Weekly Obsession: One. Tiny. Flaw.

I'm going to try to post these weekly, just an insight to my thoughts.


I do karate.
It's amazing, and I would have to say that it's my release. Once I put on my uniform and step onto the mat, suddenly my mind... empties.
Well, that's the wrong way to say it, it's more like my mind simplifies until there is nothing but my own sweat, tears, and determination.

I would say that its the best feeling in the world. Except when something isn't working.

I have no upper-body strength whatsoever, and I melt at things like pushups. I accept that. Okay, I don't accept it, I just know my limits, and I bend them a bit more each time.

What I am really proud of, are my kicks.
I'm tall and (relatively) flexible, so usually kicking is fairly easy, and the more complicated, the more I like it. (For example I adore jump inside roundhouse kicks, where you spin around, jump and do a roundhouse kick in midair, landing gracefully.)

Today, I was working on a combination of kicks, and I had been practicing it a home. I had it. I was exploding into the jump, my kicks were high, and I was hoping my teacher would give me my stripe (literally a stripe of color coded tape meaning I had mastered a specific thing) for it.

He came over to see what I was working on, and said, "Good, but turn your toes down more, it's a side kick."
I flushed. It's a simple pop side kick, and a mistake I make often, but today I felt like I had shot myself in the upward-pointed foot.

I ran through the combination twenty times, trying to fix my imperfection. I didn't just want to get it right, I needed to get it right.
Each time, my toes were an inch off at least.

We moved on to working on something else, and the end of class came.
He didn't give out any stripes.

My mom reminded me that it's an adult class, and my teacher doesn't give out stripes until the testing for the next belt level is coming up, and she's right.

But I still can't help thinking, What if  I had gotten my foot in the exact right position? Would I be one green stripe closer to a brown belt?