From Brown Belt to Red Belt

I found the following in my Drafts folder from this past January:


I’ve been a student of Krav Maga since July 2019, six months after my son started karate. I’ve attended class consistently for a year and a half, even signing on to Zoom classes during the pandemic.

I’m much more flexible than I was at the beginning, especially in the hips — I’m this close to doing the side splits, and the last time I could do the splits was in ballet class when I was seven. From a self-defense perspective, I feel like I’m more likely to react appropriately to a physical threat than I was, considering that my fight-flight-freeze instinct used to be entirely to freeze.

I’ve been showing up, putting in the work a couple times a week, and paying for me and my son’s class memberships and gear purchases and belt testing fees. I’ve been having fun and learning stuff and getting tired and sweaty. I feel like this is all worthwhile.

But I don’t feel like I should be a brown belt.

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Dose Number One

I got my COVID-19 vaccine

Thanks to what’s known as a Closed Point Of Dispensing, I was able to receive the first dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine this morning, via my employer.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to be vaccinated… but there are so many others much more at risk than myself who should, by all rights, be getting this protection before me. My husband, an “essential worker” in the shipping industry, has been working as usual throughout the pandemic, and he’s unlikely to get vaccinated for weeks or months yet.

I’m scheduled to receive my second dose in four weeks, at which point I should only have a 6% chance of contracting and exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19.

(My birth control pill only had a 3% chance of failure back in 2011, though. Just sayin’.)