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tentacletherapissed · 5 years

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Public Callout: Paradox, Blue, Jay, Bird

This is a public callout post for users Paradox (@rushifaas -- previously @mournins ; @beliisms), Blue (@divinebetrayed ; @halcyonfought), Jay (@loyalbetrayed) and Bird (@soulsbetrayed). They are active in the fandoms Persona, Fire Emblem, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Danganronpa, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, Sentai, Power Rangers, and Kamen Rider.

Never in my 15 years of roleplaying have I met a group of abusers and enablers so toxic, and this post is a PSA so that I can hopefully keep others from falling into their hands. Please blacklist them ALL for your own safety, however, DO NOT ENGAGE THEM WITH HARASSMENT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

Keep in mind, Paradox’s actions are so egregious, he is already getting charges pressed against him by two different people he abused so far, and more may be on the horizon. The rest all enable this behavior and defend him despite all that he’s done to harm them and people they previously called friends. While this callout has snapshots of receipts proving our claims sprinkled in at the mention of them, for full transparency, the full comment chains will be uploaded at the end so that context for everything will be supplied, with censoring only provided for those who have nothing to do with the conflict and wish to be left out of it.

Strong trigger warning for mob mentality, mental and emotional manipulation, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, transphobia, pedophilia, ableism, and a lot more. Details under the cut. (7,300+ words, be mindful)

[Gdoc link in case Tumblr’s formatting is unreadable]

OPEN ALL LINKS AS NEW TABS, I’M SORRY TUMBLR SUCKS AT THIS

Note: Paradox claims to have Dissociative Identity Disorder, and claims to have many alters which are sometimes go by the names of Abel, Vic, Nikki, Hebel, Cain, and Ana in some of these screencaps. I will not be arguing the veracity of such claims in this callout, but for simplicity’s sake, I will be referring to everyone in his system solely by the name of “Paradox” since there is a considerable amount of confusion based on who said what and it’s not entirely clear who’s supposed to be talking in a lot of these screenshots. He also claims to have several other mental disorders like depression, anxiety, and BPD, but regardless of anyone’s mental illness, they should treat those around them with respect and kindness, which is why this callout has been made.

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MAIN EVENT - Early September 2018 / June 10th

Paradox is the ringleader of this little cult. A few months ago, he was dating my friend Nael (occasionally called Arin, Ciel, Naoya or Hevel in some of these screens). I first got alarmed about the health of their relationship during an incident in early September 2018 where Paradox threatened to commit suicide over a conflict having to do with RPing and prioritizing one blog over one he liked. [September Break Up: Singles] They broke up, but after a lot of guilt tripping from Paradox and others in his group, my friend Nael decided to get back together with him. Even though I had a lot of misgivings about the situation, I told Nael that I respected their decision and wouldn’t pressure them either way. [Scout and Nael: 12, 13]

Months went by, and I didn’t hear much due to specifically asking Nael not to tell me about their significant other and that group of friends, but things were going downhill. There were many more fights over roleplaying and shipping, some of which Blue and Jay expressed concern about privately, especially since it seemed Paradox himself was ignoring his other lover Kieran for Nael. [For Me: 13, 15, 16]

Paradox’s behavior continued worsening until it came to a head in mid March 2019. Blue and Nael were getting invested in an rp campaign I was running on a private server. When Nael showed off a picture they drew portraying their character, Paradox became extremely upset at them. After a solid week of enduring abuse from their lover [Abel Suicide: 1, 2, 6], it eventually culminated in Paradox apparently trying to take his own life after Nael attempted to break off their relationship. [Abel Suicide: 22, 23, 24] Nael was able to contact their mutual partner Kieran (sometimes called Kie or Vampy in screens) so that he could send the police to Paradox’s home and he would be rushed to the hospital. [Nael: 11]

Nael has multiple health issues that include heart disease and problems with their brain, and was so traumatized by the experience, they had to go to the hospital themselves [Nael: 19, 20 ; Before / After Suicide: 43]. Because I was terrified at the possibility of Nael dying from the escalating nature of their toxic relationship, I urged them to go through with the breakup. Nael decided to take my advice and broke up with Paradox and Kieran on a group chat while on a screenshared call with me and another friend who wishes to remain nameless. [Before / After Suicide: 46]

Blue was at first on board for the breakup and supportive of Nael’s decision [Blue Agrees: Singles] but at the persuasion of Jay decided to believe Paradox’s story when he said Nael had misrepresented what he said when he told Nael he would probably drop Blue due to the breakup. [Copy of Group DM: Full] Keep in mind, we have the FULL attempted suicide dropbox [Abel Suicide: Full], and the breakup conversation including Paradox’s abusive behavior before the attempted suicide attempt. [Before/After Suicide: Full] Much of what Paradox says are blatant falsehoods. In addition, Kieran (Vampy) no longer agrees with the things he has said to support Paradox’s argument and says he was pressured to agree with everything, even if it didn’t feel right.

So instead of making it clear to either of us that Blue no longer considered us friends, she instead gave us the silent treatment and leaked what I vented to her in confidence to Paradox behind my back. She only admitted to doing this when I confronted her after finding a vague post Paradox made that used the exact same wording. [Scout vs Blue: 1, 3, 4] I was extra furious with her because Paradox was making it sound as if it was Nael saying those words when in fact they had no idea what I said to her and was highly distraught when they found out about the vague post. Her excuse was that she didn’t think we would find out. [Scout vs Blue: 7, 9]

This is a common theme with their relationship that shows the extent of how complicit Blue is with Paradox’s abusive behavior. Due to her once close relationship with Nael, she often served as the “bait” to bring Nael back, agreeing that the relationship is unhealthy at first [With Blue: 12] only to go back to heaping abuse on Nael for leaving and trying to persuade them to come back [Nael’s Last Conversation with Blue: Full].

By then, Nael had already blocked everyone else in the cult-like group except Blue due to a promise they’d made to her, and she abused this trust right away by pulling Nael into a group chat so that everyone could yell at them. [Scout vs Blue: 10, 11] IF YOU BECOME A PART OF THIS GROUP, THIS IS WHAT YOU CAN LOOK FORWARD TO. If you do anything to provoke Paradox’s ire, you will be subjected to a firing squad full of people yelling at you for whatever you did. You will not have a chance to defend yourself, only grovel for forgiveness until they decide they’re through with you. Nael and other members of the group have been subjected to it many times.

Unfortunately, there are no surviving screencaps of this particular dispute, but I do have the one I was involved with. More on that later.

Eventually Nael left and blocked Blue so that they couldn’t be added back to get yelled at more. For the sake of our RP, we agreed upon a peaceable way to continue the server RP [Scout vs Blue: 12, 13, 14, 15, 16] but Blue eventually exited that too [Scout vs Blue: 17]. During the three or so weeks they were split apart, Paradox vagued continuously about us, copied our behavior and prior ships he had with Nael with others currently in his cult, and sent Nael threatening and unstable messages [“Goodbye, Nael”: Single]. While behind their back, he was privately making light of the situation and even made bets with his stooges about when Nael would return [Betting: Singles].

Here’s where I have to put an important disclaimer: During Nael’s time away from the main cult, we both would snoop on his and Blue’s blogs to see if they had mentioned us. Also, during the period immediately after Blue sold me out to Paradox, I became enraged and sent him a pretty angry message [Scout Loses Their Mind: Single], commented on one of his posts, and indirectly threatened them with my popularity compared to theirs in the community I was in. All of those things were the direct result of piss poor decision making and I apologize for my behavior, because it was simply not right to do, no matter who I thought I was defending. Though the blog snooping continued, I thankfully sent no more harassing messages to anyone from the group once Blue indicated she wanted a clean break from us, and no vaguing messages were made on either of our blogs.

Worse still, I privately speculated if this latest suicide attempt Paradox had gone through was “real” or not, which is totally unacceptable. Though I was just concerned about my friend and worried that this might have been another attempt to manipulate them, all threats of suicide should be treated seriously and the proper authorities contacted, PERIOD, regardless of how “serious” the threat might seem. I definitely agree with Nael’s decision to contact the authorities as it was happening, and I’m relieved to know another life wasn’t tragically lost, no matter what my situation is with Paradox after the fact.

Now, with that out of the way… Eventually, Paradox was able to get through to Nael by convincing them that I had lied about a certain mental disorder he was assumed to have. This is all despite me never having said he didn’t have it as I do NOT have the medical condition described and am NOT a medical professional. Paradox willingly passed medical records through a mutual friend [Consent: Single] that Nael initially found convincing but has recently come to doubt. Note: PLEASE NEVER DO THIS, OBVIOUSLY.

Paradox then convinced Nael to pretend to be my friend for a little longer so that he could lure me into a groupchat under the impression that I was defending him from all his former friends. Here is the entire chat almost in its entirety (a few glitches in captures results in a few repeats and nearly 4 minutes straight of lost content), with screenshots proudly taken by BLUE [Her Discord Drop: Single], who played an instrumental role in helping it happen. While I would encourage everyone to read it in its entirety, please be warned that the amount of abuse I endured is very troubling. [Scout Trap: Full]

Please note that Nael (Hevel), Kieran (Ghostie), and Dave have all come to me and personally apologized to me for their role participating in that group chat and we are friends now. But at the time due to this traumatic experience, my friendship with Nael was officially ended. Even though I was worried sick about them, I knew they couldn’t be saved until they saw Paradox’s abusive behavior for what it was on their own. And of course, after a brief honeymoon period, the abuse started again. (Keep in mind, I wasn’t in contact with Nael or anyone else for most of these, so I’m not as familiar about what happened and when.)

The first sign of trouble started on April 16th, not even two full weeks after I had been "defeated". Once again, it was over RP drama, where Paradox became upset at his two lovers Nael and Kieran for shipping with anyone besides him [Initial Ship Drama: 6], even though he usually continues multishipping on his blog with certain people when he pleases. [With Blue: 2] He complained about this endlessly. [Random Paradox Screen]

He continuously gaslit Kieran for about a week, cycling between saying he was going to leave forever [Initial Ship Drama: 9], telling the Kieran to take care of Nael [Initial Ship Drama: 10, 27], giving conflicting directions [Initial Ship Drama: 22, 38], putting himself down so Kieran would feel compelled to console him [Initial Ship Drama: 30, 41, 58], and asking them not to try to pursue romance with him [Initial Ship Drama: 12, 13, 32, 63], only to flip around and say that the idea of romancing them makes him feel “happy”, so he will [Initial Ship Drama: 45, 46], then become upset when either one of them indicated they might need space to either think or just live life like normal. [Initial Ship Drama: 53] Really, the entire thing has to be seen to be believed. [Initial Ship Drama: Full]

Eventually, Paradox’s behavior got so bad that once again, Blue expressed dissatisfaction with his behavior [With Blue: 4], but apparently it wasn’t enough to dissuade her from luring Nael into yet another trap to be yelled at barely a month later on May 17th. [May 17th: Full]

Confusingly, the reason behind this collective thrashing was that Nael actually overcorrected too much and tried to do more stuff with Paradox, only to be called clingy and possessive when they did. Then, when Paradox told Nael he didn’t want to RP with them anymore, Nael tried to respect his decision and not get involved with group RPs that Paradox was involved with so there would be no pressure either way. This was then held up as an example as to why they were “isolating” themselves from the group. Paradox showed the screencaps to others in the group with very little context to get them riled up and angry at Nael so that they’d be on board to yell at them, again showing his willingness to twist someone’s words to make them a convenient villain, no matter what they do to try to appease him.

Then on May 24th, there was the supposed “death” of the alter “Abel”, (who has since returned yet again). [Paradox: 2] The source of all this drama was that Blue simply mentioned a ship that she was continuing with Nael during a period of time Paradox wasn’t at all receptive to the idea of them interacting. Blue freely admitted to being the source of this conflict in private [With Blue: 21], but had no problem letting Nael take the brunt of the abuse. Once again, she is complicit for enabling actions she knows are wrong and hurtful, judging by the way she expresses concern about them, as long as she’s not the one in the eye of the storm.

Following this conflict, Nael started having serious second thoughts. After getting yelled at yet again about something they didn’t even cause, they had to go to the hospital for a near suicide attempt due to all the stress of being repeatedly attacked by someone they thought they could trust.

After they got out again, they were pulled into a smaller group chat with the newly formed “Paradox” alter as well as Jay, where it was demanded he answer for the wrongful death of an alter that has since returned. Multiple times, Paradox held up the incident from September, (which was over 9 months prior!) as to why Nael was to blame for Blue’s actions this time. [Paradox: 8, 10] Paradox even told Nael, someone who had been in the hospital just a few short hours ago [Paradox: 5], that their “suicide held no meaning to him”. [Paradox: 32] All of this despite the fact that they had talked about the very same ship on May 6th! [Proof Abel Knew: 10 total]

This was also supposed to serve as yet another “My heart is telling me not to get in a relationship with you” conversation -- a breakup convo, and one their third lover, Kieran, hadn’t even initially been invited to. [Paradox: 59] It was mostly just Paradox yelling at Nael with Jay usually only chiming in to agree with or heap praise on Paradox. [Paradox: 67] Several times, Paradox made confusing reversals, at one point musing “another alter might come and love you again” [Paradox: 49] to going back to insisting they could never be together again [Paradox: 70], then accusing Nael of saying they don’t love him [Paradox: 45, 46]. You might remember this erratic pattern from his conversation with Kieran back in April. This is gaslighting in its purest and ugliest form.

Clearly after this, Nael was rattled and eventually decided to leave. Instead of making any sort of formal goodbye, they just decided to delete their old Discord and make a clean break so there was no way they could be dragged into another group chat and yelled at. The group quickly fell into chaos once again. Paradox quickly began pumping out venting vague posts on his personal and RP blogs, sometimes pitying himself over the way Nael had apparently treated him [Single: Singles], and sometimes outright wishing death on them. [Paradox die: Single] Before long, he cracked and started sending desperate messages to Nael directly despite Nael obviously not wanting to talk. [Paradox Desperation: Singles] And when that didn’t work, of course Blue was deployed to try to persuade them to come back. [Last Convo w/ Blue: 22 pages] Luckily Dave warned them beforehand. [Thanks, Dave!: Single]

To try to convince others in the group that Nael was the bad guy and needed to be stopped, Paradox began feeding lies to his followers about bad stuff Nael was apparently doing. Paradox told Dave that Nael had been badmouthing him behind his back. But when Dave went to confront Nael about their behavior, Nael provided proof that was in fact Blue saying bad things about Dave. That’s when Dave decided to leave, too.

More chaos happened within the group. Soon after, Kieran the supposed third in their relationship got tired of Paradox constantly saying how Nael was “the only person he could ever love” as well as the constant torrent of irrational behavior and abuse. [Paradox Flipping Out: Single] So he left, as well. Aside from many, many more aggressive venting and vague posts, nothing much new has happened as far as group dynamics.

So far Paradox has been mostly fixated on Nael’s absence, but without the contributions of everyone who left, this callout wouldn’t be possible, and they should all be commended for their efforts and their courage for coming to me to apologize personally for their part in the abuse I and others have suffered.

As terrible as Paradox’s behavior has been in this retelling of events, mostly centered around Nael’s situation, it’s really only scratching the surface of how toxic this group is. There are many smaller details and other people he’s hurt that couldn’t fit in this brief recap, so here are a few more things you should know about that will hopefully keep you from this toxic group of friends.

First I’ll talk about the accounts of people who used to be in the group and go into detail about all the people who are still backing Paradox up despite everything he’s done.

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PARTIES INVOLVED

- Other victims -

Kieran:

While Nael took the lion’s share of the abuse from Paradox, it’s important to remember that he was involved with two different people and treated them both badly. Paradox is an outstanding example of what NOT to do when in a polyamorous relationship.

