Reflections On The Past Year, Good & Bad

Well I'll start with the bad, training has truly gone to the wall this year. My worst year on record since I started. I could lie and say I don't care because the reasons are mostly worth it but I do because some of the reasons have been causing me seriously negative thoughts. The reasons are also far more important than the training, which means I care about the training lost but more about the people I lost out for.

My wife moved from some wheelchair use to frequent last year and this year general deterioration combined with someone using her car for their brakes has meant she is in a chair for any journey over a few metres and has to rely on motorised if the journey is too long or challenging for a manual chair. Injury from accident was upper spine which on an able body would be painful, for her it was immobilising as the pressure from wheeling a chair went straight to it.
The issue is nerve damage stemming from juvenile abuse, anyone supporting physical reprimand of children read on and take note. As with most abusers her father was doing it 'for her good' and in his mind was never excessive. This same is said by all using their hands when their brains aren't sufficient, whether it genuinely is a light tap or dropping a chair on their child's back. When parents cannot tell the safe limit, the only safe limit is no physical punishment. If you care about your child enough not to want to risk them being crippled use the contents of your head not your muscles.
The fact I know who is the source of my wife's daily pain, immobility and resulting depression is challenging my pacifist ideals to the limit. I won't harm him for a number of reasons but understand those desiring to do so all to well. When my wife is in so much pain it is a struggle to get her to the toilet without her ending up in tears with all the help I can give the desire to see the man who caused it and his wife who encouraged it get a real in depth understanding of long term pain is ever present.
The batterings along with years of fear derived sleep deprivation in her youth have caused irreparable damage to her nervous system. The latest symptom which has moved from occasional to almost weekly is nervous seizures, not epilepsy, that's still just me, but these happen during the day, mostly with plenty of warning but always resulting in increased pain from the fitting. As a result she stopped driving and has now needed to surrender her licence, meaning she is totally dependent on me to get her to places that need a driver.
The all round care her deterioration is the key reason for me not training as much as I would like this year. It could extend into next I don't know but we are now starting to get some help that could mean I can have some of my selfish time back.
On a related note I am also getting rather tired of hearing some others talking about how hard their life is because they are having to provide care for a loved one and get a pittance in carer's allowance as if I should be 100% with them. I do agree the amount they get is a joke considering how much it would cost to provide the care via a professional service but I get a bit tired of people not seeming to understand how hard providing the same care, working a full time job, commuting and getting absolutely nothing as a thank you is. This is not a sleight on the immense effort put in by non-working carers, and I do know the allowance system is set up to discourage working, but as a person doing so much I hate the way I get so little recognition in return and while some of this is from the system a lot seems to be from non working carers themselves who seem to feel I am somehow not giving up as much because I haven't surrendered our household income. This is not universal and some seem to understand, many of them have done the same and only stopped when the hours spent on care became too long. Let's just say it's a good job aesthetics isn't my thing because I think the last year must have aged me at least 5.

The driver of my wife's car when it was hit was of course me. While my damage was nothing like as dramatic as my wife's it was enough to mean I had to stop training for a while. Then of course because I am a total idiot came back and injured my knee by running with bad form. Then I did it again by assuming it was better, a week or so later. I am now back to running at minimum acceptable pace on good days, but the strength loss has been ridiculous.

That along with standard run of the mill stress, sleep loss etc. has been the bad of the year, and yes it has been pretty bad. However there have been some very good moments too.

The company I work for is one of the first I have encountered that don't have some stupid claim that their people are everything etc. but ironically I felt more valued here than anywhere I have worked before. What they lacked in silly captions they made up for in actually valuing their staff. Last year was a shift in this and when they finished this with a very stupid sign they had stopped valuing us at all, one I raised to HR in my impeccably subtle style, helped by what I was telling them would result from their actions starting while I was talking to them. They did a complete U turn on this and the result is once again I feel like a valued member of staff.
And despite telling HR they were being a tad foolish in detail, then questioning the CEO's predictions in public Q & A I got promoted as a reward for the work I have put in and the fact they knew we needed more than a 1 man team doing the work planned. So now I am running a team of 4.5 people, I share 1 of them with another team.
It's more stress, I am getting some of it right and learning while I get the rest of it wrong. We are behind as any project using top to bottom new technology would be especially when the goalposts are motorised during some periods. Some of the delays are totally my fault, others aren't but it's my team, my project so my responsibility. I am enjoying it and it is rewarding to be building up a team.

My son has now overtaken me in height. I expect him to be over 6 foot by the time he hits his 14th birthday next year, which means he is following his percentile curve perfectly and is likely to finish at around 6.5 foot tall and built like a barn door when full grown. His ambition was always to be big, I think it's job done.
He has continued to be my training partner now, meaning I have someone who will pick out every flaw in my form etc. It will be some time before he can spot me on bench or similar but by the time he can it will be a matter of little time before I struggle spotting him for weight I would imagine. Obviously with him being a juvenile, especially in accelerated growth his training intensity is never at rep max so he needs no spot except when learning a new technique where there is a potential for drop or harm, very rare and only actually used a couple of times. He like doing strange things on balance which is great for his core but sometimes means he tries something he can't do safely so he tries it, I stop him and he does something else to build up to it. No injuries, plenty of mild aches, no stunting of growth, sometimes a pity, and based on research I have done and observing him I think his connective tissue etc. is responding well to the training.

So this year ends with me doing well in some areas, not in others. The stress level is a lot higher and I need to make some adjustments to ensure this doesn't cause me serious problems, but I know this is the case so I am working on it. Currently this involves trying to be sure I get enough sleep, and ideally train to burn off my stress. I know it helps when I am getting it done. I also know I need to make time for it, but there is only a small time slot available for training and if I miss this I can't get it back without serving my family's meal too late.

Christmas is coming and Santa's sack has a fat bar and some bluetooth running headphones that take my pulse rate in it for me. If he loses them on route, he'll be wearing his naughty list as a suppository for the foreseeable, even if he is Odin with his 8 legged horse. On that note, Happy Hanukkah, which borrows severely from the Merry Christmas, which steals blatantly from Happy Yuletide. Don't tell me you never wondered how a religion starting in the Middle East happens to be celebrated in the same way the Northern Europeans celebrate Winter Solstice, especially when the story of Christ's birth is based in spring, you know with shepherds tending their lambs and all.
So to finish on a politically correct note, happy holidays one and all. Enjoy the remains of this year, and hope the next one is great.

It Was The Beer, No Scrap That It's My Genes. Yeah Right!

This is a response to some new research I read a small article about. First part is below.

People who behave recklessly when drunk could now put the blame on their genetic inheritance, as new research from Finland has found that some people are born more likely to embarrass themselves than others.
The study could help explain students who wear traffic cones as hats, says the Daily Mail, but the findings will have serious results too, and could even lead to the development of new drugs.

Of course there is a really simple way to avoid this gene being an issue. Don't drink!

I go well beyond reckless and straight into uncontrollably violent moron who hits anyone in reach. Because I know this is in my nature I haven't consumed alcohol in nearly 25 years.

It's not the beer, wine etc. it's the person consuming it. I get bored of the excuses. Alcohol is not compulsory in life and those trying to make you think otherwise are not your friends.

When I gave up alcohol the way I managed to stay clear of it was by making my social circles the people taking recreational cocaine. When I went out saying I don't drink my 'friends' would spend the evening trying to convince me otherwise or even spiking my drinks. Much against the drug pusher image, when I said no to a line the refusal was always accepted and it soon just became known and I was rarely even offered.

I am a rarity in the world today by being a total straight head, no alcohol, tobacco or other drugs, not even tea or coffee, I am that dull. When I saw what alcohol did to me I was too scared to try other stuff and as a boring middle aged/ old man I have enough confidence/ arrogance not to need them.
Make your choices, accept the consequences.

Maybe it's just my ENTP personality (I'll cover that in another post, ENTP basically means I'm awesome, you're not) but I found it was those needing the substances that turned out be boring. Under the influence they could party hard, but before these kicked in they were the ultimate nervous wallflowers too scared to do anything without a drink, toke, snort etc. So while they were busy propping up the walls, bars etc waiting to feel the effects of the artificial courage I was up dancing or generally making a fool of myself, with the added bonus that I had all my faculties about me so could do so with full coordination and speed of wit enough to leave the uninitiated wondering how the, then young, guy had managed to blow their wealth of experience out of the water.

Pro-Life vs. Real Life

Brought on by finding out the rules on who can and cannot adopt in the UK have become very lax. So people put up for adoption could end up in a home worse than the one giving them up.

When I was in my late teens the pro-life brigade seemed to be in full force, they may still be, but I don't see them as much now. As a rule I tended to leave them to their ranting and walk on by when they were preaching in the city centre near my home.
On one occasion however someone decided to confront me directly asking if I supported abortion, appalled at my answer of 'Yes.' Ordinarily I think this guy was used to people giving him a chance to start his prepared speeches on how evil this is etc. I think a bit faster and asked him 'If your predecessors had persuaded someone to have a child they didn't want. When child grew up, would they thank you?'
Such an obvious question received the very obvious answer or 'Yes.'
My response of 'Then why don't I?' Was as far from his expectation as it was possible to get.
Since this time I have stuck to simply telling people in this type of group to thank their parents for a very happy childhood and how strongly I mean that. The facts I have learned since starting to value my life a lot more are more than most of them could handle.

