tei_

Fascinating, was not expecting that one! But if they're willing to put in some work to take you as a patient (and if you felt comfortable enough to spill your life story in the first place!) then that sounds like it could be a good fit?

Yeah, I see where you're coming from! IMO, the question of whether there is too much or too little shame w/r/t expressing anger is too dependent on gender, race and class to have a single answer. In particular, it seems to me that white men who are able to project a certain image of power and authority have a much higher bar in terms of how much anger and aggression is socially acceptable to express, even in workplace environments like offices, even to the point of a kind of "boys will be boys" attitude to the reality of abusive behaviour in the home or workplace. Meanwhile women, nonwhite people, and anyone who can't fit into that specific projection of traditional authority has a much lower bar for socially acceptable anger, to the point that any expression of negative emotions is liable to be interpreted as being overly emotional/aggressive/unprofessional. So maybe "shame" isn't quite the right word, but I think there is a certain kind of calibration of someone's capacity for looking at their own expressions of anger and evaluating whether they were reflective of the kind of interactions that are owed to other people, that needs to be calibrated upwards for some people and downwards for others. And I think it needs to be calibrated downwards for hockey players, in the same way I think it needs to be calibrated downwards for a lot of upper-class white men (related, of course, to the fact that the NHL has the most affluent fanbase of any major sports league in the US, and one of the most visibly white-dominated player demographics.)

Yes, this is a great point. I haven't done a huge amount of training in martial arts, but I've tried out a few different classes/styles, and it seems like one thing that is remarkably constant across martial arts styles from very different histories and cultures is a heightened emphasis on protocol, respect, and hierarchy; much more so than in other sports, which often have those kinds of values in theory but don't really implement them in day-to-day practice. In many styles of martial art there are specific ways to speak to your teacher and other students, greet your opponents, dress, move around the space, etc., that are taught alongside the actual fighting. It supports the intuition that, if you're going to develop your capacity for violence and harm, you need to do so in concert with the development of your capacity for restraint and self-control. Yeah, for sure. And I think in order to eliminate fights they would need to not just passively condemn them or try to remove the motivation or reward for them, but work to build a culture where losing your temper in public is considered actively shameful and undesirable. Which I don't really see being a priority, especially when so many fans clearly enjoy the fights. I went to another game this week, and was sitting beside some preteen girls who were shouting fight! fight! basically the entire time. If the fans want it, the players will do it-- not just to please the audience, but because of course the players grew up as fans, wanting the things the people around them taught them to want from the game.

Happy birthday! Re. avoiding the news, I feel you, but I like to think about it more in terms of... information intake vs. what I can output. Taking in information about the world that helps you act in positive ways upon it is good. Taking in information in a way (and.... I think Being On The Internet is often that) that would prevent you from acting in positive ways is not good. So it sounds like you are managing your time, energy, and information well!

CONGRATS on getting the appointment with the psychiatrist! Even if this psychiatrist doesn't turn out to be The One, you have done the thing and entered the system and it sounds like the occupational health therapist is someone who can help you navigate the system. I agree that these aren't generally helpful words, and formulating more specifically what you're experiencing will be helpful both for you and for any doctor you talk to— but also, I think that "I constantly feel like a lazy idiot who sucks, and would like to not feel that way, and I am having a lot of trouble formulating a more precise description of my experience than that, which is also something I would like your help with" is a completely legitimate thing to say to a psychiatrist, and exactly the kind of mental quandary they're trained to help you navigate!

VERY TRUE. And even so, if you're going to be a month late to something, the hairdresser's is probably a good choice. There are still consequences... only hair-related consequences, which can't get that bad.

Flips! Driving! Hopefully not at the same time!

