I was an artist once.

I became a different kind, all at once and gradually all the same. It's still an art. I do it with my hands (among other things). I build on technique and knowledge and instict, always my best asset. I'm dedicated to it. I create, though what I'm creating is entirely within myself and sometimes hard to see. Quiet, slow, beautiful progress in a kind of art I never thought was possible for me. I never even considered it.

I say this, and it sounds like an excuse, and it is. But it isn't one I'm making for anyone outside of myself. I guess that has to do with the notion that I really don't pursue my arts for other people, to impress them or what-have-you. I want people's reactions and criticisms and, yes, I am human, I like approval, too, but that's not what it's about, when it comes down to it. Not for me. And over the last two years, martial arts has slowly supplanted the dozen other arts I was trying to study in tandem. It became my  driving purpose, and my stress relief, and my social catalyst, and my favorite pasttime, and my fitness regime, and my hobby. The only hobby I could really devote time to.

That's the issue. It's not like photography, where I could pick up a camera once in a while, maybe play around on Photoshop every so often, or photo-binge for four days and then not touch it for weeks. With martial arts, it's every day. You can't stop practicing, or you start to lose it. And I'm certainly not good enough to sacrifice anything I've managed to pick up. So whenever there was a free moment, when once I would photo-edit or run a quick photoshoot or practice my cosmetic application or draw or write or even practice my violin, it became commonplace -- and necessary -- for me to go work on hand techniques or throw some kicks or write out everything I learned in class that day.

And I love it. I love it to a degree that kind of terrifies me. It's like... I found what I was meant to do, all my life; what I wanted to do, without knowing it. This was what I was trying to find, and I didn't know I was even looking. Kind of a thing. Martial arts -- hapkido being the center of it all at the moment... it's hard for me. I'm still new to it. My body still doesn't want to do the things I tell it to do. The higher level I get, the harder it is to remember the dozens of sets of techniques from different arts and the tiny little details that go into each one -- the details that are like breathing now, and the ones that should be but get lost in the blaze. It can be frustrating. This, what I'm doing now, is not the easiest thing in the world, for me. But it IS the most natural thing in the world.

Martial arts became the art in my life.

I see that now. And I also see that losing this part of my self, the procrastinating doodler, the photographer, the make-up artist, the poet, the writer, and to a minor degree the model, is a bad idea. I can't pursue everything at once. I can't pursue much at all, what with university and work and the aforementioned fighting that has taken over much of my brain. But I need this, I miss it terribly. I miss being an artist, in the classical sense.

I was that kind of artist once.