There and Back

A journey. A return. Probably tired.

  • Stop Caring About Belt Stripes

    I’m laughing more when I roll. Getting swept to my back or tapping to a choke has never been more fun. I think I’m on to something. Grappling has always been fun. But for most of my BJJ journey I’ve had this sense of trying to ‘work towards something’ and focusing on ‘what’s next’ and when will I just ‘get it.’ Lately though, my fixation on promotion and grading has drifted away. I purposely missed the last two promotions and gradings. I just didn’t care. I mean it’s great to see people improve, and the folks that got stripes and new belts I made sure to congratulate them when I saw them next. But for me, stripes have lost their pull on me.

    I know a purple belt that never signs in. I’m in awe of his aloofness and his dedication to not recording his attendance. I wish I had that in me.

    The slog from blue belt to purple belt is a beautiful frustration of hits and misses and injuries and inadequacies. The visual reward manifests in white tape. To show yourself and others of your dedication. But does it represent actual skill? I bet it would be hard for instructors to keep track of all the students progress without the stripes. And I can see how, say, your first stripe is an indication that ‘hey you’re on the right track!’ And that the fourth stripe can be seen as ‘hey you’re almost there!’

    For me I’m not chasing stripes anymore. I’ll be honoured and thankful when I do get my next stripes, because I respect my head instructors decision and trust his judgement if he decides to give me one.

    My relationship with grappling is getting deeper (also jiu jitsu is not that deep). I don’t mean in a woo woo I’m a ninja sort of way (but yeah we are ninjas). I mean that my love for grappling is expanding to include not just my progress, in the form of stripes, but also to include the subtle ways we grip and toss and trip each other. The physical movements more than the visual upgrade. I am rediscovering the joys of training. Play curiosity presence over promotion. It is a relief not to put pressure on yourself to get a piece of tape. I highly recommend it.

  • Job Well Done

    Had a Teams call with a coworker and manager. My manager gave an update on the new facility in farm country USA that he recently finished setting up (IP address, firewalls, switches, printers, workstations, etc.). Lots of work. He said he was proud of us because we did excellent work to keep operations going here while he was away. It was nice to hear. One of my favourite things to do while at work is to open random apps and spread them out over the three screens I use so it looks like I’m deep into research. What I’m actually doing in periodically refreshing the helpdesk ticket portal and scrolling Twitter on my phone. You know real work. I work when there’s work to be done. Don’t get me wrong I’m learning a lot about how they do business here and when there are tickets for me to resolve I do my best to fix them. But when there’s no work to be done I make it look like there is. This is how to survive in an office. This is my life now. For just under 50k a year I’m doing the baseline amount of work I feel is worth it. Who knows, if I get paid more maybe I’ll work harder. Maybe. 

  • Closed 50th I.T. Ticket

    Closed my 50th ticket as a newbie IT helpdesk dude. What the hell is an ERP had to learn that it is an Enterprise Resource Planner also what the hell is that. Oh right it’s a “a software system that integrates core business processes – such as finance, HR, manufacturing, supply chain, and sales – into a single, unified platform.” Okay so what the hell do I do with that. Turns out the hardest part of my job so far isn’t troubleshooting Outlook or Teams issues which are usually resolved with signing out and signing in again or restarting the app or doing an Office 365 Reset/Repair, no, the most challenging part has been figuring out the terminology/technical jargon and workflow of the ERP that this company uses. Get this, there are reports. These reports have versions. And there are programs that generate reports and these programs have their own versions. Thank goodness I don’t need to be an ERP expert. I just have to gather enough info from the end user and send their request to the ERP support ticketing system. Basically I’m a helpdesk that submits tickets to other helpdesks. A weird symbiosis of business processes. Sounds boring I know. But I’m just happy to be getting Work Benefits now that I’m forty years old. One more week and the Work Benefits kick in and I can start shitting the bed and being lazy at work. Just kidding. Or maybe not we’ll see.

