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.

Three questions for the end of the day

Back in my angry, bitter, post-undergrad days I was really tired of being surrounded by people who couldn't keep their shit together. Seriously, this life is not that hard. Step 1: Get some skills in something and get a job. Step 2: Try to show up and not fail at your job and you should have enough money to do something fun after hours. Step 3: Don't be an asshole (maybe this should be step 1.)

So many people fail at these easy steps... but I'm over it now.

Somewhere in my journey I realized that this philosophy was doing me great harm. It would be great if the world was so simple: Show up to life, work hard, and be rewarded or don't and be a failure. Too bad nothing is that simple.

People have their own challenges. Now when I look at other people I don't give a damn how their paychecks compare to mine or how big their houses are or how well they measure up to my old standards of success. Instead, I look at how they deal with little things. Do they treat others with dignity? Do they pause to appreciate beauty in the world? Do they learn from failure or make excuses?

This has made me a much nicer person. Until I realize I still beat myself up over my old standards of success.

Now at the end of the day, I ask myself those same questions. 

Did I treat others with dignity? 

Did I pause to appreciate what was beautiful? 

Did I learn from failure or did I make excuses?

Before I wrote this, I was sinking into a bad mood. Late at night its so easy to feel alone and weak. Its so easy to trivialize the day's work as I look ahead and see how far away my goals still are. But on this day I did not fail my three questions.

Today's takedown thoughts

I'm starting to feel better about these takedown classes. I'm so bad at them that its very easy to see any kind of improvement.

A few examples: 

• Sure, he knocked me over, but I managed to pull guard instead of ending up in side control.
• Ok, so maybe the nice blue belt let me set up whatever takedown I wanted, but my timing was much better this time, I could feel it.
• I actually took a second to stop and breathe instead of my usual hyper tense state of near panic

Now that we've defined some positive space, its time for me to take a serious look at a couple of things for next time.

First, whatever I did that landed me in the receiving end of a piledriver was not good. I don't know what was worse - that I didn't take any action to avoid it or that once caught I had a couple of scary seconds to contemplate if I knew how to not get dropped on my head and the only thing I could come up with was "trust my training partner not to drop me on my head". Though true, it was also completely useless. Funny, though.

Second, I seriously need to work on my endurance outside of training. Sure, I would like to be stronger too, but I can deal with being weaker by applying better technique and timing, but I need to survive longer. (Note: I know better technique helps here too, but I'm going to attack this problem from multiple directions) I am really starting to hate the feeling that an opportunity opened up and I missed it because I have reached a level of exhaustion that makes every movement - hell, even every thought - like trying to walk through water.

EDIT: I forgot to mention it, but I need to remember it to motivate me later. Someone said I looked like a whipped puppy towards the end of class. In my imagination, that's pretty close to how I felt. This is not a good feeling. This is why I need more endurance.

This will require better time management on my part. Story of my life. Time to set some goals.

1. I want to add to my schedule (somehow) one session at the gym and two long jogs a week.

2. EAT. SOMETHING. Really, this is getting ridiculous. I don't care so much if I try to live on egg whites, fresh fruit, almond milk and bread as long as I eat enough of it to keep going.

Thought I would end this rambling mess with another random thought I had today. I was trying to show a friend this really cool armbar to triangle transition and I had it WRONG. FAIL. Yet it only took us about a minute to figure out the one step I had backwards and then we practiced it right. I think its a small step in the right direction that we could look at a technique and figure out what was off about it. At least we didn't just try and do it wrong over and over. That said, I'll try and know what I'm talking about in the future. Promise.

Two (very minor) BJJ victories

Really, I should have better things to do at 2AM. Things like sleeping. But here I am, rambling away.

For my own record, I am going to celebrate two BJJ victories from this week. People should celebrate progress more often. Rest assured that I am beating myself up about my failures outside of this blog, but I like to keep this space positive whenever possible.

Today I had a drills class that was based on mount. Given my size, weight, and skill level, that meant I spent most of my time in class trying to escape. Maybe at some point I'll get into stories about what worked and what didn't work technique-wise, but for now I'm focusing on mindset. The victory for me here is that I kept trying. Its so easy to just pause for a minute when I'm tired, even when that's the worst thing I can do. So I said I wasn't going to do that, I would keep fighting until something worked and I didn't care if that meant suffering through an entire 5 minute round barely able to breathe as I fought off every submission attempt. It was fun, but ow. I needed a 3 hour nap after class before I could move again. However, I'm tougher than I thought. I will try to do that all the time now.

