Jorah's Journey

In the utterly wonderful Game of Thrones a character that has resonated with me more than any other is Jorah Mormont. A man in his 50s, he is a tired warrior who wants nothing more than to serve his queen Daenarys Taegaryan (sp?), a woman who he loves more than anything, including his own life.

Originally sent to spy on her by the horrid Baratheons/ Lanisters of Kings Landing, he decided to switch allegiance after developing feelings for his Khaleesi. Unfortunately for him he also decided not to tell Daenarys which meant she went batshit upon finding out through other means and banished him upon pain of death if he ever returned.

He came back once more and she banished him again rather then slay him, only for him to come back AGAIN and this time both save her life and finally convince her that she had, possibly, maybe overreacted just a tiny bit.

Dying of greyscale poisoning (think, leprosy that slowly turns  you into a zombie hulk thing) he finally confesses his feelings to Daenarys and bids her farewell, resigned to his fate as a wanderer who will die alone without the woman he loves being in his life. Utterly heartbroken, Daenarys formally berates him for walking away without permission and then orders him to honour his promise to obey her commands until death, by finding the cure to his fatal lurgy. Which he eventually does.

Now…the reason all this has such a deep impact on me (and is causing me to tear up even remembering some of it) is because Jorah was a man who had fought all his life. Not just physically (he is noted as one of the finest warriors in the fictional world of Game of Thrones, despite his age) but also with both his conscience and with his unexpressed and unrequited love of a woman he adored.  Despite kicking ass in the gladiatorial pits and fighting off White Walkers with indefatigable stamina, he always struggled with his inner demons and couldn’t find the courage to do one tiny thing. Tell the woman he loved that he loved her. He was a man who wanted peace but lived a life that would never allow him to have it. A man with a terrible secret (his spying) and later without a master (banished with only his sword and the clothes he had on). He wandered the world yearning for purpose and finding none, until his persistence and his dignified yet sorrowful declaration of love finally led to him not only being cured of a normally fatal disease, but also being welcomed back to the side of his queen, who loved him back and realised the terrible mistake she had made by turning him away, just through wounded pride.

While I have my own Khaleesi, this blog isn’t about her**. It’s about me finally finding peace through a very simple thing. Today I chose one job instead of another.

To elaborate…

I’ve had many jobs. Security guard, retail manager, proof reader, journalist, police officer, postman, author, salvage diver, English teacher…and more. I’ve always had an itch to do something more than just settle down and live my life quietly. I never could find what I wanted because I didn’t know what I wanted. I’ve wandered for years and now, a few years shy of Jorah Mormont’s fictional age, I find myself finally wanting to not do difficult things just to prove I can.

The job I currently have is from October until July. This gives me 3 whole months with no work. My contract gives holiday pay but not enough to cover 12 weeks rent. So…I’ve been looking for summer work, specifically working on educational camps in Italy and the UK.

I’ve had three interviews for centre manager. The big boss. I’ve done it before and while I’ve worked for some right fucking toilets in my time (companies that regard students as revenue and teachers/ staff as resources) I’ve also done the job very well and in 2005 ran a centre that was the only one of the 21 the company owned that came in under budget and didn’t get billed for damage. This was in London so I was also a Special Constable with the City of London Police and was on duty on July 7^th, just after the terrorist attacks, at one of the bomb sites (Aldgate). Exciting times and a great sense of pride in what I achieved.

I’ve been applying for centre manager positions again because I have the skill sets and it’s something I can do well if I put my mind to it. However, last Monday one of my 8 year old students told me that she is going to London in July and excitedly showed me the letter from the company she will be travelling with. I wrote it down, dropped them an email and today was interviewed on Skype by the recruitment manager. She offered me a job that pays 400 Euros Net per week plus free board and food…as a teacher.