Most will have encountered speculation about the sensations of a fetus at age of abortion, firm scientific facts to back them up etc. but none the less without being a fetus that is being aborted none of us truly know. However we do know the level of pain many suicide attempts result in. Paracetamol overdose can leave someone suffering for up to 3.5 hours before they eventually die, by an hour in there is no going back in most cases. This type is a favourite because people assume overdose is easier, it isn't, I knew this and never tried it. Safe to say suicide attempts of fully developed humans are generally more traumatic than what happens to a fetus. So when you consider over 95% of 'saved' abortions attempt suicide more than once, it says a lot for how well saved they are. Singular serious attempts are considered normal experimentation, so people who have tried just once tend to be excluded form such figures, it's when there are multiple attempts meaning someone suffered once and still tried again that it raises flags. This fact alone shows that pro-life is not really saving a lot in many cases.

The reason most want to abort is they don't want the child and there is no better reason not to have a child than that. I am not advocating this as a replacement for contraception but when something goes wrong there is no reason the parent and child should have to suffer when there is no need. Many see this as people being irresponsible, from my viewpoint I consider not being willing to put a child through a life of knowing their parent didn't want them to be very responsible. Unfortunately many finding themselves in the situation of wanting an abortion are too easily persuaded it will all be OK after the birth, as if somehow having a totally demanding life demanding care and attention from them will fix it all.

My mother was a long term alcoholic, something many will judge as the cause for her predicament rather than a follow on. Like many people she wasn't shown a great deal of affection in her youth and as was verified by my gran in her declining years when the filter between her mind and her mouth faded, she was brought up to feel she was very much second rate and second class in virtually every way by her mother. Her mother, my gran, wasn't shown a great deal more affection and the chain continued to me, a chain I am proud to have broken, much to the disgust of many seeing how open I am with the pride and love I have for my son.
As many of her generation did and no doubt many still do now, she viewed marriage as her only escape so and when my father offered this, she took it with both hands. Love is where you value something more than yourself, something I don't think my mother has ever truly done due to a mix of fear and uncertainty of how. She convinced herself the marriage was love, but became aware a few years later it wasn't. By then she had already been convinced to have me, a child she knew she wasn't ready for and didn't want.
So before I was school age I was in the sole care of a woman who had correctly thought she wasn't ready to be a mother, had no experience of seeing herself as being loved and even less about what to do next. Like many in this situation she sought escape, for her this was alcohol, there are many alternatives.
It only really became clear to me how long she had been an alcoholic when she stopped drinking and I actually had to give thought to getting her a present instead of simply buying her a bottle. Which is as telling on how much of a disassociated mess I was at that time as it was on her. She learned as many do that running and hiding from problems in substances is only ever a short term fix. When you stop not only have you still got the problems but you have the effects of the substance use to deal with too.
Most would look at this situation and somehow see her as the bad guy in the picture. In truth there is no singular villain here, so many contributed to making her unable to get out of the bottle, including juvenile me, there are too many for any 1 person to point fingers at.

My mother is not unique by any means, especially in being smart enough to realise she would be out of her depth as a parent, unfortunately like many she was dissuaded from this.
Even though I am very happy with my life now, it was only a few years ago that I realised it was half my life where I had considered myself someone worthy of living and being happy to be alive. Even now I am not convinced I feel the cost of my younger life to be worth what I now have. the damage I have caused to people during my life is not my parents fault, I did the deeds so must take responsibility, but I wasn't equipped to deal with life in a responsible way and that is something we ideally need to be taught by our parents.

So in the world of pro-life, the woman gets pregnant, has a brief moment of doubt, gets talked round, has the baby, goes to live in a house with a little picket fence around it keeping all negativity away and everyone lives happily ever after.
In real life however the woman gets pregnant, thinks long and hard about how unprepared they are and the damage thy could cause a child, gets talked round, learns they were absolutely right. Now not only do they have all the issues they had before, they have no time at all to devote to sorting them out because they have a baby depending on them and demanding all their attention. If she is lucky the child will grow older and take the difficult road to sort themselves out, more often however they will either kill themselves deliberately or accidentally through alcohol or other substance abuse or simply spend the rest of their life feeling as undervalued as their parents.

Life's tough, most of us know this and all of us have our sob stories. The trick of being a parent isn't to avoid the child seeing how tough life is but being able to support them through this so they have the tools required when they are in situations like it outside of our care. When we are still too busy trying to tidy up our own mess and know we aren't ready to guide someone through our own this shouldn't be penalised, it should be supported. The same people who are a mess now and have serious issues to sort out could well make excellent parents in the future, but in the meantime they already know they aren't ready for dependents.

Running 19-Oct-2015

Conditions were almost perfect today. I gave what felt like all I had and if I am honest I thought I had more. Not a lot I can do about it now, but I definitely want to be getting closer to target on days like today.

7.35 miles in 56:10 speed 7.9mph pace 7:38 min mile

Speaking Ill Of the Dead

This has made me unpopular a few times and the fact others seem to have decided to idealise a person who caused me a lot of pain in my life is causing me more than a little distress at the moment.
The person concerned is my father and while some of the below is very minor in the eyes of many, the collective effect is something I spent years recovering from.

While married to my mother they found she was pregnant. She knew she wasn't ready to be a mum so wanted to abort, he pressured her into keeping me. In itself not horrendous but when you have married someone and forced them into keeping a child they knew they weren't ready for it is more than a little cowardly to run away from both of these commitments. The relationship was ended due to irreconcilable differences, aka both having affairs and in truth this was likely going on before I was born on his part. Those with high ideals regarding anti-abortion, please thank your parents for a very happy life, only people with one could be so ignorant. Also consider over 95% or 'saved' abortions attempt suicide multiple times then consider how well they have really been saved.

My mother got custody, whether this is the best thing that could have happened I will never know but he got full visitation rights and I know how much effort she put in to make him an active part of my life. Active part doesn't mean saying you will be there and not turning up so many times for so many years the zero confidence child eventually responds to 'I'll see you on Friday' with 'Which Friday?' before turning and walking away. If you aren't pretty close to 100% sure you can keep the promise, don't make it. You feel far less worthless if someone says they'll be in touch about a visit than if they continuously don't turn up when they say they will.

One of the milestone moments in most children's lives is when they first learn to ride a bike without stabilisers. Something my mother could have done but felt would be good to have my dad to to give me a positive memory I could link to him. My moment of pride and joy at managing this after trying for some time was only equaled by my disappointment when I saw he considered this was job done and could then get going back to his new family.

Knowing that for years I lived literally 5 minutes away from a junction he passed on his way to and from work, yet still couldn't be bothered to come in to see me.

My mother was no bargain either and as is not uncommon in my home town at 16 years old I was kicked out of home. I couple of months later my dad turned up to visit, not to check on my well being, just to find out how long I had been living alone as my mother hadn't notified him and was still collecting maintenance payments. Visit length was minutes which considering he would have spent over an hour travelling each way to find this out, left no doubt of it's purpose.

In order to get through stuff like this you have to let it go, so when he apologised under the influence of a lot of alcohol I gave him a clean slate. I had long accepted I was a part of his life he regretted having happened and saw no point clinging to it. There are people who will say being over things means it never effecting you again, this is wrong, that is burying it, being over it is dealing with something and moving on.

I did tend to think my life was the only one he was prepared to mess up. After all his new wife was keeping to the agreement made, looking after the house, bringing up the children and letting him be the provider. I was, as I often am, wrong. His system of viewing marriage as a casual thing hadn't changed. He was happily sleeping around and would have left his second wife and family too if my sister (half sister really) hadn't insisted he stay. He did so but I would never declare he would have done so faithfully.

When I noticed he was starting to make the same promises to my son and not keep them as he had to me I started cutting him short and telling him to give us a call when he would be available to visit us again. That was the biggest mark on his cleaned slate, damaging my life was bad enough, doing so to my son would never be allowed. My son's reaction to his death has been that it won't bother him as he never knew him, in truth I have to agree and would say neither do I.

When he died I was slightly relieved. We visited him a few weeks ago, when he was still lucid which was no small feat because he is a long way from my home. The thought of going to visit him again to spend minutes in his company then go back again for a funeral was filling me with dread, hence the relief. This feeling reminded me of the many times in my youth I wished him dead and how angry and upset he'd made me so many times. When asked by the person who will speak at his funeral for things I remembered about him I realised there is not a single happy memory in my mind associated to him. The net effect is I have been struggling a lot mentally lately and realise the lessons I have learned from my father are all how not to live and treat people.

Sorry but when someone lives there life being a total a hole then dies, they don't become perfect, they just change from being a live a hole to a dead one.

