Kishi

I'm on a major Hades kick since the sequel got announced. Most of my reading is in Sanderson's Cosmere literatic universe (:'D), although I think I'm going to take a break and read some Kim Stanley Robinson when this next book is done.

Getting lots of sleep is good. And looking back at my time with Ms. Rona, I'd advise that you not worry much about eating or drinking. There's a period where nourishment is a major hassle, but it's only a couple days; the appetite comes back, and food tastes good again, and also the impromptu fast can be good for the immune system in terms of kicking it up into higher gear and engaging in good autophagy. You're gonna be okay. Just get some sleep and be comfortable. That's the ticket. Well, with the understanding that feelings don't respond to facts and aren't really controllable, I would point out that none of this is your fault and it's not true that you're an idiot or a disappointment. It's just not. None of what's happened to you is really down to anything you had any choice in. I mean really, as if anyone would choose to get sick. I wonder, because it sounds like your problems picked up after you went to see your sick relations. Did they test for COVID?

Looking at these ingredient lists, I'm not sure there's reason to them and there's definitely no rhyme.

It's legit! Sounds like she won a lot on her way there, and if nobody else showed up to compete, well, that doesn't reflect on her. Still, as someone who's medaled for "just showing up," there's a real emotional void in not having someone to compete with. (or getting the medal for losing in a small division. Like I've done. A lot). Really good of you and your team to support her in that.

Aah, gotta hate it when you're down and everything and everyone needs you to be up. Feel better soon!

Wow! Looks like you've come a long way. No wonder you've been gone! I'm sure this will be very appreciated. I find that everyone wants to play but nobody wants to do the work that makes the play possible; up here, it's always "last one out has to clean the mats!" That's really good of you to do.

I'm amazed at how much better your map keeps looking. You're really good at this!

You're right. When I was doing my homework on this, the information basically said it'd be a month if I was lucky, but likely I was looking at 2 months plus PT/rehab. So when the doc told me two weeks, I was stoked; the added weeks are about scheduling and it feels like an artificial barrier to clearance, which I didn't think I'd have to. I am! Thanks for noticing. I'd love to do DDR, but no set-up. But there's some cardio in what drills I'm able to do. My first coach in BJJ advised that a good way to get better and develop cardio was to do drills until I broke a sweat. That's helped a lot, actually. Yup! I use a shoe myself, but it does the same thing. Right. It's a big step for me, though, since I'm prone to switching things up at the drop of a hat. It's taken a long time to accept that there's no perfect program, and that things can go wrong and it's not my fault. It's funny. I don't want to change anything up, but I have to now because of the way the rehab plays. Maybe the thing to learn is an appreciation for what I had and a gratitude that not only could I be treated for an injury (which isn't a given here in the US), but by all appearances, I will be able to go back. * Goal 1: 5.5/6 Goal 2: 6/6 Doc wants me to do my rehab twice a day. I've only been hitting once a day. My shoulder feels better with once a day, and I can't help wondering if this is one of those things where the doc tells me twice on the gamble that I only do this once. I've been researching my elbow and its issues in relation to the GB program and they would say that I'm supposed to stick to very high incline rows, as opposed to ground rows. Since I can do these with rings, maybe the trick is to go to the highest incline and just completely rotate my grip from pronation to supination, and just transition down from there. Maybe. The gua sha arrived today, so I can start the repair work on my elbow. That'll be fun. For a given definition of fun. Otherwise, a slow, quiet day. I'm gonna try getting up periodically to do drills as opposed to just blitzing and doing all of them at once. I think my shoulder likes that a little less, so I want to see what intermittent work does. Also, it breaks up the day a bit, and that's fun.

FWIW, 80% of success in friendships is just showing up, or so I've heard. You'd be surprised at how much mileage you can get out of just connecting with folk, though.

Ooh~! What system y'all playing with?

