A Light At Last

The past six weeks have pretty much been utter chaos.  I have had a lot of ten, twelve and thirteen hour days.  And that doesn't count working at my own business.  I have pretty much spent the prime of this summer working,  grabbing some food and sleeping.  I have made my HEMA meetings and kept up with my meditation.  Everything else has fallen by the wayside.  Including my free weight lifting routine and my regular sword practise.  :(

Due to the extra work I have actually gained upper arm and body strength.  I believe it is the extra tag prep and hanging.  Because I have been so behind at work I have started jogging and loping from spot to spot to hurry up.  Needless to say my lungs are now in better shape along with the rest of me.  Once things settle down at work and the days are cooler I want to take up jogging/loping with my dogs.  Now that I am used to it I like it.  (So admits the gal who hated running/jogging.)  I have started losing weight again due to the long hours and frantic pace.  This also leaves me to tired to have much of an appetite.

I have spent the past six weeks working on overcoming my childhood PTSD triggers, reactions and coping skills.  Whether I wanted to or not.  My new store manager brings all my issues and bad coping skills to the front.  I am slowly learning how to cope with my reactions to her, my own issues and how to interact with her.  

 All the overtime has given me extra income and I have been able to get  couple of things that I have been wanting for awhile.  I now have a sweet acoustic guitar I love and my steel practise/blunt longsword has been ordered.   Now I have some things that are positive to offset all the hell I have went through.  I have music to soothe the savage beast and if that doesn't work I have a sword to defend myself against it.  LOL

I feel like I have leveled up a bit in my HEMA skills.  I now have enough experience that I was allowed to play or should I say spar with others for the first time.  The first bout I had trouble looking outside of the mask. I think it was because I was focusing on my opponent's sword-not my opponent himself.   My second bout I made myself  watch my opponent's face first, the rest secondarily and/or peripherally.  I love it and find it exhilirating, but I have a long ways to go to learn how to think fast enough to do more than just make one swing at my opponent or block his swing.  I have to learn to think on my feet better.  I managed to defend myself for the most part.  But I never managed to think past the moment and to think how to counter, counter-attack etc.  I also need to become comfortable about attacking.  I found that I like to wait for the other to make a move first.  That results in a lot of circling....