Price of Pain Tolerance

I have encountered a number of pseudo disabled or just general whingers who complain because they wake up in pain, often daily. I have been doing this for decades and if anything have tried turning it to my advantage. Knowing I am going to wake up in pain anyway means I can train harder and be in pain from the day or so before rather than damage I caused decades ago. Part of my acceptance seems to derive from my knowing the pain I feel is largely from stupid things I have done so is my own fault.
Becoming accustomed to this over the years has given me quite a high pain tolerance, something until recently I have thought was a strength with few drawbacks and I felt I could deal with these. An example is when I broke 3 of my toes a number of years ago and accepted the anti-inflammatory medication but refused pain relief, not because I am too tough, but because I judge what I can do based on pain so if I don't feel the pain I would push too far and cause more damage. Basically I am too stupid to use painkillers in this type of situation but smart enough to realise this and work with it.
There is an example of where this can go horribly wrong I saw over the weekend and this has made me think a bit. My father is someone else who got used to waking up in pain daily and just dealing with it. Pre-seat belt laws he had an accident driving a van where the van ended up on its side with him going through the windscreen and landing in a pile of glass on the floor. I was passenger in the van with a seat belt, got hurt a little but I remember the blood around him making it clear his was far worse. The damage to his back wasn't enough to stop him working, he had a family to feed and got on with it. So when new bits of pain started up they were largely ignored in the same way. The latest of these was in his liver, an area close enough to his back to be ignored until it left him stranded at the roadside unable to drive due to pain. After some tests etc. they found he has inoperable advanced liver cancer and infection, considering the liver can grow back with anything up to 80% of it removed this has been an issue for some time.
This is the cost of pain tolerance. We become so used to feeling pain daily and just ignoring it that we don't report things until they are too late. In the case of my father, he will pay the ultimate price for this by dying from something that is incredibly easy to fix if caught early enough. The liver is the most resilient organ so cancer or damage here is usually fixed by simply removing the affected part and allowing the body to replace it. There are lifestyle changes during recovery and often liver diseases have a lifestyle cause, like long term excessive alcohol consumption which have to stop permanently but it's easier to fix than a heart issue.
I know the pain I wake up in is more than he grew accustomed to so even though I am less upset than many expect me to be about his upcoming demise it has had an impact on me. My father wasn't present for most of my upbringing and for various reasons his promises to see me fell through so often I remember responding to one promise of see you on Friday with 'Which Friday?' before walking away. A macho person would declare this showed how little they cared, in truth this showed how much damage it had caused. The impact his demise is having on me is very different to this. I am realising how badly damaged or close to death I could be before bothering to tell one of the thousands of overpaid and under competent GPs we have here in the UK. It's not a pleasant thought.
Everything in life has a cost. My fitness costs time and effort from training, fortunately I enjoy this but the training costs energy which I have to eat, while I like nice food much of what I eat is literally just fuel because I need it. The benefits I get from being fit and the enjoyment I have for my training make this worthwhile. Now of course I have to figure out if my life of being so used to background pain I barely seem to notice it is worth the damage that could occur without me realising. Truth is of course I am likely too far down the road to be able to do anything about it, but none the less it will take some thought.

Bench 14-May-2015

Epilepsy sucks. This session is very abbreviated because when I Lifted off 65kg ready to do a set of 8 on the downward section of the pyramid I felt ready to pass out, quite an advanced sign there is a seizure en route.
Last night the seizure happened, nothing major by the feel of it, probably only lasted a couple of minutes, always fun trying to assess sleep seizures, because I'm asleep when they happen so all I get is the after affects.
On a related topic, a warning to those of you who drive on the mobile phone. Many will think this carries the potential of getting a little fine, few points on the licence and higher insurance costs because of it. I saw the paperwork version of why you may want to rethink when the muppet who hit me while driving on the phone tried to appeal the ban part of his punishment. In it was a section pointing out that if I had died, which according to the medical assessment was a 1 in 3 chance before the operation to remove blood clot from between my skull and brain, he would have been looking at a charge of death by dangerous driving and maximum of 12 years imprisonment. So if that call is really important and you feel hands free kits are just too uncool to use, think how cool you would feel getting a 12 year prison sentence for killing somebody through stupidity, and how you could live with yourself if the person you killed was a child, I know I couldn't.
Anyway back to the session, which was short and rubbish. I am wondering what to do on top weight next time, should I risk trying 75 again and assume this was just the seizure on it's way or bite the bullet and drop it to 72.5, will see next time.

Bench press
15 x 45kg, 12 x 55kg, 10 x 65kg, 8 x 70kg, 4 + 1 failure (should have been 6) x 75kg

Deadlift 12-Mar-2015

Pretty lousy deadlift session in terms of time available for it. What I did was good but there was a higher priority to deal with so this will be part workout log, part rant about something very dear to my heart.

Single arm deadlift hold with farmers walk handle
Left 43 right 45
Left 45 right 41
Left 38 right 40

That was it for the session.

I have long held the opinion that hitting children is cowardice and hitting your own children is a sign of undisciplined parenting. Not only that as my son and I have proven it is ineffective. I was a walking nightmare and got what most fans of physical punishment consider acceptable, my son is renowned for excellent discipline and I am known as a very strict parent, he has never been hit.
There is the other issue that parents tend not to realise they are committing abuse. Every parent I have encountered from those giving gentle taps to those whose children are regularly ending up in hospital believe they are doing the right thing and that this is discipline not abuse. When parents can't tell where the safe line is the only safe line is at none.
One of the people for whom the line was past dropping chairs on his children's backs is my father in law. The man responsible for my wife being told she would be in a wheelchair by the age of 20 and even with all the work she has done to keep her mobility is still in daily pain and has started regularly needed to use sticks at close to twice that age. This is why she used to be very into fitness and now has to simply watch as I continue to train knowing she can't anymore, a fact that she hates.
Yesterday morning one of her siblings had enough of being unable to walk unaided because of a man who is walking around freely and pressed charges. When the police turned up at my father in law's home to ask for a voluntary statement there was evidence of him not adhering to a court awarded restriction on his life. So 'Would you please come with us.' became 'Put on these shiny bracelets and get in the car now!'
So my training this week is totally messed up as I work on being husband/ counsellor for my wife and father/ counsellor for my son as he realises what his mother's childhood was like and the reason mummy can't walk properly is because of her father. Obviously I care about the impact to my training, I wouldn't train if I didn't but it pales into insignificance compared to how much I care for my family.
The good news is there will soon be another piece of human trash not on the streets. The bad news is the damage he has done still causes his children daily mental and physical pain and one of those whose life he has destroyed is my wife.
The mental and physical strength my wife has shown through her life is hard for others to see because they haven't seen the history. I remember how awesome she was as a power lifter, and have seen the way she transferred her attentions to less active pursuits because she had to and has started becoming an incredible artist instead.

The Easy Route, Why It Becomes The Hard Path

The inspiration for this comes from an authors thread I enjoy reading. Ironically I ended up there by following a thread from someone I know from a fitness forum, in fact it's his brother. I have asked his permission and have linked to his post here https://thedarkword.wordpress.com/2015/02/22/its-a-little-heartbreaking-when/#comment-919

I am not a fan of easy routes and though I know I would be one of the many unpublished writers, if you don't count a single story in a magazine, the point raised in this post is something I have applied before and appreciated.

The easy route is the one with least effort and often perception of most reward for that effort.

I see it and loath it most in parenting, if you want an easy life, don't have children, simple as. None of them are easy, be ready for it or don't bother. I have infinitely more time and respect for people who have no children because they knew it would interfere with the lifestyle they enjoy than people with them who regret losing it.
I remember a number of years ago being told by a parent how they couldn't control their early teenaged daughter while apologising for what she had done. My response that if he'd waited that long to instil discipline, then it was his fault not hers, wasn't well received and a mumbled 'I suppose so' showed how he was suffering for having taken the easy route.
Tough call parents don't have hearts of stone, they are made of patchwork from the times our children break them. Discipline and abuse are often paired up as if one requires the other, strangely my son is recognised as having incredible discipline and he has never been hit or physically reprimanded. The first word he learned was 'No' and discipline hasn't let up since. Most of the time he appreciates his life, at times he hates me for being so hard on him and then he watches the behaviour of others and thanks me for ensuring he doesn't act that way. The latter is something I never expected until he reached adulthood, but it has happened frequently.
I didn't take the easy route and my son appreciates this. He is Asperger's, as many of the best people are, so his sense of right and wrong are very pronounced, something that can make discipline very easy if treated properly. However it also brings the rule for one is rule for all attitude, not a bad thing but an issue for 'do as I say, not as I do' parenting. One of the tricks we have used most of his life is to allow him to tell us off, there have been occasions where this was accompanied by Dad misbehaving to reinforce the rule in his mind, it works far better than most expect, though you do get funny looks when your preschool child is telling you off for being naughty. Come to that I don't think the funny looks have stopped despite him being somewhat older now.
There are a lot of books about parenting and the reason many choose not to read any is because no child is by the book, aka laziness. My child like all others is not by the book, but having read a number of them equipped me with potential ideas for the areas where he is, which in truth is most areas by at least one of the books. Much of what I have done has backfired, some in spectacular style, so they got tried once and never again. Other things were no good initially but I have watched him grow into a person where they are worth doing.
I am also a firm believer that if you treat children like idiots they will become them. There have been conversations with my son where I have spent more time explaining what the things I have said mean than on the actual topic, but he now has a very good vocabulary and a great thirst for knowledge. I have instilled in him the idea that if he wants something he can achieve it if he is willing to work hard at it, and like most of us there are a number of things he would like to be good at but can't be bothered to put in the work for. Unlike most of us however there are a few areas he really does work at and really excels in, treating him as if he was just a child and wouldn't understand would not have allowed this.
Of course there is the other danger, shortening childhood. Desire for the child to do well over-ruling the desire to let them have fun. I am not someone who cares about getting funny looks, I consider it an occupational hazard. My son wants to play tig, have me propel him and some friends on a tyre swing etc. I get on with it. Childhood is short enough enjoy it and let others enjoy it. Remember growing old is compulsory, growing up is optional.

