Semi-Charmed Life

Super Saturday

Had an awesome day today.

I woke up early to make it to my 11:45 no-gi class in the morning and then doubled up and took the mma class afterwards. I don't usually do classes on Saturdays but lately my work schedule changed so that I was not able to make to any of the evening classes. I work in downtown Brooklyn and my gym is right by Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. It takes roughly half an hour for me to get there, and if I leave any later than 6:50 it's pretty much guaranteed that I will not be able to make it.

So for the past 2 weeks I had to put jiu jitsu on hold because of new position at work. I was reassigned from one group into another group, and with that came a dramatic change in hours. I was used to getting into work at 6:30 in the morning and leaving by 4:30 in the afternoon. Now I have to get in at 8:30 and stay til at least 7, which blows.

So making it to jiu jitsu on weekends is kind of a big deal now because it's basically one of the few chances I get to train. When I left the gym, it had already begun snowing. Everyone at work was saying how it was supposed to be a blizzard this weekend, but I was not impressed.

Now, seven hours later I'm looking out the window and damn is it snowing hard! I don't know why but this blizzard really lifted my spirits up. Nowadays everyone I know bitches about the snow. Maybe I'm biased because I love snowboarding, but I only associate snow with positive feelings. Probably all those times back then when they closed school because of heavy snow. Those days were the best!

This is going to be an awesome weekend because I'm getting to do the two things I love most: jiu jitsu and snowboarding.

Anyway, I came across this article and I thought it was pretty inspirational:

“If you can’t spare one hour of your day to do something you love, there really is something wrong in your life”

I thought it was motivating because so many times in life people say they do not have time to do this or do that, but this guy is pursuing two of his favorite passions at the same time, jiu jitsu and medicine. I think it can be argued that getting your black belt in jiu jitsu is just as difficult as getting an M.D. or PhD.

It's also great because he is both a teacher on and off the mats. On one end he's researching about diseases and teaching graduate students, and on the other he is the jiu jitsu coach to one of the best pound for pound fighters in the world and is also opening up his own gym in the coming year.

I have not been updating this thing as much as I would like to. Part of it is lack of motivation. When I had a blog on Xanga it was more fun to blog because, let's face it, secretly we are all attention-whores and it was cool to get all sorts of comments. Now that I blog on my own domain, it's like living on an island.

Ah whatever . . . here's to a good weekend!