f* politics *k

Found a clip of Putin's speech today. What Putin is actually saying, in Russian, subtitled. I can only understand a few words here and there. Khorosho, ochen, seyches, neonatsistov...

NATO, the US government, and their corporate media stenographers are all so full of shit.

 -  2 / 2 5 / 2 0 2 2  - 

What kind of responses would I get on Facebook?

- focus entirely on the Nazi reference, because that's what's in the thumbnail. I chose that line for being eye-catching, but it's only one issue of many he raises.

- indicating that you didn't even watch the speech. No one does. Ok, then I have no interest in what you want to say about it.

- call it propaganda, as if I'm simply believing Putin, when in reality, Putin is saying things I already know to be true. I'm just surprised to hear it coming directly from him, instead of Aaron Maté or Anya Parampil. I was surprised to find it so easily on YouTube. 

It's ridiculous to call a president's speech propaganda. Like it or not, what he's saying is a critical part of the story, but Americans can't even be bothered to listen to it, before comparing him to Hitler. The Azov Battalion are literally Nazis, and they've been murdering people in Ukraine for years. Putin is stepping more fully into an ongoing conflict, not starting one. Meanwhile, Biden bombs Somalia in the midst of all this, and barely a peep about it. MSNBC is propaganda.

Couldn't give up the news for long, but at least now I'm not getting into arguments with randos on YouTube until getting back from the gym. 

BJJ, three days in a row. Had to wander all over Winooski in the heavy snow earlier today. Still hit the gym afterwards. Holy shit. It's got to be the anemia. I don't know what else could be making such a dramatic difference, but I'm suddenly in really good shape, even compared to many of the 20-somethings there. I had to pause to let my grappling prodigy partner take a minute, for the first time ever.

Almost got a choke. Almost got an armbar. Got tapped out six times. The two people I rolled with are both really good, but I never would have had the stamina to lose that much before. I feel like I've developed a superpower. I'm terrified that it will turn out to be brief and inexplicable. 

I don't want to go back to feeling like I have this tiny reserve of energy to expend each day, that I have to conserve and use as efficiently as possible, because it's never enough, and I always ended up feeling terrible. Plus the nausea. I haven't even been getting the hiccups anymore. I don't understand this, but it's awesome.

saṃsāra

For the longest time, I held this ideal, represented by this image. Life is suffering. The only escape from that is to accept it, to find peace with it.

In recent years, I've got it in my head that maybe I don't want my life to be suffering. I don't want to accept it. I want to change it, but it can be frustrating as hell trying to figure out what can be changed. I've tried to write about this a lot, but this latest turn of events poses a great illustration.

I'm feeling a lot better, and that seems to be holding steady so far. Had another good night at the gym. Made it through two hours of classes feeling ready for more. I'm concerned that I might be experiencing some kind of fleeting manic state due to stopping the sertraline, but I don't think that would be enough to account for my dramatically improved endurance. It does seem that I must have the physical capacity for it.

Most likely, it's a combination of the medication issue, addressing my anemia, and the efforts I've been making to get back into shape at home. I've been doing everything I can think of to remedy the situation, which is a lot less likely to happen when you're at peace and ok with it. On the other hand though, this is all precarious circumstance. My well-being has become way too dependent on my physical fitness, something that is inherently temporary and can be suddenly taken away again for all sorts of reasons.

My mood is better because I've been kicking ass lately. Isn't that what I've been aiming for? I know this causes a number of neurochemical boosts. This feels like Buddhist sacrilege, but we're not talking about craving achievements, material gains, or anything else in which it's never really enough. Rather, there are some conditions necessary for healthy brain function. 

We don't need more and more food, we only need enough to be healthy. Similarly, it is the process of self improvement, or social interaction, or getting enough time to play, that is conducive to good mental health. Craving more and more of these things indicates a deficit, probably in some other area. We don't need more and more, but we do need enough. Otherwise, life is more suffering than it needs to be. 

