The thoughts that roam my day on this early morning are:
📿How do I want to continue training?
📿What gear should I buy for my photography?
📿What skills should I learn?
With the idea of mindfulness and meditation, I'm trying to not cling to these thoughts. I'm letting them come into my mind and then let them go. This led me to having a more productive morning. I reevaluated what I spent over the last couple months, invested some money, edited a photo, wrote a post, talked to my girlfriend, and ate a good breakfast. Even after doing all of this, my mind brought these questions up front again.
Training ~ 训练
The question of training is in my mind due to Kuo Shu coming up soon. With a little inspiration from UFC last night, my mind began to wonder, how far do I want to go into competing? When it comes to training and competing, I want to do it for a long time. Having these competitions makes me train harder and it tests my skills to see if I have "real kung fu". That's what all this martial art journey stuff is for after all, "improving my mind and body" just like it says on my website's main page. Part of improving yourself is challenging yourself. Seeing how you deal with opposition, how you deal with winning and losing.
I think challenging yourself might just be apart of my personal philosophy.
Future Training Plans ~ 未来训练计划
Slowly, I'm leaning more into the "fighting" aspects of martial arts which means my original plan of going to China might change a bit. I still would like the monk lifestyle mixed in with my training. From what I've seen of Shaolin Temple Yunnan, I don't think they train Sanda very well. Maybe I find another school or I find a MMA place that I could go to on the weekends to train the fighting stuff.
My Chinese is decent, the Temple is in the middle of a big city. Certainly I could find a place where I could train. It would cost more but I think it would be worth it. And, I'd meet more people, see more places!
Photography ~ 摄影
Since my trip to Germany showed me how much I enjoy taking photos, I've been wondering what would be my next upgrade to my camera gear? I definitely don't need to upgrade soon but it is nice to keep an eye out for possible options. Just in one journey I realized I need something that is waterproof/weatherproof. Durable. Travel friendly (nothing too big). Of course as I looked at all this new kind of gear, I knew one thing needed to happen before I could purchase anything. My skills need to improve.
New Skills ~ 新的技术
One thing I realized quickly during my trip to Germany is I'm not 100% familiar with my gear yet. I compared some of my unedited photos to those of Miao Zheng (a photographer for Shaolin Temple Europe) and there is a big difference in color quality, focus, composition etc. So, as I continue to work and save money; I'm going to try and learn more about what makes a good photo/video.
I still enjoy the photos I take, I just know they could be better.
Time to go run, enjoy your weekend.
📿Johnny
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