Panic switch

I have been royally slacking on jiu-jitsu this summer. I'm going to try not to overanalyze that - it's just the way the last few weeks have been and I plan on being more consistent as summer wraps up and I get back to school.

Tonight's class was interesting. There's a tournament coming up (the same one I had planned on competing in until I bought a house and hit a brick wall of stress) so for tonight's class we reviewed the rules and basic strategy of competition BJJ before sparring from standing.

I thought I was coping just fine with this until I was almost through my third "match". My partner finally managed to get a full 3 seconds worth of mount on me. Not a big deal. Until my mind blew everything out of proportion and I panicked.

It was like something snapped inside my mind and I just wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. Forget jiu-jitsu, I could barely breathe. It was all panic over losing too, my partner wasn't even being heavy on me or anything. Some thought weaseled into my brain about how I just lost 4 more points and there was no way I could come back from that and all my issues with competing came flooding into my head. Ow.

I kept it together long enough to finish the class but damn. I guess I have an ego problem. I'm definitely overly concerned with these points whenever we talk about BJJ in terms of points. I also have a serious confidence problem. I have no faith whatsoever in my ability to use BJJ to help me out in a competition setting. I probably don't have a lot of confidence in regular sparring either but it doesn't ambush me the same way.

And it is definitely the ambushing the screws with my mind. So much ow. I'm off to take some advil and get sleep. Hopefully Thursday's class is better.

Inefficient Markets

My apartment complex wants to charge me 2.5 months rent to get out of 3, maybe 3.5 months of my lease. If I was simply concerned with my own financial well being, I would take the deal, after all, I save up to a full months rent, right?

However, I'm angry. First, the apartment I have is currently unavailable and our complex is generally full, so I'm thinking they will rent it out fairly easily. So they get my 2.5 months and the extra rent. Second, they have the nerve to act like they're doing me a favor. BAH. I was cool with as long as it was "2 months rent, we let you go, easy!" No one mentioned "oh and we keep the security deposit too!".

All I wanted was for them to add the apartment to there list of available apartments and let me out of the lease when they found someone. But no, they either want me to hand them extra money that they haven't earned or pay to keep a nice empty apartment until the end of December.

Financially, the choice is clear. I should hand them the money and move on. But I'm not going to do it. Instead, I'm going to try and find someone to assign the lease to (which they tried to tell me was subletting and was illegal - like, this is supposed to be your business, not mine). If I can't find anyone, then at least I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I have never broken a lease agreement.

And I'll get my security deposit back. Jerks.

And this is why efficient markets are bullshit.

First House Madness

I used to roll my eyes at people who missed weeks and weeks of their normal lives to buy a house. Like, how distracting can it be, really? My apologies to any of those people. I am in the process of buying my first house (we close Thursday!) and I am completely distracted.

The most recent casualty in this house buying extravaganza is my entry in the BJJ tournament a week from Saturday. Here are my excuses for dropping out:

• I would rather put the money towards my house
• I don't even like competing, why am I doing something I don't find fun
• It was killing my motivation for jiu jitsu in general.

This last one is the only one that worries me. I may not have any love of competing but I do love going to class ... usually. But as soon as I signed up I dropped from 3-4 classes a week to 2 classes. I can blame that on the house if I want, but I think it had more to do with the tournament.

I don't feel bad about this. I did what I needed to do and no one will be really impacted by my decision. At least I was back in class tonight and finally happy to be there for the first time in a couple of weeks.

Anyway, back to the house.

As you can see, its green. Very green. With red shutters. I hated the outside, at first, but its already been renamed in my mind as "Christmas House" and I plan on continuing the red and green theme in the back yard (which is dead and is thus a blank slate).

Its not my dream house or anything, but it has a few things I like. It has a random pond in front, which I will fill with horrors on Halloween (and maybe other things for other holidays). The driveway actually slopes down to the road. The living room has built in shelves that are begging me to fill them with clutter. Yeah. It's my house. Or, it will be, on Thursday.