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

Parkour

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Learning how to fail

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Why are all of my hobbies so abusive? Between Hooping, Krav Maga and parkour, I have no idea where all of these bruises came from!!! Knees, elbows, shins, shoulders... I'm black and blue all over. I realized today that I need to be more careful about baring my arms at client meetings because I either look like I have an unhealthy dependency or issues in the home. After not taking parkour classes for many months, I finally decided to give it another go because Fight or Flight Academy started offering a women's class. When I first started up in the summer, I was struggling with low self-esteem in the regular classes because everyone else was so far beyond my level and the guys naturally didn't have as many issues with upper body strength like I do right now. As much as I dislike the idea of women needing separate classes, I feel like it is exactly what I need to build up my confidence at a more reasonable pace instead of expecting instant results.

Tonight's class was an awesome one for me to reflect on. We focused on learning how to fall and dealing with what happens when you fail at a move. There is so much of that concept that translates well into my life! With any of my hobbies, the most debilitating fear that stops me from progressing is not wanting to fail or "look stupid". This means I don't make the progress I could if I just worked through the failure, learned from it, and moved on. Even though I'm fully aware that failure is part of the learning process, I panic and avoid it at all costs.

That little voice in the back of my mind says, "What if this painting turns out looking like crap and no one likes it? You'll just add it to the pile of half-finished canvases stacked on the floor", Or "Hooping just looks silly, people will think you're crazy. You aren't learning new things fast enough, so clearly you just aren't good enough to really hoop." Or "What if you fall and make a fool of yourself at class tonight? You could get hurt and then where would you be? You don't have the upper body strength or knee mobility to do parkour".

I read a parkour blog post this morning that pushed the exact message I needed to hear:

"Parkour doesn't take strength, parkour makes strength."

That is easy to apply to everything I do. From work to play, if I just get over my fear of not being amazing at something right now and allow myself to experience failure a little more, I will begin to reach my goals over time. I can't expect to be at a high level of expertise until I put in the work to be there.

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Parkour!

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Recently I decided that I needed to start being more active. Hooping has been a fun way to get up and move but it hasn't done a whole lot for my endurance or overall strength. I started toying with the idea of joining a nearby gym or taking a yoga class but nothing sounded like something I would stick with in the long run. I have a tendency to start new workout regimens and get bored after just a few times. Weight lifting, running, even group classes at a gym just end up seeming tedious in the long run. A while ago, a friend told me about a local gym called Fight or Flight Academy which is the first and (as far as I'm aware) only gym in the Midwest that teaches Parkour and Freerunning. If you don't know what these are, watch the video below. Hell, watch it even if you do, it's pretty awesome. Even gives you a nice idea of what the gym looks like.

Go get lost on youtube looking at videos for a while. People are crazy talented and it's an amazing display of what the human body is capable of doing. If you decide to come back to my blog, I'll still be rambling here. If not, I'll understand...

Still here? okay, awesome.

So after tossing the idea around in my head for a week, I decided to just take a class and see what I thought. My first class was last Saturday and apparently that particular day was Obstacle Course day, which is a terrible day for a complete newb to show up. This ended up being to my advantage however because while Mitch taught the main group, Chad gave me the ultimate crash course in the basic concepts of Parkour. We went over jumps, landing, rolls, vaults and wall-grabs. By the end of the 55 minute class. I was exhausted, my arms were shaking and I was having a blast! I had started the class thinking that I wouldn't be able to do much of anything. My knees have always given me crap so I've felt extremely limited in my athletic capabilities. But there I was, doing my best and actually surprising myself.

Fast forward to the next morning...

I woke up and the mere thought of moving hurt. EVERYTHING hurt. My body was taking its sweet sweet vengeance on me for daring to put it through that. Muscles that had been hibernating since I was a little kid were angry that I had the nerve to wake them up. This was just validation that parkour was exactly what I needed. This is a total body workout if ever there was one... 5 days and a massage later, I was ready for another class.

Tonight, I got off work and drove across 169 in time to watch the class before mine do some fancy flips. Honestly, some of these guys make it look so easy... it's not fair. Beginning Parkour class tonight focused on "tic tacs" and "cat to cats" or wall jumps and grabs. I spent an hour throwing myself at a wall and hopefully jumping off of it.

I'll be honest...I sucked. My feet were slipping (because I placed them too low on the wall), and my knees were struggling to push off, I couldn't even lift myself in a successful cat to cat. But I was still having fun. Watching what the more advanced students were doing helped me at least envision the end goal while I kept working on getting the basics down. As much as it sucks to try a move and botch it, I can at least feel myself getting used to the movements. I know I just have to keep at it and eventually my body will get it right. My muscles will strengthen and my joints will react faster. As long as I don't psych myself out with thinking "I'll never be good enough", I will improve. I just always have to remember this moment in time when I couldn't even lift myself up from a cat grab because this is rock bottom, I can only go up from here. and up and up and up. That's the whole point. In a month, I can look back and see improvement. In a year, I might not recognize myself.

 

There was even an added benefit tonight. I got home, still in my workout clothes, still feeling a little giddy about what we worked on and my dog was begging to go outside for a walk. I decided to take him for a run instead, which he was all too excited about. I quickly learned that my dog is a terrible running partner, constantly zig-zagging into my stride or trying to pull me in the direction of a squirrel or goose... little punk is a pent-up menace wrapped in chaos. But my point was, class gave me a reason to get out there and run a little. Even though I absolutely hate running, I have a goal now. Something driving me to improve. Which feels awesome.

The next class I'll be going to is Saturday, looks like we'll be working on vaults. Hopefully my arms will be up for it by then.

If any of this sounds like fun to you, I'd love to get more of my friends going to the class, it's more fun when you have people to joke around with :)