Fitness. I will have said before that one of the best things about getting older is the number of people attributing my fitness to age keeps dwindling. I would say the best thing about turning 41 was not being 40 anymore, I didn't mind being 40, it was people's reaction to it I found difficult, especially when I wasn't traumatised by having an age with a zero at the end.
I have increased my lunchtime running distance to just over 10k, which someone pointed out to me is a distance many aspire to run then declare he wished he could do it and be so fit. If I had been in an environment where some diplomacy is not a prerequisite I would likely have informed said person that this isn't a fluke or something linked to me being somehow gifted and special, this is the result of me having spent decades training despite the ridicule etc. that comes with it.
I will say myself that many of the things I do in training are only to be undertaken after consultation with a registered psychiatrist but none the less if you want to be fit or even just look the part, wishing for it is not the way to go.
It is easier to drive than walk, sit on the sofa than go to the gym, play computer games or surf the net at lunch than go for a run. There is however a huge cost to this. I have heard so many people tell me of Fred or Mildred who lived to be 90 while smoking and drinking every day, I have seen many Fred and Mildreds in my life who struggle to walk up a flight of stairs without a cigarette break, take so much medication to control the lifestyle related bad heath they should rattle, have no mobility at all and where a decent orgasm would be the last thing they would ever do.
In contrast I remember a couple where the man was Europe's No. 1 biathlete in his age group (60-70) and his wife was an aerobics instructor, teaching many half her age who struggled to keep up. The wife was less than discrete about why she was generally smiling and had the simple guidance that all women should marry stamina athletes if they wanted a happy marriage. Her very unassuming husband was so used to hearing it he never reacted. I haven't seen either of these two in many years and there is even a possibility they could be dead now. If this is the case they would have died in their 70s, maybe early 80s for the husband, younger than Fred or Mildred. However I would trade the existence sustained by Fred and Mildred for the life thoroughly enjoyed by the other 2 in a heartbeat.
Fitness is a lifestyle, not a trend or a short term fad. My wife gets told every time I hit a milestone birthday that I will slow down at some point and the body and ability I have worked so hard for will wither away. The last time was during my 40th year and she'd had enough so told them that people said when I was 30 that I would have stopped by 40, now they were saying by the time I am 50 or 60, and she doesn't see it happening. I enjoy my life too much to let it go. It's not the easy route, but I am finding everyday things far easier than others my age and younger now, so overall it is making my life easier.

Interests and career. For me writing is an interest, for the gentleman who wrote the post inspiring this weighty tome this is a career. Subsequently he is working infinitely harder on his writing and is far better at it than I am, despite being so much younger. The time and commitment he has put into this is why, in terms of time spent writing, he is leagues ahead of me, and the practice has made him more talented. In contrast of course if there was a SQL writing contest between us I would run rings around him, even if marked on artistic influence, that would be selective writing, if you got the joke you are as sad as I am.
For some of us making our interest our career is a great idea and incredibly rewarding. I have the utmost respect and admiration for those who can do this and no small measure of envy, because I tried it and hated it. For me career and interests have to be very separate, I enjoy my work but not as much as my interests. I am also far too obsessive to make my interests my career because it would mean having to put up with people less obsessive and I can't do that.
I am good at my job and probably still better at my interests, despite having to spend far more time at work than play. Finding what I do for a living interesting is a sure sign of how uninteresting I can truly be. None the less I do and especially over the last couple of years where I have been in a position that works to my strengths with people employed to break my stuff I have become more accomplished and am enjoying it even more. The desire to constantly improve is in me already so having the steady stream of challenges and testers finding thing that could break my logic regardless of how unlikely keeps pushing me to be better outside of my comfort zone. The good news is because I do a job that either requires you to be insane or will soon make you so, most don't want to do it, so demand is high enough for me to make a comfortable if not lavish living.
I am too belligerent to allow myself to not be fit, and enjoy being outside my comfort zone to ever stop learning. My idea of relaxing TV ranges from disengage brain movies where physics takes the day off or stand up comedy, to astrophysics, history, geology and natural history. I get a buzz out of being wrong and like seeing things that show me how little I know about the world.

Religion. This one will be contentious and I will make it clear it is not a dig at all theists, but there are a hardcore group for whom it is simply easier to learn selective bits of a religion from a person in a pulpit than that technical sciency stuff.
America is very big on atheist slamming at the moment and part of this was to show how ignorant atheists are about religion, especially their native Christianity. I cannot imagine a piece of research funded by religious groups rebounding more spectacularly if they'd tried. Overall knowledge of major religions in the modern world, atheists scored above all others, knowledge of Christianity and its scriptures, well I'll by darned if it's not those pesky atheists again. Who let them near a bible?
Religion is something used by some to enhance their lives, and others to control lives. The former have my respect as long as they don't allow it to blind them to one inevitable truth all of us must accept, all of us could be wrong. While the keep this in mind they will seek knowledge from outside the prescribed literature and improve their understanding of what they perceive as the world their god(s) gave them. The latter especially when they seek to profit by promoting ignorance get no such respect. They are encouraging people to limit their minds to line their own pockets or keep control of people to lazy and stupid to question them.
The classic was someone declaring creationism must be exactly as written in the bible and evolution couldn't ever have happened. I pointed out to this person they lived a few miles from a site where animals have evolved to a separate subspecies within the last 150-200 years, so much so that the worms living there cannot breed with those from 30 miles away because they are genetically incompatible. The response was that this is just earthworms and not much of a change, totally missing that this in only a couple of hundred years shows how much is possible in a few billion, that is why young earth creationists cling so hard to earth being a juvenile. Fun to see them declaring the world as being younger than some living organisms in our world today.
This is just one area where people take the easy route because thinking makes their brain hurt. Sorry to have singled out religion, there are many others, this is just the biggest target.

Hiding or running away. This isn't a sleight against my favoured form of self-defence, the ancient and mystical art of legitquick. This is the response to stress and tough life where we hide in substances or run away.
Am I being hypocritical here? Heck yes. I had a tough time in youth, not the toughest by any means but enough to feel that death was a preferable option to struggling on through life a few times. Then when I did get out of home I ran away from the place I knew to do stupid things endangering my life in order to escape the stress of being at home. As it happens it almost worked for me, because I came back mentally stronger and on the right path to being able to face the issues in my head. I say almost quite generously in truth, it took me a number of years before I actually did start dealing with the issues, and fell foul of the same thing most who run from their own mind do. When you stop running the problems are still there.
The same is true of those using substances to escape. There are too many, which only needs to be 1 in this instance, who declare with pride that military didn't get counselling after the world wars, they just got on with it. First of all this is nonsense, the amount spent on post war counselling was quite substantially above £0, but not enough. Growing up I knew of many ex-military who hid inside bottles to escape their wartime past, most stayed in them until they died. These war casualties will not appear on any memorials because we aren't supposed to think about the fact that our minds get messed up by war, mass killing is not something we naturally adapt to unless we are already a bit messed up.
The easy way here has one of 2 results. Either the rest of your life is spent in a state of running or hiding with the issues this brings, especially when the hiding is in substances. Alternatively you will come out of it at some point and at best have to deal with the issues and more likely have to deal with the original issues and the damage you have caused yourself and others during that time.
My time of running was when I was struggling to reclaim feelings I had stopped having, not hiding from just not experiencing anymore. The trail of human wreckage I left in my wake is something I have to live with and no amount of apologies will ever remedy in some cases. Most knew me by reputation so viewed me as disposable, the rest got badly hurt as I ploughed through too hung up on my journey. When I stopped running I had one person to support me, who was capable of giving me a swift kick to ensure I got back on track and got off the easy road. I wish I had done so earlier.
My mother was another example and as I have said before those who instantly judge that she was an alcoholic for so long need to have lived here life and see how strong they were when she reached for the bottle. The big issue of course came when she then found herself stuck alone with a child she had been very clear about not wanting because she wasn't ready for, needed to provide for it and had no qualifications due to being removed from school at 14. It was after I had come back from dangerous sports that she stopped drinking so it had been a few decades in the bottle. The easy route led her to a place where she had to deal with the original issues, chronic health problems, a string of failed relationships and the damage caused to me, destination was far from easy.

