agitated outsider

I just remembered the name of my old Twitter handle. It's strange that I couldn't even remember. I get flak on Twitter sometimes, because my new account is so new. A less established account can be a red flag for all sorts of nefarious Twitter doings, apparently. One reason Twitter is such a cesspool is that it's a perfect format for arguing. People get in the habit of thinking the worst of each other, as soon as possible.

Sometimes I've explained that my old account was deleted long ago. It's made me nervous that if they should ask the name of my old identity, I'd have to concede that I couldn't even remember. I changed it a few times, as is Twitter custom. I tried to use my real name for a while, to appear more serious, and avoid the need to come up with something clever.

It's just argue-media Twitter though. Unless you're a famous brand name blue check, who you are exactly doesn't matter. It's all a bunch of one liners. A few months before leaving, we were having the police brutality riots around the country. The phrase, "outside agitator" was coming up a lot, so towards the end there, I was going by "agitated outsider." 

Nothing good ever came of that, by the way. They just beat the shit out of the protesters month after month, until they stopped. All that going on in the middle of a pandemic, too. Crazy times, and they're only getting darker. Speaking of which, I'm still feverish. Ordered some free covid tests a few days ago. I'll probably get them in 6-8 weeks, because our government is a few decades behind on everything.

Aside from the fever of about 100-101f, I have no other symptoms. Just a little sore in all the places I've had reoccurring issues. My ribs, my knee, my wrists, both shoulders. I wasn't initially inclined to chalk that up to being sick, but it's a little strange given that I haven't even been getting to the gym. I've been depressed and lethargic, but that's typically what happens when I haven't been getting to the gym.

I used to think it was important to be reassured when in doubt, to be calmed when afraid, to be cheered up when feeling bad. I figured whatever our problems may be, feeling bad only makes our chances of overcoming them worse. I believed in trusting that if we feel better, we'd be strong enough to make the difficult choices and do the harder things.

Negativity was my nemesis, causing depression and fear, making it more difficult to do anything. The worst way to get a person to do anything is to make them feel bad, right? Essentially, I had this idea that achievement comes naturally, if we don't obstruct it. A lesson learned in childhood, when it was closer to the truth. Someone should have beaten it out of me early.

I look back on my life, and wow, I really fucked up. I spent forty years making excuses for doing nothing. How I felt in the moment seemed like everything. Now it seems more apparent that we should be less concerned with how we feel, and more with what we're seeking to experience and achieve. We shouldn't be afraid of pain, suffering, or feeling bad. This is just life. The real tragedy is in a life unlived.

It feels like my options are a lot more limited than they used to be. I am taking my own advice to some extent, but still making excuses. I've been making progress, but I'm just about out of runway. Sucks. I have all sorts of great excuses. I ask myself though, is this really the best you could do? Is this the life you want to claim as your own? Looking at everything that went wrong and went right, at who I think I am.. this? Really? 

Fuck you. That's insulting as hell. I should have done so much more than this. Whatever my limitations, I should have become so much more than this.

I compared my situation to that of an old plant, recently. One that's overgrown and dying because it hasn't been well taken care of or pruned. Sometimes the best way to save it to prune almost everything away. Refocus all its energy on the healthiest parts, by getting rid of everything else. That's what I've been doing with training. I cut almost everything else out of my life. I've barely even been taking care of my plants. I devote every bit of energy I can to getting to the gym as often as I can. Which is to say, not nearly as often as it would be if I were younger.

Sometimes it's too late. You do everything to save a plant, but it's a process, and sometimes the countervailing processes of atrophy and death come along more quickly. For quite a while, it can be difficult to tell which way it will go.

v * Z * v

The Bucha Massacre is a propaganda operation by Ukraine to frame Russia for a massacre that never occurred. Your first clue should be the media frenzy to escalate the conflict. Working as intended. Second, look at the original claim that Russians executed these people before leaving, proven by satellite imagery showing the bodies have been there for weeks? Uh, which is it? 

Why does it matter? Weeks ago is a whole other story, and it only explains some of the bodies. Many of them seem to be the Russian sympathizers and "saboteurs" killed by Ukraine after Russia left. Others are random victims of shelling and the like. In other words, they're getting bodies from anywhere they can to concoct this story. There's no evidence of an actual massacre.

It's war, so of course it's tragic. The images are horrifying, of so many people who died in terrible ways. So many lives abruptly unlived. This is why the US should never have been fucking around in Ukraine in the first place, and why Zelenskiy needs to take Russia's peace deal.