Fencing Bear at Prayer

My thoughts are all in a jumble. What does it mean to be ready for a competition? Although possible in the general scheme of things, it is highly unlikely that I will win. Again, although possible, it is highly unlikely that I will place high enough to earn a new rating. So what is my goal? To fight as hard as I can? But sheer aggression is unsettling. I need to be calm enough not to push, patient enough not to try for an attack when I have not set it up--i.e. teased my opponent sufficiently to make her think I'm going to do one thing when I'm actually planning another. But if I spend all of my time planning, then I will not pay attention to her set ups and she will, quite literally, catch me off guard. Should my plan be to work on a particular action? Again, this seems somewhat limiting. I need to be able to respond to what my opponents are doing and if I get too fixed on one plan, then I will simply keep doing the same thing over and over again. At which point, my...

I really didn't expect it to hit me as hard as it did, but on Monday when I dropped my son off for his first day back at school, I was, well, envious. I want to go back to school. Okay, so as one of my professors in college used to say, I've never really left, but even as a teacher I still hanker after that feeling that I had as a student looking forward to autumn and the beginning of a new academic year. I loved everything about it: shopping for school supplies, getting new clothes (especially sweaters), making covers for my textbooks, color-coding my folders, learning my schedule. No matter how many adventures I had had over the summer, I was always ready to go back. Not that my schools were anything particularly special--no Hogwarts, just ordinary American suburban public schools. But, like Hogwarts, they still seemed magical to me (and, no, I was far from the most popular girl in my year; think Hermione at the beginning of Philosopher's Stone but without Emma Wat...