Our school in Thorn City stopped training altogether in late November. Not much longer after my last post. Our teacher had grown even more concerned about transmissibility, but the darkness in the park had driven us into Marks garage for practice. This was making him and us a bit tense. No one had vaccines at that time. He finally called it around Thanksgiving. I did experience a small amount of pleasure getting some of my evenings back after years, but it also created a void. So much of my life revolves around planned activities. With their removal I'm left feeling adrift.
Normally this would be greeted with some happiness because there was always work on the house to be done, but it the last year all the major projects at the house were completed. For the first time in six years we had time to do what we wanted to do. In October, which normally would have been busy with my birthday shenanigans, turned out to be introspective and quiet, so my wife and I went on a road trip to visit a few friends in the nearby states. At one point we were in the far North of Washington state and I felt a sense of home I hadn't experienced in some time.
As my wife and I started spending more and more time at home and talking about where we at this stage in life, we reviewed our recent trip in October and started thinking about what a possible change would look like. Eventually we got around to talking about moving. My job is based at home and my wife is retired so the idea of moving came easier than I thought, but I originally didn't want to move with the idea that I had another year and a half until I could test for my 3rd degree (SanDan). But with the school/training stopped for an unknown period that didn't seem to be holding me down anymore.
Long story short - we moved five hours North to a small town on the ocean. We have a smaller home and we are busy settling in to our new community. Once we started settling I approached Reed and asked what to do. He referred me to the nearest school and worked out the introduction so now I'm doing Zoom karate.
There is four or five of us working on our SanDan and I find that I'm bit farther along than the others, but I'm so rusty on my kata that it's not like I'm bored by anything. Last week we started on what is my eighth kata, Sanseiru.