  • The Blue Belt Grind

    Stop caring about stripes and miss the grading class. Show up when you can even if that means you’ve only gone eight times in four months. When you’re not on the mat watch MMA and technique clips and collegiate wrestling tournaments. Read about grappling and follow people on social media that grapple. Keep stoking the coals so your love for kimono cuddling never fully goes away. The orginal cohort that joined when you did is getting smaller and smaller. Out last the attrition watch new whites come and go. More fodder for you. The smell of the mats and durable heavyweight cotton gi’s and someone elses blood how did it get on my sleeve oh man we are a weird bunch of folks who do this every week and then go to work like we’re normal people. Sigue apareciendo stay the course and before you know it you’ll be a brown belt with a food gut but the grip of a mythical gryphon.

  • The Benefits of Life

    “Accidental Death or Dismemberment” the benefits package says. I’ve never had life insurance. If I die today my wife is screwed. I just have to last a few more weeks and my probation period is over and I finally get my work benefits. Don’t worry I’m not looking to leave this earth yet. Not looking to leave my body and return to the non-local consciousness ground-of-all-being-thing. Nope. It’s that I’m looking forward to feeling the relief of knowing that when the time comes, my wife will be okay financially if something were to happen to me. Lets see, what else does the benefit package say… ah yes the Drug Plan. Eighty to one hundred percent coverage. Looks like my stomach pills are going from $40 to $8 or even $0. Here’s one I’m definitely excited about: Vision care. “$350 every 2 calendar years Eye exams once every 2 calendars years (every year for children under age 21)”. My eyes are getting worse. I was reluctant to get glasses for so long and when I finally did it turns out both my eyes have what’s called Astigmatism, “is a common refractive error, not an eye disease, that causes blurred or distorted vision at all distances. It occurs when the front surface of the eye (cornea) or the internal lens has an irregular, mismatched curvature,” I like to think that my eyes are shaped like footballs because that’s funny to me. Okay we’ll do one more, Paramedical Professionals benefits. Which include: Chiropractors, Osteopath, Naturopath, Chiropodist/Podiatrist, Speech Therapist, Acupuncturist, Massage Therapist, Dietician, Psychologists, Physiotherapist. I don’t know what all of those are but I want to do each one just for fun. Having work benefits makes me feel like I’m Secure. That’s what we all want, right?

    But I don’t have them, yet. I just have to SURVIVE a bit longer.

  • Open Mat Reflections – January 24, 2026

    I submitted a black belt. Holy shit. It was with a cross collar choke from the back. I remember him saying oh shit right when I got a grip on the cross collar and put my other hand in like a half-Nelson-type grip/position. We weren’t going really hard, that’s actually one of the reasons I enjoy sparring with him. But it was definitely the top highlight in jiu jitsu of the last year I’ve been grappling.

    I can’t stress this enough: grip fighting is Jiu jitsu. Always start there! And never stop practicing it!

    Only went twice this month so far but rolled pretty well. My endurance and cardio are crap but hey it’s winter time and I got a bit of a belly.

    And I also heard Mikey Musumeci is learning wrestling from Dagestanis? I’ll believe it when I see it.

  • How to Produce a Sample for an Advanced Semen Analayis at a Fertility Clinic

    Going in for an “advanced semen analysis” at a fertility clinic today. They said in the email “Due to high patient volumes, if producing at the clinic, we encourage you to bring headphones for your comfort.”

    The thought of hearing a bunch of other dudes trying to ‘produce at the clinic’ will in fact not help me ‘produce’ anything. I didn’t realize until today, Game Day as I’m calling it, that I had the option to ‘produce’ before the appointment and just bring in a sample.

    “The test is NOT covered by insurance, and costs $150.00. To ensure an accurate sample, you will need to abstain (no ejaculation) for no less than 2 days, but no more than 5 days.”

    My wife and I have both been sick for two weeks. So it’s been more than five days, hope my sample is accurate.

    The email goes on, “If you are dropping off a sample at the clinic the Advance Semen Analysis form MUST be completed and the time that the sample was produced MUST be documented.”

    Complete the form right after ‘producing’ and make sure to document. Wash your hands before completing the form, you don’t want your sample to mess up the form.