Under other circumstances, these circumstances might be less critical. Clearly I have some deficits I'm compensating for, but I've become very skeptical of the notion that anyone transcends this stuff. It's just life. Better to make sense of the mechanics of it, than pretend we can be better than that.

challenged

Had some interesting conversations on the way home from the fights on Saturday. The one woman in the car was expressing frustration with men going easy on her, when I realized that what she seemed to be saying, aside from feeling disrespected, is that she wants to be challenged. We're there in large part to become stronger, by overcoming challenges. Going easy on someone robs them of that. Being about 60kg in an MMA gym, I know that feeling myself.

Myself and another guy in the car pointed out that we often go easy on people we don't know yet, because we need to get a sense of where our training partners are at, to know how hard we should be pushing. It can be difficult, even with people I do know. Some people can handle more than others, and some want to handle more than others. Some of us are there to be challenged, punched in the face, and kicked in the shins more than others.

It's a large part of my own motivation. I rolled with five or six different people after class yesterday, got in a few rounds of kickboxing, then some takedown practice. I had little problem taking down everyone. That is, I'm good at taking the fight to the ground, at which point I still lose quite a bit. For less of a challenge, I could let them get up, kick them in the head, and then throw them on the ground again. 

Probably helps that I'm not anemic anymore. I've been training harder than I ever have, because it's gotten easier than it's ever been.  That said, I was more sore afterwards than I've been in a long time. The recovery from being challenged can be just as important. Fortunately, it's mostly just healthy muscle stress. No injuries or serious joint problems.

The desire to be challenged in training combat sports can be more specific than challenge itself. Lots of things are challenging. Working out at home, rock climbing, calculus, whatever. It's competitive in a very primal sort of way, to be challenged by someone else. More than just doing something difficult, there's a dopaminergic social component to challenging interaction.

It helps a whole lot if it's something we enjoy and the interactive part helps with that, too. Other people can make it more stressful and daunting, but also more rewarding. It's also nice to be challenged in arenas we have enough chance of success in. I've come to realize that I'm even developing a reputation at the gym. The other day, someone I've never seen before tells me that he's watched me drill spinning back kicks. He said that I looked like the one to ask how it's done.

He's right. It's an MMA gym, and I'm the only one there who throws lots of kicks like that. I landed a spinning wheel kick to an opponent's head sparring yesterday. Gently of course. A flashier move, but the spinning back kick is more practical. It's a move I've seen end numerous fights. I taught the basics of it as well as I could, but I need some practice with the teaching bit, too. 

As for the Battle in Barre (pronounced "berry" because Vermonters insist on pronouncing it obviously wrong) the two fighters from my gym did well. It was their first striking competition, and they both managed to lose by split decision. Close fights, that with some minor adjustments, I think they both could have handily won. One of them should have won, in my opinion, but she gets a bloody nose easily during these cold dry months, and judges tend to count visible damage like that against people.

I wasn't sure how it would feel to see the violence in person, but it wasn't an issue. None of the fights were all that rough. I wasn't crazy about it though. Like watching live music, I don't really get it. Sound quality and visibility are worse, it's noisy, chaotic, and distracting. I'd rather enjoy such things at home, but I did enjoy the ride to and from the event. It was nice hanging out with people, there was a sense of camaraderie that I haven't felt in a very long time. 

I found myself able to converse, share my ideas and take interest in theirs. I felt like I was even being likeable, finding points of affinity with each of them. It was a nice experience. As they dropped me off, I said that I hoped to see them all at the gym the next morning. And I did. Even the one who was hungover. 

It's been a good week, but I can't help but think this is probably a fleeting moment in time, before life goes back to being a nightmare again. I'm torn about ending my blog now. I generally adhere pretty well to what I say I'm going to do, but it really seems like the sertraline did a number on me. 

It's so strange that antidepressants do this to people sometimes. Pharmaceutical companies sweep it under the carpet pretty easily, because it's difficult to quantify psychological states. They have an absurd amount of latitude to downplay negative consequences while over-selling success rates. 

They even spin the well documented increase to suicide risk as the medication working too darn well. "People suddenly feel more motivated and" blah blah blah. It's speculative nonsense. The reality of it is that these drugs just fuck you up sometimes. My experience isn't even that unusual, but you'd never know it, from the doctors who prescribe this stuff. They'll act like it's unheard of, and I'm clearly just being weird.

