Writin' Forty

So, this weekend I had what I’d consider to be one of the biggest athletic disappointments of my life. I’ll back up by talking a little bit about how this ties in to something I wrote about many weeks ago. Jason ran the first  jiu-jitsu  school I attended. Things progressed well until life got in the way; Jason had to leave with his wife to Louisiana. He was going to close down his school but his heart, huge as it is, got in the way and he decided to keep the school open with his most trusted student running the school in his place.  At that time I was a white belt with three stripes (again,  kinda  tall midget. I can’t even state enough that white belt basically means newbie/next to nothing in the world of jiu-jitsu). There wasn’t really any other school to go to in Victoria; I knew nearly everyone coming through the doors of what was Jason’s school, I was in for the long haul. I attended just as many classes as I did before, though admittedly the level of ...

I have been having this feeling recently of being…unnecessary. I guess I should explain that. “Unnecessary” is a word that my granddad, mom’s dad, used to say when you just felt a certain way, when things just aren’t right and you can’t define why. You just know that something is off. I could be broad and say politics are bugging me (and they are) but that’s not saying much about why I feel unnecessary right now. Especially when things are going pretty damn good right now. I set a weight goal of 235lbs by the end of September. I’m at 239 or so and it’s nowhere near September. The  Longbox  Crusade is growing listeners /followers  as a podcast; people are really enjoying the rapport among the guys. It’s very gratifying to see that, all the guys work hard on the show but Pat and Jarrod put a lot of energy into editing the show and it’s awesome to see positive feedback.  Work is going well as it can be in that I haven’t been fired and I’m learning just a bit mo...

I mopped the mats yesterday at the end of jiu-jitsu class.  The way class is run there is an hour of fundamental training, a small break, an hour or so of advanced training, and then some form of sparring. Before all of that kids are on the mats training as well. As you could imagine, that’s a lot of sweat and feet and hands and hair and  gis . If you don’t clean the mats that you train on, daily, you’re opening up the entire gym to all sorts of germs and nastiness. Ringworm is nobody’s friend. Technically, it’s not something I have to do. I could leave class after advanced training. I could wait until after sparring, do some cool down stretches, rush to get my gym bag, and call it a day. Invariably, I’ll stay behind and help mop the mats.  I guess there’s a couple of reasons behind me doing so: I am a white belt (an advanced white belt, but that’s like saying I’m the tallest dwarf), the colored belts really don’ t have to clean floors due to rank , but probably ...