While there was a brief month long period where everything seemed fine after they started dating on October 23rd, Paradox began heavily playing favorites towards Nael, a pattern that only seemed to get worse over time. Kieran was subjected to long periods of neglect from his lover with Paradox only seeming to remember he existed when he was trying to use Kieran against Nael. Even Blue and Jay noticed this when the relationship was just starting out and rightfully called it out, though only in the safety of a private chat. [For Me: 13, 15, 16]

Several times during their relationship, when Nael would mess up or try to leave, Paradox would say that Nael was “the only person he could love” (he even wrote a diary about it!) [Copy of Journal: 2 pages] and break things off with Kieran as well. Most of the time without even telling him. However whenever he was trying to condemn Nael about something, he would hold up Kieran to say “What you’re doing is hurting US”, often without Kieran’s consent.

Of course, Kieran was still subjected to the same amount of lies, gaslighting, emotional blackmail, and mental instability from Paradox that Nael had to endure, but the fact is that he was also basically used as a weapon against someone he cared about by someone who was supposed to care about them both EQUALLY.

Ruby:

Ruby is someone who’s been fighting a personal battle with Paradox for years, starting with a dispute that happened, of course, because of an argument about a fictional character. For the past year and a half as of writing this (the harassment started Nov 2017, it is currently July 2019), Paradox has been stalking her blogs and harassing her over this perceived slight. He lied about her to all her friends in an attempt to alienate her from the public, and we have a confession from Nael that says not only was Paradox guilty of sending tons of anon hate towards Ruby even after they had each other blocked, he would send other people (Nael included) to send anon hate after her.

I briefly intervened during this dispute on Nael’s behalf in November 2018 because during that time we were both lead to believe that Ruby was targeting both Paradox and Nael. This is despite the fact that the post Paradox was upset about wasn’t even about him and she barely even knew Nael even existed. Thanks to my help, I was able to negotiate a brief ceasefire that lasted a few months up until Nael’s separation from Paradox in March.

The stalking and harassment started up again as soon as I had been branded an enemy, and eventually it got so bad that Ruby was the first (but not the only) one to announce she is going to try to press charges against everyone still remaining in the group. Although we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, and she’s done and said things that were unintentionally hurtful, she has been very receptive to feedback and has made great pains to change for the better. I support Ruby wholeheartedly in her endeavors to make the ones abusing her pay for what they’ve done. If you want to know a little more about her conflict with Paradox from her perspective, visit her page. [Ruby’s page of Receipts: Full]

- Part of Paradox’s group -

Blue:

Out of all the people on this list, Blue is the most disappointing aspect of all this, seeing as I considered her my friend even before Nael came along. We’d been friends for more than a year by the time the March Madness started, meeting somewhere around February 2018. She was the one who introduced me to Nael in the first place, and Nael was so close to her they called each other their long lost siblings.

Unfortunately for all of us, Blue can’t stand up to a bully who insults and abuses her friends, even if she knows what he’s doing is wrong. We have multiple screenshots showing instances where she admits that Paradox is in the wrong or being annoying or excessively guilt tripping others based on trivial matters. However, whenever she’s personally on the hook for getting targeted by the ones she calls her “friends”, she quickly falls into line.

The second Paradox asks her to jump, she asks “How high?” She’s been willingly used as bait to rope Nael back into situations she knows and has even admitted are super unhealthy for them, all because she’s too afraid of being the next one everyone turns on. The only time she shows any semblance of “courage” is when she’s backed up by the rest of the hivemind. She’s too afraid to speak for herself, often parroting what others have already written in a desperate attempt to show external strength and total fealty for her master.

I have to wonder what exactly it is that keeps bringing Blue back to him, even though we have an entire folder showing times where she has come to her own conclusions that Paradox is unhealthy to be around [With Blue: 24 total] and has a penchant for blaming her whenever his relationship with his two lovers ever took a downwards turn. [Paradox blaming Blue: Singles] It’s not my place to speculate, but it’s safe to say that with all the times she’s personally let me, Nael, and others in our group down, there’s no way in hell we’re giving her another chance. She has made her choice to stay with someone she knew to be an abuser and emotional manipulator -- someone who hurt her and her friends -- and she will have to live with that decision.

Bird:

Ruby’s situation with Bird is very much like my situation with Blue, made all the worse by the fact that they were actually dating at the time. Bird purposefully sold Ruby out to Paradox while claiming they weren’t in contact, all the while she was feeding all of Ruby’s words and private thoughts to him. This is a common theme with this group and why you can’t be friends with just one of them if you don’t want to be involved with the cult as a whole.

Eventually she was found out and hasn’t really bothered to hide the fact that she’s on Paradox’s team ever since. We also have screenshots of her calling Nael a brat and useless during conflicts Paradox started, like the shipping drama in September. [Misc Bird Folder: 9 total] [Ruby and Bird’s Breakup: 16 total]

Jay:

Now we get to the biggest sycophant of the entire group, Jay. She’s been the one by his side the longest -- for a whopping 4 years -- and one of his most ardent supporters and biggest enablers. While I didn’t know much about her at first, seeing as she was largely absent from what I affectionately call the “six-person beat down”, she’s an invaluable member of Paradox’s cult and basically functions as his right arm and messenger.

If you have a problem with Paradox and want to talk things over with him, he’ll usually insist upon bringing Jay as an “impartial judge”. Not surprisingly, she usually just ends up agreeing with whatever he says and pushing his narrative, all the while insisting she’s being unbiased. She will lie for him, rope cult members attempting to leave back with excuses for his inexcusable behavior, and always swallows whatever lie he has to say wholeheartedly. If he needs a message from Abel passed on to someone trying to persuade them to come back, she’ll deliver it gladly. But if you need her to send a message to him, she’ll curtly tell you not to have her “fight your battles.”

She tried to send an entire drop box of “evidence” to Dave attempting to prove Nael was manipulative and evidence of the alter “Hebel's” existence. In it, Paradox (or rather, his alter Hebel) admitted to trying to spur Nael to kill themselves so that “Hebel” could apparently take over and get Kieran all to himself. [Potential Manslaughter: Singles] All of this was sent as proof that NAEL was the bad guy BY Jay, which is truly mind boggling and shows how far gone she is with regards to him.

There is a woman in prison the very moment that I’m writing this for spurring her suicidal boyfriend to take his own life [Article], and yet Jay thinks this behavior is okay? And before anyone tries to say that Hebel is “technically” to blame for attempting to push Nael to suicide, this argument hasn’t worked in the courtroom since the 1970s! [Article] IF PARADOX’S ALTER IS A DANGER TO NAEL AND CAN’T BE CONTROLLED, PARADOX HIMSELF IS ALSO DANGEROUS. PERIOD.

This isn’t even mentioning the multiple times she’s seen Paradox himself or his other various "good" alters (everyone in the group has seen, in fact) tell Nael outright that he “wishes [they] would die” [Abel Vent: Single] and that their suicide “holds no meaning to him” [Paradox: 32]. Jay was supposed to be “mediating” the very conversation where Paradox -- not “Hebel” or anyone else -- said that to Nael! And she said NOTHING. Her silence is complicity and she should take the blame for being such an ardent supporter of his abusive behavior.

Amazingly, there’s even MORE awful things that this group (particularly, but not exclusively Paradox) that I didn’t have any space to discuss in the callout itself, but they can’t go unmentioned. I know this is already super long, so I’ll try to run through them all as quickly as possible, and then we can get to the large wealth of screenshots we have linked at the end, where everything is in context for you to browse at your convenience.

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OTHER OCCURENCES

Transphobia: Paradox is a terf, and there’s not much else to say. [For Me: 2] Ironically he said this in a group chat with one of the only two people who identify as trans in their group, his then-boyfriend Kieran. Here’s him heavily fetishizing a failed attempted Corrin muse that he described as intersex, too. [FE Abel Problems: 5 pages] (In parenthesis is a user attempting to check their work. He makes a bit of an error concerning outrealms and dragon gates and whatnot, but please forgive him for those small errors considering how much he had on his hands.)

Abuse victim blaming: Paradox would often tell his two lovers, who are survivors of various types of abuse, ranging from mental, physical, and even sexual, how it’s their fault for letting their past traumas affect them. [Victim Blaming: Singles] Please note that these screenshots were taken in May, nearly a month before they separated from him fully, so they would have no reason to lie to each other about the things he said or needlessly malign his character before they left.

Promoting infighting: Paradox enjoyed watching his underlings tear each other apart for his amusement or to influence their behavior by saying their actions affected “everyone” despite him using false pretenses to get them to fight in the first place. He lied to Dave about Nael comparing him to a user that he wasn’t fond of when it was really Paradox and Blue that had done it. He also lied to Kieran and the entire group to get them all to yell at Nael in a group chat about Nael trying to isolate themselves from everyone when it was really done to please Paradox.

Ableism: Nael is unwell and has brain conditions they don’t feel comfortable with sharing. Instead of being understanding and supportive of them occasionally not understanding things or forgetting things, Paradox would immediately use it as a weapon against them. When “Paradox” first surfaced, Nael claimed that it wasn’t fair to them that the “Abel” alter yelled at them for forgetting about their ship with Blue. Paradox immediately countered that he Nael would no longer be allowed to use the excuse that they forgot things to AVOID being yelled at for minor things. [Paradox: 21, 22] He would constantly do things like this while they were together.

Copying and stealing OCs: Besides stalking the people that left and that he’s grown to hate, Paradox also has a peculiar habit of copying their activities on his blog with the few remaining people in his circle. For example, back in March when Nael’s Grima muse began interacting with a Reyson rper I introduced them to, Paradox made Kieran pick up his abandoned Reyson muse so that he could ship him with his Robin. (This hasn’t been linked to protect the identity of the second Reyson.) Worse still, Paradox has even outright stolen characters and backstories from those that leave. Here Kieran tries to ask Jay to tell Paradox to stop using some of his stolen OCs and she questions why it “would matter” to Kieran before promptly telling him to basically take a hike and blocking him. [Jay: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Racism: This group seems to relish in their own ignorance when it comes to matters of race. Here are screenshots Dave took where he discussed Paradox saying that Japanese people are white. [No, seriously: Singles] (Please note the dates -- it was back in December, so he has no reason to lie.) Here’s Nael recounting a time Paradox told them that, because they were partially North African, they had to distance themselves from people of their race because other people would only see them as a terrorist. (No caps of that since it was in a call, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt.) Here’s Blue telling me, a black fan, that unintentional racism in a game I enjoyed but was put off by “didn’t matter” and that there was no need for me to “get so salty about it”. [Scout vs Blue: 19, 20] While I don’t think they’re going to any Klan meetings over the weekend, it’s still a bit concerning and something POC muns should be aware of because they can be startlingly insensitive at times.

Pedophilia: Probably the hardest one to talk about for me personally, but definitely one of the most serious. While I must stress that we haven’t noticed any sort of untoward behavior with underaged USERS thus far, Paradox shows an almost unhealthy fascination with underage MUSES that might be off putting to some people and may spell danger. This actually isn’t the first callout someone has made about his behavior. In 2018 while he went by the name “Vic” and was in the Pokemon fandom, he wrote a disturbing post where a 14 year old girl was killed by a literal penis monster that was saying “penetrate” as it ran her through the middle.

Though the mun was fine with their muse dying, the obvious sexual connotations of the post left them feeling uneasy. When they went to approach him about this, instead of apologizing, he got defensive and said that because it was fictional, it didn’t matter. Later he made a bizarre case arguing that because the girl was 14 and thus had presumably experienced puberty, it couldn’t TECHNICALLY be considered pedophilia. [WTF: Single] Which, while correct on only the most technical of terms, flies in the face of all reason. Here’s the full PSA about him back then [Paradox PSA], and screenshots he was booted out of for his terrible behavior. [Paradox Booted: Singles] (His then-lover initially tried to defend him, but his abusive behavior eventually drove them away as well, so care was taken to keep them anonymous.)

Most disturbing of all, though, is a smut drabble that he made this year concerning one of his newer muses, Momo. On his blog, he describes Momo as someone who is “physically” 18 but “actually” seven due to the circumstances of his creation. That would be fine, except he will often portray Momo as also being mentally seven years old even though he continues to write him lewdly. In the smut drabble, he even goes a step further and constantly refers to him as a “child” and constantly fixates on his underdeveloped genitals.

DUE TO THE HIGHLY GRAPHIC AND POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING NATURE OF THIS DRABBLE, DO NO CLICK UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED. It’s honestly not for the faint of the heart and makes me queasy from the first sentence, but there’s no other way to describe the severity of his awful nature unless you experience it for yourself. [To Endure a Fiend’s Heat: full 6 page drabble]

While some would say it’s okay to experience triggering material in a safe environment to potentially help ease the pain of past trauma, Paradox has already shown himself to be unreliable when it comes to respecting the mental health and safety of others, and though we don’t have any screenshots of this, Nael has recounted several times where Paradox said he was sexually excited by RPing his childlike muses having sex with the adult muses of others in the cult. Here's him once again emphasizing the child like element with one and then drawing them in a suggestive "pin up" pose immediately after. [Vector: Singles]

________________________________________________________________

Finally we are at our end. Once again, my purpose behind this callout is not to shame anyone with a particular mental illness or unique set of challenges. Paradox is dangerous to any community he’s in because of his view of other people as simple playthings that he can use and throw away as he pleases. He treats life as an RP, living people as muses, and his apparent mental illnesses as an excuse to do away with any sort of accountability for his actions, and it is simply NOT ACCEPTABLE. Please protect yourself and others by reblogging this -- I feel as though Nael is very lucky to have escaped this situation with his life. Informing others might save another’s.

Complete, unedited list of references, roughly in the order of mention:

(Please note that anything labeled “Single(s)” will not have an entry here, as those are the only screenshots we have about them. We got better about capping things as time went on.)

[Scout and Nael Convo: 13 total] When Nael decided to get back together with Paradox the first time in September 2018, I let them know my concerns, but told them I respected their decision, no matter if I agreed with it or not. Looking back, parts of this conversation feel almost prophetic.

[Didn’t Feel Like…: 9 total] One of Kieran’s first conversations with Paradox. Watch closely how he characterizes the incident in September. He also mentions that his trauma and BPD makes him a sexual fiend, which… idk how others in the community would feel about that.

[For me: 16 total] A loose collection of screenshots Kieran took that shows quite a few odd moments during his time in the cult. That includes Paradox being a terf, Paradox insisting that Kieran to stay with Nael if they broke up (which is something he criticized Nael for suggesting in the March break up, even though Nael only said it once), and Jay and Blue expressing concern for Kieran when Paradox was starting to neglect him back in January. PLEASE MIND THE DATES! They vary page to page sometimes!

[Before/After Suicide: 88 total] A few screenshots showing the tumultuous times immediately before and after the Paradox suicide attempt in March 2019. Afterwards, Nael breaks up with both Paradox and Kieran in no uncertain terms due to the trauma he faced.

[Abel Suicide: 33 total] Paradox’s infamous suicide attempt.

[Nael: 34 total] Nael and Kieran talk as Paradox’s suicide attempt is in progress, and Nael tells Kieran to get the police. Sensitive information blotted out for obvious reasons.

[Scout vs Blue: 25 total] A collection of the conflicts I’ve dealt with in regards to Blue since the incident in March. Also includes her racial insensitivity and back when she agreed with me and Nael before Paradox lied to her.

[Initial Ship Drama: 93 total] Kieran endures like 5 days of nonstop gaslighting from Paradox. At the end (Around page 88) he manipulates Kieran into sparking a confrontation with Nael, telling him to “be assertive” about fixing a problem Paradox caused with his erratic behavior.

[Proof Abel Knew: 10 total] On May 6th, Nael discussed with Paradox or one of his alters about the ship that triggered the May 24th meltdown. Paradox also says that having any ships, including ones that he doesn’t even have to see is unacceptable simply because they exist. He then blames Nael for something Blue brought up. Again. While asking Nael not to blame him for something Blue has done.

