Archive: 9/2014

Review: The Divine Move (Movie)

The Divine Movie Post

When I first saw the trailer for this movie, there were two things that I noticed: go and martial arts. And as someone who grew up on kung fu movies and watching subtitled Asian movies, I was sold immediately.

One of my concerns was that I would have to find some bootleg version of the movie online or wait forever to buy the DVD and have it shipped to the U.S. However, fortunately they had a limited theatrical release in the United States and one of the theaters was only about a 35 min drive away from me. Awesome!

In case you’re planning on seeing it soon and don’t want to have any of my opinion impact your viewing of the movie, I will just say that I recommend you check it out. The only word of caution I would advise is for people who are squeamish about blood and violence. It’s not anything horrific or terribly gory (like a horror movie), but it’s certainly not completely sugar coated (like some martial art movies where the people never bleed or have injuries).

If you’d like to hear a bit more opinionated review, read on!

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Journal Entry: #01

You ever have one of those days that you just start to feel like you are making no progress even though you keep trying to put one foot after another? I had one of those days today.

As anyone who has read my blog will tell you, it has slowed down considerably over these past few weeks. I initially blamed it on life getting in the way, but I was forced to take a step back today and re-evaluate whether it is really true or not.

Long story short, I’ve actually missed regularly blogging a lot. And though I set out to straighten out the rest of my life before making my return, I was shaken awake to the fact that it’ll never happen. I shouldn’t set aside things that I enjoy in lieu of trying to take care of things first. There will always be something else to take care of.

So be on the lookout for much more regular blogging as I start piecing back the parts of my life that are important to me and make me happy.

Finally, even though I have clearly been writing journal entries for quite some time, I’ve always felt that there was not enough of a distinction between my journal entries and my posts that were more essay/article-esque. So to help keep this distinction clear, this post will mark the beginning of my Journal Entry series.

Making progress!

If You're Not Moving Forward...

As I’ve been fighting off the onslaught of work and priorities that keep coming my way, I hate to admit that I’ve fallen quite behind on my go studies. In fact, they have become practically non-existent. I think the most exposure I’ve gotten to go is flipping through the new books that have been arriving. However, that cannot even begin to amount to any noteworthy type of study.

And to be honest, it’s not so much that I don’t want to study or play. In fact, I would love nothing more than to dedicate a nice chunk of time each day to my go studies. However, since that has been nearly impossible, I’ve been wracking my brain for ways to make progress before an obscene amount of time has passed since I last studied go.

As I was walking outside this morning, a thought occurred to me, “If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backwards.” (Of course, one’s progress in go is not even remotely that linear, but you get the idea.) And though this might sound repetitive to some, once again I realized the necessity of taking steps forward. And at this point, it doesn’t even matter what direction I’m taking the step in. As long as I am making efforts to move forward, it will be more valuable than simply waiting for the perfect time for me to pick go back up the way I want to.

So to those who are also caught up in the whirlwind of the responsibilities of adult life and being independent, I challenge you to take the smallest of steps forward (even if it is as simple as doing 10 easy life and death problems a day). For me, I will return to the Jump Level Up series to provide some structure for myself.

I’ll be sure to keep you posted as I begin making my comeback.