{"id":6598,"date":"2024-05-22T16:53:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-22T23:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/?p=6598"},"modified":"2024-05-21T16:54:17","modified_gmt":"2024-05-21T23:54:17","slug":"participation-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2024\/05\/participation-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"Participation prize"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There is a saying:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I spent the last year playing a very serious game of fighting cancer. I won. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prize felt very stupid\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I get to stay alive. That\u2019s serious. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But also ridiculous. I WON that prize. Should I have to win it every day?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently I did have to win it back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making progress towards my goals is a big deal to me. I am always thinking of the next achievement I\u2019m striving for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The treading water fight for life from cancer was not very satisfying. I was happy to have my martial arts to make progress on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not many people have a black belt. I am going to get one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tried to find out how many blackbelts there are. It\u2019s not so easy to find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s it for? A lot of people get to the rank of black belt, dust off their hands and call it done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The true experts say that the black belt is just the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it took me years of practice every day to get this far. How can it be the beginning? I know I\u2019m not that good. I have so much further to go. It would be a shame to take that movement literacy and not do anything more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that way, it\u2019s like winning the prize in the cancer fight. I win the right to keep going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have the right. Will I exercise it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t notice that life was hard when I didn\u2019t have to fight for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t notice much about fighting until I started my black belt journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cancer stuff was not what I expected, but I did it. Life goes on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fight goes on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I plan to use what I learned and what I earned to keep going and earn more prizes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a saying: Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I spent the last year playing a very serious game of fighting cancer. I won.  The prize felt very stupid\u2014 I get to stay alive. That\u2019s serious.  But also ridiculous. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6598"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6599,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6598\/revisions\/6599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}