Writing and I have always had an odd relationship. I’ve loved writing, relied on it, and practiced it as if it were a basic necessity like drinking water. But I also am blind to it, take it for granted and never appreciate how much it has added to my life – how meaningful it is to be able to use as a tool or play it like an instrument. I’m kind of a dick about it. But this morning Kevin and I were walking down the stairs of our apartment building and he asked me to guess how many blog posts I’d published over the years. I hesitated, calculated and then low-balled like all get out. I won’t even give the number I guessed, it was way off. The answer is 901 posts. Nine hundred and one posts! And I’m long winded, too, so if we broke it down into word counts it would be outrageous. It could be the among the most written in English on Muay Thai by a single person in a digital format. That this is done by a woman I think matters.
Kevin loves graphics and maps and left-brain stuff like that. So he measured out how many posts I’d averaged by year and I’ve been amazingly consistent (above). In fact, it measures out pretty closely to how I’ve been fighting these past 4+ years as well (below). That actually makes sense. I’ve noted that the better my Thai language gets, the better my Muay Thai gets. I think it’s the same with writing – when I can sit and process everything that’s going on, all my struggles and realizations and even the mundane, just putting it to digital paper, it puts length in my strides in Muay Thai. I will say, however, that while the number makes perfect sense I was nonetheless surprised to hear it. My blog shortly after starting Muay Thai in 2008 with Master K, but it was more like a diary. Neither Kevin nor I can even remember the name of it, back when I had freedom of abstraction and poetic license instead of aiming for clarity – which is a good change, actually, since that’s how people actually find articles by topic – but it was just kind of my ruminations on the process of carving myself out of a formless mass of stone into the shape I wanted to be as a fighter. Even from day 1 it was an emotional process. And back then my writing was really amateur, meaning I could just wait for inspiration before sitting down to type out a thought piece. But that was also when realizations or struggles were farther between, rather than the countless things I encounter, multiple times per day and every day now that I’m living this process full-time.
Not only writing, but fighting like mad.
The blog I write now includes those first posts, but it’s part of the 8limbs.us website as a whole, which was created with the intention of bringing my different social media all together in one place, as well as having a nexus point for female Muay Thai. I was about to embark on the move to Thailand, which Kevin and I figured would last a year if we were lucky, and 8limbs was created so that I could share as much of that opportunity as possible with those who don’t have the same chance. The website domain was generously financed by a Kickstarter, it was created by supporters, just as it’s maintained by Patreon supporters now. Seeing the number of posts reaching 901 gives me a sense of accomplishment, that the point was to bring as much of this exploration and challenge as possible to those who wished to share it with me and that number shows that I’ve followed through on that. But accomplishment is not being finished and just as when I reached my initial goal of 50 fights in Thailand, the “what are you going to do now?” question has the same answer for the blog: keep going.
I’d like to get back to the way I used to write, at least a little bit. Many of my old posts were more contemplative on the internal experience of what I was learning, whereas the effort toward sharing the external facts of moving to a foreign land and culture, not to mention sharing as much of the wonderful technique that one can find here, have largely taken over in my writing. I think that’s important, but in some ways the sheer volume of posts has defaulted into a more “reporting” tone than the more expressive or creative voice of when I would sit and write for me. And I believe that what I write for me is still meaningful and speaks to most of you; that’s been proven a million times over. So more of that may be coming.
Thank you to my sponsors nakmuaynation.com and Onyx MMA, and to my resolute supporters on Patreon who have pledged to keep the site and all my fighting and videography going. Let us push for another 5 years (I’m coming on 5 years in April), and maybe 1,000 more articles written.
If you are new to my writing you may want to look at some of the Best Posts of 8limbs.us
