And how's the FrogMan doing in all of this???

With that gazillion updates out of the way, here's a bit about how it's going for me.

Well, it's going quite well thank you. Ever since my mother in law has retired at the end of March, I've been trying to take three classes a week. It was kinda tough not to miss one at first, for many little reasons, but for the last five weeks, I've effectively clocked in three hours of class a week and let me tell you, I've never felt better. Dang I love how it's going on right now. I feel my abs getting ever so tighter with every class (no six pack showing yet, give me a break ;) ), my moves feel more natural although I know I still need to perfect everything.

There was a time where I thought, or could I say feared, that I would be asked to take the pretest for the black belt. It came the week before said pretest. My weeknight instructor, after we'd finished working on self defense techniques, addressed us, a group of brown belts. He reminded the two people who'd already been booked for the pretest that they had to keep working hard but it's when he turned to everyone else that I felt personally singled out. He went on to say that the others, well they are the next wave of black belt hopefuls and that we always had to work hard because, well, you never know if one of your instructors is not gonna come to you before/during/after a class and tell you that oops, he might have forgotten to put you on the test. I took a look around and dang, I was the only 2nd kyu in class. How could I not feel that being told to me directly???

Anyway, the pretest was on May 2nd and it has come and gone without me on it. I heard it went very well for everyone involved and nobody was turned down, i.e. everybody received their 1st kyu and will go on to test for the black on June 17.

Now what?

Could there be another pretest for people who were borderline ready at the time of the first pretest? Maybe.

Would they consider me borderline ready? Who knows, maybe.

Could they ask me to test without taking a pretest? I have no clue

Do I even consider myself ready? I will never really think that I'm ready, I'm like that. Only by comparing myself to the others who've been confirmed to the test can I try to assess my level of readiness. And that's where all of this wondering comes from. In that regards I'd probably say that I could be ready for June 17. I know all of the curriculum quite well and my freestyle self defense is improving greatly on a weekly basis.

I have no clue what could happen between now and June 17. I'm guessing that the only time I'll be sure I'm not on the test is on the 17th if I'm sitting at home and not stressing it out in a crowded dojo with many other black belt hopefuls. What can I do about it? Not much but train and train and train some more, do as if I was scheduled to be on that test. That's one of the main reason why I plan on going three times a week until mid-June and why I do a lot of vizualisation at home and during breaks at work. If anything happens and somebody comes to me telling me "we think you could be ready, do you think you'd be ready?", I wanna be able to answer confidently with a "yes, I am".

Anyway, in the grand scheme of things, it's not as if taking more classes now will be a total waste of my time. I'm having fun and it's not a chore for me to take more class. Why not keep it that way?

FM