I thought about this and realised that while it isn’t as exciting or sexy or challenging or wonderful on a CV as Centre Manager it will also be more relaxing and mean I won’t be stressed to hell for the entire time I’m there. It’s also the same salary that some companies offer for the CM’s position (mainly the one that are toilets). The lady I spoke to was very pleasant and spoke at length about the company and seemed very keen to take me on, saying that it was perfectly fine if I couldn’t make the training day in April (something that is a pre-requisite to contract with other summer firms).

Two years ago, at the age of 46 I put myself through two 12 day chunks of the Krav Maga Global General Instructor’s course in Australia. This was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my adult life and I knew when I went back for part 2 that I was probably going to fail the final exam (I did). I did it to prove to myself that I could face something that physically draining; that involved flying to and from Australia from the UK TWICE in the space of 3 months; that exhausted me to the point of tears; that cost me a lot of money…without backing down.

So finally I felt like Jorah once he got cured of his nasty skin rotting lurgy thing and was hugged by his queen once more. I didn’t feel the need to prove to myself or anyone else that I could do the badass job, I was grateful to be offered a decent salary to work for a company in a responsible but low key position.

I’ve always felt the need to prove myself and that has led to some monumental disappointments in my life. Not because there’s anything wrong in going the extra mile but because sometimes one mile less is still enough.

----------------------------------------------------------

** Although Tyrion Lanister was right...Khaleesi.

            

The Anxiety Perspective

(Not entirely relevant to Krav but explains how anxiety can be an obstacle to progress).

This Christmas holiday has been utterly wonderful. In fact it’s been tremendous.

I flew from Rome to Manchester on 21^st December and have spent 12 days with good friends that I’ve known for 25 years. I was originally friends with the matriarch of the family, who I met while studying Law at university in 1993. I babysat her children (then aged 7 and 8) and a friendship blossomed that has lasted two and a half decades. Her kids are now 32 and 33 and she is a grandmother twice over. Her and her husband invited me for Christmas, knowing that I lived on my own in Italy and I’ve felt more at home and at peace here than I have anywhere else for a very long time.

On December 22^nd me and the now-33 year old son (who I used to dangle upside down by his ankles in the back garden) went to see The Macc Lads, a band I used to follow around obsessively back in the late 80s and early 90s. I recently published a book about the band and was allowed to go the gig for free and sell the book at their merchandise stall. I had initially offered to split the takings 50/50 but was told I could keep all of it. So…guest list for my teenage obsession, selling copies of my book about them and seeing them play for the first time in 24 years.

Christmas itself was subdued with just me, my friends and their close relatives round. We had dinner, played games, watched TV and had a lovely time.

In the run up to New Year we all went off to a remote country house (I would say cottage but the thing was huge!) and I spent a nice couple of days breathing fresh air and walking in gorgeous countryside. I also got to fire a bow and arrows for the first time in 31 years as my friend’s 26 year old nephew is a keen archer (he was 3 when I first met him, toddling around in a nappy stealing unguarded Xmas cracker gifts).

I came back yesterday to spend NYE on my own and catch my breath, grateful for the companionship and love I’d been given but taking the opportunity for some solitude and reflection time. As I sit typing this, I have my bags packed, ready to take the trip back to Rome tomorrow morning.

Basically I’ve had a great Christmas.

And something I’ve realised for the first time in my life is that anxiety, which has been a HUGE problem for most of my life, is not something I experienced but rather something that was a part of me.

To explain…

I have been so relaxed, at peace and stress-free for the first time in ages that the little voices in my head finally quietened down enough to let me analyse my life. I have recently taken up meditation again and have found this to be a superb way of coming to terms with blockages in my life, be they spiritual or mental. I always believed that my anxious states were brought on through a mixture of circumstance and me not being able to “man up” enough to act in a way that enabled social interaction to go “normally”.

I have been constantly paranoid and nervous for decades but had adapted to this state and was surviving in spite of it. The only problem with this is that I had no memory of what it felt like before that state began. Maybe I’ve had it all my life, maybe it kicked off when I was a child but I was so used to skating on the thin ice of my psyche that I was totally unaware of it.

