Thoughts on Turning Forty Part 3: Life After Quarantine

Working in a hospital in the middle of a plague had one benefit; I was one of the first people to get fully vaccinated against Covid. Just before my fortieth birthday I got my second shot and was finally able to stop being worried about the disease. My whole house eventually got vaccinated (except for my kids, obviously), and I stopped giving a shit about Covid completely.

I wanted to have a life again. Not that I had one much before. Having to take care of two kids and having a night shift job that had me working weekends made it hard to have a life before Covid, but dammit, I was able to go outside again and I didn't want the opportunity to pass me by.

There was just one problem: Quarantine had not only drained me of pretty much any joy I had in life, but it had dragged on for so long that when I thought about what made me happy, I didn't even have an answer. I couldn't even remember what I did to make me happy.

I'm sure I'm not the only person that felt this way or is still feeling this way. This fucking plague seemed to either turn people into Q-anon obsessed covidiots, or you developed gut wrenching anxiety at the thought of being around other people and doing anything. I was definitely in the latter camp. I'd go to work at the hospital, go to Kroger in the early morning when my shift was over to get groceries (when nobody was in the store), and otherwise stayed at home and argued online with idiots. I couldn't even remember life before quarantine. It felt like a lifetime ago, and the inability to even remember what brought me joy was scary. 

A few days ago I watched Bo Burnham's new special on Netflix. Titled, "Bo Burnham: Inside", Burnham did an entire special filmed in his home. I watched it the first time and liked it because the depression he was feeling from quarantine felt relatable. So I gave it a second watch. Then a third. And finally a fourth after five days. What I first saw as some mild depression was actually a descent into full blown madness. Bo had lost his fucking mind from the isolation, and you're not sure if you're watching his mental health decline as a performance, reality, or somewhere in between. Quarantine got to all of us. Some harder than others. 

Seriously, go watch "Bo Burnham: Inside" on Netflix. It's a work of genius.

And like Bo Burnham using his special to distract himself from life under quarantine, we also found ourselves doing new hobbies or other things to keep our mind occupied. A bunch of men who probably couldn't boil water learned to make their own bread. TikTok exploded with new users, making entertainers out of bored teenagers and young adults. I became a prepper and learned how to garden and can my own food so I don't have to worry if the grocery stores run out of food again. We were stuck inside, so we found all sorts of creative ways to distract ourselves from the isolation and depression. We did all this while it seemed like the world outside was going more and more crazy.

Now it looks like the twilight of this plague is finally upon us (with no help from the covidiots; seriously, fuck each and every one of you with a broom stick) and we have to return to life again. And some of us are going to have to do some serious introspection to figure out what we need to do to be happy again.

I started doing karate again at a new school with my kids, since my old one was shut down. I also started taking up Brazilian Ju Jitsu, but had to quit because of the shoulder injury I mentioned in my last post. After my work life caused me to be socially isolated long before Covid (mentioned in my first post in this series), I want to go out and meet people again. That's going to be difficult because my economic isolation is still there, but I've been putting in the effort as best I can. I saw old friends that I hadn't hung out with in nearly two years. I even quit drinking. I don't know what my fitness journey is going to be from here on out, as I can't lift weights and won't be able to for the next several months. I'm going to be in a shoulder sling, so I won't even be able to run. But all of us have a chance to be happy that has eluded us for the past fifteen months and I'm not going to miss out on the opportunity.

Enjoy the song:

Thoughts on Turning Forty Part 2: Looking Back on a Life of Violence

I admit that the title of this post is a bit misleading. I didn't have a life of violence, just a life of preparing for, and on occasion, engaging in it.

In previous posts I've written about how I started doing martial arts when I was fifteen, and how learning to fight eventually had me protecting my friends in the freaks and geeks squad from bullies. And joining the military just after 9/11. After returning to civilian life, despite all my efforts to the contrary, I got forced into a career in private security.

