Support and encouragement makes a huge difference! Over the past year I have shared with friends, family and co-workers some details about my personal goal of achieving Shodan (1st degree black belt). I shared…

Meditation in micro-doses One of our Black Belt requirements is 15 minutes of daily meditation. Finding or making a contiguous 15 minutes of time with family, job (and early AM calls), karate class & training and…

Another night of blackout The last big storm that whipped through Sacramento caused a lot of power outages. Fallen trees and limbs plus overhead power lines do not make for a good combination. We lost power for 2.5…

1,000 Acts of Kindness (3.5 acts per day ~13 months), black belt requirement When I first reviewed this black belt requirement with Sensei Oliver, I thought to myself, “How will I achieve that? How does one m…

I started my test on the 1st of December 2022. Over the next year, just like Lucas, Dirk, and David, my goals are to do 50,000 pushups and situps, 1,000 rounds of sparring, and 1000 reps of a kata. December was a…