Both times I was badly hurt, but what makes this last weekend’s accident the worst is that it’s my knee. You don’t ever want shit fucked up in your knee. I’m especially worried because the activities that I love to do requires that my knees be functional. Snowboarding and jiu jitsu takes a toll on your knees.

I hurt it last Saturday, and it was bad for the first 2 days. I was walking fine for the most part but there was a nagging, slightly sharp pain in on the left side of my knee every time I put a load on it, such as walking up and down the stairs where for a split second, all my weight is on one leg. I didn’t go to jiu jitsu classes all week but by Friday, I felt like I was good to go for the most part. After class, the nagging pain in my knee came back.

I’m worried this might be something serious enough for me to have surgery. If I were to go through any type of surgery, this would be a disaster for me. So much of my life revolves around jiu jitsu. It’s the glue in my life. Some people who lift weights may understand. Going to the gym becomes a routine in your life, and when you don’t train for an extended period of time you feel like crap.

It’s particularly bad for me because I plan my whole schedule around it. I have a very exact routine. If I’m able to get off work at 7pm or earlier, I take the train straight to my gym. Class starts at 7:30 and ends at 9:00. I’m in the door at home by 10:15, hop in the shower, eat dinner, check my email and do some browsing on the internet until midnight. I’m in bed by midnight and I wake up by 7:00am. The whole cycle repeats.

I don’t do jiu jitsu everyday but I plan things like weight lifting on my off days. This past week, because of my knee injury, I couldn’t do any jiu jitsu. I didn’t have the motivation to lift weights either. Instead, what I ended up doing most of the time was calling some friends out after work and spending money on degenerate activities.

That’s what I consider any activity that doesn’t in some way  better you as a person. If all you do after work everyday is sit at home and watch television, then you might possibly have the makings of a degenerate. This is assuming you don’t have some type of crazy 80+ hours a week work schedule. Then you, my friend, are entitled to coming home and vegging out on television if only because you have time to do nothing else.

So yea, I’ve been somewhat of a degenerate. And being that’s winter and all, on days I don’t do anything I somehow manage to justify that because I didn’t sweat all day, it’d be alright to skip out on a shower. Not to mention the laundry. I have dirty laundry all over the place. When I train jiu jitsu on a regular basis, I have to wash my gi (gi kimono) every time I use it since I only have two. So I did laundry at least twice a week.

I feel unhealthy and disheveled. I plan to get my knee checked out soon and I hope that the doctor ends up finding nothing wrong with it.

I originally planned to go snowboarding, but I think I’m going to spend the entire day at my gym, from 7:30am to 9:00pm. It’s very rare for me to get the chance to train so much in one day.

I decided to drive out to Manhattan today to train at my gym, instead of taking the subway.

Terrible idea.

There was absolutely no parking in the city. The spots I did find were all municipal meter spots for commercial vehicles only. The regular metered spots a block away from my gym only went to an hour, and I needed at least 3. I was definitely not going to miss another day of training, so I reluctantly paid $20 at a local parking lot to park there for a few hours.

Training was great today. I did the no-gi class at 11:15am and followed it up with the mma class at 1:30pm. I was pretty close to punking out because I was pretty beat from the first class, but I definitely did not just pay $20 to just train for an hour and a half. The mma class was great, as usual. Today was pretty interesting because during the sparring sessions, I ended up pairing up with this chick who must have weighed no more than 100lbs soaking wet.

Never judge a book by its cover though . . . she had some fire in her! From our first few exchanges it became clear her background was muay thai. Not many of the guys in my mma class have good standup skills because most of them are just straight jiu jitsu guys. I was lucky I had a good amount of height over this girl because her punches were tight and sharp, and if it weren’t for my reach keeping her at a distance I would have been owned. She pressed me the entire time. At no point in time did I feel comfortable going in. Her punches fell short on me, and I was able to counter a few times off of that. Her kicks were a different story. She was kicking the shit out of my legs and I didn’t know how to stop it from happening because I’ve never trained kicks before.

She was a good looking girl with some killer striking skills . . . found out after class she is from Costa Rica and is just visiting our gym.

I met up with a friend in Chinatown after class and chilled for a bit. We ended up driving around various parts of Fort Greene and Williamsburg because he’s in the market for a new place, and there were a few places around there he wanted to check out. Ended up grabbing a bite at a place called Dumont Burger. Check it out if you’re in the area. Make sure to add bacon to your burger. DELICIOUS bacon there. Oh, and try the milkshake. It’s a $6 milkshake though. A little outrageous . . . Vincent Vega would be apalled.

Anyway, just finished my CNY Eve dinner and about to meet with some friends.

Until next time . . .

So tell me, all you wannabe psych majors, what is my major malfunction?

Dig – I’ma put it on the table
I ain’t a thug nigga and playa, I ain’t playful
I’m just Senim Silla, man without label
Standin’ on my own to you tryin’ to stay stable
Speakin’ what I know to only what I’m able
I ain’t the kinda guy who carry on for dough
The material cat who walk around for show
I’m just your everyday, merry way joe on the go
While others go with the flow
I ain’t never been the one to follow trend, I do my own bit
Can’t keep up with the joneses, I’m on my own shit
I don’t care what you drink
What you stress, how you dress, or where you got the link
I ain’t impressed

I am a big believer that it does not matter what people think of you, and that as long as you’re comfortable with your actions and yourself then you’re good to go. It rarely crosses my mind to wonder what people will think of me if I’m doing this or not doing that.

But I think it’s naive to think that it perception does not matter, but not for the reasons you’re probably thinking.