Relationships. I do get very bored of seeing couples who evidently tolerate each other rather than love each other. They are another example of cases where people just settled because it was easier. Do yourself a favour, don't do this, I didn't and trust me it was worth waiting to be sure.
Being alone scares a lot of people and that is fair enough. I always thought I would grow old alone and felt I deserved to, this was less a fear, more an acceptance, but none the less it wasn't pleasant. I have watched others look at the relationship I have with my wife and wish they had something like it, like most things they are looking at the results not the process. I am not an easy person to live with in fact I am a walking nightmare, fortunately so is my wife for most. We both push hard and are less than forgiving or our own or often each others shortcomings. This has meant we have worked with each other to improve as a couple by working hard as a team, the alternative which would have happened by pairing us with normal people is we would destroy them.
I have been impressed with some couples I thought at first glance were just settling then realised were destined to work well because they wanted the same out of life together. This is very much the point of who does and doesn't end up in happy relationships in later years. Who you are now matters less than who you want to be and how much effort you are willing to put into getting there, ideally you will both support each other then you have it sorted.

This rant went on a bit longer than intended but hey, it's been a while since the last one.

Feeling Ill

OK it's official, I have full on had enough of being ill this year. Most of December was spent at varying levels of illness and it is getting beyond a joke.
Totally messed up my training throughout the entirety of December, not making my mood particularly pleasant and generally making me feel pathetic.
One of the worst parts is the illness isn't that bad, there have only been a few days when I needed to wrap up in bed, it is just in the background not enough to be major but enough to make me know I daren't push it without it becoming so.
Well I will be training like a new years resolution by doing beginners stuff in January, so glad I train at home at this time of year.

Anyway in summary. Feel ill, not happy, want to get back to training.

When Eating Disorders Are The Norm

There are some very definite efforts being made by the minority to help people avoid or recover from various eating disorders. It would be nice to say they are winning the battle but all evidence suggests this has now reached the point where eating disorders have become the norm.

This is the point where I am undoubtedly supposed to come over shocked and say it's a modern phenomenon, but both would be a lie. This has been happening for hundreds, possibly thousands of years in various cultures around the world. Today there is more awareness of this being an issue but if anything it has being embraced and encouraged ever more to combat the awareness and enforce ignorance and reliance on the more costly fake lest people become happy with nature and stop spending on imitation.

Before I start in earnest I will openly admit to having been as much victim to wanting to look perfect as anyone else and spent years training to achieve this. There was a sizeable chunk of this time when the shortcut offered by intramuscular hormone supplements was very tempting and in truth it was more financial than moral constraints that stopped me on a number of occasions. I still like looking fit but now I am more interested in being capable and only out to please my wife in terms of looks. So this is not a dig at people wanting to look a certain way or who are unhappy with their body, it is a dig at the unrealistic images portrayed for us to aspire to.

Eating disorders have been around as long as records have shown. There have been periods when being overweight was a sign of prestige and wealth, the poor could barely afford to eat so it was fashionable to be fat. The pressure on women to be thin was severe enough for them to by tapeworm eggs to help them lose weight. So people thinking this is new seriously underestimate how stupid our history has been.

Most of us know about photoshop adjusted photos, and even video editing becoming more common. But no matter how many things pop up saying enhanced in post production etc. people see an image on screen or billboard and want to be like them, even though we know the person shown isn't like the picture.
This isn't new either. Early photographers were as guilty as any modern photshopper, the tricks were less subtle but equally as effective at making people feel ashamed of how they were. These included clipping triangular or rhomboid sections out of the photos and taping them together to make the waist appear smaller then taking a photo of the amended photo.
Before the age of film this was even worse, how many think they have seen what Queen Elizabeth I of England really looked like? Truth is she rarely sat for any of her portraits, she would choose a gown and demand a picture of her in it, a painter showing her in an unflattering light would regret it. The most accurate picture is supposed to be one painted after her death.
There are various tricks that can be used without even going this far, holding a perfect pose for a photo in a position that makes it look as if you are moving, easy way of making you look more perfect than you are.

This is before we add in the joys of surgery, corsetry etc. to give people an artificially enhanced appearance. If you this is aimed at women alone one of the DJs from an old metal club I frequented never went out in public without his girdle and men are the main growth area in aesthetic make up, clothing and surgery today, being seen as relatively untapped.

I made a bold claim at the start that the evidence is showing that eating disorders are becoming the norm. The obvious question to challenge this is 'What evidence?'

Exhibit 1 has to be clothes sizing. A sure fire sign of the shape of the world at large can be measured on what they are wearing. The best selling shapes of clothing drive the market to release more of this shape in different styles.
So when I see the smaller sizes being designed for people without any form to their legs and arms and larger sizes having the most room in the midsection, I draw conclusions that smaller people are getting smaller by under eating causing their limbs to waste away and the larger people are carrying most weight in the midsection due to overeating and inactivity. Even medium sizes are now allowing more room in the middle and less in the limbs in their cut.
The average shape is more centred around more middle and less peripheral bodyweight, and this goes for active or sports wear too in most cases.

Exhibit 2 is the increasing number of people paying for surgery to remove body fat or insert silicone in various areas of the body, from breasts and butts to under calf muscles. People wanting fat removed are generally eating more than they need regularly, I even remember reading of a court case where a woman had liposuction and was trying to sue because the fat came back, she lost but is an example of why this becomes a form of repeat business. Those wanting implanted body mass substitutes are generally underweight, personal experience has shown me that the majority of women I have seen in real life who have had implants have been built like twigs elsewhere, it's not a good look, think soccer balls strapped to a skeleton and you are getting the idea.

Exhibit 3 is the increasing number of people being admitted to hospitals worldwide for issues relating to eating disorders. This volume is increasing far more than the population so seen as a percentage the trend clearly shows that eating disorders are becoming increasingly common. Consider that most suffering from eating disorders will not end up in hospital for it and you start to see this is becoming the norm.

The good news is there are some people trying to help. Spain now has minimum body fat % on models to counter the insane human clothes hangers shown in magazines and catalogues. There is a lot more awareness and of course songs films etc. about avoiding these issues. There is also some really good news in that if you are genuinely happy about how you are there will be others who see you as attractive purely for this reason.

Now the bad news. There is an increasing trend to adjustment on photos, even on already enhanced figures. So a person who is known to have had surgical enhancements or taken substances to have achieved their physique will still have the photoshop touch applied, giving ever more unrealistic impressions of what physical perfection is. This will not stop, in fact it will get worse, as we become used to seeing adjusted images the adjustments will become more extreme to make that image stand out more.
The why is obvious but unpleasant. There is a lot of money to be made making people feel inadequate and this has always been the case. There is money to be made on diets, pharmaceuticals, make up, support clothing, surgery, anything that will make you look closer to the unattainable image in the magazine. Of course for those who don't have the money, are unwilling to pay it or aren't old enough to be able to buy the medication or surgery there is the alternative of developing an eating disorder.

The latest trend is post anorexic obesity, the most dangerous state of health dietary issues can create. Anorexia is never a good idea, but when done for a short bout as some do there is less long term damage. Of course for those who feel a very low self worth and answer this with anorexic starvation or in rarer cases bulimia for a longer time it becomes less a fad and more a lifestyle. Most of us have seen the extreme pictures or people close to death from anorexia, but in truth this is still the minority, most are less extreme, just constantly keeping themselves at a steadily dropping weight by eating rarely and usually badly. Most anorexics will eat sugary foods when they do eat because their bodies are crying out in starvation mode, they will then starve for as long as they can feeling guilt over the last 'binge' I use this as their term. During this time the body will have catabolised any muscle it can afford to lose, mental capacity will have dropped due to the lack of energy to feed our most hungry organ, the brain, any tissue that can be absorbed will be, this includes many of the vital organs, bone health deteriorates due to malnutrition and this is just the highlights. Safe to say long term under eating comes at a high price.
Fast forward a number of years and many get to a point where they stop being anorexic, though most of the time this isn't from a new sense of self worth but more accepting they will never be what they want and giving up. After so many years in starvation mode the body will store anything it can and cry out for increasing volumes of food, which is why those coming away from anorexia in professional care are monitored carefully for so long after stabilising at a healthy weight. So the body will be consuming far more than it needs and putting as much of it to fat stores as it can. The dangers of long term obesity are well known, putting additional strain on the heart and various other organs, the increased weight puts more pressure on the bones and joints which when not exercised are unable to keep up with the increased demand. Now add this to someone who's body has deteriorated and minimised itself from long term anorexia and you have an even more serious problem. The muscles, bones and connective tissues are unable to maintain mobility with the increased load, metabolism will still be low from years of under eating, so there will be a feeling of lethargy coming from low metabolism and lesser ability to move, often adding to various other factors to worsen already present depression. Vital organs will struggle to adapt to the new demands and some can fail especially if the depression is treated with the most common of over the counter remedies, alcohol.

