Awesome to read, my friend. Sorry I pulled you in—I’m just glad to know all is well!
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Hell yeah - this is great
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If it makes you feel better, I thought everything you do/did is cool. You know what’s best for your body, you work hard and the results spoke for themselves
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Appreciate the sentiment, but ideally I would have people look at my training and observe how incredibly boring it is, yet still producing results. I’ve touched that point here and there this year, but not as far as I’d like.
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You and I should start a club. This is exactly how I feel about my own log. Boring repetitive training but it works.
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You know we only come to your log for the pictures.
And the puppy
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@kdjohn - man, I questioned if I should’ve said that after I posted it but oh well 
Normally I don’t even interact with that guy, but he’s so whiny, and I’m bored at work, so I went with it.
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Very quiet in here. You all good mate ?
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100% terrible, actually. The quietness is largely due to just making sure I’m focusing on my own training and not spending so much time focusing on other’s training. Too easy for me to aimlessly scroll T-Nation.
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Whats up dude?
It’s a lot to get into, but I suppose in the spirit of the new year, and with the mentality of the Old dying and the New emerging, I’ll write something up later at work. I appreciate the concern, though.
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Alright, let’s try and tackle this.
WARNING: Metric fuckton of text incoming, with a healthy dose of rambling. Proceed at your own risk.
—
This year has been incredibly hard. Scratch that; this year has been, literally, the hardest year of my entire life. It’s been building for a while, but it reached the pinnacle around the end if the summer/fall. Can’t remember exactly. I came to a point of total loss of identity, and was plagued by nothing but anxiety, depression and fear that manifested as unbridled rage, day in and day out.
This greatly affected my wife and our relationship, and my relationship with my son, who’s only 2. I treated both of them very, very poorly. In an effort to save myself, I convinced in my mind that the only course of action was to drive them away, because continually messing up and hurting them was hurting me further. The result was me telling my wife we should divorce, because our individual traumas weren’t compatible, and they were better off without me. Like a fucking idiot. However, this isn’t what I actually wanted, it’s just the only thing I felt was possible given how deeply in the hole I was.
Initially, my wife showed unwavering support, denied this was the course of action that should be taken, and assured me we would get through this. I was resolved to heal, and immediately pursued counselling, which took much longer to actually get into than I wanted, but will finally start up in the new year. Unfortunately, my actions brought some unresolved traumas for my wife from a previous abusive relationship, as well as some repressed feelings from early on in our own relationship, and she has now stated that she needs space from our marriage to heal, and she cannot confirm whether she will or won’t want to remain married after this interim period is over.
I am utterly heartbroken, and at rock bottom.
Now, how did this all come about? Let’s get into it…
—
When we moved across the country, I struggled significantly. I couldn’t find work right away, we were too broke for me to train martial arts, I had no family or friends in this new city, and it was a bit of a culture shock going from where we were to where we are now. Meanwhile, my wife’s family and most of her old friends were here, she had steady employment lined up, and while she considers where we used to live “home”, there was an immense amount of familiarity here.
Progressively, I became more and more… “primal”, you could say; I stopped my old hobbies, spent my free time researching training and working out, became hyper-fixated on taking care of our family (especially once our son came along), kept working at jobs I hated simply out of fear of being unemployed even for a day, and just generally became a massive tightwad. Stress and anxiety ruled my days. I stopped reflecting on WHY I was feeling how I was feeling, and just allowed emotions to happen. Everything became about working, doing “stuff” that benefited our family (in my mind), running on instinct, eating and training to survive, and little else.
The results have been outline above.
I’ll backtrack for a second here and outline how I used to be…
—
Before moving, in the first couple years of our marriage, and basically for the majority of my life, I was bothered by very little. I was confident, self-assured, calm and stable and unphased by almost anything. I was a balance of relational, physical and mental. I engaged in artistic endeavours, used working out as a means to an end, and sought the philosophy behind everything and had a rabid curiosity for the world. I was compassionate, held a deep desire to see others succeed, and while curmudgeonly, felt a fairly deep amount of joy regularly.
I was never wealthy, but I was content with my simple life; I trained, I ate, I learned, I hung out with friends, I loved my wife, I saw my family. That was life, and it was all I needed.
