a mini tiny muay thai journey

The stars aligned. A couple of content creators I follow started talk about what it's like to participate in martial arts, Baki's new season came out recently, and I had pretty much finished moving so I had the head space for A New Activity. I got the brilliant idea of trying martial arts.
While my weight training does improve strength, it doesn't so much to the cardivascular health or flexibility. I figured training martial arts would be a good addition.
There is a gym nearby that teaches multiple martial arts and I picked Muay Thai because the idea of attacking with both punches, kicks, knees and elbows sounds cool as heck. And it be good for the body to be able to perform multiple movements. So I got myself a month long test period card.

I went to the introductory class and I could feel it.

The stars misaligned.

Apparently the person who was meant to hold coach the class didn't arrive for whatever reason so we got a substitute. And there wasn't much of anything I would call introduction. Mostly the likes of "do these punches and kicks" and not much on proper form for how to position yourself, how to block, how to approach someone in a fight or anything of the sort.
Didn't help that the gloves and leg guards that you could borrow were, as you might expect, Used.

I figured I could give the classes more chances since it was my first one. I booked another introductionary class next weekend, but it got cancelled a couple of days before it could happen.

Losing my patience, I went to a "all experiences" class that happened twice per week. Figured I should be able to get something out of it even with people who have trained far more than I have.

I have not felt so out of place in years.

I think I must have been the newest person in the room. The teachers threw around terminologies and concepts I have not heard about. I felt like a detriment to my sparring partner who had to explain to me what a teep is or how to grapple while wearing a mouthguard. The teachers did help out a little but they couldn't just focus on us.

That experience soured me a lot on the gym, and thinking trough it with some mild knee pain and a strained forearm (neither of which I have any idea how they happened), and realizing the monetary cost of getting another gym membership card, proper equipment that didn't smell like gym socks, and an activity that could be more of a detriment to my prefered activity (weight lifting) so I decided to quit at that point.

I suppose I can do the next best thing and start shadowboxing at home like a madman. Or some other activity. I do like the idea of knowing how to fight decently, but without doing the typical fight training I suppose. Which in of itself could be more of a mindset(blergh I hate that word) issue, but I don't want to Actually Fight, ya know.

Oh well, at least I did (somewhat) try so that gotta count for something.

lonely hitbox controller

 At some point while Guilty Gear Strive and Street Fighter 6 were fresh and new and cool, and I somehow deluded myself I'd put a lot of time into This One Hobby, I got myself an all-button controller primarily focused on fighting/arcade games.

The thing with fighting games however is that they update themselves relatively frequently, enough that if something else takes your focus, a new character could drop in and change the meta or whatever and you gotta know what their deal is.

It also doesn't help that my already existing hobbies took so much of my free time I couldn't be bothered with keeping it up for a while.

After I moved and properly put everything into place I figured I could give it a try again. Which I did. And it was mostly practicing how to play Sol Badguy for like 30 minutes and never opened a game again lol.

Now the controller is sitting on my desk, judging me for my lack of commitment. Not even commited to store it away, on the off-chance I get the motivation to be a Gamer Fighter. Until whatever I decide to do, it will sit there, collect dust, and dish out shame.

My iconic box with buttons