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.

Will today be any different?

"Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only that the cat died nobly" - Arnold Edinborough

I mentioned on Facebook that my primary motivation for trying a second jiu jitsu tournament is curiosity - specifically the question of "Will this time be different?" Even to me this seems like an odd question because I know, as a good proactive kinda gal, that I control what's different - at least a lot of what could be different. That part is boring.

I don't want to spend too much time going into my problem with tournaments because I haven't exactly figured it out yet. I will say that I survive pretty well preparing for a tournament and I seem to do moderately well actually surviving matches, win or lose. It's after the tournament - I just break down. 

I have a theory that my real fear is that I'm really not cut out for BJJ (the first sport that I haven't avoided with religious fervor) and that tournaments serve only to prove that to everyone. Here, let me put it in a way that maximizes it's ridiculousness (complete with highlighting): "My deep dark secret is that I am doomed to suck at jiu jitsu forever and tournaments will expose my secret and lead to me being ostracized". I understand how ridiculous this sounds. I also understand that the only way to guarantee I suck at jiujitsu forever is to quit now, while I suck, duh. Anyway, my point is that I haven't actually figured out ANYTHING. What am I afraid of? Do I have something to prove? Is it to myself? Is it to everyone else? Can I do better? Can it be worse? The more questions I have about something the more I will suffer through to get answers. This is where curiosity comes in.

Curiosity is, essentially, the only reason I get up in the morning. This is not counting the several years in my recent past where I didn't want to get up in the morning at all. That's a whole different problem that I have mostly gotten over. In general, when I am happy and functional and waking up in order to live my life like it matters I wake up in order to satisfy my curiosity. Will today be any different?

Maybe someone reading this will be thinking some cliche bullshit like "You make today what it is" or "Every day is what you make it" but I have lived this life long enough to know that I'm dependent on other people to satisfy my curiosity in a positive way. I may wake up curious to know if I will find a solution for a problem at work on a given day but that question is too boring to hold my interest for long (hence several years of waking up miserable). The real burning curiosity I have is for things like: "Will someone really make me laugh today?", "Will someone say or do something that makes me smile?", "Will someone ask me to do something new and interesting?". I need people. The moments of power that resonate in me require the interaction of two minds (see this post). These moments recharge my emotional reserves.

This next tournament might still be lacking in fun but I don't care. I just want to know if any given day will contain any truly interesting interactions with another mind and I have learned that truly interesting interactions are more likely if I do unusual things like competing even when I hate it.

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.