In the last two days I’ve finally cracked what was wrong and it was simply that my anxiety wasn’t something that came and went, exacerbated by alcohol and made worse through caffeine, oversleeping and lack of exercise. It was instead a part of me that was practically tattooed onto my soul.

The worst thing about anxiety is when you don't know you have it. It will make you think that your hyper reactions are simply an amplification of your "normal" personality and that you are really that insecure, unlikable, etc.

The logical side of your brain will be coldly telling you that you are merely overreacting, while your anxious side will scream that you really are the centre of attention and that everything is about you...in the most negative ways possible.

You will genuinely believe that you are simply lacking proverbial testicles and need to "man up" when the truth is that you have a DNA level hindrance to social interactions.

It's only through realising that others are going through the same shit or worse, that you can finally gain perspective and hopefully move past all this.

I didn’t realise just how scared I was of social interaction until I finally let myself be vulnerable and trusted people I’ve known for 25 years.

It has taken THAT long to be completely at ease with them.

I was never confident and never the happy, don’t-give-a-shit soul that I tried to come across as. I was always lonely and insecure and hid it, for better or worse behind a veneer of obnoxiousness, aloof chat and a dependency on social media. I couldn’t interact with people properly as my anxiety, leading me to believe that it was simply trying to help, was blocking me at every turn. I was emotionally repressed and found release through what some genius described at “emotional pornography” i.e. the extreme, sensationalist thrills of horror films and violent or sexual novels and web downloads.

Basically something was busted.

In the last few days I’ve finally gained the perspective that my anxiety wasn’t something that could be thwarted with a good dose of beta blockers (which I took for about 3 years) or abstaining from sugar, booze or caffeine. All it took was the ability to stand back and actually see that EVERYTHING I was doing was influenced by my anxious state. Unable to function properly, anxiety was a virtual duct tape to my life. Enabling me to carry on but forever preventing any serious repairs until the tape was removed, leaving me temporarily vulnerable until the changes took effect.

I look back at my life and some of the examples are so obvious now...

1. Staying now and then on the sofa of a good mate that I’ve known for years. Every time I came up I’d buy him a DVD or a gift in payment for the favour. One day he just looked at me and said “You’re my friend, you don’t have to keep buying me stuff”.

2. Believing that I’d upset someone I’d fallen in love with to the point that I stayed away from her for nearly 9 years. When I finally got back in touch to say sorry (which took a HUGE amount of mental stamina) she was not only happy to hear from me again but had never even had a problem with me and, oh so ironically, thought I had a problem with her due to me simply disappearing like that.

3. Entire days spent in bed, convincing myself that I was using the time to “think” when in reality I was totally unable to function and simply couldn’t face the world.

4. Joining the Special (volunteer) and later Regular (paid) UK police and being spotted almost immediately as lacking the mental stamina required for the role.

5. Being angry and pissed off nearly every single day for trivial things, because I wasn’t channelling my energies the things that actually needed addressing.

6. Getting taken for a ride by my ex girlfriend and being so messed up over it that I continued to do a job I hated for nearly 4 years, just to channel the grief into something else.

7. Being chosen by the Global Chief Instructor of Krav Maga Global, Eyal Yanilov to fight at the end of a seminar he had given. This was a privilege and honour given to only me and 9 others from a group of over 100 people. I was practically sick with stress and only pride kept me from walking out as I waited to go up…in a training environment where there was virtually no danger of getting injured.

The list goes on…

Being able finally to trust and to see anxiety as akin to an internal organ I never knew I had (like an appendix but not redundant) I can finally move past it and make decisions based on something other than the debilitating and crippling acid that anxiety has been for so long.

This took such a long time and I have had false starts before, telling myself that I was over myself when I was just compensating again.

I gave up drinking last July and have gone for 6 months with zero booze. This has helped tremendously with clearing out my mental state.

I’m grateful for this clarity and the ability to, finally, realise that anxiety wasn’t something I had but something I was.