The truth is there are some happy endings for people suffering eating disorders, but they take a long time coming and the journey is never easy. If you are there now please do seek help and persevere, if you truly want to get out of it, because if you don't I virtually guarantee you will fail. This like anything else linked to depression or low self esteem will take a lot of work and time so you have to want it badly.

If you aren't and are wondering if this makes you a bit weird. Maybe it does, but if so that's a good thing, I say with some authority that most of the greatest people in history are far from ordinary and were likely considered weird in their time.
Truth is there will be immense pressure on you to conform to a form that only exists on a computer and if you manage to resist this I and many others will admire you for it. You don't have to be fitness mad, or look like a magazine image, if you feel self assured enough to be happy in yourself this will give you an edge over others. You will be able to achieve more because you will know you can do it and this it turn will improve your confidence even more, something most people cannot help being drawn to.

Genre Snobs or Metal Pretenders

As the name of the blog covers and a vast minority of my posts state as well as lifting heavy metal I like listening to it. My upbringing introduced me to the inescapable fact that fans of often ear bleeding metal are in somewhat of a minority in civilised or uncivilised society. So of course there is no way a minority group like this would be stupid enough to try splitting themselves into yet more miniscule minority groups is there? That would be stupid beyond belief so of course it happens.

I watch rather a lot of my music on youtube, because I am old and out of touch so this is a good way to find new music I like, and the volume of pretenders stating the album isn't hardcore, melodic death metal because the lead guitarist is using a silver spoon as a plectrum or similarly pointless comparison is just mind numbing for those of us who have one. There are more genres of metal out there than there were bands performing it in the UK charts for most of the 90s, in fairness the metal scene in the UK was pretty slow in that decade but seriously guys you need to get a grip a bit less often. There is classic metal, soft metal, death metal, metalcore, death core, melodic death, hardcore punk, tutu wearing metal, and so many more it is absurd to think no song could end up in more than one genre let alone a full album.

Being the sort of person who tolerates stupidity so happily I of course support the pretenders at every opportunity by pointing out they need to spend a bit more time enjoying the music or finding stuff they do like rather than trying to be a pseudo aficionado on if the power chords are suitably low and bar is the correct amount of milliseconds each to fit the genre in the title.

There is no specific genre I seem to like universally, I like metal that is heavy in sound, fast, with lyrics that are either ridiculous, callous or thought provoking, and clear enough for me to understand while still having the sound that keeps it aggressive. A lot of my music is from this century, because the foundations laid in the classic metal mean newer bands can take more risks, making the music faster, heavier and more abusive than before without risking having no audience. Without the likes of Alice Cooper, who is still awesome if a bit soft for my tastes (who hasn't got away with more than they should to 'Poison'?), there could have been no Iron Maiden, without them there could be no Sepultura then Heaven Shall Burn etc. Of course such views are always well received by the genre snobs as all could imagine, of course this last is total nonsense, but there are always several liking my comments, ranging from kiddie metalheads to other middle aged men who are supposed to have grown out of this by now.

My tastes are definitely getting heavier, something I am noticing due to the number of times I am blipping through songs in the car that would have been fine years ago because they are too soft or slow. I can imagine me listening to someone singing about the injustice of war and government with white noise in the background in a matter of months, I am sure youtube will have that somewhere, I think it might be under the genre of hardcore metalcore with added tutu or something similar.

Artificial Intelligence vs. Natural Stupidity

No contest natural stupidity wins hands down.
The internet is a great way to see this in action if you are fortunate enough not to witness weapons grade stupidity in your real life. But for those who haven't I would like to declare some things that quite clearly demonstrate that we truly aren't as smart as we think we are and why stupidity is not only going to continue but is actively encouraged.

Recent US history, where stupidity was genuinely at it's most terrifying. When the Bush Cheney election had taken place a colleague of mine from the time found an interesting combination of research that should keep the world awake at night. There was a map of the US with average IQ and who was voted for by state. Ever state with an average IQ below 90, consider this is below 90% of the average intelligence for a person of their age, voted Bush conclusively, those with 90 or above voted Cheney. I will confess I didn't check the validity of the data but considering the American education system is worked out on the basis IQ is fixed for life their data in this area isn't likely to be great anyway.
So this meant the most powerful political leader on the planet had gained power by appealing to the most stupid members of the population. The more intelligent americans had either not bothered to vote or made up such a small percentage their votes weren't enough to stop the dumbest leader the nation had ever known gaining power.
We know that elections are only for the middle management and that as The Who said 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss' but if you are too lazy or ignorant to vote intelligently don't bitch about the leadership you get.

Legal claims against workplaces. There are a lot of these encouraged in the UK and I am not a fan, particularly when they are basically encouraging people not to take responsibility for their own safety. 'I was waking through a kitchen and there was a spill on the floor' an environment where spills can happen to someone who has to choose between leaving a potential fire risk or slip hazard for someone to stupid to bother to watch their footing walking through a commercial kitchen. 'I was out on a job and there was no-one available to foot my ladder.' someone who didn't read the part of the UK 1979 health and safety responsibility certificate that says they must be responsible for ensuring they don't take unnecessary risks and should notify the responsible person if looking like they have too.
The worst part about this is that these morons get pay outs, encouraging the stupidity rather than punishing it.
If you need to be told your coffee may be hot or bag of roasted peanuts may contain peanuts, please remove yourself from the gene pool by ensuring you never breed. I know natural selection is supposed to ensure organism that fit their environments prosper but hopefully in time the world will realise that it is not a good thing to have stupidity fitting into our world so well.

Dedicated follower of fashion. A bit of a lighter example of stupidity. I remember being at school when the fashions of the 70s were laughed at with justified aplomb. The same people who were laughing at the ridiculous platforms and flares were then a few years later wearing the same things, though of course the trousers were named boot cut to ensure people could be laughed at for not even recognising they were wearing flares.
There are some intelligent fashions, off the top of my head I can't think of one, but it is so easy to identify the many blatant errors in judgement. Sports clothing becoming so fashionable that the sizing had to allow for the fact that in reality it would be a 20 stone couch potato wearing the latest shell or track suit. It really doesn't matter how many genuine athletes or sports people wear this stuff well it doesn't stop someone who looks like they have 5 buttocks being a great bulimia aid in nike leggings.
I openly admit to having no dress sense whatsoever and that there is a strong chance that many of the clothes I have worn were likely in fashion once but rarely worn at the same time. So yes I can look ridiculous, but I am not stupid enough to think otherwise.

Driving, riding or walking. If you really need to see stupidity displayed en masse in everyday life you only need to be on the move. There are plenty of cases where I have witnessed people to engrossed in their phones, or food to realise they were walking onto the road with a car, truck or bus coming straight at them. I have heard cyclists and motorcyclists declaring they could tell someone was going to pull out on them and were unable to do anything about it, unless of course they had a voice or horn they could activate to make the unobservant driver aware of their presence. Yes, it would be the driver's fault, that doesn't make it hurt less so take action.
One classic I remember when my main transport was still pedal bike, most of my life in fairness, was someone declaring how much safer they were in a car. This was cleared up a bit when I pointed out he was basing this on crash tests done at a maximum of 40mph when he spent most of his time on motorways doing 80mph. So the crumple zones that would save him at half the speed would just reduce the damage meaning you would be trapped and possibly slowly fatally injured rather than instantly killed, personally I would rather die without suffering too much first. Don't talk safety with people who really can understand physics.
The number of ways in which people are stupid when commuting or travelling is immense. There is a good reason the motor car was hailed as the automated death machine in the early part of the 20th century, and it wasn't due to the limits of the machinery.

My job is in technology so I am very experienced in seeing how if you make something idiot proof they will upgrade the idiot, and of course occasionally being the idiot myself. I haven't gone as far as to wonder where the 'any key' is but I have asked how to create something only to have a really clear 'CREATE' button in a clear colour pointed out on screen.
Working in development means you get used to being given uninformed or flaky specifications, then these becoming less mobile and more motorised. This happens to such an extent that I tend to worry now if there is no scope creep, because the majority of the time stuff goes out according to first spec and no-one asks for changes it is because no-one ended up using it. This in itself is not always as stupid as it may first appear but there are definitely cases that have been beyond the realms of intelligence. one I remember was being asked to produce data for people who had found part time work and put this alongside how many women had been found work, not as a subset just an aside. The worst part to this was that I raised how pointless this would be before being told to just build it, then got asked to justify why I had built it afterward as they realised how irrelevant it was.
Those of us who have had to specialise in our jobs are often put to shame by those with more generic knowledge. So while I am lumped into IT by my job, I am left floundering at basic things like how to use the office printer or look blankly when people start talking about PC specs. The old question of 'How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb?' definitely has the answer, never happen that's a hardware problem in my world. I know hardware exists and is essential for my work to be able to run, I just don't have a clue about it and don't care to learn about it either, voluntary ignorance that frequently makes me look stupid to others.

