An Open Letter

I had my deload week Leading into a new block, and immediately on squats, I had knee pain. I think I cannot do wide stance squats, And I’m thinking about finding a powerlifting coach so that I can both find a specific programming and also work on my form. I know it’s only really been a week of throwing in some random rehab exercises here and there, but I was hoping I wouldn’t have this patella pain.

Today was a really difficult day if I’m being honest. I was super stressed and tired from trying to organize the IRL Minecraft Lan party, And when people finally came the people that said they would come earlier to help me showed up late, and a lot of things weren’t working. My home network ended up breaking, and I spent so much time trying to debug it running upstairs and downstairs and things ended up breaking my existing home network set up, so my home lab went off-line, so my discord bought my servers all the other processes running there and it’s been a while since I’ve had to do any kind of maintenance and so it was a nightmare trying to do that while my computer isn’t even working. I was really overwhelmed and tired trying to do all of that, and eventually we all said let’s take a break and get some food. We went altogether and I brought Hash, and we got pizza and I started to feel a little bit better being able to take a break and just joke around a little bit. When we got home, I went upstairs, and my bathroom was flooded because someone left the faucet open. The counters were covered, the floor was covered, and apparently it leaked through all of my cabinets, and then my friends downstairs told me that the light fixture was leaking. There was a good amount of water falling from the ceiling downstairs because the leak had gotten that big, and the next few hours were me and my friends helping thankfully, trying to do as much damage control as possible. We ended up unscrewing the light fixture to let a lot of the water drain, and trying to deal with all of the things that were damaged. I remember, I was super exhausted and honestly depressed this week, and I just wanted a break, and with the whole networking and home Internet fiasco, and the devices breaking, I just wanted to end, and then I came home to an even bigger crisis. eventually, though, when we dealt with most of the things to the point where all of the immediate issues were addressed, we ended up at least playing Mario party, which was fun. We also watched a movie before that. I then had to go and clean up some more stuff and deal with some more damage control, and I decided to go to the gym. I was exhausted and my new block just started and I didn’t think that I would be able to do all of the things programed and so I instead just treated it as a fuck around day where I could just do whatever. At some point at the gym, I realized, however, that all of the things that I am stressed or overwhelmed with, they are not things that I have to do, but rather things that I get to do. This is directly from the book, nonviolent, communication, and when I applied it here, I realized how many things I have to be grateful for. My home network breaking was stressful, and I was exhausted trying to get everything working, because I had friends over at my place to play Minecraft as a lan party. That sounds like a fucking dream, and I can think of more times in my life than not that I would’ve prayed. I would be able to do something like that. I’ve always wanted to do a Lan party. And on top of it, having to reset my network was painful because of all of the other devices and things in the house that would require reconfiguration. Trying to debug the home server, or make sure that the backup NAS doesn’t break, but all of these things are stuff that I was super excited to get and I still am excited to have. I remember how I wanted these things for a while, and I wanted to save up for them, and I ended up being able to get them from my dad. I have a little server rack. And I’m grateful that I have all of these things that I get to reconfigure. And the fact that I’m so stressed about water being trapped in between floors is only there because I have a fucking house with two floors. That is so incredibly lucky and I cannot think of anyone else that has something like that, and I will be able to fix it and learn from this. I was also able to call my dad and ask him for help and he picked up immediately, and he offered to come over even though it’s not necessary, and he is coming over tomorrow. I have a dad that I can call and rely on for things like this, and that is near me and accessible. And I came home to this massive mess that happened because I had friends over that feel comfortable enough to use my things, and we came back from all getting food together. I remember when I was a kid I would go to sleep and try to dream about just looking through the window of an apartment and seeing me with like three other friends just hanging out casually. I went and got food with four friends. And I remember I used to pray and look at myself in the future and think about how beautiful it is that I can take that for granted. That would mean I’m not afraid of losing it, and I wouldn’t think that this is something worthy of a dream, just an average Saturday. And honestly, I’ve started to cry a little bit while using voice to text to say this. I remember when I would struggle to make new friends when I moved here or when my life got fucked over from my last breakup, and having to push myself hard to try to make all of these things again, and telling myself how this is one of those situations where you plant the seed now for the fruit later. I remember how lonely I would feel and how anxious and worried I was about how I couldn’t control it directly, and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to find my people, and all of the times where I tried and it didn’t work, and I would feel more and more afraid that I wouldn’t be able to find friends. And now I can take it for granted. And when I think about the fact that I went and got pizza and a McDonald’s drink with friends with my dog with me, I can’t help, but to think that in one of the worst days I’ve had in a while, younger me would be so fucking excited. I can type this now while walking around my bedroom with my dog happily licking his paws on the bed getting ready for sleep. And my friends know my dog. And all I can do is think back to all the different points in my life where I have dreamed of such innocent goals like this. I would close my eyes and daydream and try to convince myself that things would be better in the future, and it would be finally right. And I have gotten so comfortable with this relative heaven. It makes me cry and these tears are of happiness. I know that life has its way of giving everyone their fair share of misery, but I’m so incredibly fortunate to have these stresses. And even though I feel exhausted and stressed and scared and overwhelmed, if I think about younger me, seeing this, I don’t think I would be able to hide my excitement out of thinking my dreams would come true. I really really am grateful for these blessings. And I’m so thankful to myself for being strong and working towards these things even though they felt so incredibly impossible.