[With Blue: 24 total] Kieran talks with Blue about the aforementioned shipping drama, and she immediately expresses frustration and anger with Paradox blowing the whole thing out of proportion. Later she also expresses annoyance with the May 24th incident of the alter “Abel” “dying” due to even more ship drama.

[May 17th: 13 total] Once again, Paradox whips his followers up into a frenzy over Nael, who’s really just trying to do what they were told and prioritize their lover. When they’re told the amount of attention Paradox literally asked for is stifling, they back off, only to be yelled at for it once again. It’s not shown here, but Blue once again acted as a lure to bring Nael into a public flogging.

[Paradox: 72 total] Nael is blamed for the “death” of an alter that has since returned because the alter “wasn’t around” for something they discussed on the 6th of May. This is the introduction to the “Paradox” alter, that I’m assuming now has assumed a fronting role. I don’t really care if that situation has changed since I started writing this.

[Jay: 12 total] Just some screens of Jay kind of being a jerk (mostly in the first set). She won’t tell Paradox to stop stealing someone else’s OCs and stop improperly using Nael’s last name, which is considered legitimate identity theft in France, where he lives! Mind the dates.

[Last Convo w/ Blue: 22 pages] Blue reprises her role as the bait to try to drag Nael back, but they’ve wised up to her game by now. It’s not going to ever work again.

[Jay’s “Evidence” Folder: 122 total] All of the things Jay sent to Dave in order to convince him that Nael was the bad guy. None of it accomplishes that goal. In it there’s a lot of doting between Nael’s alter “Naoya” and Paradox’s alter “Abel”, before Paradox showed the exact same abusive behavior and drove Naoya away as well. Then Paradox’s alter “Hebel” tries to explain his existence. He also admits to attempted manslaughter. So. (Please note: some of these are out of order, and we’re very sorry about this, but it’s not our doing, sorry!)

[Ruby and Bird’s Breakup: 16 total] Ruby tried to get Bird to intervene on her behalf to get Paradox to stop harassing her after she tried making an apology post. Bird totally flaked out, probably due to her dual loyalties to Paradox himself. This spurred a messy breakup between them both.

[Misc Bird Folder: 9 total] Some more random stuff showing Bird and Ruby’s relationship, including her take on Paradox and Nael’s September breakup, where she calls him a “brat”. The entire time during these screenshots, Bird was secretly feeding information to Paradox against Ruby’s will, breaking her trust when she found out. She even told Paradox, Ruby’s abuser, about the new blog Ruby made in order to escape him. That’s why she’s on this callout.

[Discord Server Chat with Blue: 23 pages] The complete chat about the Fire Emblem Heroes event that left me feeling upset about the handling of race in Book 2. While the rest in the server try to be respectful or change the subject, Blue insisted on devaluing my feelings and saying I was accusing her of racism, which was, of course, untrue at the time. Currently, I’m not feeling so generous. (Note: My apologies to fans of Heroes’ Nifl -- I say some strongly worded things here which may be unflattering, but I felt it was important to get the entire conversation down.)

BONUS: [Paradox Guilt Tripping on his birthday: 16 total] In case you needed more evidence of Paradox’s gaslighting behavior, here is him guilt tripping them because Nael, who is not a native English speaker, didn’t understand one video he sent. If this is all it takes to trigger a breakdown, he is probably not ready for a relationship.

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hellimagines · 6 years

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Love and Death -- Patrick Hockstetter

Masterlist

Request: “Hi I didn’t know where to request but could I pretty please with a cherry on top have an imagine of reader looking back at times of her and Patrick before he died and kind of working their way up to how she reacted to his death. I’m bad at explaining it but would you please be able to kind of song prompt it to the acoustic version of Katy Perry’s ‘The One That Got Away’ (listen to it while thinking of Pat it will bring you to tears. I don’t know if I did this right but if I didn’t explain it enough just send me a message. :) - @realclassact ”

Summary: You and Patrick were June and Johnny. Nothing could separate that, except love and death.

Warnings: angst, major character death

Pairing: Patrick Hockstetter x fem!reader

Word Count: 2,130

A/N: The timeline is different than the movie/book, so RIP that. Also, I left out some of the song, because I figured it wouldn’t work with the rest of the story.

Summer after high school

When we first met

We make out in your Mustang

To Radiohead

Patrick Hockstetter was a concoction of chaos. You had been friends with him, and the rest of the self-proclaimed Bowers Gang since the beginning of sixth grade. It wasn’t as hard as everyone made it seem to run with the Gang. A couple sly smirks, a roll of the eyes, and being able to watch as they pummeled their latest victim. A lack of moral and a lot of patience scored you your spot in the group. And you loved it.

You were closest to Patrick, out of all of the boys. He was the one who dragged you into the group in the first place. So nobody was truly surprised when they found out that the summer after 8th grade, you and Patrick got together. It was early June, and the five of you were outside Mr.Keene’s, arguing over what to steal, and what to buy. You needed tampons, but none of the boys were willing to steal you any. And Patrick needed a pack of smokes, but nobody was willing to steal those, either. So, the two of you came to a deal.

“I’ll get you your fucking cigarettes if you get me my damn tampons,” you said to Patrick, staring him down with a glare. An oh-so-familiar, wicked smirk crossed his face as he dragged his eyes up and down your form.

“Fine… if you kiss me,” he bargained triumphantly, winking at the boys. You had never shown any interest in a boy, or a girl for that matter, so all the boys figured you were a stuck-up prude. Needless to say, Patrick’s eyes almost fell out of his head when you leaned over and gave him a long, rough kiss to the lips.

Whooping and hollering echoed from the Trans Am as Patrick pulled you closer, having you practically straddle his lap. Vic coughed and groaned in the corner, desperately trying to shrink into the seats. You pulled away from Patrick with a grin and bit your lip as you shook your head.

“Better get me my fucking shit, Hockstetter,” you whispered, before crawling out of his lap, and slipping through the front seat to leave the car. Henry, Vic, and Patrick were quick to follow (Belch staying back as the getaway), and the four of you made your way inside.

“We’ll create the diversion, you two grab the shit,” Henry ordered, and all of you nodded.

You and Patrick mingled in one aisle, while Henry and Vic made their way to the back corner of the store. With a simple shove from Henry, Vic was toppling into the shelves and displays, knocking everything to the floor. At the sound of a crash, and the sight of two ragged boys, Mr.Keene was all-but jumping over the counter and rushing over. You took your chance and dashed to the counter, grabbing four packs and hastily shoving them into your pockets. Patrick grabbed your tampons, and a few other things, before grabbing ahold of your hand and pulling you out of the store. You two jumped into the Trans Am quickly, and a few seconds later, Vic and Henry came dashing out of the store, grins on their faces as they too jumped in.

Radiohead’s ‘Everybody Knows’ blasted through Belch’s radio as the car sped down Mainstreet, while you and Patrick pulled out your stealings. You tossed the smokes at Patrick, and he tossed you your tampons, as well as a chocolate bar, before giving Henry, Vic, and Belch their desired items. You smiled at the chocolate in your hands, before grabbing Patrick by the back of the neck and pulling him in for a kiss.

“Hm, guess this is a thing now,” Patrick snickered against your lips, before pulling you closer while the rest of the boys groaned in disapproval.

And on my eighteenth birthday

We got matching tattoos

It was your sixteenth birthday, and as you sat in Patrick’s basement, shirt-sleeves pulled up, you couldn’t have been happier. You and Patrick had been together for three years now, and as a birthday present, Patrick had gotten his hands on a tattoo machine. He had given the boys tattoo’s a while ago, but you could never decide what you truly wanted- so you never got one. Until now. You were getting a lighter on your shoulder, and Patrick was going to give himself a can of hairspray on his thigh, to symbolize your relationship.

“Ready?” Patrick asked, pressing the needle of the gun against your shoulder. With an affirmative nod, Patrick got to work. Two hours later, you and Patrick were supporting matching tattoos, chaotic grins on both of your faces.

Used to steal your parents’ liquor

And climb to the roof

Talk about our future

Like we had a clue

A few months later, you and Patrick found yourselves on top of his roof, a bottle of Grey Goose and Jack Daniels placed between the two of you.

“Whiskey and vodka is not a good mix,” you shuddered, taking another sip of the amber liquid.

“Grey Goose is your favorite though,” Patrick hummed, gulping down said liquor.

You nodded, watching him with a smile. “Yeah, and ‘Daniels is yours.”

“You know me so well,” Patrick purred, moving the bottles so he could tug you to lay down with him.

After a few minutes of silence, your mouth began to move of its own accord. “What do you think college will be like?” Patrick looked over at you, startled at your sudden question.

“Fuck if I know,” Patrick shrugged, wrapping an arm around your shoulders, pulling you to lay on his chest.

“Are you going to go to college?”

“Probably not. But with you, little Ms. Harvard, I may just hitch a ride to Massachusetts with ya,” Patrick snickered, and you huffed out a laugh.

“Yeah? You and the boys sneakin’ into my dorm?”

“Sneaking? Oh no, we’d all live with you.”

“Oh, that’s just bloody fantastic, really. You all better get jobs,” you sighed, shaking your head in mock-disapproval. Patrick grinned down at you and squeezed your body against his.

“Whatever keeps ya around.”

I was June

You were my Johnny Cash

Never one without the other

We made a pact

Everybody knew, that where ever you were, Patrick Hockstetter was sure to be right behind you: he’d be at your locker, waiting for you after every class, he and the boys would walk you to every class, and pick you up every morning, and at the end of every day. For six whole years, it was (Y/N) and the boys, and then (Y/N) and Patrick.

You remembered the day you realized you were in love with Patrick Hockstetter. You had been sitting on the hood of the Trans Am, beside Vic, watching Patrick and Henry square off in a beer-drinking competition. It was probably midnight, and there was a heavy bonfire going, thanks to yourself. You had been watching Patrick closely; the way his head tilted back to allow the alcohol to slide down his throat, the way his long, black hair was tossed out behind his shoulders, a few stray strands sticking to his wet face, the way his over-shirt hung loosely around his black tank-top. It was all too perfect, and quickly, your heart stopped.

“Vic,” you suddenly whispered, turning to him in a flash, with wide, fearful eyes. “I think I’m falling in love with Patrick Hockstetter, and this is the most painful thing I’ve ever gone through in my life. It is like I’m in a ring of fire, and I’m never coming out. I’m going down, down to the bottom of this thing. It’s going to kill me, because I would never have the nerve to tell him, nor do I want to tell him, and I know he’d never love me back.”

“(Y/N), you fucking idiot,” Vic whispered back, his own eyes wide. “Of course Patrick cares about you, in his own fucked up way. But love? I don’t think he even knows what that is.”

“That’s my point! I just signed a one-way ticket to hell,” you whined, slamming your face into your hands. Vic reached over and rubbed your shoulders, biting his lip while looking between you and Patrick.

All this money

Can’t buy me a time machine

Can’t replace you

With a million rings

It didn’t take long after your realization, for things to go downhill. You had confessed to Patrick about how you truly felt, and as expected, it went up in flames.

“No, you can’t love me,” Patrick ordered, sticking a finger in your face.

“But I do and I know you don’t love me back, but it’s fine, okay? I don’t want this to come between us!”

“It already has, (Y/N). I can’t be with you, knowing that you love me. That’s not how this works,” Patrick snarled, before he was marching out of your house, and out of your life.

Looking back on that day, you wished you could change it all. Your fingers lazily twirled the ring on your index finger, the one Patrick had given you a year prior. You were sat in class, slouched in your chair, and hands in your lap. It had been a few weeks since the breakup, and it was now mid-September. Kids were still going missing left-and-right, and you had almost forgotten about all of it, being so caught up with the boys.

But then, you saw the posters.

I should’ve told you

What you meant to me

Cause now I pay the price

Your heart shattered, into a million unfixable pieces. Your body stood frozen, staring up in absolute horror at the piece of paper stapled to the lamppost.

Patrick was missing.

Patrick had joined the other dozens of Derry kids that had been taken the past year. Patrick, the love of your life, was gone. You showed up at Vic’s house, in absolute hysterics, not even bothering to say ‘hello’ to Henry and Belch, who were sat on the couch. Your eyes were swollen, cheeks inflamed, and nose running. You couldn’t form words, you didn’t know what to even say. So, you let Vic pull you into his arms, in a desperate attempt to shush and console you. Belch joined in, hugging you from behind, while Henry stood to your side, hesitantly petting your hair.

“We’ll get him back, (Y/N), okay? You know we will,” Vic whispered, kissing the top of your head. You shook your head furiously, a quiet gasp escaping your lips.

“No, no. Something is different. Something is wrong,” you cried, hands balled into fists as you tried to quiet your sobs. Something wasn’t right, you just knew it.

In another life

I would be your girl

We’d keep all our promises

Be us against the world

In another life

I would make you stay

So I don’t have to say

You were the one

That got away

Your whole body was numb. From the tips of your ears to the bottom of your toes, everything was numb. You weren’t filled with icy rage anymore or boiling sadness. Everything was just gone. Just like Patrick.

“We are gathered here today, to mourn the loss of Mr.Patrick Hockstetter. At the young age of 17…” You zoned out once the pastor started preaching, your eyes hazing over to Patrick’s closed casket. You sat between Henry and Vic, your hands fisting the skirt of your dress until your knuckles turned white.

It didn’t seem like anybody in the church was actually crying. Patrick’s mother and father sat at the end of the pew, holding one another’s hands, solemnly looking at their final son, laid to rest. Patrick’s relatives sat in the pews next to, and behind you, none of them shedding tears. Patrick had never gotten along well with his family, other than his one grandmother, who passed away a few years back. Henry, Vic, and Belch had sat as your support beams the past few weeks, letting you lean, cry, and punch on them when you needed to. So now, as they sat by you, they looked like soldiers returning from war, but ready for another one to begin. If your body didn’t feel so foreign, you probably would’ve been crying.

Nothing was ever going to be the same again. Patrick was gone and had left you behind. Your last moments together was a fight that should’ve never happened. And now, you were never going to see him again. Never touch him again. Never kiss him again. Never love him again. Because Patrick was the one that got away, and he was never coming back.

#patrick hockstetter #patrick hockstetter imagine #patrick hockstetter imagines #patrick hockstetter fanfic #patrick hockstetter fanfiction #it (2017)#bowers gang #bowers gang imagine

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your-dietician · 3 years

Text

Inside the journey of Notre Dame's David Adams and life after football

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/ncaa-football/inside-the-journey-of-notre-dames-david-adams-and-life-after-football/

Inside the journey of Notre Dame's David Adams and life after football

The magic is in his story now, in the climb that couldn’t reignite the smothered dream but perhaps launched something even better.

Even if it looks and feels like limbo at the moment.

Four months in the NCAA transfer portal for former Notre Dame linebacker David Adams produced curiosity from three Power 5 schools and slightly more than that from roughly half the schools in the Mid-American Conference and a handful of programs from the FCS.

During that same stretch, he also muscled up impressively, completed his final 10 hours of coursework for his ND degree in business as an Econ major and contracted COVID-19 twice in a 90-day span — the reinfection in April serious enough to send Adams to the hospital twice.

► More:Notre Dame athletes embrace NIL opportunities on first day of new NCAA policy

► More:Notebook: For Notre Dame OC Rees, the summer push to get better starts with himself

A litany of injuries that coaxed Adams to accept a medical disqualification at the end of his freshman year, before he could ever take a snap in a college game, was also the lingering reality that ended the comeback and prompted Adams to remove himself from the portal without a landing spot on June 14.

The original inventory of ailments Adams brought with him from Pittsburgh Central Catholic High included multiple concussions, a torn labrum of each shoulder, a torn elbow ligament, a torn medial collateral ligament in his knee, cracked knee cartilage, a knee hyperextension that required surgery, patellar tendinitis and four broken fingers.

That doesn’t count breaking both ankles during his AAU basketball days.

