Writin' Forty

 I have lost friends over this Trump situation. You know, the whole he got re-elected for president of the United States again, which is going to be a got damned disaster on a global scale: you don't put a conman who owes unsavory characters money in charge of a country (which should be very, very obvious) but the macro level of this is something I can talk about later. I want to talk about why I lost friends. I have been ringing the alarm bell on Trump since he took stage in this tragedy of errors we call a political landscape. He lost me from his first speech where he railed against Mexicans. And he really lost me when one of the first people to commend that speech was David Duke, a well known Klansman.  I could go on and on about the outright racist, bigoted, or xenophobic statements that Trump has made. I could come up with a hell of a lot of thoughts about the rancid cult of personality that Trump has cultivated: it's awful and full of all of the worst people you can imag...

 It has been forever and a day since I wrote and I could make any number of reasons why. Ultimately, you make time for the things that are important to you and clearly, this wasn't something that was important to me, right? Ehhh...maybe. I would have thoughts about this or that and then just not commit. I would get in my head and think that no one would want to read for the 718th time about some lesson I learned from jiujitsu. I still do that, by the way. I got brown belt this January. In a whole lot of ways that shit is absolutely crazy to me. I earned it the way that you're supposed to earn things, with blood and sweat. And as the case is with any promotion you get it not because of what you've done but much more with what you can do. Almost a year in and I'm still figuring out what that means and the journey of that is allowing me to grow. That growth is going to come into play very soon because for some reason this country elected Donald Trump for president, again, ...

  Recently I reached a milestone in jiujitsu that had only somewhat to do with belt rank: I helped instruct in a class for the first time!   Technically, this is something that you can do at blue belt,  provided that  you can get out of work early enough and come to help teach the children’s class. Well, I can’t get out of work early enough consistently enough to do that so that’s out.  So  the next level of teach is teaching the adult class. We normally have enough black belts and brown belts at our school to cover down on that during our regular classes. This leaves Sunday’s class that specifically teaches blue and white belts about the techniques you learn to become purple belt.  Because I haven’t provided enough caveats, technically I have been asked to help stand in as an instructor for this Sunday class. Twice, but I was given direction to not provide instruction per se, just guide the people there since I was the most senior person in the room. ...

 I can’t remember the exact date, but somewhere around 5 years ago this week I walked into the doors of Fight to Win.  I wish I could say I did so because of Steve Hall’s lineage. Nope. It was the closest to my house 🤷🏾‍♂️. I saw a Facebook ad and reached out. Steve said I could come in that Monday and to please let him know if I wasn’t going to make it; don’t waste his time.  I mean, I showed up but I have to leave it to Steve to say if I’ve wasted his time 😂 When I walked through the door there were like 8 purple belts lined up against the wall. I left a school that was run by a purple belt…I felt I was wading into deep waters. Every single one of those purple belts were tough in their own way. I kept in my head what it was like to be a purple belt… Now I am one. Today, I helped teach a 370lb guy how to hip toss. Which means I lifted a 370lb guy and hip tossed him. There was a time I would not have even have the confidence to even try that.  Today, I looked arou...

 So in the end I guess the most important thing is the friends we made along the way. I'm getting ahead of myself. My friend Phil likes a lot of music. All types. I think it's safe to say that metalcore is his favorite. Well, metalcore is not my favorite. Matter of fact, I hadn't really listened to any metalcore until I started hanging out the big guy. I'm still ahead of myself. Phil and I met through jiujitsu. As it turns out, he is a big guy at 6'6" 275 or so and as you can guess, was the biggest guy to walk through the jiujitsu gym. At 6'3" 240 or so I was the biggest guy in the gym and with a little experience under my belt I was paired with Phil a lot.  As things normally go the person you spent time with a lot at the gym is the person you become friends with outside of the gym and I'm certainly no different here. Phil is twenty years younger than I am. Twenty. TWENTY. XX, if you're old school Italian. I can honestly say that while I have ...

  In my  oldish  age I definitely have come to realize that not everyone in America is on the same page. I mean, variety is the spice of life right? Nothing wrong with that. What constantly amazes me and saddens me is that America isn’t on the same page as to what freedom means. If you think this is going to get political, you’re probably right but I can at least let you know where I come from when it comes to how I view politics. Ever since I was basically made to pay attention to politics, which has been about 15 years or so now…let me back up. When I was still in the Air Force and stationed in San Antonio I first started paying attention to politics. More pointedly, I would hear some of the guys in the office call things “liberal” when it was a policy point that was ongoing which they disagreed with or if you were a person to say something that wasn’t the way they wanted you to say it they would call you a “liberal”.  I even saw what that was then: if you don’t th...

  I’m going to do the military thing where you start with bottom line up front. Here goes: I don’t care much for Joe Rogan. That statement isn’t really much in itself and I’m going to do everything I can to support it but it’s going to be indirect and may not even necessarily be about the man himself. It’s highly possible I do like the dude; if we were somehow to meet without cameras around we would have conversation and I would be blown away by what a complete human he is. Maybe. I try to be open m inded so that is a possibility. With that out of the way: One of the…things that bugs me about, I  dunno  if it’s even endemic to just MMA/ jiujitsu  culture or if it’s widespread to overall “manly” culture…ugh. Let me try this again. I am not the hugest fan of the “image” of being a man. No matter what, there aren’t really a ton of things around that are required for you to be a man anymore. One might say that’s the problem overall with society and I’m not really here to...