Maybe I am still blogging, in any case. I'm not sure yet.

endemic

Taking sertraline again turned out to be a remarkably bad idea. I even let my doctor talk me into bumping up the dosage a few times, sticking with it for months, but it just kept getting worse. I was so fatigued, I couldn't get to the gym. When I did get there, my performance was awful. I felt like keeling over as soon as I started. I noticed that this began around the time I started taking the antidepressant, but my doctor dismissed the correlation. I thought because it acts on norepinephrine, it should increase energy, not wreck it. I sank deeper into depression, thinking it must be because I'm getting old.

Google it though. I wish I had, a lot sooner. Fatigue is a top side effect, along with nausea, which has also been a problem when I spar. It's been awful. Also, I don't know why I thought it was a norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, it's an SSRI. I stopped taking it, and it's been a miraculous improvement. Now I just have to deal with the withdrawal, but even that hasn't been as bad as taking the stuff. I desperately needed some help getting through the winter, and only managed to make things worse. 

Trying meds again wasn't just an act of desperation, but also the idea that it might be time to reach for a springboard. All the help I can get, to pull myself up out of this hole, like I did a few years ago. Didn't work out that way this time. I'm not where I was back then, and maybe it's not realistic to hope for similar results. So, I try to adapt, move on, focus on what's working for me now. 

I'm also thinking maybe it wasn't the sertraline that helped me so much, a few years back. I keep wondering why all these tactics don't seem to work like they did back then, but the reality of it is that the last few years have been brutal. I'm injured and scarred. It's been a huge setback, when that was supposed to be a last ditch effort. I was freaking out at the beginning of the pandemic, because I saw some of this coming. I'm sure I'm not the only one who isn't going to entirely recover from this, ever. My hopes and dreams were torpedoed, so I need some new ones. 

I'm happy to finally be able to spar without throwing up, again. That helps me more than anything, and it's nuts how badly meds can fuck up the very things that help. They work sometimes, for some people, and I take no issue with that, but I think I need to stop trying them, myself.

The pandemic is basically over in the US, but liberals are having trouble seeing it. The Canadian trucker protests are a little strange, because they're happening right as all sorts of restrictions are ending anyhow - because the pandemic is ending. Yet, they're still pushing mandates and passports, and treating protesters like monsters.

To be clear, I'm well aware we still have covid cases, and people are still dying. People who are at elevated risk still need to be careful - but they need to be careful about the flu, RSV, and even the myriad viruses we call the the common cold, too. Covid is still a little more dangerous than all of them, but it's everywhere and now due to omicron being milder and high vaccination rates, it's harmless for most of us. Restrictions no longer make sense, and vaccine mandates never did, aside from in hospitals, nursing homes, and the like.

Covid season is over for now, but we'll still have covid season again, and hospitals will be overrun, the same way they often are due to flu season. That has more to do with how our profit driven hospitals are run, than anything people are doing wrong, getting themselves sick. Covid is finally just another virus to add to a list of similar viruses we already deal with. It's not novel anymore.

The science has changed, but for a variety of reasons, some are not adapting or even aware of it. I imagine it might have even been psychologically damaging to spend all this time hiding, such that we become afraid to ever stop. That's something I know a little too much about, but that's also why I'm less tolerant of staying that way. It's a trap, and I suspect lots of people have become stuck in it.

The media isn't helping. Liberal politicians aren't helping. Corporate influence isn't helping. I'm not sure what they're up to. Or if they're just scared and don't know what's going on. 

I'm going to an event tomorrow, with a group from my gym. Two of them are fighting in it. They were hoping for MMA fights, but could only find kickboxing opponents. I was hoping for MMA, too. In any case, I'll be in a van for a few hours with a bunch of people I barely know. None of us are going to be wearing masks. I'm not sure about the event itself, but if there are no mandates, people won't be masking, for the most part. 

I'm not worried about covid at all, not because I won't get it, but because it's just another virus now. They still auto-censor me on YouTube, for commenting that covid is like the flu, but it is. To some extent, it always was. The flu was one of the most deadly pandemics in human history, back in its day, but these things change.

Nailed an Imanari Roll for the first time today. Grappled for almost an hour straight. I'm wondering if they make a serotonin reuptake disinhibitor. I might be feeling some kind of rebound that won't last. Or it's what happens when I can get to the gym regularly enough. I'm not sure.