Well, this is weird.

(EDIT: Uh, HOLY CRAP, this is TL;DR. Sorry for the ridiculous length.)

You may or may not have noticed that I haven't talked about wushu much, lately. For a while, it was simply because not much was happening there, and it was easily overshadowed by the tremendous emotional rollercoaster that was the first few months of Fresh Meat. For the past few weeks, however, it's because I haven't actually been to practice. Like at all.

Looking back on it, this is something that's been building for quite some time, now. I've had no shortage of complaints about the class format at the wushu school, that I learn much faster than they're willing to teach, that they don't train me hard enough, often enough, or for long enough. I don't think they've ever taken me seriously as an athlete, and each tournament I've been to since moving to PDX has had me going in feeling hideously unprepared and in sub-par physical condition, compared to what I had at UO.

I quit demo team back in February, and I've been fine with that. Surrendering the competitive aspect of wushu was acceptable, given the constraints of training at the School, and the fact that I had a much more robust athletic culture offered to me through derby. It was a relief taking things down a notch, and I enjoyed simply working on basics and learning compulsory straightsword.

But, then the nagging complaints started to creep back in. The classes are still designed for weekend warriors, for kids who are under-18 and have short attention spans. I wanted fine-tuning, I wanted deeper understanding of the practice, but there was never time or allowance for that.

They still teach too slowly. I realized that, even coming to class only once a week, I was still able to easily keep up with the new material in the form. Even after having missed class for close to a month, I could probably still go in and catch up fairly quickly.

There was also the fact that, without demo team, I had little-to-no say about what forms I'd be learning in class. I was lucky that we were learning compulsory straightsword, and that I was actually excited to learn it, because who knows what they'd be teaching next?

And, of course, there are belt tests, which have always been completely and utterly arbitrary, and not at all tied to actual skill level. EVERYONE passes, and some of those people can't even remember the entire form on their own.

And then, I injured my knee, which meant that I didn't do jumps or sweeps in class for two months.

And then, my summer workload kicked in, with meetings to attend, sessions to shoot, and editing backlogs to take care of.

And, finally, the "annual renewal" came up at the beginning of June. Yes, not only was I paying monthly for the privilege of practicing a sport I've trained in for over 7 years, but they also charged an annual "membership" renewal. It's a bullshit fee, and I know it. In fact, once you factor in belt testing fees, and whatever weapons they arbitrarily decide to teach (and therefore, sell) to us, I was spending over $2000 a year on wushu.

Yes, I loved the sport THAT MUCH. When I first moved to PDX, quitting was unthinkable, even in the face of expensive classes, and having to go through 2-3 months of white belt class, because they wanted to "evaluate my skills." I even searched for classes at other schools in town, but I wouldn't settle for their incorrect teaching methods. I wanted real, honest-to-god wushu, with coaches from China who really knew their shit, and I sucked it up and did what it took to afford the fees. I did gain some very amazing coaches. Master Chen and Master Gao were both fantastic to learn from, when I actually got a minute or two of their undivided attention, and they're sweet people, but I feel that the business model imposed by the head of the School stifles a lot of what they have to offer.

I lost a lot of things, when I left UO Wushu. The community of (relative) peers, the culture of support and the "wushu family," the drive to train harder, the ability to put in more practice time and effort, the infectious excitement of just being around people who are as obsessed with the sport as you are? I haven't had any of that in several years, aside from small doses via occasional visits to Eugene or once-a-year trips to Berkeley. It's no wonder I got bitten by the roller derby bug when I did, last year--there was a huge gap where UO Wushu and the rest of the Wushu community used to be, and the derby community was able to fill those gaps.

To keep spending that kind of money, and not even get what I truly want from the practice? I've reached a point where that doesn't make sense to me anymore. I can pay $25/mo to skate until I'm blue in the face, and another $30/mo gets me kick-ass full-body circuit training 3x/week. That's still not even half what I was paying for 45-minute kiddie classes twice a week at the School.

So, yeah, I haven't been to wushu since the end of May. It's sad to me that this is the way things have gone. It took them four years to take all the fun out of wushu for me, but they did wear me down. I DO still think about going back, though, or switching to Taiji, or something, ANYTHING. I do miss wushu, but I also want to be doing it on my own terms. That may be too idealistic to hope for, but what I had at the School was so far from what I want that it's just not worth it. Not right now.

It's okay, though. It's not who I am, it's just a thing I do. There are days when it'd be fun to go to wushu class, but there are other days when it feels more like a distraction from more important goals. I want to nail down my business and really make it work. I want to get drafted to an RCR team. I want to spend time with J, I want to see my friends. And I *need* a certain amount of down time.

I do think some part of my brain will find a way back to it again, though. I still do my splits and stretches, and I love the idea of finding a nice place to use the Taiji knowledge I gained from Chen and Gao. It'll just have to be a far different way of doing things than this, and at a different time than this.