Competitions for over-analyzing? No? Ok. BJJ it is.

Disclaimer: I'm posting this to see how out of whack my internal monologue has gotten. Feel free to comment! :)

First, some background. Despite the lack of BJJ in my blog lately, there's been a decent amount of training in my life at least. Not as much as I would like, especially because I lost last week to being sick, but enough. Also, there's a competition coming up. Two, in fact, and I want to do them.

Let me say that again.

There's a BJJ competition scheduled for May 11th and I WANT TO COMPETE.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way here are the internal ramblings.

1. You haven't trained hard enough and you don't go to the competition classes.
2. You will embarrass your school with your combination of poor conditioning and complete emotional breakdowns.

My problem really boils down to this: I have enough trouble convincing myself to go to class when I start thinking about competition that the actual physical preparation gets a little muddled. I'm just going with what I've got at this point.


My plan is drag myself out on that mat on May 11th. This I am prepared to do. If any actual good jiu-jitsu comes out of it, I'll consider that a bonus.

My nightmare

I am so grateful to xkcd for showing me I am not the only one with this problem. For me, it's always the same class - Intro to Scientific Computing taught by Professor Ganesh. I took this class my last semester at Mines in order to finish my degree in Computer Science. This class was legendary. The first time Ganesh taught it, he failed all but TWO students. I took the class his third time teaching it. He was clearly learning to reign in his frustration with his students.

While working I would still have this dream and I would have to remind myself that I graduated already. Now I'm a grad student and I can't use that excuse anymore. So when I wake up after dreaming that Ganesh now teaches my Securities Valuation class (which my dream mind thinks I've ditched for 3 weeks straight), the panic does not just go away.

FML. I have this dream twice a week right now. *pulls hair out*

Death in the family

A week ago today I woke up to find my pet parrot, Paradyse, dead in her cage. She was almost 7 years old, when she should have lived to be at least 15. I don't deal with death very often. I've only been to one funeral that I can remember, and I wasn't close to the person who died (who was not a relative). I also have never had a pet that was not a fish. One with a real personality and a place in my life.

I spent the day cleaning. My apartment is now cleaner than it's been since Adam and I moved our stuff into it. It could have been worse.

I try to find the good in all things and this is no exception. Even though I am devastated that my birdie will not be around to watch my kids grow up like I planned, I feel like I have gained perspective. 

I have a better idea of what is important to me. I am tired of spending so much time worrying about things when I could be doing more to help the people I love.

I am less afraid. Everything could change in one freak accident or one tragic illness. Against that, why should I be so afraid of anything that doesn't kill me? Hell, I'm afraid of things that don't even matter. Things like interviews. It doesn't even make sense anymore. 

I want my bird back. I know that's impossible.

Life goes on. There's so much to deal with right now.

I miss you.

Now that I'm sane again...

I can talk about what really happened at the tournament.

First, before I get so worked up about going backwards I should instead consider that maybe I simply wasn't as far along as I thought. And either way, the way forward is clear enough.

Looking back, I see that I was way more afraid of competing than I realized. This makes sense. I've never competed in any kind of sports before, ever. My childhood was spent avoiding the humiliation of sports at all costs and since that's impossible I have a lot of bad memories. I thought I was passed all that. It's been years! WHY NOW?

Anyway, I have finally found a place where it is actually safe to fail, where I won't be made fun of for being slow or weak as long as I keep working hard. It's incredibly valuable, but it can't undo a lifetime of fear in one day.

I was prepared to face my fear of competing. What I wasn't prepared for was the lifetime of childhood fears that ambushed me after my matches were over. The fear of being judged, of never fitting in, of feeling so alone. Feelings I had buried for years completely overwhelmed me.

It took about a day for me to recover enough to breathe properly. I wish I could say that those fears belong to different person, a younger me that no longer exists, but I can't. I will just have to work past these fears like I do all the others.

So, my first BJJ tournament ever was a disaster. I was completely terrified and I didn't even know it until after I had a match, when I had a complete emotional meltdown. Good times.

I'm better now. I have a chance to heal a few childhood scars and become a better person. So what if it now looks like more work than I thought?

