Its been 2 weeks since my last post. Life has been a little frenetic lately, and will continue to be for the next 2 weeks. It was expected; Bert and I had looked at the April/May calendar and shook our heads. Jill is at the peak of her badminton season- in the last 10 days she has won a gold medal at each of the three school tournaments she competed at. Next week are the school provincials- in St. Paul, and then right after that (the very next day) its the Canadian Nationals all week in Sherwood Park. In between all this, she's job hunting, and practicing her driving, training, doing her homework and I'm ferrying her around. Janet has her provincial volleyball tournament in Calgary next weekend; her honours band trip the very next week, and in between practices for both, she and I are battling it out as she hisses and screams over her trigonometry, and the french past participle. Bert has an out of town trip scheduled next week; and we're busy with painting and flooring so that the house can go up for sale in May.

Kung Fu, however, is supposed to be my number one priority, because I am testing for black belt in October. It's not really in my ilk to put anything much ahead of family for priorities. Master Brinker has really tested me on this, and I believe that I have given it my very best shot. I missed all three of Jill's last tournaments, Jill's teacher interviews (Bert went alone), Janet's practices, and the visit from the flooring guy so that I could practice and perform in lion dancing and a demo, participate in the forms marathon, attend regular classes and open training, participate in the pitch in clean up, and get ready for the tiger challenge. For the most part, I have to say that fiddling around with my priorities has really produced some positive overall results, for my kung fu progress, and for my perspective on what my family's real needs are and aren't. There's the stuggle with guilt too; will my daughter's hold it against me for not being there; will I have overlooked some aspect that I should have been there for them?etc, etc.

I haven't been able to shake that guilt feeling, and I'm feeling a little frazzled - I feel I need time to think and regroup. Because as the priorities have shifted towards Kung fu - the pace of progress in that department has sped up. Performing in the demo last weekend forced me to practice Lao Gar with increased intensity, so I'm farther ahead with that than I had expected - it got me thinking about everything else that I next need to turn my attention to and that has been a bit overwhelming too. Preparing for the Tiger Challenge has produced similar results with respect to the coreographed fight sequences, weapons practice, etc, etc etc. My daily home training has lost its rythm. Rather than methodically execute the kicks, hand forms, agility work, pushups, situps etc that I have selected for that week, I am reworking the musical form, practicing the traditional form and the cane form, board breaks, and trying to find time to work on the coreographed fight sequence. The end result of this is a feeling of frazzlement, unfocus, loss of direction, failure. More than once this week I've asked myself what the heck am I doing, at 47 years old, tossing family priorities to the wind, leaping around in lion costumes, swinging a cane around at imaginary assailants, doing forms at the kwoon to 2am.

But Master Brinker insists repeatedly that it is one of the most important things we will do in our life. I really do believe him because of what I've experienced so far. But right now, I'm mostly feeling frazzled.