There are so many examples of how stupidity is rewarded too. People who have made a fortune selling themselves into some form of celebrity and getting a massive following of wannabes into the bargain. A terrifying example is Katie Price, the person who complains so vehemently about Frankie Boyle insulting her parenting but is willing to disappear into any environment she is told if there is a camera in the area, deserting her children while doing so. I remember wondering what exactly all the fuss was about the first and gladly only time I saw her on a TV show, Top Gear as it happens, such a sour face and the voice and personality certainly seemed to back up the look. I do remember thinking the reason for her multiple divorces was that her exes had figured out they could get a better looking twin pack of silicone at the local DIY store, with a better personality to boot.
I think she would be less scary if there weren't an army of young girls seeing her as the way to be. I know she isn't the worst role model people have chosen to follow, Charlie Bronson is one I have heard a couple of people declaring they wanted to emulate and I think he's worse, but the whole spectrum of embracing the most stupid and pointless in our society is a horrible thought.

I declare that I have survived despite the number of stupid things I have done and I stand by it. I cannot justify this fully, much of what I have done could very easily have killed me and as my son pointed out that would mean he wouldn't exist. What I do that is different to so many is accept responsibility for what I have done and the consequences.
Strangely enough when you are living a life where your life is at risk several times a day, you don't tend to consider later life. Something to do with not expecting to have one. The irony is I considered what I did OK because if anything went really wrong I'd die and that would be the end of it, chance of injury were, in my mind, lower than chance of death. I was wrong of course and the list of injuries I sustained was enough for me to have had 247 scars removed from my body, most successfully and those that failed are no worse than previous. The medical insurance covered this and I thought what the heck. The internal damage was pretty nasty too.
As an aside to this I remember being in hospital for the 2nd batch of scar removal, some crossed over others so it took two separate batches. I came out and was wrapped in bandages over a lot of my body to stop me scratching and opening up the delicate stitching. There was another patient in the hospital who looked at my bandages and evidently wanting horror stories asked what I had done. When I answered scar removal he walked away disappointed. Not bright when you consider I was largely covered with bandaging so if someone wanted horror stories I was the place to be.
Back to the point. Now I live with the results of living like there would be no tomorrow only to find there is. This means waking up in pain every day, a few stretches and movements tends to get rid of most of it, and by continuing to train I keep myself able and mobile so I am less lucky and more the result of switching from not caring to looking after myself.
The point here is this is no-one else's fault, it's mine. There was no-one with a gun to my head, in fact it would have likely have taken that to stop me doing the stupid things I made the core of my life for my younger adult years. Subsequently I accept the responsibility for the price I pay for those choices and live with it. We can all be stupid but we need to accept this as our own choice and not look to blame others.

I don't like the drugs. Musical reference aside I am a bit of a rarity in today's world, a total straight head, all the stranger for my interest in dangerous sports, where there are a lot of recreational substances used, part of not caring about later life I guess. The reason is less moral stance and very much fear based. I tried alcohol and it made me uncontrollably violent so I was scared to try anything else. This certainly wasn't lack of opportunity, in fact in some ways the easy availability made it less appealing, there was no urgency to try it because it would always be there. Most of the people I knew were casual or frequent users of class A narcotics and I got used to being around them and what this involved.
The parts I find stupid are the blame and blindness that goes with a lot of drug or substance users, this includes alcohol and other legal substances.
Blame first. 'It wasn't me, it was the drink.' or other substance. Now if this was put into your body by someone else against your will I agree, if not no dice. If you drink the alcohol or take the drugs, you know the risks and likely the effect it will have on you. If you don't want those effects don't take it. I know that with a pathetic amount of alcohol in my system I become out of control and a danger to anyone nearby, so I don't drink. If I did it wouldn't be the alcohol's fault it would be mine and that would be stupid. Most people have done things they regret under the influence of substances they have gone back to, the smarter of these moderate, others just become a joke.
Blindness, not literal but voluntarily ignoring the inescapable fact that there is always a price to pay, sooner or later. If what you take lifts you up, there will be a come down, and it could be a longer journey down than you were ready for. If you take things that are mood based, hallucinogens etc. then being nervous about taking them will definitely mean you will wish you hadn't, there are made up horror stories of course and most of these are stupidly obvious, but seeing someone on a bad trip is pretty bad, being in one must be infinitely worse. I have helped a number of people make decisions on drugs before, and surprisingly considering I never resort to the 'don't do drugs' mantra many have decided not to for a while because of things I have said.
Asking the dealer for guidance is not a good idea, most of them are long term users and don't remember the first time at all. Look up what things do to you positive and negative, short and long term first. There is no such thing as a totally harmless drug and it's worth finding out the cost and benefits before taking it. If you need to see the truth of this find someone who has frequently smoked cannabis, an often stated harmless narcotic, for a number of years and see how a conversation with them feels.
My adrenaline habit wasn't safer than any other addiction, the death would likely have been more dramatic but that's about it. There is no moral high ground here, I found another way to get high that's all there is to it.

Parenting is an area where I think a lot of stupidity starts. There are a lot of people so convinced that children can't do x, y or z and subsequently they never try to find out if they can. I came into parenting totally blind to what different ages were supposed to be able to do, so I talked to my son as an equal, which has meant a number of conversations where I have said a sentence then spent a few minutes explaining the meaning of half the words in it and had to start again because the thread had been totally lost after the explanation. Yes this does make you feel very stupid, but it also means I haven't limited my son by my ignorance, this is to such an extent now that he is teaching me things I genuinely didn't know based on research he does for fun. By the time he reaches adulthood he's going to be way ahead of me, and that's a good thing.
A lot of the time we were educating our son at home involved lessons where we would have a list of things to cover and keep going up the difficulty until he didn't know any more. Then he started learning. This may seem bizarre considering we were teaching him so should know but he has a lot of interest in science, history, geology and a few other things so assuming he wouldn't have been on youtube or google finding out things just for fun would have meant looking like a total idiot in class, something his new teachers are starting to realise is all too easy if he takes an interest.
Children are as dumb as we make them. I know it's fashionable to be stupid but it really is time the fashion changed.

Did Life Begin (Or End) At 40?

Short answer, no! Longer answer below.

Well I'm still alive so it didn't end. I haven't died, though after training I can smell that way on occasion. I haven't grown up either, still managed to hurt myself training and play silly games with my son enjoying them as much as any other child would.

I have been 41 for a short while now and there is something to be said about not having a 0 at the end of my age. I am not getting people asking me how much I was dreading turning 40 or how old I must feel any more, I don't even get people looking at me in astonishment at the fact I will happily admit my age which was in some ways worse. I did have a couple of people saying that it will hit me harder when I reached 50 but I had that when I was 30 about turning 40 so I seriously doubt it.


There are a lot of reasons people feel age to be significant and not all of them are bad.

The passing of time brings us ever closer to the end of our lives, dark and sinister maybe for some but for me this is more about what I leave behind. I want to see my son grown up and happy, if he has children I will likely want to see the same for them too. Death means I don't get to see them again, so I won't be there for them if I am needed. That stings more than it should because in truth I seem to be very good at not dying even when all evidence says I should have many times. I am immortal until proven otherwise.

The young at heart. I never fully understand this term, maybe I have always been too old at heart to get it. To me it is always a pretence. I am physically capable of far more than most half my age, I can act the fool with the best of them, I am not young and have no illusions about this, which makes this even more confusing for me. I see people declaring they are young at heart who seem to be using it to describe the fact they are jovial and happy, as if being older makes you less happy. Others use it as an excuse to be selfish and drink like they could when they were younger. The young at heart seem to feel the passage of time is an insult to their eternal youth.

The waiters, not the people bringing you food and drink, these are the people who were waiting for life to bring them something worth having. These people get to 'milestone' birthdays and look back wondering why they didn't get the breaks. Truth is we all get them, the trick is spotting them and going for it, then of course being willing to pay the price for them. I took the road less travelled because I saw what started off as a small opportunity that became a way of life for a few years and set me into a totally different mind-set. The cost is that while the others who walked the more conventional trail have nicer houses that are mostly paid for I don't and with the property market being as it is I likely never will. I don't like it but that is the cost of me taking the opportunities I did.

There are more of course but I don't intend this to be a novel.


Milestone passed. 40 was a mixed year.

I hurt myself being stupid training as already stated. This means I will not be achieving this years targets, though in all honesty they were a bit ridiculous anyway.
For the first time in many years I decided I wanted to build up a bit and be more aesthetically biased than pure functional as I normally am. My wife has put up with me for 15 years and I felt that it would be nice for her to have me looking more appealing for her. The balding old man look isn't what she went for when we first met and there's not a lot I can do about the disappearing hairline but I can work to ensure that beneath the rapidly greying body hair is a physique she likes.
Fortunately she was pretty happy with me as I was because this is not looking realistic at all. In fairness we all have genetic limits on how much muscle we can build without intra-muscular hormone supplements and I am almost 1.5 times my original body weight even with having to slip into remedial work, which seems to be my limit.
When analysing the math it appears the additional weight I was able to gain was far from the 50/50 muscle/fat split and more like 20/80, so I was gaining weight but not much lean mass. I have dropped some weight again now and most of that has been the excess blubber so I do look prettier, if not bigger.