Went to the rink today in between French practice zoom and interviewing-my-friends-about-art podcasting. Tried skating backwards for the first time. Fell a few times but not at high speeds 😂 Gymnastics yesterday was, as always, low energy; I don't know if it's just something about Sundays? I usually take Sunday off my ADHD meds, but that didn't have a huge effect last session. This session, the time I'm training before I coach the adult class is just... there's one other class there, and the coach is a kind of quiet teenager that I don't really know but the CEO was enthusiastic about me going in to train at that time because it meant I could be the official Adult In The Gym for insurance purposes and he didn't have to go in and supervise. IDK! She never puts on music, which seems like a silly thing to make a differemce, I'm just used to the gymnastics club being a loud busy place and feel lethargic when it's not. However, I did manage to do some front layout fulls of the trampoline, THANK GOD, I had gotten into a mindfuck situation which happens, depending on who you ask, either when you twist too early in a front layout, or when you have hardcoded the "wrong" twisting directions into your body (i.e. I cartwheel and roundoff right but twist left, which is technically mismatched) and as a result end up going for a full and end up twisting half in one direction and then the second half back in the direction you came from, i.e. no net rotation at all. BUT I seem to have fixed it: ALSO, there's a former competitive athlete who comes to adult gym who did a little pommel horse lesson yesterday, and I realized I'd been trying to be hollow in the back (front support) stage of the circle, when you actually want to be slightly open. Which makes sense, since your hips need to be open in the front and sides, why wouldn't they also be in the back. But I think that will help with my quest for mushroom circles. Whenever I actually work on pommel again. I never do it on Wednesdays because the gym is busy and I don't want people looking at my flailing.

Yeah. I think part of the cognitive dissonance for me is the difference between the mens' and womens' games— the women do seem to get penalties for being violent in ways they aren't allowed to be, but they don't seem to have a culture of drop-everything-and-punch fights during games, so clearly it is possible to play hockey without frequent fights. I can see the argument, however, that fights are the natural extension of allowing checking in the gameplay, so you kind of have a choice between no-violent-contact-or-else hockey, or some-violent-contact-which-will-inevitably-sometimes-get-out-of-hand hockey.

that path is gorgeous!

Went to a junior hockey game yesterday! Coming from a perspective of knowing nothing at all about hockey and trying to learn what the sport is from observation, it was really interesting to compare this game (men's hockey, players drafted into NHL teams regularly) with the I went to last week, which was the womens' team at the university. Obviously the biggest difference was that the junior team was, well, better, which I wasn't sure I would actually have the discernment to be able to see, but definitely could; the speed of the skating, the passing, the... idk, organization of bodies so that everyone always had options of who to pass to? Was just a whole other level. There's also the fact that the mens' game allows checking and the womens' doesn't. Which, if you had asked me before, I would have said I either had no opinion on checking, or would prefer to watch a game without it. But actually... the actual checking, the fact that you are allowed to put yourself a location someone else is already occupying in order to get the puck, I think actually did make the game more interesting to me? I mean... a lot of sport is kind of inherently about aggression? And I mean that in a good-to-neutral way, I guess; humans have physically aggressive feelings and it feels good to have outlets for them! So I'm not necessarily anti-violence. That's what I liked about the womens' game too! It wasn't not violent; the game itself was violent, even in the absence of "illegal" contact. So given that, I'm trying to figure out why the actual fighting in the mens' game... kind of ruined it for me? Given that I am not opposed to violence in theory— what's the difference between smashing someone against the boards, and punching him after for good measure? And I think part of it is the feeling of dishonesty or cognitive dissonance that there is around fighting. Like, it's not allowed, you'll get a penalty, it's not sportsmanlike. And yet, as soon as two guys pulled off each others' helmets and started punching each other... the cameras focused on them, and the crowd cheered, and the refs kind of just hovered around until one got the other to the ground. Clearly, there is also a perception that fighting is in some situations honourable and sportsmanlike and the only possible response to certain kinds of slights! Which I would be okay with, except, y'know, if fighting a guy for something he did in a hockey game were the only reasonable response, why stop with a little scrap on the ice? Shouldn't you come to the aid of your teammate, if he's fighting? Why not take it out back after the game, if that's the only way to defend your honour? Clearly, if the main goal of hockey is to be a game where people compete to put a puck in a net, deciding that fighting is OK is just... not super practical. So, OK, if fighting is in fact dishonourable and unsportsmanlike then... well, I'm going to think less of people who do it, and become less invested in the success of their team. Which is kind of where I'm at. Watching a fight makes me think, this is stupid, you're stupid, your whole team is stupid, now I'm less impressed with your abilities than I was before. There's also something almost infantilizing about the fights, that I find kind of creepy. Like, there's so much power and mature skill on display, and then suddenly they're being separated and sent to time-out jail like kindergarteners? idk, aren't they embarrassed? (Don't answer that. I'm sure they're not. I'm sure they think they're cool and assume everyone else does too.)