“I both wanted to try the comeback and needed to do it,” Adams said. “Wanted to, because I love football. I love the game. I love making tackles. I love playing defense.

“I needed to, because whether it was actually going to happen or it wasn’t, I’d get closure on this chapter in my life. If it didn’t work out, I’d get closure at the very least.”

What comes next is what the 4-for-40 mantra that Notre Dame bakes into its recruiting pitch really looks like in the real world in real time.

The gift in Adams having it thrust upon him at age 20 and reinforced at age 23 is his reaction to it.

The uncertainty of tomorrow doesn’t bother him, because the resolve and ambition that have been building inside of him are being channeled this summer into something truly inspiring.

“I’ve been stuttering my entire life,” Adams said. “Before I go looking for a job, I’m giving it my full attention. I’ve never had the time to do that before. I have it now and the belief I can overcome it.

“That’s my No. 1 focus right now. Well, that and my golf game.”

He’s working with Arthur Joseph, a renowned author, teacher, communication strategist and voice coach.

“I know it’s not going to go away overnight,” Adams said. “I’m just hoping I’m going to gain some more control for now.

“There’s a lot of people who have had it. Joe Biden. Tiger Woods had a stutter. Shaquille O’Neal had a stutter. He told stories about when he was in school, where he’d be called on to read and he couldn’t get any of his words out, and everyone would just laugh at him.

“I know how that feels. I also know it can be overcome. It’s time to give it everything I have.”

What might have been

On a November Friday night in 2015, with a road game at Pitt set for the next day, Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly and four assistant coaches clustered on the sideline to be seen at — every bit as much as to see — Pittsburgh Central Catholic’s WPIAL Class AAAA home playoff game with Upper St. Clair.

The targets of their efforts were Adams, at the time a junior and ranked as one of the top five linebackers nationally by Rivals and third by 247Sports, and senior defensive back Damar Hamlin, who’d eventually land at Pitt.

Emerging as another player of interest following the 49-0 romp by PCC was an unheralded three-star defensive lineman named Kurt Hinish.

To put in perspective of what an ascending prospect Adams was at the time, the Irish allocated just one assistant — then-QBs coach Mike Sanford — to venture 20 miles north to Pine-Richland High School that same night to scout a vaunted sophomore QB named Phil Jurkovec, to whom the Irish offered a scholarship the very next day.

Adams verbally committed to the Irish the following March, and Hinish two days later.

“I love my hometown, but I wanted to get out of my box,” Adams said. “I wanted to take the hard road. I wanted to challenge myself athletically and academically. I wanted to grow as a person.

“I had never been to Indiana until I took a visit there. I didn’t even know … I just heard it was a bunch of cornfields.

“And it is a bunch of cornfields — and so much more.”

In the fall of 2016, though, Adams’ preferred hard road took on added and unwelcome dimensions. The injuries began to accrue during his high school senior season, and he played right through them and the pain that came with them.

He did so to the point where Pittsburgh Steelers head orthopedic surgeon Dr. James Bradley, upon examining Adams, said that he had been misdiagnosed and that one of his shoulders was actually “hanging by a thread.”

The consensus top 100 prospect nationally, unsurprisingly, began to fade in the recruiting rankings. By the time he signed with the Irish in February of 2017, Adams was a three-star prospect.

By the time he enrolled at Notre Dame in June, he was a constant in the Irish football training room, seeking treatment, rehab and hope. When the 2017 season rolled around, he not only didn’t play, he wasn’t even allowed to suit up for the games.

Over the next few months, head athletic trainer Rob Hunt, team physician Dr. Matt Leiszler, special teams coach Brian Polian and defensive coordinator Clark Lea each pulled Adams aside and tried to gauge if he really wanted to continue to try to play football.

Each time it took him aback a little bit. But when Kelly brought Adams into his office for a one-on-one at the end of his freshman spring semester, in 2018, it had a different vibe to it.

“He pretty much said the player he recruited out of high school would have played a lot of football for us,” Adams related. “But, he said, ‘Your body has changed a lot since then, and I’m worried about your health.’

“That was very hard for me to hear, knowing everything I had put in since I was a young kid. I finally get to this high level, and I wanted to go even higher.

“I obviously had NFL aspirations, All-American aspirations, everything. But to hear that after my freshman spring ball was very difficult, because it wasn’t something where he says to me, ‘You’re just not playing good. You need to step it up.’

“In that case, I adapt, I get better. In this case, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do, because of my body. So it was tough.”

Adams stayed home that summer, not sure he’d ever be back.

“They left it open — ‘We would love to have you back’ and ‘you’re always welcome’ — that type of stuff,” Adams said. “But that summer was very hard.

“Then I came back in the fall. Initially I didn’t plan on going around the football team. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but I thought it would be too hard emotionally. After I got back, I realized it was even harder to be away from it.

“I’ll always remember this. When I got back my sophomore year, I heard the band playing one day. And it was just like, ‘Wow, I’m back here. All my dreams are now shot. I don’t really know what to do. It’s hard being here and hard being away. But it’s harder being away from football.’

“So I decided I definitely wanted to go back and help out any way I can and hang with all my good friends.”

During Notre Dame’s 2018 playoff run Adams, then a sophomore, attended every practice and every home game. He watched film and made breakout tapes of ND’s opponents for Lea and senior defensive analyst Nick Lezynski.

He’d help oversee the scout team defense in practice. He’d help organize meetings.

“David was a throwback, in a sense,” Kelly reflected last week. “He was a downhill, knock-you-in-the-mouth linebacker. That’s how he played the game. So to have the game pulled from him so early in his career, a lot of people can’t handle the void.

“On top of that, David had to deal with his speech impediment. He already had a challenge in front of him as it was. And I don’t know that there’s anybody I’ve ever met that has handled it quite as well as David did, given all the things that could and probably did go against him.”

Making a difference

The function of medical disqualifications/hardships is to allow players to remain on scholarship and finish their education without it counting against the team’s 85-max scholarship limit imposed by the NCAA.

It’s college football’s Mulligan.

But Adams never personified that. He counted and mattered off the field, and at a particularly critical juncture.

In 2016, the Irish cratered and went 4-8. Kelly responded with a coaching staff makeover, lots of self-reflection and a reboot of his entire philosophies when it came to the way he related to his players and how he ran his program.

None of which plays well in the cut-throat recruiting arena.

After wide receiver Michael Young’s July 20, 2016, verbal commitment, the Irish whiffed on every opportunity to add to the class through the end of the second-losingest season in Notre Dame history.

There were also a Kelly Era-high six decommitments in the cycle, including linebacker Pete Werner and cornerback Paulson Adebo, eventual stars at Ohio State and Stanford, respectively. Over the other 11 completed recruiting cycles the Irish have had 15 decommitments combined.

“Decommitting never crossed my mind,” Adams said. “I knew what Notre Dame had to offer and it’s sports, you know. Everybody has bad years. And so it was, ‘Ok, they’re having a bad year. I’m sure they might make some changes in the offseason.’ I didn’t waver at all.

“I know some guys, who are on the team now and who have already graduated, and a few of them did waver a little bit. And me, along with others, tried our best to hold it together.

“I believe I was the first defensive commit in the class, so I took pride in trying to hold things together, making sure we got the best class possible.”

They also helped reverse the momentum late in the cycle.

Notre Dame broke the drought with the December commitment of offensive lineman Aaron Banks and closed with six commitments in the final week before signing day. Three of them, including future All-American Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah, made their decisions on the actual National Signing Day, in February.

Four years later, the group reached graduation day with the same number of losses in four years combined as the 2016 team amassed in one (8). With it, that class helped fashion 43 wins and the first two playoff appearances in Notre Dame history.

And on Nov. 7, they played their part in upending No. 1 Clemson, 47-40 in double-overtime, at Notre Dame Stadium for the first victory by the Irish over a top-ranked team in 27 years.

“The memories are special — I’m glad I have those,” Adams said. “The people are even more special. Coach (Mike) Elston, coach Kelly. There are so many of them. They make a difference in who you become. Now I want to do that for other people.

“I don’t know what that’s going to look like yet, but I know my decision to come to Notre Dame was the right one. Football was my Plan A. My Plan B — if it doesn’t work out — I have an economics degree from one of the best universities in the world. I couldn’t go wrong either way.

“I wanted Plan A more than anything, but I ended up getting Plan B. So yeah, I’m happy. Going to Notre Dame is going to help me in a lot of ways in my life — with opportunities. Our alumni are very strong in helping each other out.

“The beautiful thing is when you know you have people in your corner. It makes you feel like you can still dream and accomplish anything.”

Follow ND Insider Eric Hansen on Twitter: @ehansenNDI

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archivesdecreole · 3 years

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UNFOLDED

BY JOHN LENARD VILLEGAS

Anxiety and panic attack—just like any teenagers, or any age, quarantined last year, I know I am not the only one who experienced this formidable mental rattrap. And to frankly, honestly say, it was not a downhill battle. I did have to wrestle with the chimeras and avalanches of horrible scenarios made by my mind which had caged me into prison of panic, trepidation, and anxiousness. Howbeit I did maneuver myself from it, the experiences are immeasurably backbreaking and soul-breaking that whoever yet to experience it should know what to do--- since this, too, is inevitable and thus, ever worth discussing.

Last March 16, 2020, the total lockdown was implemented all over the country. Everything that was considered normal was abruptly forced to adjust in consonance with the pandemic. I, who had an ongoing class that time, were also instructed to compulsorily stay at home for the prevention of receiving and transmitting the virus. On the first few weeks of the home quarantine, everything went well. I got to enjoy the sudden decompression from studies and the solitude of being at home all the time. I used social media so much that I unrealistically consumed all the effects of social media--- mostly the negative effects. From morning until the next morning, all I did was to hold my phone like it was an extension of my being. All my former routines right before the quarantine changed in just a blink of eye. Never had I thought it was something I would regret in no time. All things for me were heaven not until the mid-part of April. I started to have a hard time sleeping; My chest was throbbing in pain every night; My heart had kept on palpitating; My interiority felt like malfunctioning; And on top of all, my thinking pattern and rationale functionality had begun to be deteriorating. I got worried so much about my life and started asking and concluding “What if there will be no future anymore? What if there is only death waiting ahead?” And also, all of a sudden, I became afraid of death itself. I became afraid of the thought that everything might not be going back to normal anymore; that all of the things I’d seen, I won’t be seeing anymore. These litanies of thoughts lived rent free in my mind and little did I know, it was already something perilous mental disorder called “anxiety attack or anxiety disorder” that is requiring an immediate medicinal or personal supervision.

The moment I knew the condition I was experiencing, I researched right away and found out that its root-cause was my insalubrious routines during the home quarantining. It was like a domino-effect, unhealthy habits had given birth to anxiety disorder which had led to the multiple complications I have felt. However, exercising, meditating, planting, dieting, social media deactivating, and constant early-sleeping patterns are the expedient ways to avoid the aftermath of this disorder and to cease itself from continually harming my body and my rationality. But even though I had already done these things, it seemed to me that my condition was not getting better, that there was no progress at all. My mind continued to fabricate hypnotic things that drowned me to the abyss of fright and illusion. This condition along with its effects have stayed on me for months of two.

Only an inch of hope left on me. Until one night, it was raining hard. The pitter-patter of the rain and its petrichor aroma stimulated my whole entity. Absurd it might’ve been, but as I let myself calm by the rain, an intervention enlightened my sense of thinking, sense of living, and everything in between. Something soothed me once again. It was something that had pushed me to open up to my mother what I had been experiencing and helped me cope with it. She made me feel secure, loved, and guarded. She kept me calm and let me sleep on her shoulders like when I was an infant. She did everything just to lighten up the constrainable scenarios. And with that, the way I think got back to normal. The pain in my chest, the palpitation, the fright, the trepidation, the illusions, the nervousness, and the insomnia had gradually gone. And at last, I could sleep at night with a tranquil mindset with no frets and fusses. This made me think that no one could ever heal her- or himself alone and people were designed to be dependent on each other no matter how strong one person is.

I am now alright. Maybe there are some times when the feeling keeps on haunting me back but I know I can easily handle it like a walk in a park because I know someone important is always on my back, my mother. That significantly dire experience taught me so many lessons, so many things that I have to put on my pocket so that whoever will experience the same way, I can be like my mother---- the one who will lend a handkerchief to a person and help him back to his original pace.

Fighting anxiety disorder has never been easy. I almost gave up. I almost got carried by waves of anxiousness away from my own being. I was almost out of breath. But thankfully, God never let me fight it all alone. He sent someone to rescue me and gave me the breath I have been longing for a long time.

And to you who read this, if you are experiencing the same way, always remember, just like anything in this temporary world, that, too, shall come to an end. Do not believe what your mind says. Seek for help. Someone will come to rescue you from the ocean of fright and uncertainty. Keep holding on and keep breathing, love.

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livinginlandmarketing · 3 years

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This story is Part 1 of a series

This is the last thing anyone knows for absolute certain about David O’Sullivan:

On the morning of April 7, 2017, the 25-year-old from Ireland checked out of a motel in the snowy mountain town of Idyllwild.

Sixteen days earlier, he’d set out hiking from the Mexican border. Nature and his own inexperience had made the 180 miles he’d covered, through deserts and up and down mountains, challenging.

In one of the last messages he would ever send, he told a friend that he was getting things sorted out, but it had been hard so far. “I knew it would be, but …” he wrote, cursing for emphasis.

“I love it.”

This was supposed to have been just the beginning of a 2,650-mile journey, following the Pacific Crest Trail through the iconic mountains of the American West all the way to the Canadian border.

Instead — as far as anyone knows — Idyllwild was the end.

He never met up with a friend in Santa Barbara, as he’d planned.

His bank activity stopped.

His parents never heard from him again.

Read the series

Part 1: The mysterious disappearance of Pacific Crest Trail hiker David O’Sullivan

Map: David O’Sullivan’s 180-mile Pacific Crest Trail journey

Part 2: Who’s looking for David O’Sullivan? At first, almost no one

More: Missing in the mountains: 4 families ache for those lost

Part 3: 4 years later, searchers seek an answer: What was David O’Sullivan’s fate?

But they had expected him to be out of touch for weeks at a time. That, combined with some incorrect information they received when they first started to worry, and the difficulties of being on another continent, resulted in it taking three months for O’Sullivan to be reported missing to local authorities.

By the time the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department got the case, their search efforts would not have been a rescue mission. Either he was missing on purpose, or they were looking for his remains.

Investigators spent a few months looking into both possibilities, including checking into a few reported sightings and conducting one official search, then closed the case when they concluded they’d run out of leads.

Four years later, O’Sullivan has never been found.

But a group of volunteers from across the U.S., none of whom ever actually met O’Sullivan, haven’t given up. Motivated by his family’s palpable grief and a desire to bring them closure, they’ve poured countless hours into searching for him.

A post marks the Pacific Crest Trail on the northwest end of Fuller Ridge in the San Jacinto Mountains. (Photo by Nikie Johnson, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

The pandemic interrupted their efforts in 2020. But in late 2019 and early 2021, the same people looking for O’Sullivan found the remains of two other people who’d gone missing in nearby regions, and their leader has started a nonprofit foundation to help them keep looking.

Though they can’t be certain, they don’t believe O’Sullivan made it out of the San Jacinto Mountains, the range that surrounds Idyllwild. They’ve focused their efforts around Fuller Ridge, a notorious 5-mile stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail that was still covered in ice and snow that April, and where numerous other 2017 hikers reported dangerous experiences sliding off the trail.

Maybe O’Sullivan — who had no experience in those conditions — fell and met a quick end, or was hurt but had no way to call for help. Maybe he got off track and hopelessly lost in the steep, forested wilderness. But the searchers are convinced his remains are out there, just waiting for someone to find them and send them home to his parents.

“I still wake in the middle of the night — not every night anymore, like I did in the beginning — just thinking, ‘Where is he?’” said his mother, Carmel O’Sullivan.

