intracultural communication

This COM requirement class I'm taking, intercultural communication, so far, has not gotten into any specifics about any particular cultures.  We talk about how communication works, the use of symbols, intentional vs unintentional.  Reminds me of a 5th grade "gifted & talented" class.  So far, very familiar almost juvenile material.

The class turns out to be oddly social.  The instructor's lectures feels almost like an hour long chat, and then we split into groups and discuss something, like three paragraph long scenarios involving a few interactions, and how intentional any communication therein would be.  Ok, whatever.  Have to admit, I need the practice.

The class is mostly women.  My chatting partners have been almost all women.  This makes the issue more acute, but broadly speaking, it's making me realize that's I've never talked to people in my entire adult life.  Aside from family and a few other close people - I've never had conversations with strangers, people I barely know, or just met.

Even in the instances where I spent time around people, like back in Minneapolis, I barely talked to any of them about anything ever.  Aside from a few polite exchanges.  I've managed to go most of my life without having conversations with people.  No wonder I never meet anyone, right?

I feel insulated being older.  This class seems to be especially young for some reason.  It doesn't matter as much whether or not they like me.  We're not peers, we're not going to be friends, regardless.  Oddly enough, that makes it so much easier for me to be friendly.  Smiling, making eye contact.  Even stringing together words of appropriate brevity and substance.

For my other class, I have to read a chapter, and then write 5-7 sentences of substance about what I liked most or some such.  This is a weird semester.  Given the lighter course load, I wanted to focus more on training, but then I hurt my knee.  Old injury that flares up sometimes and makes me stop using my leg for a week or two.

why so slow

Interesting article on why sloths move so slowly.  It's an adaptation to having such terrible diets while living in trees where they're relatively safe.  They don't need to move fast, so they conserve energy by expending very little to keep muscles moving and active the way other mammals do.  Similar to being cold blooded, they depend on the environment being warm enough, so they don't have to burn energy keeping their muscles warm.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190828-why-do-sloths-move-so-slowly

Growth hormone is utilized in the metabolism of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates.  Even had an endocrinologist tell me that it should really be called the metabolic hormone, as that's even more of its function than growing is. Metabolism is the process through which the body generates its energy.

I'm not deficient in any of these nutrients, my system gets enough, but struggles to convert it into energy no matter how well I eat.  I'm often of the mindset that I need to conserve what I have, careful about every bit I need to spend.   Could be an adaptation of my own, learned over years of feeling depleted all the time.

For over a year now, I've been attempting to expend as much energy as I can instead, to train my body to produce more of it.  This is bound to have limited results given my condition, but makes much more sense than conserving it.  That's not how energy seems to work, given that I'm not literally a sloth.

headkicks

So odd the way I want to write about my martial arts classes lately.  It's not very interesting, even to me.  Something about my brain chemistry after class just seems to line up.  It's going well.  I wish it were easier to remember that before class.  I keep trying to go to more per week, but failing.  After about two classes a day, two days a week, my willpower seems to be depleted for the week.  It shouldn't take so much.

Sparring was strange tonight though.  A new type of class, where the instructor really emphasized wanting us to go light impact.  Then announcing rules that changed every round.  One person, no kicking.  The other, no punching.  Or what what he called Kyokushin style, no punches to the head, and no clinching - vs. no lead leg kicks.

When I was assigned "Kyokushin style," we were reminded that this does include head kicks.  I was feeling confident enough to try a few, something I haven't done in ten years.  Not only did they land, but fast and ridiculously gentle.  This is better than I used to be.

In the prior class, I'd been partnered with a man of substantial girth.  The instructor joked that those were some extra heavy kicks to be holding for, even with the heavy kicking shield.  Even seemed to watch me to make sure I'd be ok at one point.  Wasn't actually bad though.  Not that I'd want to get hit even once without the padding, but holding was fine.  

He was the latest person to be surprised at how hard I can hit, when it was my turn.  I've been getting better at this.  There's are so many little details to maximizing the amount of energy you can put into a strike.

I can finally do kip-ups again, too.  I'm almost 45.  Maybe getting older isn't such a catastrophe after all.

high functioning

C in calculus, A in python, onward ho.  Halfway to a degree for getting a better degree.  This semester the theme turns out to be communication, because I have these requirements to meet.  I had to pick from a list of courses ranging from customer support to an anthropology course on linguistics - that one, not actually offered this semester.  Or ever, really, but in theory.  It's in their catalog.

So, I went with the second most academic looking option on the list, intercultural communication.  I dunno, could be interesting.  Certainly something I could use some help with, given that I consider all attempts at communication to be intercultural for me.

Then another course on technical scientific writing.  It seems to be surprisingly focused on the the communication aspect of that, adapting it to a given audience, accessibility, brevity.. Eh, not so interesting, but should be tolerable.

It's about time I do this to say the least, but I still have a few reservations.