Basically, my whole life has been preparing for fights. The amount of actual fighting has been low, but I'm going to chalk that up to fortune favoring the prepared. That, and being a giant. People usually don't want to fight someone that's 6' 4".

Now that I'm 40, that may be coming to an end.

A few years ago I went to see a doctor for pain in my right shoulder. I may or may not have written about this, I don't remember. But the doctor found a calcium deposit on my shoulder. Some minor surgery with a needle and it was removed. Unfortunately another one came back a month later and the doctor told me that I would need to have more extensive surgery on it, requiring time off from work and wearing a shoulder sling. Because this is America and we don't get paid medical leave, I had to turn it down. So I lived with pain in my shoulder for the past five or six years. It's been more of an inconvenience than anything. Hard to lift big, but otherwise not a problem. 

Anyway, my job gives me paid time off now, so I decided it was time to get my shoulder fixed. 

Of course my shoulder is even more fucked up now. Why wouldn't it be?

The doc was less concerned with the calcium deposit, and more concerned that the cartilage in my shoulder had been partially torn and was no longer attached to the socket in my shoulder. Without surgery, I may end up losing the use of my arm.

So yeah, that's great.

If you did martial arts in the 90s you know pretty much everything there's ever been said by or about Bruce Lee. So being one of many former superfans of the man, I thought back to a documentary that talked about how at the age of 35, Bruce Lee began getting scared of becoming old. He didn't want to be unable to fight or lose his strength. And like me, Bruce Lee spent his life preparing for violence. And like me, he was scared of being unable to do violence. 

Did I just compare myself to Bruce Lee? You're damn right I did. It's my blog, I make no apologies. Deal with it.

Really dude? Really?

There wasn't much said about Bruce Lee's childhood that showed what made him have the drive that he did. I remember in my teenage years of being driven by a trauma of being bullied and I wonder if Bruce Lee had the same issue. I do remember that he got in Wing Chun after being in a few street fights. It wasn't until a few years ago that I learned that he didn't just do Wing Chun in his teenage years. He did every martial art he possibly could. Boxing, fencing, kung fu. If he was able to learn it, he did. I don't think anyone gets that obsessed with martial arts unless you have trauma making you have the constant threat of violence being done against you in the back of your mind.

So now that I'm older than Bruce Lee was when he died, my body is starting to show the signs of aging, and it's scary. 

I'm getting too old to prepare for violence, and when you've spent your whole life preparing for violence, that's a scary thought. What am I if I can't do violence? I don't even know. My last post talked about politics being such a large part of my identity for a long time, but preparing for violence has been a part of it for much longer than that. And I don't know who I'm going to be now that the sun is setting on that chapter of my life. My future is becoming one big unknown, and it's at a time when the future of the world is becoming one big unknown as well. I'm getting old when the world seems to be living in one massive historical event after another.

Thoughts After Turning Forty Part 1: Politics as my Entire Personality

I know I said I'd stop writing this blog, as it has mostly been just me screaming into the void, but I feel like screaming, anyway.

Last February I turned forty years old. I've had a lot of thoughts on it, so this will be part one of a series of posts on my aging. 

A few days ago I got into an argument with my wife. Nothing big (I promise, our marriage is doing fine), but she said that I'm hard to talk to. She never knows what's going on inside my head. I'm too quiet.

I wasn't sure how to respond to that. I know I don't talk much in real life, which is weird, because when I first met my wife I was a social butterfly. I would joke with random strangers. Didn't mind just going up to people and saying hi. Just thinking about it makes me chuckle at how young I was, because it was a really long time ago.

A few weeks ago I was thinking about that myself. I never talked to people anymore. Unless it's about politics. I didn't tell people about my personal life and I didn't care much about theirs, but if the subject of politics came up, I could have an hour long discussion about it. Your hobbies? I don't care. How was your vacation? Don't give a shit. But Trump decided to abandon the Kurds to be slaughtered in Rojava and I had a lot of things to say about it.

