January was nine years since I got back into fencing. I fenced a little in college. I don't mean to say I fenced for a college. Rather, I took a class sophmore year, loved it, transferred colleges and joined a local club. For another year or so after that I fenced with them. There wasn't much organized fencing in my area and it being the pre-internet days I had no idea how or where to find any. My memory of the club I was in was looking at the fencing book and seeing if we matched the pictures. I never had much formal training.
Skip twelve years and lots of game changes later, I moved homes again. Amongst the many things I held onto was my fencing stuff. I had always picked up the foil to practice some parries, done a little footwork, and figured I'd get back into it. But after all those years of not fencing, I figured this was its last move and I would sell everything once I got settled in my newest place. Instead days after I moved I found an advertisement for a brand new fencing club just starting up. So, figuring it was a way to meet new people in my new home, I joined.
That was nine years, three clubs, two injuries, and lots of strip time ago. You would think, based on that list I'm an experienced fencer now. General fencing wisdom is that it takes three years to become a competent fencer. Based on the numbers alone, I must be three times better than competent by now.
As we all know, numbers lie. In my case, they don't lie so much as betray. It's been nine years and not a whole lot of progress to show for it.
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| PICTURED: Not me. At all. |
This is all brought home whenever I compete, which isn't often. I competed yesterday for the first time in a year and a half. I sucked. I'd say it's one of the worst showings I've had in a while, but as I mentioned, it's been a while since my last one.
Going into yesterday's event I thought I'd record my thoughts before and after to see what I found. It looks like this:
Before a Competition
- I'm excited to fence
- I can't believe I'm fencing. I always wanted to fence.
- I kinda hope it's over quickly
- Fear that I'm going to suck
- Guilt for not training harder
- Anger at others' abilities (this is where I compare myself to others)
- Resentment that I don't have more time and money to train
- Embarrassment for all of the above
After a Competition
- I QUIT!
- Fu-uck
- I gotta find a new club
- I gotta take more lessons
- NINE fucking years!
- I gotta get to the gym more
- I gotta be faster
- Let's get drunk
- I want to snap my blades in half
- I quit
- I'm clearly wasting my time
Why might you ask is this coming up now and not before? Because I've been taking three months of private lessons and yesterday's showing was horrible. It's like I learned nothing. Not only that, this one is getting in my way today. I really need to focus on other things at the moment, but instead I keep seeing all my mistakes. When I try to do something healthy about it, like search what others do to recover and move on, reading their words makes me angry about my situation all over again.
I'm putting this, raw as it is, here for the moment in the hopes that saying it aloud (sort of) will help unblock me and let me do what I need to. I just need to get past myself to move on right now. I'm so angry I don't even want to pick up my foil right now, much less figure more of it out.