The CBT

In the UK, if you wish to ride a motorcycle, you must receive a day’s instruction with an approved school on the finer nuances of controlling a bike. This is NOT the test for the licence, no, no. This is training on how to learn.

To explain.

Years ago, those wanting to buzz around on a Yamaha would simply buy a 125cc model, bung L plates on it, strap on a helmet and off they went. Problem was that, without a rudimentary knowledge of how the bike worked, a lot of accidents (many fatal) occurred. 

So…to solve the issue of motorcyclist pizzas littering the highways of the country, the government introduced a thing called CBT or Compulsory Basic Training.

It’s a course of about 6 to 7 hours, with approved motorcycle instructors, learning how to brake, use the gears, apply the clutch and ride with a basic level of proficiency when on the roads. It reduces your chances of making stupid mistakes and teaches you the fundamental things and the more subtle ones such as a “lifesaver glance” or “counter steering”.

I did this course in August 2016 with a school based at a civilian airfield near Stratford-upon-Avon. The 60-something instructor named Bob was top notch, reassuring and friendly and took us through the day with basics, a theory test and finally a trip out with him to Stratford for a couple of hours. We had radios with earpieces and every so often you’d hear Bob say “Lance, turn your indicator off” or “Gerry, move away from the white lines please”.

Despite having what are known as Grandfather Rights on my car licence, meaning I can drive a bike up to 50cc without CBT or a test AND I can drive a shit load of vehicles that you now have to be tested separately for, I thought the day’s training was fully worthwhile and took away a LOT of my nervousness about using a motorbike when I went backpacking a short time later.

The certificate is valid for 2 years, meaning that in August of this year I will need to retest if I want to ride a bike again. But…and this is the crucial point once more. This only allows me to ride with Learner plates on the machine. I would still need to, at some point within the 2 year window, take both a theory test and a practical one, to prove that I am road worthy and competent using motorcycles from 125 to 600+ cc.

Only then would I be granted the coveted ‘A’ licence for a motorcycle, meaning I could ride Harley’s, Honda’s, and Yamaha’s to my heart’s content.

Which brings me to…

I haven’t touched any training with KMG since I failed the final test for the General Instructors’s Course last July in Melbourne. This isn’t out of a desire to sulk or say “fuck you”, but only down to the fact that I live 16 miles from the nearest club, in an area with limited public transport and I only have a bicycle to get around on. I still fully intend to graduate and gain the black, instructor’s T-shirt but for the time being I am not involved in that world. It’s been recommended to me by a national KMG chief instructor that I repeat at least part 2 (or 2 and 3 depending on location) again before retrying for the final assessment, even though the form I signed after failing had “no retest or resit required” which meant that I had, in theory, only to retake my G1 grading again. Skill fade will be a serious issue, especially with 9 months living a life bereft of Krav. The only way I can train is to watch the videos of P1 to G1 techniques with Eyal Yanilov that break down the various moves required for the techniques. This will give me some knowledge as a foundation for when I go back. It does not however help my teaching skills (but I’m an English teacher as a main job so my daily work will help with that). I recently asked an E5 level instructor what he thought about me using the videos as a basic tool to try and keep my skills fresh. He replied that while it would help, it wouldn’t be enough and I needed to get back into training before trying for the GIC again

What I realised after this conversation is that at this level (wannabe instructor) I need to not only learn, but have a basic knowledge to enable me to learn, a CBT of Krav Maga to build upon. It won’t be enough to learn how to perform a forwards roll or a overhead stick defence, I will also have to be able to teach those moves. The CBT would be watching the videos and copying them so that, when I finally return for the 12 days of GIC 2, I will be able to build upon what I know, and be able to break them down so I can instruct others on how to do them.

CBT for motorcyclists was designed to give a basic proficiency so that the core skills could then flourish under a learning process. The same thing exists with Krav Maga. I want, very much, to become in instructor but I need to keep a foundation at all times of the rudimentary knowledge so that I can come back and learn again on the higher aspects. 

Learning how to learn. Or in this case, learning to learn to teach.

