I no longer want to clog my twitter feed with rambling sports tweets, so here are random thoughts all-in-one on Tumblr:
11:26 PM - Bullshit Tech on Ezeli; he handled that terrible call as well as one can
11:27 PM - Personality-wise, Bogut is one of my favorite players in the NBA, but at the same time I think this might be the 3rd game I’ve ever seen him play in
11:28 PM - The only “Hack-a-Shaq” variant that ever worked is “Hack-Asik” and that was discovered by dumb luck; stop using it a la “Hack-a-Bogut”
11:31 PM - The “Inside Trax” dumbs NBA coaches down & does a disservice for what they really do
11:33 PM - Judging by the crowd alone, San Antonio has some BIG ladies.. poor Jon King. Or maybe it’s a good thing if that’s what he’s into.
11:34 PM - I think Klay Thompson is arrogant prick for thinking he’s a better shooter than Curry, but this game is a bad time to drive that point home
11:37 PM - That #dancehit Sear commercial gets me almost everytime damnit
11:38 PM - SHHHH Coach Pop interview! … was well worth the silence
11:39 PM - I hope the first thing Adam Silver does as commissioner is ban stadium music and sound effects during crucial game moments.. fuck it, all game moments.. keep that shit in the minors
11:41 PM - I think the real reason Coach Greenberg got fired was because he tried to justify not offering Stephen Curry a scholarship, saying there was no more room on the team. If he admits he fucked that one up, he still has a job.
11:44 PM - i remember watching Green in Michigan State and thinking he’d make a good pro #DudeICalledItMoment
11:49 PM - Matt Bonner is just an insecure version of the White Mamba
11:54 PM - The first time I saw the Kevin Durant Sprint commercial, I thought the next scene was going to be the mom going down on KD, just like all you guys did
12:06 PM - Curry is so amazing to watch; nothing better than watching a pure shooter/scorer do his thing
12:09 PM - I hate to root against the Spurs because I respect the hell out of that franchise but… fuck da Spurs, go Warriors!
If I charted my body weight over time since I was 16, the graph would look exactly like a wavelength - a continuous up & down motion with no signs of flat-lining. That’s because I’m a guy with a good sense of fitness but who lacks the discipline to stay in shape.
Whenever I find myself content with the amount of weight I lose, I get complacent and forget that I’m allowed to surpass initial goals. At this stage, I lose sight of the long-term and start to eat shit food again. After a few cheat meals here, a night of drinking there, my body sneakily morphs me into a fatty again before I know it. And once I can no longer face the realities of my fat reflection, I ultimately decide to whip myself back into shape. It’s been seven years and this is the cycle my body knows.
When I got back home to Virginia Beach earlier this year, my body was at the peak of said wavelength - a steady dose of heavy drinking, bar food, and a sedentary lifestyle will make your weight ascend like that. After a week of trying to psychologically kick my drinking habit, I was primed and ready to workout to aid my recovery. It had been virtually months since I exerted myself with the intent to sweat, the longest such streak of my life.
There was only one problem. I no longer had a car to go to a gym. I was bounded to the confines of my own home. Enter in P90X, the home exercise system developed by Tony Horton [blah blah blah…]. I’ve given this routine a go once before and even received decent results after a month. But I quit for two reasons:
1) I had limited space and equipment to work with. My dumbbell set went from a bottleneck range of 15-25 lbs, which hindered any hope for future progress. How stupid would it be to constantly do 50 reps of an exercise just to feel a burn? It also was a nuisance to have to pause the video and adjust the dumbbells, which turned a 60 minute workout into an inefficient nightmare.
2) Tony Horton and his lame ass crew started to annoy the fucking piss out of me. I especially hated that jackass who thought he was the shit because he could hop circles around the one-legged man in the Plyometrics video. Why don’t you be a professional like Pam the Blam, stop showboating, and show us proper form? You think you’re going to get a spin-off workout video based on this performance, is that how it works? How does it feel to know that America hates you? Not too good, I’d imagine.
Anyways, I had no other options. I realized that in order to conjure positive thoughts about life, that I had to workout and start feeling good about myself. If I was serious about reinventing myself for the better, then I had to learn to play nice with Tony & friends. At this moment, I was ready to buy into the program and all of Tony’s lame quips.
As they say in the video, it was time to bring it.
Looking back, I’ve always been in denial with the role alcohol played in my life. Early in my college career, I only drank once or twice a week and felt I was a good enough person on my sober days to justify being a screw-up during my drunken rages. Because I saw others drink more frequently than me, I figured I was an alcoholic in the same way stealing gum makes one a seasoned thief. Little did I know, I was overlooking the seeds towards my addiction.
As life’s problems became more complex, so did my relationship with alcohol. From the summer of last year onward, I used drinking as a crutch to make the time pass. In doing so, my mind would drift away from my life’s harsh realities, giving me temporary relief.
