Friday 16th February 2018

A plan is formulating that will hopefully see me back swordfighting and competing soon.
The finger is slowly healing.  Over the past week I’ve seen a massive crack in the tip slowly fuse together and heal over.  It’s been quite miraculous to watch.  How do our bodies know to heal?  If I tied my fingers together, would they eventually fuse like this crack?
It’s still sore and I suspect that under the massive scab that covers the cuts there’s still healing going on.  But it slowly feels like it’s returning back to normal.  And so I’m pretty much decided that I’m going to go sparring on Sunday.  It’ll be the longest drive I’ve done since I damaged the finger so  the journey itself might be a challenge.  My plan is to wear my large Koenig glove over the bad hand (it looks like Iron Man’s gauntlet and has a complete protective endoskeleton underneath).  I’ll see how it performs on Sunday and then…
Next weekend I have competition over 2 days.  I’m going to do shit so I’m going in with no expectation.  I’m just going to have fun with weapon sets I don’t fight.  I’m not really going to hang around just do my fights and leave.
The following weekend I have a competition in Bradford.  That’s a 5 hour drive.  I’ve not made any hotel plans due to not knowing if I’m well enough to fight, but if Sunday goes well then I’m considering making it a mini-break.  Obviously I need to get the time off the day job, but a friend was saying they’d like a holiday and since I’m driving all that way and will need a hotel why don’t I just extend the stay a couple of days and have a break in Yorkshire.
There’s a lot of moving factors, the main ones being the finger and whether my friend is genuinely interested or was just making passing comment.   But turning the competition into a mini break has started to make me excited for it.
So obviously the first hurdle is getting the finger better.  Whilst I’ve been very demotivated and feeling lazy the last couple of days,  I honestly believe based on the healing I’ve seen with my own eyes that I’ve been making the right call for the right reasons.  I nearly sliced my entire finger off and I’ve really needed to give it time to heal.
As a result, I’m starting to feel a bit more motivated today, feel like I’m emerging from my fugue state with a sense of direction.
Given that my swordfighting informs my writing and vice versa, I’m hoping that this feeling will transfer to my writing as well.  It’s quite rare for me to have a day when I’m not at least thinking about some novel or other but I can honestly say that in the last week I’ve been the most detached from my writing career I’ve ever been.  I’ve known it was a temporary thing caused by a break between projects, but coupled with my lack of swordfighting, it’s made the last week quite rough for me.
Emerging at the end of the week with a sense of direction is a good thing and I hope that Sunday goes well enough so that my swordfighting and (as a result) my writing continue their forward momentum.
If you want to follow more of my journey, then be sure to check me on my social channels.  Likewise, if you’d like me to expand on any point mentioned above, please say so in the comments.

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