Sometimes other people are better able to criticize any flaws and weaknesses in you, and it’s good to hear it every now and then so that you can address any problems with yourself that you might not be able to see on your own. If a friend came to me and told me in total honesty something I did not want to hear, I would respect that and at least stop to consider if anything he or she said had merit to it.

I feel like a lot of times people are told things by other people, things which they don’t want to hear, and dismiss it self-righteously. They think they are being strong willed or independent or some other benevolent self-noble adjective. It’s true, you can’t always listen to other people and for the most part you have to follow your heart and do what you feel is right. I think the key though, is to know when to dismiss what other people say and when not to.

Anyway, this popped into my head this morning because for some reason I have the urge to ask my friends what they think of me, but I didn’t want to appear insecure because I’m really not. If you think about it, it’s a very odd question to ask someone. But if there’s something I can work on that people think negatively about, I want to know about it. Maybe I’m a selfish prick sometimes, or maybe I’m cheap as hell other times. Or maybe I’m too insensitive and say fucked up things at inappropriate times. These are the things I’d like to know, and I wouldn’t mind in the least if a friend were to tell me that.

*edit

On a related note, just read an interesting post by Mark Cuban. If you’re not familiar with his blog, go check him out. Lots of big ideas, and if you’re the entrepreneurial type or just enjoy reading about different takes on things such as business or internet trends, you might find his blog enjoyable.

Here’s an excerpt from today’s post that is relevant to mine:

While its fun to make a list of those who have criticized me, the criticism is incredibly valuable.  As a businessperson and one who tries to stay ahead of the technology and business curve, even when it means taking a position that is far from popular, critics serve the purpose of always “making you check your hole card” . In other words, the more a position I take gets challenged, the smarter I get on the position. So the criticism is welcome.

Why Have So Many Internet People Lost Touch With Reality?

This is what I’m currently reading. I normally would not read something like this because this is the type of stuff I would typically consider dry and dull. However, recently I’ve been motivated to learn more about the type of work I’m in, securities lending. Being in the operations side of things, I didn’t really get the “big picture” of how stock loan works and wanted to gain a more holistic view of the way things work.

I’m still in the very beginning of the book. Really heavy stuff that takes a long time for it to sink in, but I actually find a lot of it fascinating. One particular section really struck me, of which the title of this post is named after. I wish in college, at the very beginning of your finance/economics career, they explained why the things you were going to learn and the work you were going to do would be important in the greater scheme of things. And in such eloquent terms.

Here’s an excerpt:

A growing number of economists and policymakers, backed up by day-to-day experience, now share a consensus view: robust capital markets, which offer a full array of modern financial products and practices, contribute to long-term national economic growth by encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation, even given periodic market corrections.

Capital markets can finance economic growth more efficiently than traditional bank-lending systems that depend on making a “spread” of interest rate revenue over the banks’ costs of funds. Capital markets can more easily diversify and distribute risk by dividing shares in the equity ownership or portions of the debt involved in financing enterprises into stocks and bonds, which in turn can be more widely dispersed among investors than traditional loans.

The availability of active markets for shares in new enterprises then enables venture capitalists to make a range of investments in a variety of high-risk ventures–in the hope that one or more spectacularly successful IPOs will more than make up for other ventures’ failures and losses. Traditional commercial banks, by contrast, cannot risk lending to an array of unproven startups–however promising–because banks cannot earn enough additional interest on those new firms that succeed to make up for capital they are likely to lose when other, unproved borrowers fail.

Exhibit A:

I take a certain highway to Queens and get off of a specific exit to hop on to another highway all the time. The vast majority of the time, this is the road I take. However, on the few occasions where I’m headed in the same direction but different location and need to take the first highway a few exits past the exit I normally hop on to, I’ve always managed to completely forget and end up taking the path I normally take to Queens.

It’s come to the point where I have to tell myself “you are NOT going to take this exit, you must go past it” and I STILL do it. It’s crazy. It’s like my mind goes blank when I reach that certain area and my body just takes over.

Exhibit B:

The reason for this post . . .

Every time I go to the kitchen to prepare a protein shake before I head to bed, I wind up brushing my teeth. Maybe it’s because the bathroom is right there . . . maybe it’s because it’s that time of the night and my body knows it has to sleep . . . maybe I’m just a retard. Whatever the reason is, it’s annoying as hell because I only remember the protein shake RIGHT at the moment the toothpaste is being worked into my teeth. Then it’s just one big DOH!

Damnit why can’t the executive function of my brain be more dominant!

A friend shared this with me the other day. Does anybody else think it’s ironic that a list that’s supposed to help simplify your life doesn’t look so simple? Here was my reaction (with some minor editing):

This list is not simple enough . . .

1. Get your priorities straight and get shit done when shit has to get done.

2. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Grab a drink, play some ball, play WoW. Whatever floats your boat.

3. Quit bitching about shit and go do something about it. This means, if you’re broke, get a job. If your job sucks, get a new one. If you’re bored, find a hobby. Etcetera etcetera.

4. Positive attitude. Self explanatory.

Sure, it might not be an explicit list but it’s easier to follow than some list of 43 things.

It was nice to have a dose of estrogen in the mix on this past trip since I mostly roll with a bunch of guys when I go snowboarding. We stayed in a house right next to the mountain. Camelback blows, but the stay at the house was awesome. Had some great home cooked food and drank ourselves stupid. We were even treated to some crazy late night wrestling mayhem. Out of all my snowboarding trips so far this season, this was probably my favorite one despite the lack of good snowboarding.

Anyway, today marks my 1st day as a full time employee. Hellooooooooo health insurance! After nearly 3 years of consulting, it’s nice to have some stability in a full time position. I’m still at the same company, doing the same work, but no complaints here. 2010 is off to a promising start so far.