It’s been a big year for me in regards to martial arts so I wanted to look back on some of the highlights of the year.
1. Starting my Fighting Like a Butter Bee blog: I started this blog as a space to record my thoughts, experiences and memories of all things martial arts in my life. Since my first post in March, I’ve had 4000+ views coming from all over the world, which I’m really happy about. It’s an honour knowing that people are visiting my blog and reading what little I have to say. 🙂 Personally, I’ve found this blog to be a really great space to focus my thoughts and reflect about what I’m learning in martial arts, if only to think up content to write about. It’s made me a more aware and thoughtful martial artist, rather than someone just going through the motions in training.
2. Meeting new martial artists: I’m pretty shy and introverted so I don’t usually put myself in spaces where I meet new people. But happily, I’ve got to meet and know several very cool people out there in the world who share this martial arts common interest with me. Firstly, from my blog I got to meet Julia from jiujiubjj.com and SL from cupcakearmbar.tumblr.com. Through SL, I went to train at her gym in Malaysia (another highlight) and got to meet more cool girls (and boys, but the girls stuck out more :p) who roll in Malaysia. I also joined the Australian Girls in Gi group and through there, I’ve met some very awesome and inspiring ladies. And of course through competitions, I got the chance to talk to and meet my fellow competitors.
3. Training in a new country and gym: I got to visit Leverage Combat Academy in Malaysia and it was a brilliant experience! Can’t wait to head back to visit again in February.
4. Competitions: I finally started competing again this year and entered 5 competitions:
- AFBJJ Victorian Championships – silver medal (Gi)
- AGIG Female Only Competition – gold medal (no-Gi)
- GTA Gi Championships – silver (Gi)
- AFBJJ Pan Pacific Championships – gold (no-Gi), silver (Gi)
- IFBJJ Melbourne International Open – silver (Gi)
There were comps where I was super happy with how I did and there were comps where I felt really disappointed in myself. But each and every one of them, regardless of winning or losing taught me so much about myself physically, mentally and emotionally. Learning is my main purpose in doing martial arts and I think I get the highest spike in learning when I go through the process involved in competing so I’m definitely going to keep on competing.
5. Successfully cutting weight to Light Featherweight: It was hard work but I managed to do it and in the process, gained a ton load of self-confidence in my ability to achieve any goal that I set myself out to do. I’ve since un-did a lot of the weight cut with Christmas junk food and lazing about though. But I’ve gone back on track again this past couple of days. 🙂
6. Artworks: To make up for the lack of photos to illustrate my blog posts, I started drawing pictures to post instead. People started expressing interests in my designs and illustrations so I finally got around to setting up a RedBubble shop to sell my works. While it’s still small, I’ve got heaps of ideas for more designs and can’t wait to get around to sharing and showcasing more artworks in the year to come.
And of course, as with every year of training, all the fun times had while training. 🙂
Fighting Like a Butter-Bee 
Yeah, meeting other bloggers is super-awesome: so far, I’ve only managed to do that here in the UK and in several trips to the USA (which have been incredible: I’m doing another one in a few months), but I’d love to head over to Asia for a blogger meet-up one day. Lots of cool bloggers over there. Australia too, although the fact almost everything can kill me is off-putting (I’ve been once before, but only a few days). 😉
I’d definitely love to visit and give training a go in the UK and US one day. 🙂 The community here in Australia is still pretty small but steadily growing. You should totally visit Australia! Hey, I’ve been living here 14 years now and yet to be eaten by a croc or spider or RNC by kangaroo ;).