Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Many Essays on Restarting this Blog: Part One--I am not a Mellow Man

I started writing a blog when it became fashionable to write a blog. Amateur writers the world over were leveraging blogging platforms from Wordpress and BlogSpot that made it easy to self publish essays nobody or everybody could read.  I had an interesting core theme focused on being a middle-aged surfer in Washington State, living in Seattle, raising a young son with my wife. We built a beach house on the Washington, achieving a lifetime dream, and I blogged every step of it. As the dream emerged to the morning reality of two mortgages, tuitions, car repair bills, and the general costs of middle-class life forced us to put the house on the rental market to help with the budget.


One night, in the midst of an evening of bourbon-fueled dismay, I obliterated that four-year piece of work. While the bourbon-fueled part is not a usual element of my way of working through problems, the dismay has been for years. My passion, its peaks and valleys both, has cost me. Some friendships, the bonds of which were probably never meant for the long haul anyways. Some prestige at work as I have needed to reach my mid-50's to recognize the value of tolerating approaches to problem solving for which I previously had no patience. Most importantly, my moodiness put me in debt to my sweet, smart girl for understanding and working with it. As a result of her clear-headedness and practicality, and my resolve, we always end up on our feet.


Despite such support, I blew up four years of gentle, introspective writing for reasons I can barely fathom now, eight years later. So almost immediately I started Plain Old Dad, in an effort to refocus my thinking on fatherhood and my physical health and fitness. Some really great essays here, but mostly filler posts to keep track of a song I liked, or a quick video of me participating in one or more of my myriad tours through my fascination with Physical Culture. After retiring from Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as a 10-year white belt to have total knee replacement, I thought I had gained some essay-writing and even video-blogging momentum as I decided to pursue lifetime powerlifting personal bests as I recovered from my knee surgery.


Powerlifting for me has always been an adjunct to training for another sport, especially rugby, where for some dumbass reason I was attracted to playing Prop, a position dominated by men (and women) who tend to be much larger than myself. But I have always been ironminded and have always enjoyed the thoughtful, structured way in which powerlifters trudge through their progressions in pursuit of sometimes disappointingly incremental gains.  To me, powerlifting was a far more internal, even introverted pursuit.  But the dietary demands of the sport changed my health for the worse.


No longer able to "eat to recover, eat to break plateaus, eat to gain," I hit lifetime personal bests at 455 deadlift and 445 squat. My best bench press ever at 320 happened years ago while still playing rugby, and I barely trained it this time around topping at 285 later the same week as the these two lifts. Similarly, my best overhead press happened four years ago at 210 and I barely touched 200 this time around. While I remain immensely proud of the discipline I engaged to get there, I veritably walked out the gym at the end of my peak week, into a Russian sauna to recover, and quit lifting cold.


After my four year foray into serious powerlifting training left me 30 pound overweight (by my standards; I was 65 pounds overweight by the U.S. Government's ridiculous BMI standards), I needed a change. Still feeling vigorous and healthy, my sweet wife reminded me of the fun I had boxing my way through law school and into my first job as an associate attorney in San Diego in the early 1990's. I've been a devotee of fight sports, especially boxing, since my youth when I was regularly taking beatings from the neighborhood polacks on my way to and from school. A discussion that day with Ms. Tres_Arboles lead to a day of driving from gym to gym in the greater Seattle area. And then to my (re)introduction to Tricia Arcaro and a new pursuit at Arcaro Boxing. Where I previously sought to get as strong as I could by 53, I now wanted to make Light Heavyweight by 55.


Continued.