Inspired by ‘Wild’

David O’Sullivan was one of almost 4,000 people who got permits from the Pacific Crest Trail Association to hike the entire route in 2017. The association is a nonprofit that helps maintain the trail, provides information and issues long-distance permits, but does not keep track of hikers along the way or take responsibility for their safety.

The number of PCT thru-hikers, as they’re called, has increased steadily since “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail,” the best-seller by Cheryl Strayed that tells of her life-changing experience, was published in 2012 and then turned into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon in 2014.

O’Sullivan was one of the many people inspired by Strayed’s memoir to attempt the trail.

“I think this was his way to find himself, which a lot of PCT hikers do,” said Cathy Tarr, the woman now leading the volunteer search efforts, who has become close with O’Sullivan’s family over the past four years.

“He wanted to do the PCT after college but before he got into the real world,” Tarr said. “Possibly proving to himself and to others that ‘I can do that.’”

O’Sullivan had grown up in the countryside outside Midleton, a town of about 12,500 people in Cork County in southwest Ireland. He went to University College Cork and graduated in 2014 with a degree in English, then moved back home.

David O’Sullivan, then 25, of Ireland, took this photo of himself while he was hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in Southern California in spring 2017. (Photo courtesy of the O’Sullivan family)

“I am often asked by our searchers ‘what was David like,’” Carmel O’Sullivan wrote in a Facebook post on the second anniversary of his disappearance. “As a child he was full of fun and mischief often making us laugh with his stand-up comedy. He performed on stage at youth theatre and in his school plays. He grew up to be a thoughtful, kind, and loving young man. He cared about a lot of issues including human rights and equality for everyone. …

“David’s other great quality was loyalty. Loyalty to his family, his employer and his great bunch of friends,” she wrote. “He met some of them his first days of school and they remained friends through all of their school years and beyond.”

He wasn’t an athlete, his mom said, but he did have a black belt in karate and enjoyed hiking and bicycling.

Once he’d set his sights on the Pacific Crest Trail, he spent about a year working at a gas station to save up money.

His parents were surprised — and not thrilled — when he told them about his plans in late 2016. By then he’d already done his research and started physically training.

But the mountains in Ireland are nothing like what he’d encounter in the U.S. They only get up into the 3,000-foot range, a fraction of the lofty elevations of the Pacific Crest Trail, and they rarely have much snow. He wouldn’t have been able to practice with equipment such as crampons or microspikes, which go on your shoes to improve traction, or an ice axe, which you can use to stop a fall if you start sliding downhill.

It was unfortunate, then, that when O’Sullivan applied for his PCT permit, he got an early-season start, on March 22, 2017. To minimize the environmental impact of thousands of hikers, each one is assigned a start day, with no more than 50 per day setting out from the southern end of the trail. Mid-April to early May is widely considered the best time to begin, the sweet spot when you have the best chance of hitting mountains that aren’t too snowy and deserts that aren’t too hot.

The “Wild”-inspired popularity of the trail happened to begin at the same time California entered a yearslong drought, so the PCT hikers who had filled the internet with accounts of their trips in recent years had been describing conditions that were very different from what O’Sullivan would encounter in 2017 — the year that drought finally ended.

“There’s been a lot of rainfall lately,” he wrote in an email to his dad a week into his hike. “It broke a drought the area has had for years. All the desert flowers are in bloom. I can often smell their perfume-like aroma as I hike. Most of the place is covered in green and there were streams everywhere for the first few days. It’s a weird time to be in Southern California. It’s not usually like this.”

He knew that the Sierra Nevada had received heavy snowfall, and that he wasn’t equipped for it. He planned a strategy that thru-hikers call flip-flopping: skipping over the Sierra portion of the trail initially, then returning later when enough ice and snow had melted for him to feel safe.

The San Jacinto Mountains can’t compare to the Sierra, but the conditions were dangerous enough. Up to 3 feet of snow still covered parts of the PCT by the time O’Sullivan came through, according to a San Jacinto Mountains trail report written by Jon King, an Idyllwild man who estimates he hikes about 5,000 miles per year in the local mountains and runs a website that describes current conditions.

Jon King of Idyllwild posts a flyer with information about Pacific Crest Trail hiker David O’Sullivan, who has been missing since 2017, on Tuesday, March 3, 2020. (Photo by Andrew Foulk, Contributing Photographer)

King’s post from March 30, 2017 recommended using microspikes or crampons for traction and poles or an ice axe for support. By April 11, some snow had melted, but King wrote, “Many PCT trail posts above 8000’ remain hidden under snow drifts, making navigation somewhat difficult.”

At least four other hikers had to be rescued that March and April, according to the Riverside Mountain Rescue Unit, a volunteer group that often assists the local sheriff’s department. One was a PCT hiker who had fallen down the mountain near Black Mountain Campground, at the northwest end of Fuller Ridge, on March 30. He’d lost all his water and his stove in the fall and “had exhausted himself climbing back to the trail repeatedly,” rescuers wrote. On the way to get him, their own truck got stuck in the snow three miles from the trailhead.

Hardships, high spirits

O’Sullivan’s longest email was sent from Julian, a mountain town in San Diego County, a week after he set out from the trail’s southern terminus near the town of Campo. In the message, which Tarr shared with this news organization with his parents’ permission, he described some of the people he’d met so far and seemed surprised and disappointed there hadn’t been more.

(It’s not unusual for people to hike the PCT alone: About two-thirds of the people who responded to a survey by the Halfway Anywhere blog in recent years started solo. For many hikers, one of the appeals of the adventure is finding a “trail family” along the way.)

O’Sullivan also wrote about how he wasn’t covering the distances he’d hoped to. Someone he shared a campsite with on his third night — who had hiked in two days as far as O’Sullivan had in three — helped him realize his pack was too heavy.

“I got my kilos and pounds mixed up when I was measuring it,” he wrote.

David O’Sullivan took a photo of his blue backpack at the southern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail near Campo, California, just north of the Mexican border, when he set out to begin the 2,650-mile trail on March 22, 2017. O’Sullivan disappeared about 180 miles in. (Photo courtesy of the O’Sullivan family)

The next day, O’Sullivan met someone who worked at an outfitter in the town of Mount Laguna, who helped him pare down his load and sold him a new tent, sleeping pad and other items that would be lighter than what he’d purchased in Ireland.

“I’ve been flying ever since,” he wrote. “I think I’ve dropped about 12 pounds of equipment since day one and I can really feel it.”

His pace picked up in the hundred miles between Julian and Idyllwild — he managed 20 miles one of those days — but his struggles weren’t over. Another hiker who was on the trail at the same time as O’Sullivan, and who blogged about his trek, described a storm the night of March 31 that unleashed winds so strong they partially collapsed his tent and caused the rain to fall sideways.

That same hiker, Daniel Windsor, actually had lunch with O’Sullivan a few days later in Anza, at the southern base of the San Jacinto Mountains. They’d both stopped at the Paradise Valley Cafe, about a mile off the trail, whose burgers are mouth-wateringly famous among Pacific Crest Trail hikers.

“I sat down and talked to a fellow thru hiker, Dave from Ireland,” Windsor wrote in his blog. “Cracked lips and peeling skin attested to his story of losing his sun hat a few days ago. He had worked at a gas station for a long time to save up for this trip. Some people make some serious, long-term sacrifices to be out here.”

Windsor enviously described seeing O’Sullivan catching a ride from the cafe to the trail, while Windsor had to walk the mile back, and gave him a tragically ironic nickname: Lucky Dave.

O’Sullivan’s incredibly bad sunburn is one thing that stands out in his memory, Windsor said in an interview. Another is how unprepared O’Sullivan seemed.

“I got kind of a general feeling he was kind of getting slapped around by being out on the trail,” Windsor said. “That’s probably why I was trying to push him toward not trying anything he was not prepared for.”

He felt like O’Sullivan had romanticized the PCT as a place to escape to. Despite the rough reality, though, he said O’Sullivan’s spirits were high.

“He didn’t give any hints he wanted to quit, or escape the trail,” Windsor said. “He wasn’t miserable.”

He said hikers were aware there was still a lot of snow in the San Jacinto Mountains. Online, some who’d made it through portrayed Fuller Ridge as “the deadliest, iciest ridge on the planet, but others were saying it was nothing to worry about, you could do it in tennis shoes,” Windsor said.

He got the impression that O’Sullivan was going to try to skip some of the snowy sections up there, but he could have changed his mind depending on what he heard in town.

The Pacific Crest Trail cuts across the steeply sloped and thickly forested Fuller Ridge in the San Jacinto Mountains outside Idyllwild, Calif., in this August 2020 photo. In April 2017, when David O’Sullivan went missing, some hikers were running into trouble in the ice and snow that covered the ridge. (Photo by Nikie Johnson, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

Final days in Idyllwild

The San Jacinto Mountains tower over Riverside County’s sprawling suburban Inland valleys to the west and the Coachella Valley desert to the east. San Jacinto Peak, the high point, rises 10,834 feet above sea level. The mountains spread over hundreds of square miles of mostly public lands — national forest, national monument, state park, state and federal wilderness — and their granite ridges and valleys are covered by a tangle of trails that lay like yarn strewn across a map.

The network is dominated by the Pacific Crest Trail, which passes a couple of miles east of Idyllwild. Most PCT hikers take a detour into town to resupply and maybe sleep in a real bed.

O’Sullivan arrived April 5 and got a room at the Idyllwild Inn for two nights. In addition to the typical errands, he had a specific mission.

A map that’s been marked up by Cathy Tarr, who is leading volunteer search efforts for David O’Sullivan, shows the roads, trails and various public lands that cover the San Jacinto Mountains.(Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

He was traveling with very little technology: no cellphone, no GPS device to navigate, not even a rescue beacon to summon help in an emergency. He did have a Kindle, though he could only use it where he could connect to WiFi — and he hadn’t brought the right travel adapter, so he hadn’t been able to charge it.

He’d ordered a new adapter, but there was some sort of mix-up and it hadn’t made it to Idyllwild. He had to order another one, and complained in his final email to his parents, sent from the Idyllwild library on April 6, that he was going to get a later start back to the trail the next morning because he’d have to wait for the post office to open — a clue that he wasn’t planning on hitchhiking down the mountain, like Windsor thought he might have been considering.

The same day, O’Sullivan messaged his friend in Santa Barbara. The plan was to hike about 470 miles farther to the Ridgecrest area, where the trail transitions from the Mojave Desert to the Sierra Nevada, then catch a bus to Santa Barbara for a weeklong visit. He wrote that he thought he’d be there in about four weeks.

A month later, the friend messaged O’Sullivan again.

“Hey, when should I expect you to arrive here”

The next day, he tried again:

“Hello?”

Next in the series: Who’s looking for David O’Sullivan? At first, almost no one

-on May 26, 2021 at 01:05AM by Nikie Johnson

#riversidenews

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pandemicperipatetics · 3 years

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Weekend in Grand Canyon

The Verdict: It’s (obviously) totally awesome, one of the most stunning places we’ve ever been, etc etc. Rather than restating the obvious, we’ll share our top 3 tips:

Hike the South Kaibab Trail. It is one of the coolest hikes we’ve ever done. And really great bang for your buck in terms of strenuousness vs. views.

Late March is an awesome time to go - outdoors feels like about 20 degrees warmer than what the Weather app says, which is great for hiking. And we hear it’s less crowded than a little later in the year. Just take crampons if you’ll be hiking - it’s icy and you can’t really hike without them!

It is really convenient to stay inside the park if you can. When we drove out on Sunday around 11:30 a.m., the line to enter at the South Rim Entrance Station was legit over a mile long. By staying inside the park, you’ll get a head start on hikes and avoid the crowds.

WHAT TO DO

There are different ways to see pretty things in Grand Canyon. You can drive, walk, or hike to the views. We prioritized seeing the South Rim, the most popular area to visit. We were also able to drive to see sights along the East Rim. The North Rim was closed for winter, and the West Rim was a bit out of the way for us.

Hiking (i.e., walking down into the canyon)

There are (long, multi-day) hikes where you can walk from one rim to another. We opted to do shorter out-and-back hikes on our own to get a more leisurely glimpse into the canyon.

South Kaibab Trail - This trail is AWESOME! We can’t say enough good things about the views; it’s no surprise it’s the most popular hike in the park. It’s a stunning downhill trail into the canyon with markers at 0.9 miles (”Ooh Aah Point”), 1.5 miles (”Cedar Ridge”), 3 miles (”Skeleton Key”), and beyond -- we didn’t look into going further, though we’d love to next time.

The first 5-10 minutes of downhill are STEEP and ICY - we could not have done this without crampons. We saw plenty of people give up on the hike because they didn’t have appropriate footwear, others sliding down on their butts, and also saw someone fall. We didn’t think we would really need crampons, so we ordered them on Amazon and didn’t open them until we got to the trail and saw that they were absolutely necessary. After those first several minutes, we didn’t encounter any ice - just lots of mud and some mule poo!

After those first several minutes, the downhill gets less steep until Cedar Ridge. Post Cedar Ridge, it’s again quite steep (important to keep in mind for the return ascent). We started around 7a.m. and are glad we got an early start: the hike gets HOT lower down in the canyon, even on a day with a low of 25 degrees and a high of 61.

The views got prettier and prettier as we went further down. To be safe, we stopped about halfway between Cedar Ridge and Skeleton Key. In retrospect, we would have gone all the way to Skeleton Key - the ascent wasn’t that difficult after Cedar Ridge; going further seemed totally doable.

Logistical Pro Tip:

We read that we needed to park at the Visitor Center and take the Orange Line shuttle for the ~10 minute drive to the trailhead. But we later realized there is a better option - you can drive to Pipe Creek Vista and park on the road there - parking is scarce but probably fine if you go early, and by mid-day we saw loads of people park outside of actual parking spots on the opposite side of the road. From Pipe Creek Vista, it’s just a 15 minute walk to the trailhead, all on the gorgeous Rim Trail. It really beats waiting 10-20 minutes for the shuttle to pick you up, then cramming in with a bunch of other tourists, especially during the pandemic! If you do park at the Visitor Center, you can take the shuttle back after your hike or walk ~2 miles along the Rim Trail. We really enjoyed doing the latter.

Bright Angel Trail - This trail is good, but in our opinion the views (at least up to 1.5 miles down, which is how far we went) aren’t that much better than from the park’s many scenic viewpoints. Like South Kaibab, this is a long downhill trail with markers at 1.5 miles in, 3 miles in, and further on.

We did the ~10 minute scenic walk from our hotel, El Tovar, along the Rim Trail to get to the trailhead around 8 a.m., and we walked down about 1.6 miles before turning back. The weather app reported it was in the high 20s - due to the sun it felt more like 40s - and the hike down was icy and slippery the entire time. Crampons were 100% necessary for us.

It took us about 1.5 hours to descend and about 1 hour to ascend - a bit surprising since we had read the ascent takes 2-3 times longer, but we were also extra-careful going down due to the ice and trying to avoid any more ankle sprains. It felt closer to moderate than strenuous, compared to other strenuous hikes we’ve done recently. If you have extra time after doing South Kaibab, we’d still recommend this hike. If you’re at a moderate fitness level, the 3 mile out-and-back hike (6 mile total) should be completely fine.

Walking

It’s a very popular option to walk the Rim Trail. As the name suggests, it’s a walk right along the rim of the canyon. It’s pretty flag and continuously scenic. We walked parts of it and thought it was beautiful!

Driving

Desert View Drive - This is a popular 23-mile (one-way) drive between the South Entrance and East Entrance of the park, with views of the East Rim. The East Entrance was closed due to winter conditions, so we started and ended the drive at the South Entrance, which is close to many lodges & food inside the park. There are many stops along the way with lovely views. Our favorite was Moran Point - a great place to eat a picnic lunch sitting on a rock (we didn’t see any tables). We were a bit underwhelmed by Desert View Point (right by the East Entrance). There also seem to be some short hikes or walks along the way. We tried the Shoshone Point Trail but it was way too muddy and slippery! We walked around there for about a minute and then spent probably 15 minutes cleaning off our hiking shoes. Note: The well-known Yaki Point is also along this drive, but it seems like you either need to take the park shuttle to get to it, or park near Pipe Creek and walk even further than the South Kaibab Trailhead. We did not see it.

