Life
Katherine Delaunay
Memories of Dan

I’ve kind of been avoiding writing this stuff down. On one hand, I want to always remember Dan and how amazing he was, but on the other, writing it down forces me to sit with it. To remember all the good things, the sad things, and the things I can’t do anything about any more. As vibrant as my memories of Dan are, as admirable his passion, dedication, and talent were, he is gone and the future will give me no new memories with him. 

Memories of Dan
Katherine Delaunay
Seeking Sustainable Change

We’re creeping up on 2 years since I broke my leg. It’s a little frightening to think about how much time has passed and how quickly it feels like it went by. Even though the bone was mended well enough for me to walk without crutches or a boot in about 4 months, the rest of the year felt lost to pain and physical therapy. The past two years have been a series of ups and downs, but they’ve helped me define and refocus on what makes me happy.

Life
Katherine Delaunay
Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend

I’ve come to the moment that every pet owner avoids thinking about. I avoided it so hard that I developed a mythology in my head that my cat was some kind of vampire who would live forever because he always looked so damn young and healthy. But over the past month or so, my cat Midnight has been telling us that he’s ready to go. 

Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend
Katherine Delaunay
Reaching out
Katherine Delaunay
Kaizen

I really like the word "Kaizen". It is a Japanese word that means "Good Change" or "Change for the Better" and represents the idea of continuous change to improve all functions of an organization. It is a popular business philosophy that helps increase productivity using increased awareness and action informed by that awareness. The idea is that when changes (great or small) are made over time they can result in great improvements on productivity. While this is most often used as a business strategy, it's easy to apply this idea to one's personal life. It's been an helpful tool for me because I can easily become overwhelmed when I try to change too many things at once. This weekend, my Kaizen focus was cleaning and organizing my studio/office. 

Kaizen

Training

Back to Basics

Hard to believe another month has gone by and we're already in April! Days move quickly when you've got a lot to keep busy with. March was filled with more training, adventuring to the ice caves in Bayfield, WI, and wrapping up a couple of chainmaille projects for some dear friends of mine. Plus, I got a new car! Pretty exciting stuff.

April is going to be another great month for improving my skills in parkour because I've signed up for Fight or Flight Academy's "Foundations Course". It's a program they just started offering to help new students get the basics down before jumping into FOFA's main class schedule.

Speaking from experience, it can be very daunting to start taking classes with students who have been around for a while. Even the easiest vaults pose a challenge if you're starting from scratch, especially if you're an adult with a mostly sedentary lifestyle. I think this new course will be a great way for people to explore what they learned in the Free Introduction Class more in depth and develop the skills they will need as they continue training.

I've been a dedicated student at FOFA for about a year (give or take a few months where I was a weiner and didn't show up),  and there are still a lot of basic moves I struggle with. Shoulder rolls are the bane of my existence and yet they're an integral landing that everyone needs to master, especially when you start jumping off of taller obstacles. I've taken the intro class at least a dozen times and I still just can't get it right consistently. I hate practicing it because I look silly. Then there are the two vaults I find absolutely terrifying: Kong and Dash vaults. I just can't convince myself that I'm physically capable of doing them. My brain is great at getting in the way. 

See examples of the 5 basic vaults in this video!

I'm hoping that after taking the Foundation Course, I will be more comfortable with all of the basics so I can focus on training the more interesting techniques they teach throughout the week. 

I know I've grown a lot in the past couple of months, but I've got a long way to go and a hell of a lot to learn. I'm looking forward to writing a review of the course at the end of the month to encourage others to give it a try. If I can do this stuff... anyone can!

We had a brief reprieve from winter's grasp so we did some training outside at Hidden Falls!

Exorcising Weakness

Well, the new year buzz has died down and the jinx of new years resolutions is safely behind us. I spent some time in January reflecting on 2013; the things that I tried for the first time, things that I continued working on, and old hobbies that I rediscovered. After some consideration, I developed a challenge for myself that I would like to pursue over the month of February to help me overcome some pretty major mental roadblocks.

September Progress Video

In August, I started to record video of me practicing various hobbies so that I could track progress over time. The main focus is tracking improvements with parkour and freerunning because I'm so new at it. 

This process of putting the videos together is a quite painful, self-criticizing all the things newbies do when they aren't familiar with new movements. My arms flap around a lot. My landings suck. Why can't I jump farther? Do I really look like that in class? But so far, I've been able to see improvements already, even in individual training sessions. That feels pretty awesome. Seeing what I'm doing wrong brings issues into greater focus and motivates me to work harder. 

Eventually, I'm sure I'll look back on these videos and feel good about how much I've learned.

I 'm posting both August and September because I didn't do a post last month. So enjoy a double-whammy of silliness!

September 2013 

September felt like lots of botched precisions. I think my biggest take away from watching this collection of clips is to stop flapping my arms around so much and absorb more of the landings with my knees. My precisions look pretty close but I keep bailing at the last moment.

 August 2013

This is the first in a hopefully long lasting tradition of posting videos of my progress in various hobbies including fire dancing, hooping, parkour, freerunning and weaponry. We'll see how this format goes, I'm sure it will evolve over time depending on what I'm focused on. This was a pretty busy month!