Reviewing myself

I had Dan training yesterday and I had a chance to talk to Master G. I told him that I was in a better place in my mind. I'm not 100% over myself and my "wannas" but I'll get over it. There's a saying in the dojang--check your ego at the door. I'm not stupid enough to think that I'm as good as the Dans I trained with. I know I have MUCH to learn, but they were there to help me. I worked with Mr. L and had a lot of fun learning. He was so serious but such a good person to learn from. He made no bones about grabbing me during the Ho Sin Sparring. His goal was to grab me and my goal was to get out of his grip. In the past, I would have tried to avoid any sort of thing like that and would have made excuses for trying to get away. I had no option to do that. It was a serious training. It wasn't a "you have to do as little as possible". I like the challenge. I promised Ms. S that I wouldn't flinch (much!) when someone hit me. She warned me that I would be taking hits, but not to say "Ouch!" because they would exploit it and would work on me for that. I'm pleased to say that I didn't flinch (much!) about taking grabs. You know what? I'd be ready to do it again.

I am going to be working on myself. I want to get myself to the point where I'm not afraid of being me. I'm not going to be a whiny person if I can avoid it. I rather like myself the way I think I'm becoming. I didn't like the whiner I was. I've since been working on how I think. I'm leaving the "I don't..." outside the dojang. If I need help, I'm going to have to put aside my ego and ASK.
I do NOT know the Korean (hangul?), but darn it, I WILL learn it! I can now count to six in Korean...I'm working on that. I'm working on terminology. I'm not afraid to ask now. I make mistakes and now can laugh about it. (Ask my classmates about the 7 Class Tenents that turned into 8! There was extra credit for knowing the 8th one according to Master F!)

I still have much to learn. In terms of my learning, I'm just starting out on my journey in BTK. I'm feeling a lot of love and exasperation from my classmates. There are days when I'm sure they want to whap me upside the head, but you know what? I don't think I'd blame 'em for it!

Christmas wish list

I'm having the kids create their Christmas wish lists today. I figure that we can look at the lists and see what is the easiest and most economical thing to get them. The oldest has put "a television with my own satellite receiver" on her list, along with "a computer", "new cell phone", "DS", "MP3 player--the I-touch" and some other things. She put them on the list, knowing full well I'm not going to be providing all of these things. It's totally interesting to see what happens.
The young man has put things like "a Bionicle", a "DS", "games for the PS3, Wii and PS2" on his list. It is interesting to see the difference between the two.

MY Christmas wish list is as follows:

1. To learn my terminology for my karate class by my birthday (6 months, 1 week)
2. To learn Nahainchi Ee Dan and be able to execute it properly by March.
3. To learn my one-steps and Ho Sin Sul properly.
4. To learn to run and like it...or at least, just to run.
5. To learn NOT to focus on how heavy I am (yes, I'm heavy, but I'm working on it!).
6. To NOT stress out over work.

Of course, I have quite a few wants/wishes that cost money, like a house, etc, but I know that I have more control over the wish list I've posted. I can't afford to buy a house at present, especially since most of the houses I like in the neighborhoods I like are upwards of a quarter of a million dollars!! Unless Santa's going to be leaving me a cool 250-300k in my stocking, that's out of the question.

What's on YOUR wish list??