playing a game, not actually fighting. Which was why my first offense was using my off-hand as a tool for parrying. I was in the mindset of a true duel. I had this 1 specific duel in the name of helping my student (the challenger), and it helped them, at my own personal cost of self-esteem and pride.

Another pointer for possible bummer syndrome is fear of losing respect from that person, and losing that person as a student.

My archery hasn't changed a lot too for the past 4 months, I hit target, but never consistent on where I hit, so I'm at a plateau, and can't get better.

I haven't shot pistol in ages, and it only improves sporadically because it's like a beginner that's starting up, Going from zero to 1 is an infinite improvement.

Perhaps it is time to lay down my arms, and move to something else, whatever ordinary people do I guess, or whatever else I find that tickles my fancy.

It's a possibility I'm just taking things too seriously, or too deeply, but, if it happens it just does.

Just another repeating bad day.

It's like watching reruns on TV, except there's no channel switch, and there's no off button.

I just finished going through my posts, and if you look at Sept 22, basically it was almost an exact rerun of that day.

-late for class (didn't miss it this time),
-usual classes
-go home, eat, wonder why all the lights are on, and the fans running. It's wasting a lot of energy ...
-get a ride from dad (big mistake), and he rages about me upgrading to windows 7
Well it was 40$ instead of the 120$
-get treated like a baby on paper, as he writes with rage on notes and notes of paper.

Why do I always get ratted out for my spendings, and I don't rat anyone else out for theirs? Because it's trivial, and we all know there are consequences later. Opportunity costs, we buy something now, we wait longer for other things. How hard of a concept is that? How come that doesn't sink into his head that I don't mind waiting for things. He wants to push an LCD monitor ($200) on me for some reason ... I don't want it. I keep saying I don't want it...

Is it not surprising I find myself frustrated about being raged on about spending small amounts over periods of time, and he wants to burst it on big items?

Now my frustration accidentally manifested itself into a murderous intent. We had our argument in the car, and right when I was getting off to go to fencing. I had to spend at least half an hour meditating and breathing to calm myself down from taking it out on students that I'm coaching. Let 1 slip up and yelled at the regulars for being slower than the beginners getting their armor on (and today was the first day for beginners to put the full suit on).

Luckily though, teaching has been one of those relievers of emotional stress. I calmed down by the end of practice, and was back to most of my usual self. I let my students pound at an obnoxious nose to the sky charade of me, and it felt good that they were able to focus themselves to defeat that charade, and with the things I was teaching them today.

Archery, I was totally off my game, because my focus had not yet come back, and didn't until the last volley. I just didn't want to go home. I was contemplating asking a res friend if I could stay at their place, but I have come home still to find that complaint paper.

Home is not a place of retreat for me, it's a place of war and battle. I am more at ease, marching through the city, carrying my education, carrying my hobbies, and carrying myself through society. I always think about the idea of camping out in the city. Why? Probably because it's the real cheapest way to live and it is the most mobile for one who doesn't own a car.

The incomplete circle of goals, success, and progress.

So it's midterm season, and I'm doing quite well so far. However, one of the main downers was last weekend when I went to competition. I didn't do badly in the round-robin matches, but my elimination round, I was practically a target dummy to my opponent and for the first time in my fencing career, defeated in less than 3 minutes.

So one of the first things that I was thinking about was just how well I applied, the different styles I learned. It works on slow people, and on dumb people that react. However, what about average people and the intelligent adversaries? We never tried things out on them, in other words we never tried things out in reality.

I realized that and was quite concerned with a more general theme where my colleagues are content with the results we got from just the people we tried it on, and just the people we were around. One of them even blinds himself to saying he's expanding it by teaching it to people in the club. I applaud his effort, but he fails to be capable of having things spread beyond him. I'll ask him later, why he doesn't compete. Why doesn't he show the larger community that actually counts and will make a difference in changing the face of fencing? I believe he stopped being competitive was because he mentioned that the competitive community is stubborn, and arrogant and not accepting. Which isn't true considering things are still changing in the community.

So I was disappointed about our lack of progress and blindness to what progress really is. We set the goals, we succeeded in achieving them, so in conclusions we made some progress. That's great, but we stopped now.

So my busy life continued, and next up came archery. 1 of the members there, she's been practicing since the start of the club, but has only begun to consistently hit the target. She was happy, we all cheered/teased. Today though I was giving pointers on things to look out for. Something to check when she's next in practice. She didn't quite understand. So when I did finish explaining it was relatively labourous. I tried something different then. Trying to get her to understand, the variability that skews an archer's aim. If she understands the difficulties, she can understand what can be fixed. What she can work on, without relying on the coach to give her a foreign concept to learn and work at.

She got royally pissed at me for being tedius, and that I should "you tell the student THIS IS wrong, you do it that way." I personally don't teach this way because

a) it insults the students frequently and not everyone can take it.
b) it spoon feeds the learning material. The student will never learn unless the coach is there.
c) Kind of a corallary to b), is that the student will never learn to think independently.

We moved on from that subject, and I warned her not to get comfortable with her achievement on monday. She can be happy, but she has to remember to not stop and keep going. It was a warning, and she took it as my assumption that she is. So she became angry again, and with all the dramatics to follow. I was consistently trying to correct her misunderstanding and apologize for my incoherence.

She became very emotional, and I gave up on trying to reason with her.

Different case, similar problem,

We set goals, we progress and achieve them, shouldn't we look towards more progress, better and higher achievements besides our immediate little world?

Like that Desjardin commercial. "Just because something's invented, does it mean we stop there? No, we knew we could do better. "