Saturday, July 16, 2005

In Whites

Today I won my first medal in Epee. It is a silver. I really think that I am getting better at epee. Last year I didn't even place. The thing that I kept reminding myself of is patience. Patience got me points. Bravado and impetuousness only gave defeats.
My style of epee fencing is one of patient speed. Wait for an opening. Wait until my movements create an opening. Wait to commit to an attack until it will work with certainty. Attack without hesitation when an opening presents itself. These are the things I aspire to do.
Impatience is my enemy. It was the reason I lost the final bout decisively. I had been tied for the first two periods and very well could have pushed the bout into over time. Instead I rushed and lost ground.
Despite that, it was an excellent match. I loved every minute of it, trying to out wit and out work my opponent into making a mistake that caused an opening. I found a few and my waiting game paid off. But I lost because I did not want to lose.

Perhaps next time I will accept the possibility of failure and not worry about it.

Friday, July 15, 2005

Writing For The Sake of Writing

A lot of the things I have read about writing say you must write to become a good writer. This seems obvious but is harder in practice to accomplish. I started this blog to try to improve my writing. I have this tendency to use more and larger words than necessary to explain myself in prose. It really irritates me sometimes to go back and read something that I wrote and find that it has no flow, that it is choppy. I want my writing to be smooth and easy to follow. If I am ever going to write good technical documents, a good writing habit will make that easier. Writing itself would be easier if I did it more often.
I should be writing more now than I have ever done in my life. I am in college where, arguably, I should be writing so much that it hurts my fingers. As it is, in the two years I have taken so far I have only written maybe 100 pages of material, one sided double spaced.
I am not saying that I need to write mountains of pages, it's just that I know I can write more than I do now.
In some way I realize that most of the things I will be hammering out on the keyboard will look like nothing more than drivel to many people, but that is why I practice.