2026 03 09 – Progress So Far

Fountain pen ink sketch of a Cassowary.

For some reason Wix insists on not formatting images properly. It wants everything to be squares that cut off the tops of the images.

Reading

One of my goals this year is to finish at least twelve books. I just finished Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ll probably be going back to it for reference when trying to find ways to convey story through visual media.

Working Through Pain and Injury

Shoulder pain has been an ongoing issue, usually adversely affecting my ability to do pushups. This forces me to find other exercises to use as an equivalent to the pushups. This week I dusted off my rings, you know the ones, like gymnasts use that hang on the ends of ropes or straps. This allowed me to get back to doing hangs (a.k.a. dead hangs), which helps open the subacromial space and prevent impingement of the head of the biceps tendon (where I frequently have a lot of pain). After only a few days of this, there’s been relief of pain from some things that usually cause pain.

Journalling

I’ve done various things regarding journalling over the years and still haven’t fully settled on a system. I keep finding things that aren’t working. A spread sheet works great for recording and tallying numbers, but it doesn’t do anything for other aspects of training (and life) for example, recording progress, feelings, routines, and making it easier to evaluate what’s working and what’s not. I’ve tried long form journals, like a diary, but the training gets lost in everything else and isn’t easy to refer back to for making improvements. I’ve tried electronic note apps but the information strangely gets lost there too, even with search capabilities and tags. Lately I’ve started keeping a small paper journal with me (most of the time) that is almost exclusively used for jotting down notes about training (sometimes other things get in there too, simply so I won’t forget). We’ll see how this works over time. One thing that is always helpful when keeping a paper based journal is pagination and creating a table of contents so that I can find important information more quickly later on.

Weapon Form

I’ve chosen stick again this year, but with a twist. I plan to work on what’s called “Contact Staff”. Much like we are often encouraged to do juggling and pen twirling to improve our Kung Fu, I thought that learning to control a staff in this way could possibly aid me in mastery of the staff. It also looks like fun! However, I’m not sure counting numbers of repetitions is going to work for tracking this. So, I’m thinking of simply tracking how many days I work on it in some way combined with tracking which techniques/tricks I manage to learn how to do consistently (minimal dropping of my staff). So, the first one(s) I plan to work on is the neck wraps and stalls.

Art

Using my sketchbook to do most of my art homework in, instead of digital media, has been quite useful and eye opening. Everything is in chronological order and makes it so much easier to go back and see (track) progress. My following a horse drawing class this year (in the sketchbook) is decidedly better than when I tried it a year ago! This is why I decided to do the same thing with a small training journal for Kung Fu. I want to see if the same thing happens.

Numbers So Far This Year

Pushups/equivalent: 478 / 25000

Sit-ups/equivalent: 260 / 25000

Hand Form: 39 / 1000

Weapon Form: 1

RAoK: 14

Sparring: 15 minutes

Kilometres: 61

Memorize Mastery:

Nurture Relationships:  

Journalling: 11 days

Blogging: 3 posts

One-on-ones: 1

Improve Flexibility:

Help with Level 1 Classes: 1

Decluttering: 3 days

Art: 4 days

Reading: 1 / 12

Dog Training: Teaching/maintenance moments only, so far