Here's a list of some things to work on that actually matter to jiu-jitsu (this is not a complete list, I have a gazillion things to work on, these just stand out after Saturday):

1. I really need to figure out how to get into deep half-guard. Seriously, it just confuses me, every bloody time, even when I manage it.
2. Takedowns. Suck. They suck enough when you have a vague idea what you're doing but when your mind blanks out on you because you're SCARED OUT OF YOUR MIND it sucks worse.
3. Sweeps. I don't get these. Pretty much any of them. I suppose I'll pick one or two and drill them until the weight distribution/timing thing starts to click. And then drill them some more.
4. OMFG guillotines. First, I need to not stick my neck out like an idiot and second, if I fail at that I need to set up the defense faster. Its not like its hard.
5. Knee-on-belly. This is a side project. Its not high priority, but its fun to try to set up and one day I might actually get it. I'm optimistic.

Well, that's weeks and weeks of work on its own, so I'll stop there. :D

Why am I writing about this?

I don't think I should be talking about this. I think I should just go take a nap and in a few hours the whole world will look different. Or I could wait a few days. Time. Time would let me distill my feelings into something I could look at and learn from. It was my first BJJ tournament ever, it has to fit in somewhere.

But part of me is furious. I am furious with that voice in my head that is capable of being so cruel. I am not even capable of being so mean to someone else, but I can do it to myself.

Would I really do this? Would I really put down in a public blog the kinds of things I say to myself? Am I trying to shame myself into being a nicer person? Am I just trying to get these feelings that I can't handle out of me? Have I figured out nothing since I was an overemotional teenager?

No... I'm writing this down so I can come back here later. Maybe in a year. Maybe 5 years. However long it takes for me to be able to look at this again.

This is what I have to deal with inside my own head; this is my problem:
"You know, if you keep this up they'll eventually just tell you to always pull guard, because takedowns are just not your thing."

"He had that. I don't know how you got out of that, he must have just gone easy on you again."

"You have gotten better, but everyone else gets better too. You will always be the weakest link on the team."

Just right here, I have some serious insecurities. Why am I so convinced I'm an object of pity? Why can't I believe that I can do better than this?

I don't know. I signed up for the tournament to challenge myself. To see how I handled the pressure. The answer: badly. I expected to be able to say, "Look - I was afraid of this but next time I will be less afraid". Instead I feel like I'm afraid of things I wasn't afraid of before, like I've gone backwards.

I'll take that nap now and see how the world looks in a few hours.

Could it be...? Nah, that's impossible.

I feel stuck! Like I'm sitting around waiting for life to move on rather than living my life. I hate this feeling and tonight I'm not going to stand for it.

I decided to reflect on this for a while (the alternative was Pinterest) and I thought about my goals and what I need to do to advance them. Is there anything I can do RIGHT NOW to help me get over this feeling?

Silence.

Ok not exactly silence. There is ALWAYS something that could be done. But I couldn't think of anything that was more than a break-even proposition. For example, I could go work out, but I'm still sore and bruised and I'm waking up at 6 AM to go work out so there is not a lot of value there.

Then it dawned on me... Is this feeling because my entire life is going according to plan?

O.O

I can almost hear my perception of self being rearranged.

Conclusions:
1. I am so unprepared for my life to be going according to plan that I am frustrated I don't have anything to do. [Side note: I KNOW I've manufactured a crisis to avoid this sensation before, I'm so glad I don't do that anymore]

2. Nothing goes according to plan. Bring it on. >:D

Thoughts on rolling and staying calm.

This story will cover Reason I Love BJJ #4.

Today during open mat I had the chance to roll with one of my favorite instructors. It was extremely fun and a good reminder of why I like to go to open mat. After I finally had to stop and rest, he said that I did a good job of staying calm, and that he likes to force lower belts to match his pace and I did just that.

I really appreciated the compliment. I feel calm when I roll, at least 80% of the time. I can do better then 80% and I'll work on that, but the level of calm that I feel when I'm rolling is amazing.

Here's my deal. I get bored easily. There aren't many things out there that can focus my mind completely. Until I found BJJ, engineering problems came the closest. I could sit and try and solve a problem for hours. Unfortunately, working out in corporate America was usually not as challenging as my homework was during my undergrad experience. Ever since I graduated college I've been sitting on too many spare moments to think.

I can't be trusted to think of productive things in this situation. End of story. Instead I'll think about how I could've done something better or how I failed in some way. Insecurity manifested. Without a problem to focus on, I waste energy on maintaining a near-constant level of anxiety.

Then I started rolling. Nothing focuses the mind like trying to survive. Trying to recall the techniques needed to escape and avoid being submitted (not to mention planning for some kind of offense, should the opportunity present itself) leaves no room for insecurity. Why wouldn't I be calm?