A few months ago I decided to go on a diet. It was not a change in my eating habits but a change in my mental consumption. I had caught myself over the course of the pandemic reading more and more news articles, scrolling through endless youtube videos, and occasionally losing myself in social media–often when it was time instead Read More …
Dear students, friends, and colleagues, Over the past few weeks I have been the subject of a series of coordinated attacks and rumours that are an escalation of a more than 2 year campaign that has sought to damage my career, my school, and me personally. These attacks come from a small, interlinked circle of students and instructors at Valkyrie Read More …
Why do you practice martial arts? If it’s for fun, once you’ve achieved a good level of fun, why seek to get better? If it’s to win, why does winning matter? If it’s for artistic or personal mastery, why? Like getting caught into a conversation with the pedantic child who always asks “why?”, down the why-hole lies madness. When I Read More …
How do I help you? In this mire you rest But it is more that you wrest and struggle with stuck. I want for solutions To work you like a problem Solve you like a riddle Unscramble your Rubic’s Cube and set you in order But all I can do is sit In this dark room with you I cannot Read More …
You’re not too old to learn something new. Unless you plan to die in 10 years, there’s still plenty of time to gain a notable level of proficiency. Perhaps you won’t be leaping five feet into the air or out-competing some young competitor, but the benefits for your mind and body actually increase over time. The only barrier between learning Read More …
Some weeks you’re in the groove. Some weeks you’re not. Tonight I’m feeling decidedly disconnected from the music. I feel like I’m astral projecting above my body as it moves to the rhythm of its own synth. I’m syncopating out of sync. Usually I would feel verklempt about this. Swimming in a frustration of non-connection; with the music, my body, Read More …
I am missing the woman I love. A friend has lost his son. My cheeks are sticky from my small sorrow. I lament not feeling her touch, smelling her hair, tasting her breath alongside mine. A man has lost his son. What is the measure of my small grief? Alongside one so large. Soon I will hear her voice. I Read More …
In my coaching practice, one of the core life skills I help people with is learning to budget. I do this both on an entrepreneurial level, to help people who are running new businesses establish healthy money management habits, and I also help individuals on a personal level. For many when we think of budgeting we think of saving. This Read More …
I have done many things in my life that didn’t work out. I have found myself on adventures of which I had imagined fantastic and romantic ends that never came to be. Many of these adventures had their fair share of pain and hardship. Yet I don’t regret these adventures, in that I don’t regret who I am now. I Read More …
I revisit the question “Why do swordplay?” on a regular basis. Many people ask me what my reason is for practising something that is arguably esoteric and a few centuries past its true usefulness. The answer may not be what people are expecting. At the end of the day, I feel that hundreds of years past its applied art of Read More …