But it got to the point where I needed alcohol to function; without it I felt restless. And gradually, I stopped feeling insecure about my drinking habits. It didn’t matter if I was with friends or all alone; rest assured I would drink heavily, everyday, while testing the threshold of my body’s limits.
Enter in my moment of clarity, the realization that all I had left was a bottle and a mess of problems for a guy pushing his mid-twenties.
It was at this moment that I decided to quit. Cold turkey. What made it easy was that I was home with my family around, and absolutely no one to drink with. What made it difficult was the fact that I still had a myriad of problems and countless amounts of time to soberly reflect upon them. Being unemployed, I was alone more often than not, spending hours pacing around the house just to avoid the urges of cracking one open.
Sure, I had some early success. I was able to quit drinking for the time being, aided by a new diet soda addiction that helped mimic the fizzle of beer. But it wasn’t all high fives and smiles. Not having alcohol to distract me from my current struggles left me highly depressed, and introverted even against my family’s loving energy. I simply tuned-out everyone in my life, focusing solely on fighting my personal battle. The way I shut those closest in my life wasn’t fair, but I knew of no other way to handle myself.
My rambling thoughts were driving me crazy. I finally realized that I had to do something else with my time or else risk going insane. Although I was on a path towards recovery, I still needed to patch up all the destruction that came before it.
When I was younger, I always felt that - somehow, someway - I’d live a life of excellence. Hitting rock-bottom, to a place I never thought imaginable, finally gave me the resolve to set that dream in motion.
Where did I leave off? Ahhh, yes.
From the moment I came back home to Virginia Beach in March, I was determined to start the proverbial first day of the rest of my life. Which sounds revolutionary in theory, but really, what an abstract concept. How do you start? What in the hell does that entail exactly?
For me, the process started with identifying everything I hated about my present situation. And wow, how quickly did I realize that this part of the process was disturbingly easy. Let’s see now, you’re single, jobless, car-less, out-of-shape, living at home (and on the couch at that), broke, & now that you’re removed from your friends, you are alone. As for your secondary problems…
With that kind of self-realization, most people would instantly reach for the razor blade. But not me, mainly because I’m scared of sharp objects. Feel free to add a giant pussy to my list.
But this wasn’t anything new. I felt this way for months now. If I continued to feel this way, why wouldn’t I try to put an end to all this? Why not strive to better myself? As these thoughts were racing through my head, I took another sip from my Guinness bottle to settle my mind. The deeper I starred into that opaque black bottle, the clearer it all got. And at that moment, I proceeded to put the bottle down.
My alcohol addiction was impeding my life. This was my moment of clarity.
February 17th, 2012.
That was the day that I realized my life was in need of a change.
Before this time, I was merely going through the motions of my life. I felt a strong sense of depersonalization, with the belief that I had no control over any situation. Every night I looked forward to the same thing; to hit the bars hard and forget about anything else. Microbrews were my only source of pleasure, something that gave me solace against my misery.
How lazy was I? Sure, I worked over 50 hours a week, but that was just a front. I used the long hours at work to justify my lack of ambition towards a life, post-graduation. I maintained that I was too exhausted from work to conduct a real job search, but of course, I’d always catch a second-wind when it came time to go downtown.
How did I get to be like this? Looking back, you could say it was a number of things. It was the fact that I was past my 5th year of college, barely getting my degree and having nothing to show for it. It was the fact that I was involved in an abrupt breakup and coped with it the wrong way. It was the fact that I gravitated towards alcohol to heal my wounds, without taking on my problems with a clear mind.
It was the fact that I believed I deserved more in life without actually doing anything to earn it.
How did I get a grip on reality? By sitting down and having a long look at myself. Instead of being fixated on what I didn’t currently have, I made a list of things that I had going for me:
Come on dude, you have a degree from Virginia Tech, your dream school since you were a kid! That can get you a job if you search hard enough! Although you’re a fat piece of shit now, it’s okay. You’ve worked your way back into shape before, start hitting the gym again and take care of yourself! By the way, what the fuck are you still doing in this area? Go home and focus on your future. Plus, you have a family there that loves & misses you. And oh yeah, you can’t handle your liquor, so quit fucking drinking and thank me later.
And that is precisely what I did. I put in my two weeks notice and bolted the hell out of Blacksburg… and onto my new life’s journey.
I have not felt compelled to create a Tumblr post in awhile. With two lengthy papers on my plate, I have gotten into the mindset that my writing comes at a cost; the time and effort I put into writing posts means resources away from my papers. And if you have any clue about my life, then you would know that there is nothing more I want than to get the hell out this area. Simply put, I’ve been here for too long. And the completion of my Field Study is my one-way ticket out of here.