For Want Of A Nail

For about 8 years now, on and off, I’ve been a practitioner of Krav Maga. I have taken a total of 8 gradings, hold the rank of P5 and have trained in Italy, the UK, Greece, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel.

I’ve qualified to teach children Krav under Ze’ev Cohen when I took the Kids Instructor Course.

I have completed the General Instructors Course but haven’t graduated yet.

I’ve met Eyal Yanilov several times and interviewed him for this blog and for KMG UK.

I’ve attended seminars for public transport, aeroplane hijacks, adrenaline and 3rd party protection plus many others.

I’ve cured my lifelong phobia of fighting through sparring on day 11, of part 1 of the GIC**.

I run this blog and have published a book about Krav Maga called “Walk In Pieces”. 

I’ve lost a piece of a tooth on my P4 grading and been personally selected by Eyal Yanilov with 9 other people to fight The Bullet Men at the KMG World Tour 2014. 

Basically…I’ve had a lot of fun doing Krav Maga.

The main things Krav has taught me is that ego is dangerous and what my brother might call “the puffy option” is usually the best one (i.e. walking away from confrontation if you can). I’ve become calmer, more self confident and a lot less paranoid through following this discipline. 

My life since 2016 has involved a lot of backpacking. In August of that year I had what might be called a mid-life crisis and decided to give the cat away, sell the car, put most of my stuff in storage and fulfil my dream of going to Australia & New Zealand. During that time I learned to be careful about my personal space and to keep close attention to where I have my stuff. I ALWAYS carried my passport, money and phone on me in a military style hip pouch that you cannot take from me unless I give it to you or you take it from me by force. 

Now that I’m settled in Rome teaching English I give security a high priority in my life. I share a flat with 2 other guys and my bedroom door has a lock, as does my wardrobe. Before I go out I put all valuables I’m not taking with me into the wardrobe, lock it and then hide the key. I then check the balcony window is secure and lock the bedroom door, hiding that key too. 

I use a bicycle to get about so it has not one, or two but THREE locks. One for the frame, one for the front wheel (one of those awful, quick-release things) and one for the saddle. When I stop to go shopping I strip everything from the bike that could be stolen. 

When cycling I am constantly aware of the traffic and practice what could romantically be called “defensive biking”, i.e. I anticipate drivers and pedestrians acting like idiots and plan accordingly. So far I’ve had no accidents but a fair few near misses.

A couple of months ago I read about the Cooper colour code and adopted it as a way to get by each day. 

Basically I’m someone who’s pretty careful. 

And then, 2 weeks ago, I got my phone snatched at about 2am in central Rome. 

I was walking around using my phone’s GPS to try and find the night bus stop when a guy approached me, grinning broadly and and said “Ciao!” like all he wanted to do was be my bestest pal. My instincts kicked in and I immediately put the phone in the inside pocket of my jacket. 

The bloke walked along next to me and asked casually “Why did you put the phone away?”

I replied “So no one can steal it”.

“They can”, he said and after a few more seconds, he lunged over, stuck his hand in the pocket, grabbed the phone and ran off. 

The reason he got away with this……

I was very, very drunk.

Luckily my wallet and money were in the other pocket so I got the bus home eventually and woke up that morning feeling very sorry for myself. Phone gone, contacts lost, messages too. Only good thing was that I had extremely good security on the phone which means that the thieving toad who took it can’t access the contents. Once the self pity wore off I realised just how lucky I had been. I didn’t get hurt and this wasn’t even a mugging, merely a street robbery with minimal physical contact. The state I was in that night, I would have been no good in fight and losing the phone was a minor inconvenience compared to what could have happened. Only Jackie Chan can fight when he's drunk and still win.

The one and only reason he was able to reach into my jacket and grab the phone was because I hadn’t done up the third button. Believing no one could get in there I’d settled for doing up the first two. I’ve tried quickly darting my hand in that pocket since this incident occurred and 4 times out of 5 I snag my fingers on the jacket lining. It’s not an easy thing to achieve which means my thief was either very skilled or very lucky. 