My son started at a school rather than being home educated, which wasn't an instant thing. We were told in no uncertain terms he wasn't suitable for state education, which in fairness to me means the state aren't providing a suitable education and support. Subsequently we took to educating him at home. When at a group of sessions designed to help parents with children on the Autistic spectrum my wife was directed to a school that specialised in secondary age children on the spectrum. After a great deal of sessions, forms etc. we got a SEN (Special Educational Needs) statement, which said this school would be best for him, we were a respectable second there was no third.
We then spent a great deal of time grilling the school on what they would be able to provide for him, concerned that they would be either a glorified nursery providing virtually no education, or be as bad as the school he had attended. They made all the right noises but we were still concerned.
The good news is the SEN was spot on, he loves it and we are starting to be able to just enjoy being his parents again. Something you don't always realise when home educating in a way that actually includes education is how much it can damage your parental relationship. Our son had started to see us as omnipresent and probably always on his back because the parts he was remembering were the critiques over the fun.

Because of the lack of stigma attached to being 41 it is just a bit of fun. It's going well with my son enjoying school, my training going better than I deserve and life is ticking along happily.
So life didn't begin or end, it just continued. If people are being generous they could declare me middle aged, presuming a lifespan of 82 years or they can be less diplomatic and say I'm just old.

Looking Back (Anti-Rosy Tints)

There are good things about getting older of course. One I like is the rapidly reducing number of people attributing the fitness I have worked hard on for decades to my youth. There are also bad things about getting older too, one I hate is the number of people, many younger than me, who look back on 'their day' with rosy tints. The world has never been perfect and it never will, it just changes.

One thing that sparked this is the way people talk about music of set eras as great and modern stuff as meaningless and soulless, or of course my favourite, less moral. There has been pop music for as long as there has been music and I'm sorry but if you don't see an immoral message in 'If you can't be with the one you love, Love the one you're with' there isn't a lot of hope for you.
Every type of music changes over time, there is classic and nu metal, because it's far too cool to be spelt new. Some of the classic stuff is pure musical excrement, and even some of the bands who have produced it have stated so in later years. How many of us haven't looked back at work we used to do with a sense of shame? Some of the new stuff is as bad but some of it is truly awesome and you can clearly hear the inspiration from the older stuff.
The message changes because time changes, strangely there are no songs about the war in Vietnam anymore, because most of the bands weren't even born when it ended, but there are plenty singing about the new corruptions etc.
There are of course classic themes that will always endure, topics that haven't changed much, desire for love, sex, good times and of course some that are simply setting out to be hilarious, with varying levels of success.
It is quite strange to think that this is now a long time ago but there was a period of pop songs in the UK that seemed to be going for having the word sex in the title and as the adage goes they were selling well. Someone who is now likely middle aged too announced to me that you wouldn't have been able to listen to music with such crude lyrics years ago. I introduced her to a few examples of how wrong she was from the metal genre and resisted the temptation to tell her what her gaping mouth should be used for, in fairness not difficult I like people who can count above their IQ.

My grandfather seems to have been responsible for my earliest realisations that the world wasn't perfect in any era, now it looks as though I am set to follow his example.
I remember him upsetting several his age when I was a child. One class example being when someone was getting him to agree that they didn't have trouble with all these illegal drugs when they were younger, she seemed less than pleased to have the fact this was because they were all legal back then pointed out.
I find it interesting to watch people talk about the way things were so much better when they were younger, who so evidently haven't a clue what was happening at that time. Watching people criticise the, in all fairness, ridiculous fashion of displaying the waist band of underwear while having the trousers draping past the feet. However the usual criticism is about the visibility of the underwear. I remember being a child during the punk era when there were a few people wearing see through trousers, one couple in particular would have assisted any struggling bulimic with how low slung their buttocks were, so by comparison G-string and see through trousers from the old days is nowhere near as tame and inoffensive as the flash of waistband from recent times. Fashion is always ridiculous, that's the whole point, if you don't want to look cool copy me, I never have.
Crime and violence. The all time classic, because of course the fact we know the majority of crime is committed by people under 25 is only from this generation, we haven't gained this knowledge by looking back over decades of data. The youth of today are very similar in most ways to the youth of my day, my parents day etc. In fact the truth is that per capita there are less youths being involved in crime than there was in my youth, and it has been attributed in part to one of the very things that has been blamed for violence for years. Video games are the way a lot of people interact now and they have friends who they only know through their games consoles. It is not practical to be indoors playing and outdoors creating trouble so many mis-spent youths are now being mis-spent in front of the TV with a controller in hand.
My grandfather told me about the way the police were encouraged to let things slide a lot just after the war (WW2) because they needed people working not locked up. Then years later when crime was getting to be an issue the government cared about again they had to start arresting people. Lo and behold the post war crime figures are really low and a bit later skyrocket, the world didn't change just priorities. He even admitted himself that he was fortunate to have noticed others getting locked up for being in fights before him to give him time to start using restraint, otherwise he would have been one of them.

There are many parts of this which confuse me. One is the increased use of 'never did me any harm' or 'character building'. Even bullying has been put down as character building, and yes it built characteristics into me, but fortunately I have worked those out since so the harm has been undone. The question I tend to ask when I hear the 'did me no harm' argument is 'Did it do you any good?' Most either look dumbfounded or snap to answer yes before they have had chance to engage their brains. Many things that have built my character have definitely caused me harm and there are a good number I wish hadn't happened. Some were my choice and show that sometimes getting what you want is not a great idea. Truth is we have things happen to us and will have to deal with them after, wishing they never happened doesn't undo the harm, it isn't that easy, especially if you don't accept there may have been harm.
One of the more fundamental is how rapidly people forget how much they hated people talking to them as second rate citizens because they were the youth of the day. I see people now seeing a group of teens messing around in a group, laughing and being loud and assuming they are automatically trouble as per tabloid media. Truth is some are, but the largest majority aren't. They are often hanging around in groups because of the fear we are drip fed telling them they need to for safety, so they are as scared of elders as elders are of them. They get loud because that's what happens when large groups get together. Unfortunately some of these groups get so fed up of being treated like thugs they start acting like them, making it a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Voluntary amnesia goes further still of course and the respect people hated being demanded instead of earned by their elders is now something they don't understand why they aren't just getting.

There are a few things I have seen become abolished or introduced that people criticise now as if they were the key to ultimate peace, harmony and perfection.
Corporal punishment. Because of course who wouldn't be brought into line by a swift whack with a piece of bamboo? Well me for one. I was one of many unpopular kids at school who realised there was a bit of temporary celebrity to be gained from taking a whack without reacting too much, so we would do just enough to get the beating we could stand without too much hardship for playground bragging rights. By the time I was attending school I was at one of the last remaining to have this so it was only part of my education until I was 9 years of age, when we moved to a new area and therefore a new school. The secondary school I was near when I was a lot younger stopped using it after some pressure but the people who had received the beatings before this would boast about the way they had damaged the teacher issuing this's car etc. for revenge. This was while they weren't big enough to hit back against full grown adults, a few who found they suddenly were found themselves excluded from school when they struck back against what was in fairness a legalised armed assailant. Fair to say corporal punishment is a great way of building hatred, animosity or getting noticed by your peers, not even remotely a useful form of punishment to instil discipline.
Lack of technology. I grew up before mobile phones were common, in fact it was quite something to have a home phone and for reasons I never got, most people kept them in the hallway. So people get all nostalgic talking of days when we didn't feel the need for children to have mobile phones in case we need to get hold of them or vice versa. Of course this is them forgetting the sheer panic if the child was late because they had missed the bus and had no way to contact them. My mother used to issue me with 2 10p coins and strict instructions to call her if I was going to be late. Of course sometimes I was nowhere near a payphone and this wasn't practical, on those occasions she would have worried. Technology has it's faults when used badly, spam mail etc. but I am glad my son has a mobile phone and knows how to quickly call us if he needs to. We had a call from him on one occasion because he was in a game of hide and seek we didn't know about in a large outdoor park and we had no idea where he was. Having heard us shouting for him he called us to say he was OK just hiding. This may seem daft but it worked, we were all happy because he was fine and able to continue playing.

I often wonder if there isn't more than a little bit of jealousy behind the rosy tints. Wonder how the world looks through the green mist of envy and rosy tinted glasses. I know my son gets life better than I did, I have worked hard to ensure this is the case and intend it to remain so. He still has to work for things but he was born to my wife and I at a time when we were as ready as we could be and truly wanted him, which makes a massive difference. As with all children he would like things we can't or won't give him, but unlike many he is not being fed nonsense about how our day was so much better, we show him the good and bad so he knows it wasn't better or worse just different.