But because I’m a walking paradox, I’m thinking to myself, ‘would the next step be all that great?’
I always think about my future solely through the way I envision it, and I never take into the account the process in which I’ll get there. All I do is daydream. I create benchmark dates where I envision my life will magically turn into the way I want it to be. I can’t wait till the end of this week… this month… this summer …this year. And at every mile-marker at the road of my life, I become disillusioned with the way things actual are.
You see, my dreams are scenarios that involve other people and how they will perfectly fit into my life. And when the people closest to me cannot align themselves the way I imagined, I’m left all by myself and disappointed with the way things are. In order to move on, I envision a new ideal life for myself with arbitrary dates where I’ll finally be content.
That’s bullshit. That’s not the way I can continue to live. It just sets me up for the big letdown. I need to recognize that the only factor that I can control in life’s scenarios is: myself. And I need to put greater effort in deriving my life’s pleasures from reality, not far-fetched dreams. I’m wasting my time thinking too much. From here on out, my dreams are going to be dynamic, with the short-term complimenting the long. I simply want to enjoy every day as a new journey and not as another step towards a dead end.
Don’t you love it when your ethnicity puts you in awkward situations?
While driving my co-worker home, he kept softly saying: cervezas? Cervezas! After playing a cross-lingual game of charades, I deduced that cerveza meant beer in Spanish. Nice, he wants to kick back a couple brewskies with me after work. But I politely declined his advances and dropped him off at his apartment.
Except that he wasn’t offering me cervezas. Once I parked my car, he said, nooo… 7-11! Oh, he wanted me to drive him to buy some beers. I get it now. Kind of rude, but whatever.
Once we get to the store’s parking lot, homeboy hands me a twenty and says: Yo no tengo ID. No ID? No shit. I understood that from the time you said “7-11.” I felt like being charitable this evening, so of course I was buying the beer.
We proceed to go into the store and he looks at the Coronas for about 5 minutes. Finally he says, “no 18-pack?” I tell him, “no cabron, they only have a 12-pack.”
“Oh, si. We go to Kroger? Maybe Wal-mart?”
At this point I put my foot down. “No, we buy now. You’re lucky they have limes here. Not a lot of convenience stores have this kind of fruit selection.”
He eventually settles on the Coronas and now it’s time to pay at the register. Our cashier was a tatted up white chick, maybe in her late 20’s. From her vantage point, we were simply two Hispanics trying to buy Coronas, which she assumes is our National drink. And how she tried to communicate with us will stay with me forever:
“HOLA! You two want to drink BEER-O to mucho RELAX-O ?! Coronas are very good…no wait, what’s the word in Spani… they are BUENOOO!”
I wanted to play dumb by nodding & say “Siiiiiiiii.” But she would be expecting that. So I decided to throw her off-guard and speak back in my whitest voice ever. ”Yes. These Coronas will serve us good after a hard day’s work. I can’t wait to drink a cold one, responsibly of course!”
After that, this chick’s jaw was down for about two minutes. She agreed that I should enjoy my beers responsibly and alas, our transaction was complete. Once we got into the car, I thanked my co-worker for having my back in 7-11 by letting me do all the talking. He stayed silent even in the car. Ahh, he’s still in character, he’s one of those method actors…
Once I dropped him off, he offered me ten dollars for all the driving. I normally would’ve accepted because I’m a dick, but this particular night I declined. The opportunity for that memory was payment enough.
I love doing those student-run sobriety tests downtown. It gives me a nice reference to how much alcohol I actually consume on my drinking nights.
Anyways, they introduced a new trick to their repertoire - a field sobriety test! Now, one can simulate getting pulled over for drunk driving without the consequences of failing. Nicely done, Psychology department - except for the fact that during this test, they pitched a curve ball my way.
While walking the “straight line” test, I looked down at my first steps to make sure I was performing this routine sufficiently. And hell yes I was, because I’m so coordinated when I get my drink on I was pretty sober. All of a sudden when I looked up, an armed cop was standing there, monitoring my every step. Why did they boost up the intimidation factor?!
I’m not going to lie, I can’t perform under extreme pressure. After seeing this cop, I suspiciously stumbled & then gave clichéd excuses for my misstep. Fuck, now the officer is staring me down. Uhhh officer you gotta understand, it’s these flip-flops! Yeah, that’s it. You see, they’re a size too big for me, fucking Old Navy can’t mass produce for shit. They’re the ones you gotta arrest. Sir, SIR, why are you reaching for your cuffs?! Fuck this, I’m making a run for it.
And I would’ve ran off if I wasn’t limited by my cheap flip-flops. I would’ve ran 5 steps before tripping over my feet and falling into a bush. Anyways, the cop left (why was I so paranoid again?!) and I ended up blowing a BAC level of 0.033. That’s not even high enough to qualify for one drink.
I love being a lightweight.