That button cost me my phone but more importantly my decision to get ratted and then wander around on my own at half past bastard in the morning had, like the proverb For Want Of A Nail, led to greater things going wrong. Had I not been that drunk I would have found the bus stop. Had I found the bus stop I wouldn’t have been wandering around with my phone out. Had I been sober I would have simply moved away quickly, or even run, when the bloke walked up. Had I been less drunk I would have done up that third button.

All the training in the world, all that time spent doing gradings and learning about avoidance, de-escalation and fighting techniques…was meaningless because I was so inebriated. 

I know an E5 Krav Maga instructor and told him this story. He said that this kind of thing is one reason he doesn’t drink alcohol at all. 

It only took the smallest of errors for all that misery to occur and what scared me the most was that my training, mindset and skills were negated completely. The third button was undone because I wasn’t aware it could have prevented this crime and above all it made me realise that.

No matter how hard you train.

How strong you are.

How determined you feel.

How good you might be.

None of that will matter if you are

attacked when you are drunk.

** Imagine throwing an aquaphobe in the Arctic ocean...and then seeing them swim back.

Defy Your Destiny

In July 2017 I checked my luggage in at Heathrow airport to take an Etihad Airways flight from the UK to Abu Dhabi. This was the first phase of a two-part journey back to Australia to complete the Krav Maga Global, Australia & New Zealand General Instructors Course (or KMG ANZ GIC 2017 for short).

Over the preceding week I had had many thoughts about my future and the very real possibility that I would fail the GIC. 

The course comes in three parts in most countries, two in some. KMG ANZ do it in two. Part 1 had been in the Gold Coast of Australia and was 12 days of learning under the tuition of Expert level 4 examiner Rune Lind**. The course, while enlightening, educational and mainly fun had also been bone jarringly exhausting and physically painful. 7 to 8 hours per day of training isn’t that hard to handle if you are even reasonably fit. But with the necessity to teach, make notes and stay mentally aware, it was VERY draining.

I thoroughly enjoyed it but on the last day, when Rune took us to one side individually to give us our personal feedback he said to me “If you carry on as you are, you won’t pass part 2. But do it anyway, because then 1 is locked down and you can retest 2 later on if you need to”.

I have covered the anxiety issues, and how it felt to fail, in my blogs Schroedinger’s Pussy and After A While… but recently I realised just why I really did it.

Just why I went back at all.

When part 1 was getting closer I was exercising as much as I could. I was backpacking in New Zealand at the time and, in order to get my mind on the right wavelength, I booked the return flight back from the UK to Oz for part 2 months before it was due to happen. Retrospectively this wasn’t necessary as you can do part 2 in any country where they are happy to accept you on the course, if you’ve completed part 1. However at the time I wanted to convince myself that I could see this through.

A tourist visa to Australia (or at least, the one I had) is valid for 9 months per year from the date of first entry. However, you must leave every 3 months in order to keep the visa active. So I had no choice but to quit Oz after part 1 had finished and I intended to spend it with my dad in Greece. 

When it came time to pack up my groin guard and fly to Melbourne for part 2, I had figured out how to “not go” and also get the money back. A lost passport would have been covered by my Platinum insurance and the non-refundable return flight as well. I decided only when I handed my luggage over at check-in desk to actually go back.

After another, more arduous, 12 days of training I failed the GIC as I had known I probably would.

Now…

All my life I have dreamed of being brave, being a warrior and defeating monsters. My earliest dreams, at the age of about 5, involved me as Lance cowboy, a hero of playschool*** who other kids held in awe and was loved by all. However, growing up my reality was very different. I had no ability to fight and while I wasn’t a coward (I’d stand still and take a beating to prove I wasn’t scared) I gave up trying to make a difference to my own limitations by about the age of 14. 

If something came unexpectedly, then I’d deal with it as best I could, but I would avoid situations that could cause me pain, loss, humiliation or other draining emotions, and keep my life on an even keel.