Teaching and training martial arts, as well as security and bartending, meant that my mind was constantly stimulated and engaged. It also meant I was moving constantly. It allowed me to completely rest during my down time, because I was physically and mentally spent after a day of work. If I wasn’t, or there was some aspect of my martial arts I needed to work through, then a small amount of study could fill the need to satisfy any cravings.
After moving, my mind was rarely stimulated, because the security jobs I worked were horribly dull, but without the opportunity to stimulate my brain in any way. I was like a working breed dog who was left mentally unchallenged and cooped up constantly. I went crazy.
The other issue, as I’ve stated, is I threw all my energy into optimizing my workouts because I didn’t know what else to do. Horrible mistake.
Now, all that to say, what do I plan to do about all this? Good question…
—
Life is about balance. Humans are beings of both intellect and physicality. We exist in a state beyond the rest of the natural world, in that our brains allow us to think at a level above mere animals. We share relational (needing the companionship of other humans) needs like other animals, and need to move our bodies like other animals, but I believe you do a disservice to your humanity if you don’t balance that with engaging your mind.
The human mind allows us to do amazing things; introspection, philosophy, art, long-term planning, deep reflection on the past, calculation — the list is myriad.
Firstly, I’ve drastically changed my workouts. I’m focusing on running, yoga, a handful of barbell lifts, and kettlebell sport. The workouts are remarkably simple, can be easily done at any time of day, take about 30-45 minutes, and don’t have me anxiously thinking about improving them throughout the day.
I also use the time as a sort of “physical philosophy”; running is highly meditative, yoga forces me to breath and focus on what every part of my body is doing, the barbell lifts require an intense period of work followed by calm, and kettlebell sport is rep after rep after rep, which becomes an exercise in technical focus under extreme fatigue.
I’ve also been reading like a fiend. Just everything. Crime novels, Japanese samurai texts, Greek philosophy, Norse wisdom, science books, societal analyses — just anything and everything that tickles my fancy. Along with this, I’ve been playing brain games and casually studying various subjects (math, sciences, grammar, etc etc) through apps on my phone. The reading and studying is helping my mind so much it’s unbelievably. I’m a fanatically curious person, and without the absorption of new information or the expansion of old knowledge, I feel unfulfilled.
The next step is getting back into martial arts, but scheduling and money are still issues there. I’m trying to cultivate patience around that point, though. I’ll get there.
I know trying to resurrect my old self is futile, but hopefully I can reclaim some of it and form myself into a new version. An improved version.
—
I had some clever way to conclude this, but I can’t remember anymore.
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Thank you so much for sharing what is some very personal information. I sympathise with your situation and am happy to see you have a plan and some steps to get help in 2022. I don’t really have any advice I feel worth sharing but will say that you are not alone and if you want to talk about this or just talk about everything other than this then just reach out. Hoping 2022 will be a year of healing for you and your family.
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Thanks, amigo. I truly appreciate it.
Like @simo74, I appreciate your post. Thank you for sharing.
And thank you for the impact you’ve had on me and my training in 2021. Yes, I’m just some guy on the internet, but I sincerely appreciate the interactions we’ve had this year nonetheless.
For what it’s worth, I think that statement shows you’ve already won.
Here’s to a better 2022!
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Very kind of you to say. It means a lot. Watching your training transform has been a definite highlight of this year!
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Dude, no joke, I think of you as a brother. If I can help in any way, reach out. If there is a book you wanna read that is prohibitively expensive, let me get it for you. Consider it a much overdue Christmas present. You helped me keep sane during COVID and got me back in touch with my roots; much is owed.
You will come out stronger. That’s who you are.
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Super kind of you to say and it means a ton. I want for nothing at the moment physically though, but thanks, compadre.
Fall seven times, stand up eight.
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03/01/2022
Aerobic + Mobility
0630hr start
Running
- 5km
-26°C with the “feels like”. Been running consistently in the dropping temps though, so I’m not too affected by it.
Yoga
- 20 min, front splits focus
Good session to do after running. Loosen up those hips and hamstrings.
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Thanks for sharing man, and keep on keepin’ on. The Tnation family is here for you.
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