    “You must use a sterile sample container, a sample cup can be picked up here at [the clinic], the cups are located outside of our office in a basket during buisiness hours. Please provide your sample a half hour after producing, keeping the sample at body temperature during transport.”

    Yeah that’s sounds like a lot of work I think I’ll just jerk off with those other dudes.

    UPDATE: it went well

    My home away from home
    I didn’t ask for assistance because I am a gentleman.
    Place to put my coat how convenient.
    I had to put boot covers over my boots. Turns out it’s to prevent salt on boots being scattered all over the facility and not for protecting my feet while I’m producing a sample.
    I timed myself. In and out in about 10mins. I’m a pro.

  • Woo woo

    Dan Brown is a gangster. When I was waiting in the tiny waiting room at the hospital with my wife, you know the smaller waiting room with the bed and machines that go beep, you know the third waiting room after the intermediate waiting room which is after the first waiting room with all the plebs. We were in the waiting room that makes you feel like the characters from that Judgmental Volturi meme which is a screengrab from one of the Twilight films. In any case, I was reading Dan Brown’s latest novel called The Secret of Secrets. I can’t put it down. Each chapter ends on a cliff hanger and the book is so simple to read and it’s written like a script. Turns out it’s gonna be a show series sometime soon I hope. I don’t usually read novels like that but a person on social media recommended it because it was “trippy.” So I looked into what it was about and it has to do with human consciousness. Which is a topic I was really into back in the day when I was a pot head stoner degenerate loser. I loved watching video of a dude name Amit Goswami. A PhD Quantum physicist, bestselling author, and pioneer of Consciousness Studies. He says some absolutely outrageous stuff about consciousness and quantum thingamabobs and whatchamacallits. Anyways check out the Dan Brown book and some Amit videos. It’s time to start reading and watching more woo woo stuff. We need more woo in our lives. 

  • C’est la vie

    My boss has 12 Bitcoin. Currently that’s $1,157,478.72 USD. He was wearing a twenty five thousand dollar watch today. One of many in his collection. Get him talking about watches. That’s how I build rapport with him. Smile nod and say things like “wow” and “no way.” Let him talk more than me. Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind chatting about watches and I wish I had an expensive hobby like collecting top tier timepieces. I have a $40 Casio. My most expensive hobby right now is jiu jitsu. $135 a month. I’ve only gone eight times in three months. No wonder I got my ass kicked last time I went to open mat. Speaking of ass kicking, I have a $600 vet bill coming up. My older dog needs an eyelid tumour removed. Poor guy. I’m sure he’ll be fine. I bet if I had mined Bitcoin in the early 2000s like my boss did I would be able to afford a hundred dog eye tumour removals. C’est la vie. Así es la vida. Such is life. Maybe next time when I’m reincarnated as a sysadmin I’ll be rolling in cash. Here’s hoping. 

  • The Dream

    Turns out I did get sick. Bummer. Just a cold. Probably should have got the flu shot. Maybe next year. Maybe. Well at least I get to work from home today. I already closed two tickets, the users email signature was formatted with borders when it’s not supposed to be and only when they were replying to an email. Found a temporary fix, took some screenshots, and sent them a How To so they can manually change it themselves when they reply to an email. Even if they don’t do that who cares. They can still send and receive emails and those issues were more Cosmetic and didn’t interfere with the users job. Fuck em. Happy to help. Working from home is pretty sweet. This isn’t the first time I’ve done work-from-home. I did it during the lock-downs. Don’t get me started on the lock-downs. Working from home then was good then it got rough. Because I was smoking weed 24/7 and it really got to me. Picture this, getting out of bed five minutes before having to be in a Zoom meeting. One minute before the meeting starts ripping a huge bong hit and blowing all the smoke out while pressing the ‘join chat’ button. Those were wild times. But now since I don’t smoke or drink anymore I think I’d like to work from home. Maybe in the future. Maybe when my wife and I have children I can work-from-home doing IT tickets and be a stay-at-home dad. That’s the dream. That’s a good dream