Happy New Year to all! I hope 2022 brings health, prosperity, success, and happiness to all of you!

Let’s hope this year is better than the last two years!

2020 and 2021 were trainwrecks on a societal level. Nevertheless, I am optimistic that the Omicron variant, while unbelievably contagious and currently swamping the world, is good news regarding the end of the pandemic. But, unfortunately, we have to ride out a bumpy month or two due to its massive contagiousness.

Post Publication

Two hours after this post was published, Ontario announced new restrictions that amount to another lockdown, the third such action put in place since March 2020.

All indoor gyms and sports facilities will be closed for the next three weeks. That means that martial arts schools will take yet another hit.

Dining at restaurants and bars is out for a similar period. Indoor gatherings are restricted to 5 and outdoor gatherings to 10.

Kids return to online school on January 17th.

One can only wonder about the long-term economic, financial and psychological impact of all the various restrictions since March 2020.

What does this mean for me? Cancellation of in-person private lessons for the next few weeks.

What choice do I have except “Go with the flow!“

Ahem. Back To The Post.

On another note, I will change my social media schedule for this year.

Except for this post, I will publish my blog posts on Wednesdays. The new schedule is the result of shifting my YouTube game a bit.

The long-form YouTube videos will come out on Mondays (when I have video partners!).

In addition to the long-form videos, I aim to do my Vlogs (Thursdays) once a week. On top of all this, I’m doing YouTube Shorts which will be on Tuesdays and Fridays.

What are YouTube Shorts?

YouTube Shorts are vertical videos that can be as short as 15 seconds. The maximum duration is 60 seconds. YouTube rolled this out a year ago to compete against Instagram and TikTok. The funny thing is that I didn’t know about this until recently. I briefly tried TikTok last summer, but it didn’t jive with me. The idea of doing all of my videos on YouTube seems simpler to me!

Anyway, here’s my first YouTube Short on New Year’s Eve. I had fun with this!

If you are not able to view this video, click here.

One thing that I’ve gotten out of the dissolution of Bamboo Spirit is that I determined that I spread myself thin on various social media channels, trying to find the magic bullet. In other words, I tried too hard.

With Bamboo Spirit gone, I’m focusing on this blog and YouTube. And having fun!

SO MUCH SIMPLER!

Anyway, I hope all of you have a great year and look forward to getting feedback from y’all!