Another hippie ramble

    

Somebody else made this picture, ownership is a lie

     Through all my best efforts I have somehow figured out how to chill out and enjoy life a little bit. For the past few years I have been running headfirst at high gear trying to get somewhere as fast as possible, even if I didn't know where that was. I didn't and still don't know where I am going in life but I knew I had to do whatever it is I was doing really fast. I blame this entirely on the expectations of society that I unconsciously internalized. This pushed me to be more and more "productive." I would practice a polyphasic sleep cycle where I would sleep 2-3 hours a day whilst working and going to school taking way too many units. I became a zombie but consoled myself with the idea that I was moving ahead in life.
     There's a culture of ignorant pride in working so hard that you run yourself down sacrificing yourself to be more productive. On top of this goes a dollop of well deserved indulgences in the form of fast food or whatever vice it takes to try and even out the suffering we put ourselves through to get to the next day. I often imagine what it would be like to be a big shot CEO or just someone with a ton of money and responsibilities. I see how their health is deteriorated while they attempt to do compensatory exercises to give themselves the delusion of "health."
   I just don't think we can get away with denying our evolutionary heritage in favor of being part of the "economy" as if that's a real, natural system in the world. It's made up, a cycle devised to keep moving for the sake of moving, completely ignorant of the natural cycles of the world. I'm trying to opt out in many ways, trying to reduce my consumption of everything. Trying to stick with the things in life that are free and of much higher quality than anything you could put a dollar sign on. I'm tired of considering some leisure activity that I'm doing not worth it just because I can't figure out how to monetize it in the future. Not every experience has to be an investment to help you get the upper hand at some point. Perhaps our life experiences are valuable for their own sake. Crazy, right?
     If I had my food and shelter covered I would just trade my time with people for everything else but as long as I am trapped in a monetary system with everyone else, I will do my best to make sure I'm of service to others. As long as I am somehow mitigating the suffering of someone else, I'm on the right path, even if I'm getting paid for it. One day I will live my life without having to think about money, either because I've lived frugally, having minimal impact, or because we all somehow figure out how to change the economic structure of the world. There are alternatives to money, it just takes cooperation from like minded individuals.
      The gist of what I wanted to write when I started this ramble was that  we all need to take a step back, relax a bit, and take a look at our caffeine addicted, wide-eyed, crazy-haired, frothing at the mouth selves. We need to relax, walk out into nature for a bit, and just be okay with being, to rejoice in being. In accepting myself for who I am, I feel I may just accidentally do more than I would have in life if I just skipped my contemplative self-examinations and blasted full speed ahead.
    Anyways, some of my inspirations right now: Gandhi, omfg watch the Gandhi movie, read about his life, it's amazing, so inspiring, and so sad in a lot of ways, the zeitgeist movement stuff, Thic Nhat Hanh is brilliant, reading about native american agrarian societies, fricken Wim Hof.

Transgender Parkour

   So I'm transgendered (male to female) and I do parkour. How does that work? I'm on hormones that physically change some of the morphilogical features of my body to match my gender. Some of these changes include shrinking muscles and body fat redistribution.

     I'm very early in on my transition, only 2 months on hormones but a lot has changed socially and physically for me. I was incredibly worried about not being able to train the way I did before. I thought that I would just get weaker and so it wasn't worth an ounce of my strength to take hormones even if it meant that my body would change into what I'd always needed it to be. I also needed to be strong and capable, wouldn't I lose all of that? Since I'm already 2 months in here, I've already come to the conclusion that I'm gonna be okay. Working with a doctor who has had several trans patients gave me a lot of confidence and I found myself dispelling a lot of myths about taking hormones that kept me too afraid to get on the path.

     Yes it's true that my muscles will get smaller due to my lowering levels of testosterone. However, this means that my overall bodyweight will drop due to the muscle being heavier than fat. As a parkour practitioner I'm really only concerned about my relative strength/power to weight ratio. It does not really benefit us to be extremely heavy with muscle or fat in this discipline. That's the theory anyway, but there are plenty of real world examples of female gymnasts, one arm pull-up rock climber chicks, and super skinny parkour dudes to show that it's quite possible to thrive with smaller muscles. Aaaand of course don't forget about all the other female parkour athletes out there breaking down all the stereotypes. I draw so much motivation and inspiration from them.

    It's about motor control and neurological training which doesn't just go away with muscle loss. It reminds me of Pavel's work. In one of his books he shared a story about a woman lifting a car off of her husband or something because she was recruiting a higher percentage of her muscle fibers. So there you go, estrogen will allow me to lift cars now. There's your non sequitur of the day. In all seriousness though I'm writing about this stuff because I don't want being a serious parkour practitioner to bar trans women from getting the treatment that they need. Let's see if my theories hold true throughout my transition. I'll do some progress report posts on things as they unfold . Also if there are any other trans parkour athletes out there, feel free to connect with me, we're a rare cross section of people.