This is one of those moments where I think that depression is a blessing in disguise. If I did not have this chronic obstacle to joy or any kind of willingness to live, I have been forced to learn and develop these skills and intentional ways of living, such as this exercise of gratitude. And it is these practices that I’m required to constantly do in order to manage my mental illness, and while that is exhausting, it also gives me this incredible resilience to difficulties in life. The same situations that would cause more Neurotypical people to struggle end up being the same amount of difficulty regular life hands me, and so I have enough familiarity and experience with pulling myself out of it. A marathon is not as painful if you run every day, as opposed to only during the marathon.

I’m honestly really overwhelmed today, I just feel like I haven’t had any energy or motivation for anything. I did no work, and I ended up spending four hours trying to set up all the stuff for my Minecraft event tomorrow. I didn’t finish and I will have to do stuff tomorrow, and I’m exhausted. But I for some reason got motivated to play guitar, and I learned at least how to play parts of sober to death. And now I feel better. Something about just singing and playing the music and really putting your heart into it.

I went to Costco and I was dressed like a bum because I took the day off, last night I got home Late and I had the Taco Bell Baja blast that apparently has a pretty substantial amount of caffeine to it. As a result, I could not sleep at all due to restless leg. I ended up actually getting up at 3:30 out of my bed because I could not sleep and going on a jog around the neighborhood shirtless. I eventually was able to sleep, but I called out of work because I felt like there was no way I could’ve been productive. But I digress, the thing I was asked in Costco, however, was about the macros on the chicken bakes that I got, and they commented about how it’s obvious I lift. I told him honestly I don’t really know, I am not locked in on my diet like that, and he was shocked and taken aback by that. I feel like I get that pretty often, and honestly, I’m not completely sure why I am able to have the body I do while still eating like trash. But part of me feels guilty because when I tell people that I don’t know if this is necessarily reasonable for everyone or if this is another spot where I’ve gotten incredibly genetically lucky. I think about how maybe my metabolism is pretty good, but I also did get very overweight or I guess very overweight compared to what I was used to when I truly ate horribly. But now I exercise very consistently and for a lot of time. Typically I just end up saying because I work at very hard. That’s why I get the benefits that I have, but I’m not sure if this applies to everyone. It’s one of those things I’m grateful for and fortunate with, but I’m not sure if it is fair if that makes sense. It’s one of those things that I don’t want anyone to be envious of.