I really hope he goes away forever now

This had been a thing long before Trump. I started being politically active in 2004, when I was worried that George W. Bush was going to get my balls blown off by sending me to Iraq (I joined the military in 2002, shortly after 9/11). I volunteered for John Kerry and did my best to make sure Bush was a one term president. That didn't work out, I got sent to Iraq, and managed to not get my balls (or any other part of my anatomy) blown off. I did my part for the American empire and survived. 

During my time in Iraq, I started getting into political blogging. It was the only way I could do any sort of political work. Talking about how much the president sucks ass while in military uniform was not a smart move economically, and being able to speak anonymously about things going on felt safe. When I came home, I continued political blogging while doing activism work in real life.

However...

By 2010 I had become disillusioned with the Democratic Party and stopped going to meetings or paying dues. I started being active on Facebook and found a bunch of political pages to like and before long my whole feed was filled with it. In 2013, I was working up to 70 hours a week, and with a new kid I didn't have any time to spend with friends or meet other people. So my entire social life has been online.

I previously wrote about Facebook changing their algorithm during the mid-2010s. They made it so you would be more likely to see things that would make you angry. And they succeeded. My entire online social life began to be a series of arguments with Republicans. Just non-stop arguing. That was the only time I was really talking to anyone. 

Thinking back to this blog, I started it in late 2013, and if you look closely enough, you can see the change in me where I was having a bit of a life (did a lot of running in 2014) and over the years I started talking more and more about politics. You can see my personality evolving.

Being that obsessed about politics wasn't doing my depression any favors. When I found opportunities to be happy I felt guilty about being happy. Oh, you want to be happy?, I'd tell myself. Must be nice being a privileged cis white dude. You know racism is still a thing, right? And then I'd go back to being depressed, because being depressed meant I least gave a shit.

But feelings are meaningless without action, and despite my best efforts, I haven't taken a lot of action. This is not because of laziness or a lack of motivation, but because between having a full time job that has me working both nights and weekends, along with raising two kids, I simply do not have the time. Most real world political stuff (rallies, meetings, organizing) takes place when I'm working or sleeping. It doesn't make any sense for me to be angry or depressed about things that I can't even organize collectively to change.

In the age of Covid, you can see online that this constant anger is a common phenomenon now. Go to any comment section of a news page on Facebook or wherever, and you see it. I think watching other people do the same behavior I had been engaged in for years caused me to have some introspection on it. Watching people be angry at relatively mundane things and raging in the comment section just seemed weird. The protesting of the quarantine was weird. People making plans to kidnap and kill the Governor or Michigan because they couldn't have sit down service at Applebee's was weird. It was strange that people were mad about a simple safety measure. But they were told on social media to be mad, so mad they got. With people having to stay home to avoid getting sick, being online was the most social they could get, and many started going down the same path I took years ago. And as people got more and more insane I had to look at myself and how social media was affecting my mind and mental health.

Now that I'm forty, it doesn't make sense to be mad about things that I can't fix. I'm certainly not saying that nobody can or should fix it. If you have the ability to organize to make things better, please do it. It's just that I'm too fucking old now to be angry when I can't do anything.

Last night I was laying in bed with my wife and thinking about what she had said to me a few days prior about being hard to talk to. And since I had a few days to think about it, I told her that it's easy to know what's going on inside my head. It's all politics, all the time. When a conversation isn't about politics, my mind wanders and thinks about politics. I judge people based on my standards of politics and if they aren't as far left as I am, I think they're a horrible person. I know she's scared to talk to me about politics because she never felt like she was one bad day away from burning it all down, and she's scared that I'd leave her or resent her for it. I let politics become my entire personality and I'm tired of it. 

I'm forty now. I'm going to leave the saving of the world to the Zoomers and younger millennials who are more woke and politically aware than previous generations before them, The people who have the time to make change and make it better. As for me, I'm going to work on being happy and enjoying my life. I deserve to be happy.