Second victory was Thursday. The normal class is focused on takedowns for the next month or whatever. It was time to confront that fear of falling that follows me around making me all tense and disturbing my aura of somewhat calm. I survived. Not the most glamorous victory, but I'll take it. Kudos to fellow white-belt Scott for being very patient and helpful and for being just nice enough that I learned a ton and just mean enough that I had to face my fear. Seriously, its hard to explain striking that kind of balance, but I know what it feels like and I respect the training partners that can do it that much more.

On a related note I have extra special leg bruises - see! I'm thinking about going as a leopard for Halloween.

Thoughts on teaching

I love being a student. I always have. So one of the things I hate is knowledge-hoarding. Why do people act like you have to pass some kind of test or prove your worth before you can even be a student? The places where I've learned the most (and been the happiest) are those places where all that is expected of the students is an open mind and a willingness to work hard.

To clarify: I expect to have to "pay my dues". I just also expect to be treated with dignity. I shouldn't have to beg to be taught like a dog for table scraps. This is my problem with Ivy League universities; they seem to take great joy in watching prospective students humiliate themselves... but I digress.

Somehow in my life I have found people willing to share their knowledge without egocentric power trips or ruthless competition for attention. I am grateful, but what happens when I am cast as a teacher? I think everyone reaches a level of experience where they might need to teach as well as learn. I've often had to teach math and computer programming, for example.

I do not consider myself to be a teacher for two reasons. First, I get caught up on details and and I never know where to begin. Second, I run out of patience. I often wish I could just download my entire understanding of a subject to a hard drive and hand it to someone and have them understand it instantly.

Recently, as my patience ran out while explaining a topic, I thought about why I was getting frustrated. I was angry that my student didn't magically "get it". I handed you a hard drive with my entire understanding! Why is this so hard for you?!

I see, the blame-the-student excuse. Have my favorite teachers ever done this to me? Not that I can remember. But it gets worse. I also felt a certain vicious selfishness creeping up. Well, if he can't understand this, then I will always have something he doesn't.

NO. ABSOLUTELY NEVER AGAIN. I will not tolerate the hypocrisy of this anymore. I may prefer to be a student for the rest of my life, but I will aspire to follow these rules.

• I will try to learn well enough that I could teach someone else.
• I will share what I know without hesitation.
• I will remember that everything must be learned, including how to teach.
• I will not be threatened by the success of teaching. What I have learned cannot be taken from me and is not diminished by someone else having it.

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

Getting a job in corporate America.

When I was trying to land a job as an engineer, I had zero problems getting job offers. Getting the offers I wanted was a little challenging because I had no idea what I wanted. Its hard when you have never had a real job to just decide what you would want that job to look like.

Point is, I had offers, no problem.

Business degrees are different, supposedly. You're supposed to really work at selling yourself and presenting to your future employer as much evidence as possible that you are exactly what they need. I'm ok with this in theory, but at some point I always get asked to phrase something a certain way or to make extra sure I bring up something in an interview even if its barely relevant to the question... Oh, and my favorite is when I'm told to have a flaw/weakness that is not a real flaw/weakness. Like being a perfectionist. "Oh, I'm just so obsessed with getting a problem done right that I'll work myself half to death to make sure of it, its a real weakness of mine."

Here are my priorities in finding a job - as straightforward and honest as I can make them:

1. Does the culture fit? I'm honest, sometimes brutally so. I need to know I can ask questions and say what's on my mind without feeling like I crossed a line every time. I like real criticism. Make me better, push me, that's fine. I also need support, I prefer to be working in a team to working completely alone.

2. Am I solving problems? I need to be investigating real problems or implementing solutions to problems. I have no interest in a desk job trying to maximize return. I want to be protecting something, whether that's a company from legal issues or clients from getting ripped off, or the industry from its own reputation. Finance makes our world function and I want to be on the front lines keeping the industry fair and prosperous.

That's it. I care about what I get paid only out of fairness. I have a great sea of talent and skill and I should be compensated. I'm not after amazing bonus checks.

I'm not in finance for the money. I'm in it because of how important this industry is to everything else. It must be protected. If someone can use my skills to do that, I will be loyal to them for a very, very long time. If no one can, then I will just put aside my vast technical skills and join a local police department.