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THIS IS A MESSAGE
My Life in Uni - Part one January 8th 2006
I'm at that kind of part of my regular cycle of moods just before I actually get up and do something productive, but don't because I have a hundred other, less important things to do. The exception today being that I actually have something very important to do, which is revise for an exam I have in two days, which I'm sure I'll put off because I need to rearrange the songs in my Ipod or clean my shoes.
As the beginning of a new year I would like to make some new goals, even though I find the whole thing stupid. I don't think I've ever once kept to my goals, and writing them down would be a monument to that fact.
Life in university, has so far been, exactly as everyone has told me it would be. I've on occasion got very drunk, as has everyone around me. Nobody has done any work as far as I can see. And on occasion people bring up martial arts.
It's amazing how great my room is compared to the conditions of the academy last year. Firstly, the joys of having your own room are many, as in (obviously) that I can mess it up as much as I like. It's a sty, it's great. And opposed to having a freezing cold shower that I would take once a month when I was feeling particularly brave, I actually have my own shower, just there, and even now I can't be bothered to have one that often.
The teachers we have wear ties and don't hurt me.
I wake up at Eleven, eat pork pies, and swear as loudly as I can to my flatmates, laugh way too loud and I still don't find any reason at all for ironing things.
I'm told that the course I'm doing is the first Martial Arts degree in Europe and to an extent I'm proud of that, and to a separate extent I'm scared of what it will involve and its meaningfulness later on in life. I'm quite happy with the things that I've learned in the course so far though, and although the actual martial arts side hasn't really taken off yet, I'm assured that they will in the semester starting this February.
My main goal, for this year, as I've decided just now is to go into the real idea of fighting. I've always been into the non-violent aspects of martial arts much more than the real, gritty side to it, and as fun as that may be sometimes, I would really hate to just be a person that could do the splits and act smug about it.
Luckily for me I have a flatmate who doesn't mind beating the crap out of me, and providing I can stop being such a coward about it and fight him once in a while, I should get much better. The way I see it, is that we fight in a very narrow corridor where there is absolutely no space for evasion and stepping back nearly always means losing - and I think that this is needed in realistic fighting to bring a feeling to the exponent that you just have to be as aggressive as possible and drive forwards. What also helps is that the guy I spar with is probably the scariest fighter on the planet an I'm sure that nobody else around really compares to him, or at least his level of intent to hurt me. Plus we're only using our hands in these scraps, something I've always had to work on.
What I'm thinking of really, in my weak little philosophical and pointless thoughts that I sometimes have, and then ignore, is that success really comes from being able to completely ignore feeling of fear and humiliation from losing and just keep at whatever it is you're doing. You hear things like that being said a lot, but it's meaningless until to can really apply it to your own life. For me, I want to face my fear of hurting people and getting hurt, and then maybe I could think a bit more effectively on the best ways to hurt other people, and to avoid getting hurt, and train these up to actually become instinctive.
It's going to be a fun year.
Liam, on a quiet Sunday, 2am in the morning, listening to Richard Ashcroft and eating a bowl of Coco Pops.