When I was 19 two bouncers in a pub I worked in, held me down and forcibly cut my hair. I did nothing and tried to laugh it off.

When I got a job after leaving uni, I quit due to bullying from my supervisor after making zero effort to fight back against her behaviour. 

My next job was populated by a bunch of wankers who were banal and bullying in equal measure. Again I did nothing.

A job I got in 2002 where my boss refused to pay me properly on my final day, I put up no resistance.

When I fell in love in 2004 and couldn’t deal with my emotions I ran away and hid for over 8 years, telling myself outrageous stories about how the woman must have felt about me.

When, in 2010, and a police officer, my sergeant bullied me gleefully until I resigned, I put up only token resistance and only made peace with the situation after publishing a book about it all.

Any key event in my life I wouldn’t see it through. I would stop and say that I’d stood my ground long enough and now it was time to move on.

And then GIC came. 

I had been training in Australia and New Zealand at a few clubs when I asked Adam White, the head of KMG ANZ if he’d let me take the course. I made it clear I couldn’t promise regular training but that I would still give it my all. Problem is, techniques need to be absorbed into muscle memory and by not training in clubs more than once every month or so, there was no way I was ready and deep down I knew that.

To fly back to Melbourne from London was going to take me about 30 hours. It was winter in Australia in July so I would not only be tired, I would be cold and uncomfortable too. The training would start early and end late. I would have homework to do. I would be facing a range of negative emotions and would hopefully be able to get over what I found out later is called The GIC Hump. This would be hard. It would be one of the hardest things I had ever done and to top it all off, I had little chance of success. I simply wasn’t ready. 

On day 12, the last day, I gave it as much as I could. I had passed both the theory and teaching exams on days 10 and 11 and while I knew I was bollocksing up the techniques that part 2 examiner Franklyn Hartkamp was asking us to demonstrate I still lived in the moment. After 5+ hours we all got our results and Franklyn made it clear that while I had got good passes on the first two exams he wanted me to wait a year before retesting, my techniques had been that lacking in polish. He also expressed surprise when I said I would be flying back to Europe in 2 days, asking “But you’re coming back?” and then saying that he’d never had this situation before, where someone had been in a country ONLY to take the exam and was leaving straight after.

Through all that pain, and eventual disappointment, I had spent a lot of money, time, sweat and pain on something that I now needed to do all over again if I still coveted the Instructors’ T-shirt.

But then….

I had come back. I’d sen this to the end. I’d not made a false insurance claim and told myself that I could do part 2 “another time”. I’d travelled a ridiculous amount of miles and gone through a world of pain. And that was the achievement. For possibly the first time in my adult life I had, with my eyes wide open, decided to not turn the ship around, tuck tail and run, or do a U-ey. I’d faced my fears of both failure and pain and both participated in and completed something that, even three years previously, I NEVER thought I would be able to do. I had fought with guys both better and worse than me, and had my 42 year phobia of fighting finally cured during the sparring on day 11 of GIC part 1.

I resigned my jobs, I didn’t protest when two thugs cut my hair for a laugh, I hadn’t been able to tell the woman I loved how I felt about her, but now, knowing that I was 80% likely to fail I had still gone back and done this. 

This was the achievement, not the G1 patch or the Instructors’ certificate and T-shirt. To know that I could trek across the world to pursue a dream. Something I’d always wanted, and not back down when the odds were against me. I’d faced my demons and I’d had a good time. A video of me fighting during the grading shows me getting my arse handed to me by a much bigger, better and stronger opponent (who at one point, kicks me in the HEAD from a standing position). The same video also shows that while I’m out of my league, I’m also not backing down. He was the personification of the GIC. I knew I couldn’t beat him, but I tried anyway and stood my ground.

This experience gave me back a lot of the self esteem I lost growing up. In 2010 I had a tattoo done on my left arm that said “Defy Your Destiny” and for once I tried to. 

I now know that even if I never retake the GIC I have the power to try whatever I want.

** Now Expert 5.

*** Kindergarten to Yanks.