insomniac again
It's not the fault of the fencing that I'm awake; I've just reached a stage with work and other things where I've found myself in the habit of waking up in the middle of the night and worrying just too much to get back to sleep. Sometimes a large mug of a herbal concoction called Tranquillity Tea does the trick, but not tonight. So I'm working some of the time and surfing the internet in the intervals.
It wasn't a good evening's fencing, though a kind and much better opponent (well, they're almost all much better) encouraged me by saying how much faster I had become in epee. That was true - I was even quite impressed with my speed. It's just unfortunate that I rarely managed to conclude one of my newly fast attacks by landing a hit. And my failure wasn't just because my opponent was much more experienced; he's one of those generous epee fencers who always fences me at a speed I can manage and deliberately gives me opportunities for landing a hit. But even when I did touch him, I tended to hit with insufficient angulation to fix the blade. Eventually we concluded the practice by a brief bout and the only hits I landed were doubles. Oh well, perhaps next week I'll manage to combine speed with greater accuracy.
Apart from that, I fenced foil against a couple of the boys, including my son - again not well, but I did notice that one kept exposing his back which gave me the opportunity to land a few hits, and that pleased me. Mind you, even then I failed to land a couple of easy hits. I didn't get to fence any women this week. They don't fence epee and whenever I was looking for an opponent they were busy with foil and sabre.
Towards the end of the evening a fencer commented on the weight of the epee and I realised that this week I hadn't been consciously aware of it. That may be because I didn't fence as much epee as I do some weeks, but I like to think it's a sign that I'm improving - slowly, but still improving. Having had no expectations of myself when I started, I can still stop and marvel that I'm fencing at all.
I wonder how big a factor insomnia is in the popularity of blogging. It's certainly an anjoyable thing to do in the middle of the night.
When work gets lest hectic - in a couple of weeks or so - I must start working out the best way to add links, etc. I'm sure the information is all there but I don't even have time to look at it just now. Meanwhile I've found myself in that awful cycle in which worry stops me from sleeping and insomnia makes all the little worries seem worse. It's easy enough to analyse but hard to deal with when the insomnia's really bad. In a couple of weeks I'll probably be so tired my body will make sure I catch up on sleep.
It wasn't a good evening's fencing, though a kind and much better opponent (well, they're almost all much better) encouraged me by saying how much faster I had become in epee. That was true - I was even quite impressed with my speed. It's just unfortunate that I rarely managed to conclude one of my newly fast attacks by landing a hit. And my failure wasn't just because my opponent was much more experienced; he's one of those generous epee fencers who always fences me at a speed I can manage and deliberately gives me opportunities for landing a hit. But even when I did touch him, I tended to hit with insufficient angulation to fix the blade. Eventually we concluded the practice by a brief bout and the only hits I landed were doubles. Oh well, perhaps next week I'll manage to combine speed with greater accuracy.
Apart from that, I fenced foil against a couple of the boys, including my son - again not well, but I did notice that one kept exposing his back which gave me the opportunity to land a few hits, and that pleased me. Mind you, even then I failed to land a couple of easy hits. I didn't get to fence any women this week. They don't fence epee and whenever I was looking for an opponent they were busy with foil and sabre.
Towards the end of the evening a fencer commented on the weight of the epee and I realised that this week I hadn't been consciously aware of it. That may be because I didn't fence as much epee as I do some weeks, but I like to think it's a sign that I'm improving - slowly, but still improving. Having had no expectations of myself when I started, I can still stop and marvel that I'm fencing at all.
I wonder how big a factor insomnia is in the popularity of blogging. It's certainly an anjoyable thing to do in the middle of the night.
When work gets lest hectic - in a couple of weeks or so - I must start working out the best way to add links, etc. I'm sure the information is all there but I don't even have time to look at it just now. Meanwhile I've found myself in that awful cycle in which worry stops me from sleeping and insomnia makes all the little worries seem worse. It's easy enough to analyse but hard to deal with when the insomnia's really bad. In a couple of weeks I'll probably be so tired my body will make sure I catch up on sleep.
posted by kathz | 4:05 am
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