Hermit’s Rest Road: You have to take the shuttle or a bike to travel along this road. It’s right near the major park lodging, and we looked for parking near the road to see if we could walk along it, but could not find a spot. It’s a 7-mile road that is well-known for Hermit’s Rest Viewpoint at the end - so probably best not to try walking there anyways. We didn’t see it, but it sounds nice.

Mather Point: You can walk the 0.3 miles here from the Grand Canyon Visitor Center, which is just a few minutes’ drive from the park lodges. It is a pretty large area with lots of space to look into the canyon. Still, it was fairly crowded. We found a rock to enjoy our picnic lunch with a view. If you’re eating there, just watch out for the aggressive squirrels that may come and beg you for food and/or try to swipe it away from you! We also saw a park sign claiming that upwards of 30 visitors a day seek treatment for finger bites from the squirrels...

There seem to be tons of other viewpoints in the park - some that cropped up a lot in our research included Yavapai Point and Hopi Point (along Hermit’s Rest Road). There are plenty of places within the park to get a look at the stunning canyon!

WHAT TO EAT - VEGGIE VERSION

The veggie options inside and near the park seemed a bit mediocre. We tried Park food for lunch and peanut butter sandwiches & snacks in our room for dinner, because 1) we were too lazy to leave and 2) we honestly felt our homemade sandwiches would be more satisfying than the available vegetarian dinner options.

Bright Angel Bicycles & Cafe at Mather Point (currently open 8am-5pm) - Park your vehicle at the visitor center and walk over (it’s right next door). There are pre-made sandwiches, wraps, salads and a little bakery area with bagels, muffins, croissants. We got a Mediterranean wrap with hummus (tasted like food at a corporate lunch), a frozen egg-and-potato breakfast burrito (not too bad), and a blueberry bagel with cream cheese (tasted like dessert!). There is a self-serve microwave (i.e., for frozen burrito) and toaster (i.e., for bagel). While the food was decent - and decently priced - the cafe is quite small and there was not social distancing going on at all. We honestly felt like it was the riskiest place we’d been to during the pandemic. Thankfully, there was a large container of hand sanitizer available at the condiments station.

El Tovar Dining Room - This is apparently a thing to do during a visit to Grand Canyon. Since we stayed in El Tovar, we walked by the dining room a few times and witnessed the line to get in. The dining room is indoors. There is a global pandemic. We did not try the food. (If you’re a guest at the hotel, you can order the same food through room service, but the vegetarian options seemed overpriced and not terrifically tantalizing).

Canyon Village Market - We didn’t try it, but the menu & prices looked decent - black bean burgers, a veggie breakfast sandwich, etc.

Sophie’s Mexican Kitchen - This is a restaurant in Tusayan, the closest town to the south end of the park. We didn’t try it, but among limited vegetarian options in Tusayan, this looked like it might be okay. We read online that there are vegan/vegetarian options here - it looked like standard stuff like tacos, burritos, quesadillas, etc.

WHERE TO STAY

We stayed at El Tovar, a lodge inside the park run by Xanterra Resorts, a Park-approved vendor. We’d recommend it solely for the location: it’s right on the South Rim and convenient to all of the main sites in the park.

The room itself felt like a freshman dorm room without a desk - sparsely furnished, cedar wood furniture, paper-thin walls so you can hear everything in the hallway. The customer service was poor: the doorman (whose job seemed to be to keep out the tourists trying to get into the famed El Tovar Dining Room) was pretty rude every time we tried to get in to go to our room, and the person who checked us in clearly didn’t know what she was doing (she emphasized multiple times that cigarette smoking is not allowed). Note there is no elevator; we chose the 3rd floor, which is the highest, because the receptionist told us it would avoid hearing people stomping around upstairs. We also had difficulty finding parking because tourists use the lot to park to see the canyon views right outside the hotel. The rooms at El Tovar also tend to be extremely expensive - don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s a luxury hotel.

On the plus side, only El Tovar residents can order room service off the El Tovar dining menu (not that we did), and the piano playing on the second floor wafted up to our non-soundproof room in a lovely way.

Sunset outside El Tovar

#grandcanyon

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junker-town · 3 years

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Illinois vs. Loyola-Chicago should be March Madness’ best game of the first weekend

via Getty Images

The Illini are a powerhouse, and the Ramblers aren’t your typical No. 8 seed. Here’s what to expect in the round of 32 matchup.

The state of Illinois isn’t used to seeing two of its college basketball teams meeting in the men’s NCAA tournament. It had only happened twice in history entering this year, most recently in 1984 when DePaul knocked off Illinois State on its way to the Sweet 16. In 2021, the thought amounted to something of a nightmare scenario heading into Selection Sunday that became realized when the bracket was announced.

The Illinois Fighting Illini, fresh off their first Big Ten tournament championship since 2005, would anchor the Midwest region as the No. 1 seed. The Loyola-Chicago Ramblers were listed one game below, taking a No. 8 seed into a matchup with Georgia Tech. If Loyola could get past the ACC tournament champion Yellow Jackets, it would be on a crash course to face the Illini in the round of 32.

Now it’s happening. After Illinois trounced Drexel, 78-49, and Loyola took out Georgia Tech, 71-60, in the opening round on Friday, the Illini and Ramblers are set to face off on Sunday at 12:10 pm. ET on CBS.

Illinois has rightfully been deemed one of the favorites to win the entire tournament, and will enter the game as a seven-point favorite in Vegas. Don’t let that spread fool you into discounting the Ramblers. Loyola went to the Final Four in 2018, and most of the numbers suggest this team is even stronger entering the tournament this year. There’s even a case to be made that the Ramblers are one of the more overqualified No. 8 seeds the field has seen in recent years.

Given the stakes on both sides, it doesn’t feel like a stretch to call this the biggest game in the history of college basketball in Illinois — or at least the biggest game since Loyola beat Illinois on its way to the 1963 national championship. Here’s what you need to know before the Ramblers and Illini face-off.

It’s a shame Illinois vs. Loyola is happening so early into March Madness

Maybe the NCAA just wanted to ensure that every TV between Rogers Park and Champaign would be tuned in to the same game. Maybe Loyola ending up as a No. 8 seed in the same region as the Illini happened all by chance. Whatever the reason, it counts as a bad break for both of these teams that they have to catch an opponent as strong as the other in the round of 32.

The beef here is with the Ramblers’ placement. Loyola entered the tournament as the No. 9 overall team in America in KenPom’s efficiency rankings, and placed No. 10 overall in the NET rankings, a tool created by the NCAA to help the Selection Committee seed the bracket. Somehow being favored by the NCAA’s own metric couldn’t help the Ramblers overcome the lack of quality opponents on their schedule after going 6-4 against Quad 1 and Quad 2 teams during the season and undefeated against everyone else. According to the full seed list, the committee doesn’t even think Loyola is the best No. 8 seed.

If you’re still not convinced that it’s a crime for this game to be happening in the round of 32, take it from Sister Jean:

“Probably nobody thinks it’s a fair bracket,” the 101-year-old nun from Loyola said. “It amazes me they put two Illinois schools against each other rather than support each other.”

In an alternate universe where Loyola gets Clemson’s No. 7 seed in the Midwest, a matchup between the Illini and Ramblers would have been a popular Elite Eight pick. Instead, the only thing the winner gets on Sunday is meeting with the winner of Oklahoma State vs. Oregon State in the Sweet 16, which means a possible date with the NBA’s future No. 1 overall draft pick Cade Cunningham.

Here’s how Illinois and Loyola matchup in the efficiency stats offered by KenPom. A few key takeaways:

Illinois wants to play fast. Increasing the tempo is always a good strategy for a favorite: the more possessions there are in a game, the more chances your talent advantage gets to show. Loyola, meanwhile, has been following the underdog’s formula for success all year: grind games to a halt and take away any quick-strike opportunities from the opponent.

Both of these teams have elite defenses. Loyola was ranked No. 1 overall entering the tournament before slipping a couple spots after their win against Georgia Tech. Illinois has also been a top-10 defense most of the year with a conservative drop scheme based around keeping everything in front of center Kofi Cockburn.

This likely won’t turn into a three-point fest. The Illini rank No. 320 out of 357 DI teams in three-point rate — the percentage of field goal attempts a team takes from three-point range. Loyola ranks only No. 173 in the same category. Instead of threes going up on every possession, the ones that do go up are going to feel like the difference between going home and staying in Indianapolis for another week.

How Illinois can beat Loyola

Gonzaga is the team that entered the NCAA tournament hoping to end the season as college basketball’s first undefeated national champion since Indiana in 1976, but there’s a case to be made that no team is hotter than the Illini right now.

Illinois has a pretty great setup. The Illini have a First Team All-American guard in Ayo Dosunmu to initiate the offense. They have perhaps the most hulking physical presence in the field at center in Cockburn. Around the two stars, there’s a group of players whose responsibilities fall into the 3-and-D mold (seniors Trent Frazier and Da’Monte Williams, junior Jacob Grandison, freshman Adam Miller), plus an electric freshman creator off the bench in Andre Curbelo.

The key for Illinois is always establishing Cockburn and keeping him out of foul trouble. The sophomore center has the sixth biggest diet of post-ups in college basketball, getting the ball on the block 7.7 times per game, which is roughly half of his possessions, per Synergy Sports. Cockburn averages one point per possession on post touches, which grades out as ‘excellent’ on Synergy and ranks in the 84th percentile in America. That Cockburn is unstoppable down low isn’t exactly breaking news after he waxed presumptive national player of the year Luka Garza in a Big Ten tournament matchup and put up double-figures in scoring in all but two games this year, but it’s worth noting none the less.

Illinois will want to get Dosunmu downhill attacking the basket in the pick-and-roll and on dribble handoffs. When that doesn’t work, it will let Curbelo try to create some magic as a ball handler and find the angles no one else can see.

It seems like a different player is stepping up as Illinois’ third scorer after Dosunmu and Cockburn every game, and they will need that trend to continue against the Ramblers.

How Loyola can beat Illinois

We already established that Loyola will want to slow the pace and limit possessions against a juggernaut like the Illini. Their best strategy might be attacking Cockburn defensively both in the post and in space, and seeing if that leads to some playmaking opportunities for Loyola’s own star center, Cameron Krutwig.

Krutwig doesn’t have the name recognition of Dosunmu and Cockburn, but he’s been one of the very best players in college hoops all year. The 6’9, 255-pound big man ranks No. 4 in KenPom’s Player of the Year standings (one spot behind Dosunmu), and entered the tournament top-10 in all-in-one stats like PER and BPM.

Krutwig is also a monster in the post, getting 43.5 percent of his possessions on the block and scoring in the 87th percentile on those opportunities. Unlike Cockburn who only has five assists all season, Krutwig is also an ultra-skilled passer. Look for Loyola to let him leverage his facilitating in the high-post and on the block to find cutters going to the basket and shooters dotting the three-point arc.

Fellow senior Lucas Williamson is worthy of co-star status. A tough 6’4 wing, Williamson won Missouri Valley Defensive Player of the Year this season and can turn up aggressive ball pressure when he wants to with an impressive 3.2 percent steal rate. Williamson will try to disrupt the Illini’s side-to-side ball movement and get out in transition for easy baskets, where he scores in the 88th percentile of America. In the halfcourt, look for Braden Norris and Keith Clemons to try to get loose for threes, and for reserve guard Marquise Kennedy to give Loyola some much needed dribble-penetration.

Krutwig and Williamson were both key contributors on Loyola’s Final Four team as freshmen. It’s fitting that they have their program back to the pinnacle with a shot to knock-off their heavily favored in-state rival as seniors.

Illinois vs. Loyola-Chicago time and TV channel

When: Sunday, March 21

Time: 12:10 p.m. ET or 11:10 a.m. CT for Illinois-based fans

TV: CBS

Read our features on Ayo Dosunmu and Cameron Krutwig

We interviewed both Dosunmu and Krutwig before the tournament. Check out our coverage here:

Ayo Dosunmu is the star Illini basketball always needed

Loyola-Chicago’s Cameron Krutwig on Final Four run, Sister Jean, and return to NCAA tournament

Also be sure to read The Champaign Room for continued coverage of the Illini, and Mid-Major Madness for coverage of Loyola.

Illinois vs. Loyola prediction in 2021 NCAA tournament

What’s not to love about this matchup? We have two top-10 teams in efficiency rankings with two of the best defenses in college basketball. We have two of the best big men in the sport staring each other down. We have the Morgan Park-grad Dosunmu as the Chicago-bred star who finally chose the Illini and made good on his promise. We have Whitney Young-grad Williamson who was ignored by high majors like the Illini but now gets the chance to upset them.

I already went on the record saying that if these two teams played a best-of-seven series, I’d take Illinois in six games. What does that mean for a head-to-head meeting in a single elimination tournament?

We’ll take Illinois to win the game, but Loyola to cover the seven-point spread.

Cockburn is the swing factor here. For as great as Krutwig is, Cockburn feels like college basketball’s biggest mismatch problem right now. There isn’t another player in America who can match his combination of size, strength, and finishing touch. If Loyola can get Cockburn in foul trouble, they’ll have a chance to pull the upset. Otherwise, we see the Illini sneaking by in a close game.

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amieyhko · 4 years

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Quarantine

7 aug 2020

As I sat across Danny oppa during my farewell-brunch, reflecting on this year of postponed plans, I told him I felt like I didn't cope and respond well to this whole situation. He said I did all I could. Though I wasn't convinced, I was comforted — it was good enough. It felt like a permission to be confused, for just a little longer. After my "Postponed" letter three months ago, Bible School stopped classes for two weeks due to soaring outbreaks. Masks in every form and shape were sold out, church services were held at home through screens, and masked acquaintances waving at me were the most confusing part of the deal.

MARCH - APRIL

Instead of scrambling up early for 8am morning prayer before class, I went to church almost everyday to pre-record and edit stay-home services. During this time, a crisis committees were formed and there was always someone editing videos at the church office. I was infinitely thankful for my investment in blue light blocking glasses and my design teachers through the ages. During this period of supposed slow-downs and postponements, everything seemed to escalate to cancellations. Though I knew deeply I needed to process and grieve, my mind hijacked my heart into thinking that indefinitely postponed events don't deserve moments of silences. It felt as if I was trying to prove my usefulness with my skills and miscalculated time.

APRIL - MAY

After Easter service and mother's day specials, Taipei City eased up. Besides, it was getting too warm for masks outside at all times — I could finally recognize some acquaintances on the streets. Trying to keep up a conversation on public transits with masks on was another learning curve. School resumed, birthday parties were celebrated, dinner hangouts ensued, and unperfect weddings were tied. As time skipped ahead, I allowed my heart to wonder if I would be ready for this brave new world. I slowly came to the agreement that changes needed to come from within — but how? This is an ongoing battle. Will I slowly breathe in the changes that need to arrive within a short time? Will I believe that I'm not the only one going through visa issues? Could I even begin to allow myself to sink into the pool of self-compassion? In the last weeks of Bible School, there was a heavy chunk of time spent dealing with emotional health and our inner child. A couple of terms were redefined and renamed, many tears were shed. It would take way too long describe it here so I posted my journal entry for you to peruse (or skim). These classes were gentle reminders to let go of my own agendas and closely listen to the heart of God.