I just got back from a J. Cole concert. N Had a friend that was flying in that couldn’t make it and so he offered me the ticket for free, and I was super happy to say yes. I had a feeling during the show of how high school me would’ve gone crazy to have this experience. The fact that I was able to see J. Cole live and in honestly pretty good seats. I’m really grateful.

I feel like my sleep schedule has definitely been lacking recently. I find myself more and more staying up to chase, temporary dopamine, whether it’s through gaming or watching YouTube, or scrolling on my phone. I’m not proud of this. But I guess I want to try to look at this with as a little shade as possible, because I think that a shame is only something that makes it harder to make meaningful differences with. I feel like this is one of those habits, like waking up early, or not using my phone in bed. The more I normalize, and I expect watching YouTube before bed, the harder it is to stop and the more I do it. I think I could benefit from being more disciplined with this again.

J and I planned to hang out today, and we ended up trying to re-create poster boy for five hours on FL studio. Honestly, I’m pretty proud with what we made even though it’s nowhere near Accurate enough to pass, but I actually learned a lot while making it. I actually really enjoyed that, and I could see myself fucking around with more music stuff, especially if I have a friend to do it with.

I went to the mall with L and L and I got a shirt and pants. I was also looking for a pair of glasses, and the guy there commented about my traps, and asked me if I get that a lot. He said he immediately noticed when I entered, and I was wearing just a regular T-shirt. I think the journaling and writing down all of these compliments have started to work because I’m able to recognize That I do get this feedback a lot, and that I am jacked. I think it’s also one of those things where I have been so incredibly in the fitness space in the types of content I consume, and a lot of the friends that I have outside of work, and so I forget how much of a difference it is from just the regular population who doesn’t do some sort of weightlifting. I’m really grateful to myself for getting into this hobby because I feel unrecognizable from past me, and I think it’s something that I just enjoy so incredibly much, that also has given me such drastic benefits in life.

I heard someone Describe the world as everyone having three things they can make a priority. They were originally describing it by saying how they would see someone that is incredibly muscular and think wow they look so good and instead of thinking, why don’t I look like that, it becomes that is one of their three priorities and if I made it my priority, I could also have that, but I choose not to. There are a lot of different ways I can apply this, but I’ve been thinking about it and I feel like my three priorities are powerlifting, socialization and building a social network, and I feel like I need to include Work. I’m not 100% sure if that is accurate because I do have pretty good work life balance and I know that there are very much a lot of friends and jobs where you can’t really step away from it the same way I do. But I’ve been wondering if I think that a relationship is one of these three things to me. Ignoring the fact that it’s kind of difficult to just consciously go ahead and put more effort into actively searching for a relationship, because I don’t really think that dating apps are necessarily too helpful in that regard, but just generally, I feel like one of the ways to cope with life is to not prioritize a relationship. Instead of going crazy waiting for it you can focus on the other things that make life enjoyable, and those will inherently lead to being a more desirable person and hopefully how you meet another person. But I also think about how in a relationship that is something that requires a lot of time and effort, and it’s a little bit weird to think about it in the lens that something or other will have to change or be given up. I think this shows itself a lot in something like a person getting into a relationship and then spending less time with their friends. I know I was very much guilty of this, and I guess it’s kind of natural because you are more or less spending most of your time with your partner out of other people I think. But I also think it could show up in ways like not attending to specific hobbies the same way, especially when those hobbies are kind of a means to meet a partner. I go to the gym and like powerlifting not really for a partner, that would be cool, but I’m doing these things because I enjoy them and in a relationship there’s no question I would continue to do these things. I can see however me maybe try other hobbies or things like that with the intention of finding a partner. And it feels like a weirdly disingenuous thing in my mind.

I just got home from driving to LA for a concert with friends, and on the way back I was showing some songs that I really like and explaining the stories behind them or some of the cool things behind them, and I just felt really happy and in love with a person that I am. I think it is like the same thing as the love for life that I have built up and practiced, which allows me to do things like dance and get people involved and enjoy things and find anything really, and I think that’s something that a lot of people gravitate towards. And I’m grateful for myself.