Yeah man. It feels that way to me too. Those parts really light up in speed matches, but that's also part of what frustrates me too, because I shouldn't have to lose the game when I'm up on points. I mean, I get that you wouldn't want to just capture a pawn first and then troll for five minutes, so there should be some parity between players in terms of how much time they have left. Like, maybe if they shared a timer and were both on the same clock? I'd prefer that, I think. But that's just me. Yeah, there's definitely an element of that there too. I haven't seen any studies about it, but I have a theory that part of the benefit/addiction of the sport lies in both the endorphin response to exercise and a possible dose of oxytocin. Meaning that you're taking these brains and simmering them in a good chemical soup for an hour or two, as opposed to the distress chemicals that we get otherwise. Could be there's a literal part of me that's missing its dose and acting out as a result. Thanks. Pandemic's been good practice for rolling with things and making the most of a bad situation. Yeah, for sure. "It ain't the years, sweetheart, it's the mileage." * Goal 1: 5/5 Goal 2: 5/5 Got a text from a BJJ text chain I'm in. Let on that I was injured and one of them, whom I go to Sunday open mats with, said she thought I'd just been skipping out. At which point another said, "[Kishi] never skips Sundays. He's either injured or he's dead." Warms the heart to know what kind of reputation I've developed. Anyway, not much to say about yesterday. Writing friend was not available to write, so writing did not happen with her. Did it on my own instead. After core training, some of which I had to walk back. The Gymnastic Bodies method of training supersets a strength move with a mobility move, and the mobility stuff would have put some compressive force on my shoulders that I think I'm supposed to avoid. So I scaled back to what I've done before. I've been getting thoughtful and restive about my training lately, wondering if the way I was doing things was what led to me getting hurt. Presently, I think that it did, in part, at least as far as my elbow goes; I've carried on with that pain there a lot longer than I should have (which is to say that I should have stopped as soon as it started). As to my shoulder, I actually don't think it did. While it's true that I've been doing a lot of shoulder-intensive stuff (handstands, TGUs, KB snatches and swings), the weighted stuff has been relatively light and the handstands were done with an eye toward practice and progress rather than trying to be aggressive and build boulder-shoulders. If anything, I might not have been aggressive enough with that training; maybe if I was stronger, this wouldn't have happened. Or, if I'd been aggressive, I would have just busted on my own instead. Really hard to say. Anyway, I'm just thoughtful with regard to what responsible training looks like going forward. Especially with that elbow. I'm wondering if I want to spend time going forward focusing on time under tension, since that's supposed to be good for tendon health. But that's going to clash a bit with how the strength work is programmed, since the mobility moves I mentioned earlier are a form of active rest and you're supposed to go right back to the movements once your mobility work is done. OTOH, maybe I should be listening to my body and doing the work in my own way and on my own time. It's nothing to get after immediately here, but it is something to think about. I should probably ask them about it too to get a feel for what I'm doing going forward. Trying to figure out how to integrate the shoulder rehab with my other training is challenge enough ATM. Doc wants me to do a bunch of moves and then ice my shoulder immediately after; it's really hard to do any kind of cooldown stretching or anything like that after. Doesn't mean it can't be done; probably something to do after a hot shower, which I'll try to experiment with but couldn't do last night since I needed to shave. So. Today, I got up later than I should have if I was going to hit the mats tonight. It's early enough to get done what's gotta get done, so I'll take a half point for it. Beyond that, it'll be TGUs and shoulder rehab and stretching. No real plans to speak of tonight.

Well, if it helps, a species doesn't develop that kind of body of work unless it's a very common problem! Surely it must be human to have these problems, and surely it must be human to overcome them. Breakfalls are dope. I come to them from a martial arts background, but as I've studied aging and causes of injury and such, I've come to conclude that everyone should do breakfalls and get ups of some kind or other. They're just that good. Cool to see someone else doing them!

Smart play, I think. There's an awful lot more to be said for practicing strength at a given weight than is generally said. Mastery now will make further steps easier, and it should make daily life a bit easier. Yeah, man, I get this. It's about 18.3 C down here. Might go for a walk if I finish my job early enough. In January. Oh, the world may be dying, but at least she burns beautifully.

Well, that's not reasonable of them. Don't they know how people get healthcare in this country?

Why did you have to do 12 hours sick, if you don't mind me asking? Do you not have sick leave or anything like that?

Nice! Sugar can be a real demon; way to deal with it. Also, FWIW, I've always found MovNat movements to be really cool. I dunno, for me there's just a sense of flow and harmony with the human animal that I think is really neat.

Goal 1: 4/4 Goal 2: 4/4 So I realized yesterday evening that I'm stuck on the shoulder rehab until I'm cleared, and I'm not going to see the ortho again until 2/7. Meaning that instead of 2 weeks of rehab, I'm in for a month... and I'm going to off the mats the entire time. I'm not happy about it. But I'm working to confront myself about that - am I angry because I'm missing out on mat time? Or am I angry because I'm insecure about how much better everyone will be when I go back? Or is it both? Or is it something else? (it's probably both). Still, if I'm on enforced rest, it doesn't have to be a bad thing. As long as I'm seeing to one set of hurts, it's an opportunity to see to an ongoing case of Golfer's Elbow on my left. I've elected to pick up a gua sha to dig into it some, on account of having had some good response to such treatment in the past. It will hurt like the dickens. Looking forward to it. Otherwise, yesterday was pretty uneventful. I did my writing, drilled what I could drill, did shoulder rehab. @Stronkey Kong was nice enough to let me win a game of chess; it's good mental training and I really should get back into it, but I kind of hate it for BJJ training. The way the rules work, you can be up on points in a game of chess and still lose if time runs out on your turn. That's bullshit and I hate it but I must strive for indifference to it. And besides, maybe that kind of incentivized aggression is something I need. Anyway, today is today. TGUs, core training, and qigong on docket. Might be some night writing with a friend later, but it's even odds; if I hear from her sooner that it's not happening, I'll get it done sooner since it'll be easier that way. I should at least try to get to bed early tonight to practice getting up early for striking sparring, even if it's not gonna matter for a while.