MAY - JUNE

I will admit to my slow response time to my visa doom, but one giant brick wall of bureaucracy still existed. Even if I received a work permit, as someone on a working holiday visa (in their most familiar country), I HAVE TO be outside of Taiwan to process the working permit into a work visa to come back to Taiwan, despite COVID-19. If that last sentence was too confusing for you, don't worry. Basically, I had to leave Taiwan by the end of July — work or no work. By mid-May, hard questions had to be asked. What do I do after my year in Bible School? What do I do with my expiring visa at the end of July? Is Hungary still happening? How do I start looking for my next thing? What will I do now that everything I thought would happen, isn't happening? Why didn't I think of better ways to support myself financially? Snowballs tend to roll downhill. The worst feeling in all this confusion was this pang of settling. My mind was building up to going to Hungary on 14 June, 2020 for almost a year. That was the only plan. Now that I couldn't have it (for now), everything else felt like second-rate. I felt robbed. My visa in Taiwan was supposed to expire just in time for Hungary. Big cancellations lead to big alterations.

JUNE - JULY

I was offered a job (with a visa) that felt like absolute boredom for me. It was going to be an admin job where I knew I could put up with it and do it well, but I didn't want to say yes to it until I was fully convinced God wanted me to say yes. After four days of tears, inner-battles, tough conversations with my nearest dearests, and a quiet prayer by the sea, I could accept this job with a peacefully grateful heart. But applying for visas and having that process approved are two very related yet different stories. Usually when I tell this story of indecision and rejection, it takes about half an hour. I have boiled it down to the minimum word count (you can ring me up if you want the whole spiel). After a three week wait and a denied application, I scrambled here and there for other opportunities of work permits. It became clear to me how difficult it was for me to find a job that ticked off all criteria — usually visa was the issue. There were a couple of catches here and there, but I'll get into it when there're more concrete resolutions.

CONTINUING THEMES

Two updates ago, I mentioned how "privilege" is my word of this year. One update ago, I touched on how wor(l)ds have turned upside down. God started redefining "Privilege" for me. A June journal entry I scribbled goes like this:

"This year has been absolutely notorious for being the worst turn of the decade. Despite Rona, Racism, and Ridiculousness Everywhere, the world is still on a trajectory that almost seems normal — especially in Taipei City. The normalcy is only a vibe, though. Now, I tend to only ever talk about my life in result of COVID-19, there doesn't seem to be anything else. My life has turned upside down and I wonder where my word of 2020 went. Then I have to take a deep breath and ask God, again, what the @!%$ is he thinking (yes, I beep a lot at God, He sasses back). I have no other questions by this point even though I know I'm asking all the wrong questions. By this point, I'm frazzled, numb, furious, and invalidated all at once. I've been overusing "unfair" a lot. It takes all my attention to remind myself that privilege looks extremely different from what I imagined back in January. Privilege is Taiwan being absolutely golden in upping their preventative strategies. It is living in a city that fully functions while the rest of the world still has unbelievably soaring cases. Privilege is finishing Bible School with the classmates sweeter than most humans I've met and friends I hope to always rely on. Privilege is a church full of people celebrating, even with masks on. Privilege takes shape of friends who always have my back especially when I'm having meltdowns. [. . . . ]As this list goes on and on, it's not about what I own, but the life I've led and lead gifted by the Almighty."

As I packed my bag in preparation for my expiring visa, I wondered if I should be packing for the worst or the best. Neither. I'm treating this season like Elsa singing "Into the Unknown" (I watched Frozen 2 twice and ugly cried both times). This is not a time for me to judge my situations as bad or good but to let peace and joy that lives in me exude to every environment I am situated in. As my fourteen-day quarantine in Korea is ending, I'm reminded modern day technology is marvelous and my homes are only a text away. I think I've forgotten how to interact with physical human beings, though — I'll slowly get back on track. Let the awkwardness ensue.

#updates #quarantine #taipei #seoul #taiwan #korea #2020

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iceddecafcaramel · 4 years

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05/28/20

Hello world,

I feel so comfortable knowing that none of the people who actually know me will ever see this post, because there’s no reason to hide and I can be completely honest. But that’s hard because I’m often not honest to myself either. But by writing my heart out on here, maybe, just maybe, I can try to be honest for once. So here it goes.

These first five months of the year have been a roller coaster. I met my boyfriend on Tinder in January and things clicked so well that he moved in to my apartment after 3 weeks of meeting. He is such an interesting man with many goals and interests, the polar opposite of me, where I have a general idea of what I want, but I don’t know what kind of car I would want for me and my family and what my dream house looks like.

Things were going pretty well until the pandemic started and we were quarantined together from mid March. He asked me to come back to stay with him in his parents’ house in Portland in early April so that we would have more space to workout. So I agreed and packed a week’s worth of clothes and my cat up, and we drove up. Things started going downhill from there. By the end of April, we started getting in many small meaningless fights, and he started getting annoyed with me about the said annoying fights. He asked for space so I started shutting myself in the play room and wouldn’t approach him because I wanted to give him space. Things didn’t get better despite my efforts and he just couldn’t get the space he wanted. I also somehow was boiling oil in a pot and that caught up in flames, and I almost burned the house down. So that didn’t do any good either. By the first week of May, I talked to my friend about this and he offered to come get me if I wanted him to, because he didn’t want to see me suffer. I told my bf this and I guess it made him realize how much I care. He asked me to wait for two more weeks until his final ended on the 30th, and promised things would get better. I agreed. So things did start getting better and he was being so caring and sweet but I pushed him away and started getting meaner to him because I was still hurt from all the anxiety and sadness that I had stored in. Yesterday, I got upset because he didn’t let me help him put up some pictures on the wall, and I stormed out of the room. He didn’t think that it was such a big deal and after seeing me react, he asked if I thought we would last the entire year. He said that he could easily find another place to live next year and just didn’t think this would work. I stressed out so much at this point because I went through such a hard time (family drama, feeling bad for involving my friend’s parents, etc) finding the apartment for my friend, him and I to share, and we had just signed the lease for it last week. As I was calling my friends about how stressed out about the situation I was, he asked to talk to me again. This time, he told me that he never cared about me as much as I did for him from the very start and that he never saw this as a forever relationship. He planned to tell me after the trip to his Doctor-friend, that was supposed to happen three weeks later. He missed being single and feeling free. I knew that he didn’t care about me as much as I did but I figured that he needed to take his own time to open up, but I guess it was never his intention to. He said that we could stay together and he wouldn’t cheat on me with anyone but wanted to tell me upfront that he didn’t see anything serious for this relationship after this lease was over next July. At that point, I tried to stay strong and I didn’t shed a single tear as he told me this. I always knew he didn’t care as much or wasn’t as attracted to me as much but I didn’t expect him to care this less. I always knew he wasn’t my forever but it just hurt because I have so much feelings for this guy. I’ve been reading self-help books lately and luckily, I didn’t question my self-worth (I know that one day, I’ll find “the one” for me and that I deserve someone who cares about me as much as I do for them) but I couldn’t help but burst into tears after calling another friend, because I was so tired of waiting for the right person to come along, and how stressed I was in this situation. He then came in the room and asked me if we could talk again. He said that he was sorry for hurting me and didn’t want to see me upset. He also said that he wanted to “restart” and “reset” the relationship, and forget about the previous conversation. He thought that his studying was getting to his head, and wanted us to try again and be kinder to each other. He also said that he thinks that he didn’t let himself fall for me more as in his ideal plan, he wasn’t supposed to be in a relationship until he was done with school, around when he was 30. As I still have so much feelings for this guy, and I’d rather live with my future ex than to go through the hassle of finding a new apartment, I agreed. That night, he said that he was going to try to “fall for me again” and try to care for me more. As much as this was what I wanted to hear, I didn’t know how much of that he truly meant. I have so many questions at this point: - Will I ever be able to completely trust that he means everything he says? - Is it worth putting myself through this? - How much pain am I going to be in? - What do I do when it turns out that he’s just faking that he cares for me? - What if he can’t “fall for me” again? - Why did he change his thoughts so quickly, especially yesterday? - How much more is he hiding if he was planning to keep this “from the start, I never cared about you as much as you do for me” thing away from me for three extra weeks? - I posted about this on reddit yesterday and I checked his account to see if he was following r/relationships so that he wouldn’t see my post, and I saw that he commented on a post that was like “what would you have missed out on if you committed suicide a year ago?” and he was like “I was suicidal three and a half years ago (so in 2016) and ...” and I was like WHAT THE FUCK? Why did he never bring this up? I literally opened up to him about my abusive family relationship and me getting raped and stuff. I had no idea about his past???? Like I feel like he’s hiding so much from me and he’s so closed off. - What made him decide to choose to let himself fall for me more? and to what extent is he going to let himself go to?

#thoughts #H

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jim-reid · 7 years

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Eyewitness - The Jesus and Mary Chain Riot

John Harris / Q Mag Witness: Various Event: The Jesus And Mary Chain Riot Date: March 15, 1985 Location: North London Polytechnic

Having carefully whipped up a minor furore with their "buzzsaw pop" and fun-sized live shows, Scotland's premier Scuzzadelic oiks found themselves at the centre of - eek! - a real-life breach of public order. John Harris rounds up the culprits and gets some feedback. Neil Taylor (NME writer and first journalistic JAMC champion): The article about what happened at North London Poly was the second or third piece on the Mary Chain that I'd done in a week. I'd done a review of the show at the Three Johns pub in Islington - there were 20 people there, and a week later 200 were claiming to have gone. The piece caused quit a sensation for the band: I said they were the most exciting group I'd seen since Joy Division. I'd spent the last three years writing about English pop groups who were influenced by ideas that had this cuddly DIY outlook - The Wedding Present, Shop Assistants, BMX Bandits - and then along came this band who had a real Fuck You attitude. You could tell the potential was larger. Jim Reid (JAMC vocalist): People were waiting for something to react to. There was nothing around at the time: the early '80s was probably the lowest point in musical history. People wanted a bit of nastiness, trashiness. We kind of knew what we were up to. Some people were going to see what we were doing as genius, and some people were going to see it as an insult. Even at some of the early gigs, violence broke out. There were always people who were outraged by what we were trying to pass off as music. But North London Poly was different. It was on another scale. We were quite shocked. Alan McGee (Creation Records head honcho, then also Mary Chain manager): You've got to see it in context. Gigs now are not a threatening experience, but gigs in the mid-'80s - because it was just after punk - had this kind of football element. Once you crossed the boundaries of good taste, it just seemed to appear. Neil Taylor: What happened at North London Poly was a result of what happened at the Fire Station on the Old Kent Road - which was packed - and that was a result of what happened at the Three Johns. At the Fire Station, people were complaining that the band wouldn't talk to the audience or that they'd only played for 15 minutes. At the same time, their popularity was building - so by the time they got to North London Poly, it was quite a volatile combination. Some people actually wanted to be abused, everyone wanted to know more about it, and it just flared up. Alan McGee: Meat Whiplash went on first. Halfway through the set, Stevie, the guitar player, threw a wine bottle into the audience. He was a nutter. Somebody got on stage to belt him, but he and the rest of the band ran away, except for Eddie Connolly, the bass player. So he got socked. The next band on was the Jasmine Minks, and they went on carrying clawhammers. They wanted people to see they were tooled up. I said, "What the fuck are you doing?" and they said, "If it goes off, it goes off." So the audience had a bottle thrown at them, the second band went on with hammers... is it any wonder it all went off?

Jim Reid: We were watching what was going on from backstage. It was obvious that a bunch of people had come to cause trouble. There were a gang of people who were up for a ruck: probably people who'd read about the gig at the Three Johns. We'd heard there were people in the crowd with baseball bats. And there wasn't any security! People could get on the stage if they wanted - and there were people out there with weapons! They could just get up and pound your head in. Everyone was very uptight. Neil Spencer: I turned up with my girlfriend, just in time to see the Jasmine Minks. I was anticipating enormous problems with the audience - they crammed in all these people, and they weren't prepared for it. There was no security, no system in place to take care of what was likely to happen. It got out of control partly because of the dialogue going to and from the stage: people shouting about whether they actually were the "best band in seven years", which was a comment I'd made in my review, responding to Jim Reid's attitude, people shouting "Rubbish!", pushing and shoving. Jim Reid: I'd had enough beers to feel kind of numbed. It was definitely Dutch courage. I could see the people who'd come to cause trouble right in front of me, making gestures, saying they were going to rip my head off. I was too drunk to be scared. We played for 15 or 20 minutes, and then it was just chaos. Joe Foster (early JAMC producer, soundman, guitar tech): There were some guys at the front of the stage who pulled Jim into the crowd, with the basic intention of ending his career as a singer. I dived off stage, slapped a couple of them and jumped back up. But the college security guys wouldn't let us back up. It was like they wanted us to die! Neil Spencer: They came on. Two and a half minutes of feedback, general abuse. They started to perform, and a fight developed. They went off stage, came back on stage, the equipment got pushed off, and the police were completely incompetent. It was impossible for them to deal with it. There was no animosity towards them: they were just caught in the middle, with their helmets falling off. Joe Foster: Someone knocked a PA stack over and it all went downhill. It seemed to last forever. I remember going out front, finding all these student girlies hurling speakers at each other. Jim Reid: I think it was Pete Astor (of the Weather Prophets) who told me that there were all these Japanese girls at the back, pulling at the curtain, shouting, "Liot! Liot!" Neil Taylor: I did actually get thumped. One person came up to me and hit me, for having partially created all of it. It wasn't Chris Eubank territory, but it was a punch. I got out of there pretty quickly. Jim Reid: After we came off, we were in our dressing room, and we heard all this pounding on a door down the corridor. It was an angry mob banging on a cupboard door, thinking it was our dressing room! I remember peeking out of the door, watching these people shouting, "Get the bastards! Get the bastards!" I don't know what their problem was: maybe we played too short, maybe we went on late... maybe people had been listening to all this crap music for too long. Neil Taylor: I wrote the story. I phoned up the NME and said, "Hold pages two and three!" It was a news piece, a double page spread. Very factual. And it was great for them, because suddenly everyone was after them. They went from calling me up and coming down on the coach to having record companies fly them up and down. Joe Foster: It was after that gig that the whole riot thing seemed to take off to an incredible extent. And it made us feel that we were right to be kicking against all this crap: people saying, Ooh, Boy George is a great singer, and all that sickly stuff. You know, 2,000 rioting maniacs can't be wrong... Alan McGee: Once it went off, it was out of control. People say I hired people to start it, which is absolute rubbish. I wasn't trying to have a riot; I was 24 years old and I thought I was Malcolm McLaren. I was just having a laugh. But it changed me. Up until then, it had all been quite voyeuristic: cranking it up, seeing what happened. When it actually did go off, it was horrible. This all relates to the whole Blur/Oasis thing, actually. You know they were going to do gigs in Bournemouth on the same day? I said to Noel, "This is a very dangerous thing. I've been through this shit with the Mary Chain". The minute you start doing Blur v. Oasis in Bournemouth, you'll get football fans coming along for the fight. Jim Reid: We played the Electric Ballroom in Camden a few weeks later, and that's when it all got to be a bad joke. I think at the beginning it happened for the right reasons. It was sort of spontaneous, even though trouble was expected. By the time we played there, people were coming with copies of the NME under their arm, looking at the photos of North London Poly, like, "This is how you do it..." It took a while to get away from it. We'd keep walking on stage and being met with a shower of bottles. Funnily enough, I got beaten up about three weeks after it, by people who said they'd been there. Four or five guys beat the shit out of me at a Nick Cave gig, saying, "and if we ever see your drummer again..." Alan McGee: The Mary Chain used to regularly get their heads kicked in at that time. Them and The Birthday Party just brought out the violence in people. Neil Taylor: Was it a riot? The weekly papers referred to it as a riot, but if you go back to my piece, it's only the headline that has the word in it. But, you know, I'd say 40 people fighting is getting there. It wasn't aggression against law and order, which is what you'd usually expect a riot to be; and there wasn't that much aggression against the band: it was just something that was brought out in people by the very nature of the experience. It was all fantastically exciting.