If any opportunity arises for non-skating foot knives, I will definitely take it! Huh, I don't think it ever actually occurred to me to use the toe as a brake on figure skates! So far the differences for me seem to be that I'm a lot more likely to pitch forward , since I'm used to the pick catching me, and I was used to using it for propulsion a bit, too, so I have to actually learn how to get momentum from a side-to-side motion instead of a "walking" kind of thing. Also, since I only ever skated in a "family outing to toddle around the rink in the park" kind of way, skating with the goal of eventually learning hockey means I would need to learn a whole lot more skating skills that I never learned in the first place— turning and stopping quickly, skating backwards, etc.

UP TO NO GOOD YOUNGSTER. WELL DONE

TRUE, I do still hate running. There will be no running this challenge except the kind with knives strapped to my feet. I... don't know! Honestly, probably! I keep getting ads for a piano-teaching app on duolingo, so...

A ranger? Oh no! I've been an assassin so long. Okay, not that long, but the Rangers is the largest guild, and as Plutarch, "I live in a small city, and I prefer to dwell there that it may not become smaller still," I didn't want to be a ranger, EVERYONE'S a ranger, come on now. But maybe it's time for me to accept that the real action is in Rome/that my entire life is a mediation of the driving need to do ALL THE THINGS with the necessity of choosing some subset of Things to actually get done, at risk of being paralyzed by how very many things there are in the universe. So: Ranger. I went to a hockey game last week, and decided I wanted to learn how to skate on hockey skates/maybe eventually play hockey. So, I have three fitness Things that I want to keep up this challenge: -Gymnastics: Wednesday/Sunday, with Wednesday being my main training day where I can go to the gym while EVERYONE ELSE is there and marvel at all the gymnastics happening, and Sunday I come in a bit early before I coach my adult class to do some flips. Lifting: Tuesday/Thursday/Friday. I'm still trying for Thursday, even though i teach a Zoom class at 2:30 and had been spending Thursday mornings wandering around the house muttering maniacally to myself about math for a pretend audience. But if I take the car to the gym that morning then I'll have plenty of time. (I usually take the bus.) Skating: Once a week! There's open skate Mondays 2:30-3:30, so I'm going to aim for that. I need to look up stopping, backwards skating, etc. Other things I will do this challenge: learn python (I got a summer job that... has something to do with data science? I literally have no idea what it is or how I was chosen but hey), learn classical mechanics (my one class that I am taking this semester is first-year physics, which yes hilariously I am taking first-year physics and teaching first-year math, because when I went back to school I MEANT to take science classes that I'd been scared to take in high school because I couldn't do math, but then I had to take a math prereq first, and fell into a rabbit hole of math, and now need to get around to those science classes, and going from differential equations last semester to a physics class which does not have calculus as a prereq this semester is a really bizarre form of whiplash and confusion), keep practicing and making reeds even though concerts are cancelled for the entire month, buy peg dope and new strings for my violin and take it out of the case for 15 min/day, keep up my now weeklong duolingo streak (anyone want to be duolingo friends? https://www.duolingo.com/profile/_tei) and-- GO TO BED BY 11:30 AND AIM TO WAKE UP BY 8 SO I HAVE TIME TO DO ALL THESE THINGS