I'm really glad you took the time to play with me. You gave me a lot of problems to solve, and I appreciate you for it. Let me know when you're up for another game.

I remember I had a similar experience with food and COVID. The first day, I lost my appetite completely, and when I tried to eat even a single spoon of almond butter it tasted like ashes and I had to force myself to swallow. It took a couple days for me to want to eat anything, but it didn't last. I bet it'll pass for you too.

Coming to a bookstore near you... someday.

I think @Everstorm and @Harriet got it right. I'm not prone to making grand, sweeping statements about human nature, but I do suspect that as a species we're pretty prone to expedience. How we experience expedience varies from person to person, and I'm pretty sure there are exceptions to this. But if it's true, it goes a long way to explaining why starting new things is hard, and why training has to be made psychologically easy in order for it to do us any long term good.

I don't want to hijack your thread and make it about me and my problems... so I won't. I will say, though, that I get this. I think you're on the right track, and you sound like you've got some wisdom on the road from where you were to where you are. Good news is, "the road goes ever on." Sadness and limitation are valid places to be, but they don't have to be the end if you aren't cool with them. So, one step at a time, one day at a time. Onward.

Wow, I'm not sure but I think you may be doing literally all the things. Very cool. Can't wait to see how it goes!

Good to have another pair of eyes on this. Thanks. Oh yeah, for sure! A good infodump is a classic hallmark of SF/F genre fiction, and I love 'em. My issue is that I had originally tried to plan out the novel on what's called the "Scene-Sequel" structure, which emphasizes character conflict as the primary driver of a story. The Dresden Files employs this structure if you want a good example of it, and I low key think of my novel as a lefty answer to the author's conservative bent, especially since he turned off a lot of my friends with how he writes and I wanted them to have a good story in his style without his problems. The structure has a place for infodumps too, but I think I misunderstood what constitutes conflict between characters and what constitutes an info dump. The novel's been written as a character on the outside of a magical underworld slowly getting dragged down, meaning he needs information, but I didn't figure out how to make that information a source of conflict between characters. Mostly because I didn't even think of it as something that he needed or would be a goal for him to work toward. It's obvious to me now, but it wasn't when I was planning this puppy out, and... 🤷‍♂️ * Goal 1: 3/3 Goal 2: 3/3 Good News Sandwich! Good News: it's just a strain. I got meds and exercises for it and I'm due back in a couple of weeks for a recheck. Bad News: I'm barred from the mats. The orthopedist said I could do any training that didn't put a load on my shoulder. But that's basically any training that involves another person, just due to the nature of BJJ, and I'm not even allowed to hit pads at this point. About the only thing I could do is mount work, and even then, I'd need accommodations for it, which the academy isn't in a position to give. I'm also barred from a lot of my KB work, especially the walking snatch program and weighted TGUs. Good News: I've still got a lot I can do to train and study around this. I can still do my leg and core training, and I can do some of my flexibility work. I can still shadowbox and I still have access to a lot of my drills for BJJ. I also have an extensive training library that I can watch and review to go over old concepts. Also, I can still juggle, and that just makes me happy. So, it wasn't what I wanted to hear, but it's not as bad as it could have been. The buggery part is that I might not be cleared to return in time for a promotion day that's occurring this month. I don't have any expectations about earning another stripe, but I did want to at least be a problem for the folks who were supposed to be promoted. But it's just another uncontrollable, meaning it's something to seek peace with rather than stew on and angst about. Come a couple weeks from now and we'll see what happens. If I'm stewing over anything, it's my programming for now, since I'm trying to figure out if unweighted TGUs are useful and if farmer's walks can continue. I know the doc said that I'm supposed to avoid load, but all the exercises he gave me involve load via the use of a resistance band, so clearly some load is okay. And the Internet says that those exercises can be good for shoulder strain (there's a study on a jiujitero using TGUs after a bad shoulder strain for rehab which seems ridiculously on the nose). Just got to make sure not to overdo it, so I'll be experimenting with that some over the next couple of weeks. Otherwise, I stuck to my goals. It's tempting to slack off and say there's no point to early sleep, but I don't believe that, and in any event it's probably going to be good to practice now for long term success further down the line.

Okay, but, like. That sounds amazing. I used to love mint hot chocolate, and here I can't remember the last time I had it.