#interview

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leisureninja-blog · 6 years

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Hungry Mother 50k

Note: I’ve never blogged before but I thought it would be a good idea to have a place to post the adventures and exploits of my year off work (that starts today!).

I wrote this a few months ago but figured I’d use it to keep the juices flowing and see how this Tumblr thing works...

Race Report Hungry Mother 50k, April 2018

10 miles of shimmery salt-soaked space and I’m wondering how long it would take me to cover that distance. I was on a tour bus full of nieces, nephews, aunts and uncles, my wife and children and their grandparents, driving south along the west side of the Dead Sea looking across those miles at Jordan. It was late December 2017 and I had my music in, flipping through race websites on my phone (yes, even here I had a great signal). I’ve always been pretty serious about New Years resolutions and I was thinking through my objectives for the coming year. It had been two and a half years since I’d run a race (Mountains to Sea Trail 50k in Durham, NC - 3rd Overall) and I knew it was time to commit again. My unplanned hiatus had come about in the summer of 2015 when I’d herniated a disk in my neck. Beyond a few weeks just after the injury I’d managed to keep trail running but never felt good enough to train.

I’d been searching for just the right challenge and I’d found it - the Hungry Mother 50k at the eponymous state park in the far southwest corner of Virginia. There were plenty of interesting trail races these days but I needed enough time to get ready and had a big work event in March to avoid. The April 7th date had good prospects for cool weather and the race was small enough that I didn’t have to worry about rapidly filling signups, lotteries or waiting lists. I’d also heard from my parents that this park was gorgeous so I jumped into the deep end once again.

I always enjoy organizing my training programs so I set to work there on the bus, scribbling in my notebook. I’ve never been a high mileage runner - I run just four days a week - but I try to balance my training so that each day is pointed towards a specific training objective. This time I decided to go with:

Tuesday - fast road run (8 miles)

Wednesday - treadmill climb (crank it up as high as it will go and power walk for an hour or two)

Thursday - couple times around the hilly Duke x-country course near my house (7 miles)

Saturday - long trail run (starting at 12 miles and building to 28 a couple weeks before the race)

This is about all my work schedule will allow so I get up early and try to be done before the kids are up. It makes for a lot of dark runs during these winter months but it’s my stress relief. I was also tilting towards training for the climbs as the race had 7,000 ft of elevation gain over it’s 31 mile distance (one 15.5 mile loop run twice). Finally, I knew that to do well in this race I’d need to be running at least marathon distance each Saturday for the last 6 weeks of training so I plotted a pretty quick ramp.

Time flies by these days and before I knew it it was race time. I tapered for the last couple weeks and started watching the weather. Now I was hoping for cool but, to my surprise, there was snow forecasted for race day. I was intending to bring the family up from Durham but it looked to be a pretty nasty day. In the end, my Dad drove down from northern VA with his RV and we camped at the Camp Burson RV campground right in the park. The park has tons of camping options from cabins to yurts to regular camping but Camp Burson was particularly convenient as the race runs right through it (twice), making it convenient for friends/family to see the race.

I woke early on race morning and my Dad helped me get my gear together. The forecast had turned for the better - the snow was coming over the mountains a little slower and was not expected to start until mid-afternoon. The temperature was to be about 40 at the start and getting slowly colder throughout the morning. I knew I’d be pushing pretty hard and decided to go with just a thick short-sleeve, long tights, a warm hat and gloves. I was a bit worried about rain so I left my Adidas running hoodie with my Dad to hand off to me as needed. For you gearheads out there, I ran in my Pearl Izumi M2’s, Nathan running belt with two 10oz. bottles for water and Heed and an 8oz. bottle of pre-mixed Perpetuem; and of course my Garmin Forerunner 235. How could I go wrong?

The race volunteers and rangers were great, taking us through a concise set of rules and course warnings just before ‘go time’. One last potty break and we were off with a big Whoop Holla! The group went out pretty slow - I could immediately tell that this group had a deep respect for the big climbs ahead. I fell into the fifth spot on the short stretch of road before we hit the single track, not knowing how many folks in front of me were 50k runners vs 25k runners as we had all started together. One of the volunteers had joked earlier about the ‘Clyburn Thigh Burn’ and she was right. Less than a mile from the start there were already steep sections where I was opting to power walk and conserve energy. After several hundred feet of climbing I passed a runner as we were finally reaching Clyburn Ridge and then hit a very long fast downhill stretch. I was impressed at how well groomed the trails were through this section and I was to learn that the whole race was like this. Outside of some steep spots, the whole race was very runnable. I’m used to lots of rocks and roots at home but these were perfect conditions for a race of this length.

This first section was a little less than five miles and my Dad was waiting at the first staffed aid station. He had never seen me race before (at least since high school x-country) and I got a big boost seeing his face when I came through in fourth place. It was at this moment that I knew I wanted to dedicate my race to him, for getting out there with me on a nasty day (Go Dad!). From here the trail ran right past where we had parked the RV and then hugged the edge of the gorgeous lake before going back into the woods on the east side of the park. Even in the dreary weather, the park was beautiful and it helped to keep my mind off my body. I was warmed up now and keeping myself just under my red line so I needed some distractions.

The trails on the east side of the lake were even nicer than before, with gentle but persistent dips and climbs following the topo lines of the foothills along the lake. I came up on a fast woman runner and we started yo-yo’ing on these hills. I would crank past her on the climbs and then she’d blow past me on the downhills. We got to talking after the first couple times and I learned her name was Leah and that she was also from Durham (!). Turns out we both train at Umstead State Park too. She asked me which race I was in and I told her the 50k and it was only at this point that I realized that the two people now ahead of Leah and me were likely 25k runners, and while I still wasn’t sure, I thought maybe that put me in the front of the 50k crowd.

The terrain was getting steadily steeper now and I wished Leah luck as I pulled past her (she would go on to finish third in the 25k and first among the women!). I knew this steepening of the course meant that the beast was coming. The dominant feature on this course is a steep 800ft climb up to the vista on top of Molly’s Knob. This comes at roughly mile 10 on the first loop but then you have to do it again at mile 25. It was this latter climb that had been stuck in my head for the last month so I tried to take it easy the first time through. The last half mile of this out-and-back is quite steep and I was mostly power walking this, finding few opportunities to run. The vista at the top uncovered a bird’s eye view of the park’s valleys filled with low lying clouds - the biggest view I was to get that day and pretty spectacular. Coming back down was a blast, the well groomed trails allowing me to really let loose and fly down.

One of the nice advantages of a out-and-back trail section is that you get a good idea of who’s in front of you. The two guys that came down as I was going up were far enough ahead that I started to feel pretty confident I was leading the 50k race. There was one more chunky climb before the end of the first loop and I was pretty thrilled to see my Dad again at the finish line area. He was standing about 20 yards in front of the finish line with my next Perpetuem bottle and I stopped to talk to him for a few seconds and do the bottle swap. The race volunteers were calling from the finish line saying ‘don’t stop yet!’, not realizing that I had another 15 miles to go! After getting my stuff I came through and finished the first loop - I’m guessing around the 2:20 mark - and set off to do it again.

I was still feeling strong through the Clyburn section and was really letting loose on the downhills - something my 43 year old knees don’t often allow me to do. I knew nutrition was critical at this point in the race, having already burned through any glycogen stores I’d built up over a week of rest. My stomach wasn’t super happy but I committed to downing the second 8oz. bottle of Perpetuem before the Clyburn Ridge aid station so that I could get my 3rd and final bottle there from my Dad to finish the race with. This brought me right to the edge of indigestion but I think it paid off in the end with an extra 300 calories to burn.

I’d never raced from the front before and I’ll tell you it’s a pretty nervous exercise. While I’ve enjoyed the thrill of overtaking someone on occasion, I found myself looking over my shoulder on this second loop. I knew Justin Gero was in the race and he had set the course record the year before at 4:59:48. I figured it was only a matter of time until he came galloping past but I also knew this was my first real shot at topping the podium and my Dad was watching.

The second time up Molly at mile 25’ish was pretty tough. By the top, I found myself pushing my knees down with my hands as I climbed. I hadn’t seen any runners since the the finish line but finally got my bearings as I saw Justin coming up as I was heading down. We yelled encouragements to each other and did the fist bump as we passed. While it’s hard to estimate, I think he was most of a mile behind me and I now finally started to taste the victory. I opened it up even further on this steep downhill, knowing I’d be feeling it in my knees for weeks and knowing at the same time it would be worth it.

I finally got down to the paved area of the park but, within just a hundred yards of the finish line, the true masochism of this race director confronts you. Within site of the finish, the trail takes a hard right and heads back up the Raider’s Run and Old Shawnee trails. While I had prepared myself for Molly, this last section hit me like a sucker punch. I was heading up hurting pretty bad but something possessed me to look at my watch to see how I was doing against the course record. I was now officially 4:45 minutes into the race and realized that I had a remote shot at breaking Justin’s course record from the year before. I put the last little bit I had into these final climbs and then booked it back to the parking lot area. I finished at 4:59:25, just 23 seconds ahead of the previous best. I’d never been first in a race before and I felt that my hard work had really paid off!

I want to thank the race organizers who put on a great post-race setup. Food, a cold beer and some great prizes put an awesome finishing touch on the day. I’ve run a fair number of races in the southeast over the years and I was really impressed with the beauty of the park, the convenient camping, the well groomed but challenging trails and a great group of volunteers. While this is a small race today, I expect this will become a premier race in the area within a couple of years - and I’m sure my course record won’t hold as the top tier runners discover it!

I also want to thank my Dad again for putting up with the bad weather and bringing the RV down for a warm and comfy place to crash after the race. We had a great time together all weekend and this one is dedicated to him.

Kit Linton

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cryptonani-blog · 6 years

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Irrational Exuberance Revisited: Is Crypto The New Dot-Com Bubble?

If you have ever encountered the word ‘cryptocurrency’ or ‘bitcoin,’ there is a solid chance that within the same paragraph or even sentence the word ‘bubble’ could also be found. Bubble has indeed become a shibboleth for crypto sceptics, especially after the market soared at the end of 2017, and the widening gap between valuation and intrinsic value of digital currencies and tokens became ostensible to many.Yet not all bubbles are created equal: some bubble-framed references and metaphors tend to surface more frequently in media space than others. Perhaps the crypto’s most conspicuous historical analogy is the dot-com bubble of the early 2000-s – and quite understandably so. There is almost irresistible temptation to draw parallels between the burst of the booming market that emerged around early applications of a disruptive communication technology, and the highly volatile market that emerged around the blockchain ecosystem.The recent slump in crypto prices has only made face similarities more pronounced. As Bloomberg reported earlier this week, VanEck’s MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index, which tracks the prices of top ten digital assets, went down 80 percent compared to its January high. Symbolically, this development is now more dramatic than the Nasdaq Composite Index’s 78 percent nosedive at the height of the dot-com crash. The overall market cap dipped below $200 billion, shrinking by a factor of more than three from the all-time high. Does this mean that crypto market is doomed to follow the pattern of the early internet boom’s infamous explosion?

Bubbles and dot-coms

In the simplest terms, market bubbles occur when assets are traded at prices that by far exceed their fundamental value. Even though this can happen in virtually every market, tech industries, widely construed, are especially prone to such dynamics. Perhaps this is due to the human tendency to get excited over potentially disruptive technologies and then engage in speculative behavior fueled by this excitement. The technology in question does not necessarily have to be a digital one – the British ‘railway mania’ of the mid-19th century could serve as a good example of an ‘analog’ bubble.The mid to late 1990s saw the rapid growth of internet-powered consumer markets. Sensing the ‘next big thing,’ entrepreneurs and investors flocked into the space, inflating each other’s ardor along with valuation of internet startups, which sprouted prolifically in the bull market. At the time, adding .com to a company’s name did the same to its stock as adding ‘blockchain’ does today. The Nasdaq Composite stock market index was the one that tracked many of those technology companies, and it was doing great – until a certain moment. At its peak in March 2000, the index reached the value of $6 trillion. A few years before, then-Chairman of the Fed Alan Greenspan famously observed that ‘irrational exuberance’ tends to ‘unduly escalate asset values.’ Once the dot-com bandwagon headed steeply downhill, the term ‘irrational exuberance’ entered just about every analytical reflection on what has happened.The bubble burst. Expectations were set too high, the market was too overheated, and many of the dotcoms proved unable to come up with sustainable business models, let alone deliver services worth anything comparable to what investors poured on them. In less than two years, more than half of the companies folded, while trillions of dollars of investors’ money just vanished. As the widespread narrative goes, the explosion of the dot-com bubble helped weed out numerous opportunistic players, thus clearing the way for those serious companies that had authentic ideas and a truly clairvoyant vision – today’s giants like Amazon and Apple usually among the primary examples. Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin famously characterized these events as ‘creative destruction’ and, along with many others, pointed out that the crypto market might be following the same trajectory.

Degrees of similarity

Indeed, the dot-com bubble and the hypothetical crypto bubble share many striking commonalities, from powerful waves of irrational exuberance fueling their explosive growth to grandiose disruptive promise of their underlying technologies to trend lines describing the dynamics of their capitalization. As per Morgan Stanley’s March report, cryptocurrency price chart is broadly mirroring the Nasdaq index chart from the turn of the century; the number of bear cycles and rebounds, as well as their depth, are largely similar, as are the regularities in trading volumes. Some other very smart people have independently reached similar conclusions by using fancy statistical techniques to compare those two sets of data points. So, is it warranted that the painful burst is what invariably awaits us all? Or has it already happened in January, meaning that we are now living through the gloomy days of decay akin to the dot-com post-wreck 2001? The unsatisfying answer is that we cannot know for sure.One thing to bear in mind is a number of important features that are still different between the two sets of circumstances. The most obvious one to look at is the size of the market, even though the relevance of this metric is debatable: whereas the Nasdaq Composite index amounted to six trillion dollars on its brightest day, the crypto market’s high-water mark is around half a trillion. At least we can rest assured that the damage to the overall economy in the case of collapse would be less dramatic than eighteen years ago.A more consequential variable might be the pace at which the markets move. According to the same analysis by Morgan Stanley, in blockchain industry things happen 15 times faster than in the early internet sector. This is a product of a number of important distinctions between the two cases. One is that thanks to Twitter, Reddit, and Telegram, the information environment around crypto markets is richer, more transparent and more responsive to relevant (and not-so-relevant, for that matter) signals. Another point is that, unlike dot-com startups that were mainly supported by venture capital flowing from institutional actors, crypto markets rely on millions of retail investors globally a good deal. In sum, the ‘crypto bubble’ is a more diverse constellation of actors who have a wealth of information about the market, which is arguably more distributed geographically than any other. This looks like a set of structural differences that could yield outcomes that are different from what the story of dot-coms would predict.In his thoughtful analysis published on Hacker Noon during the first downward tide of the year, Noam Levenson argues that the digital asset market has not yet reached the levels of adoption and capitalization needed for a proper ‘popping.’ Moreover, the dot-com-like crash might not even take place at all, and instead crypto markets would just bounce between bear and bull cycles until widespread adoption helps them entrench in a less volatile territory. The point is, we might well be past the crash, or simply in another loop of bear market on our way to the new heights. It is impossible to assert one or another with confidence, since there is only so much that can be learnt and extrapolated from the dot-com case – a case that is somewhat similar but not identical to the current state of the crypto market.

Does it even matter?

Ultimately, whether digital assets are a bubble or not is no more than a debate over terminology. Even within the crypto community, it is clear to the majority that the present-day tangible output that blockchain-based ventures can offer lags far behind the figures observed at the home page of coinmarketcap.com. It is also clear that these two values will have to realign at some point, similar to how it eventually unfolded with internet companies. The right questions to ask are what the timeline will be, and what the resultant configuration of the industry will look like; what share of today’s players will survive and which ones will eventually make it to the status of Amazons and Googles of the blockchain industries of the future; whether the industry will progress through a devastating crash or a relatively soft landing.According to a radical viewpoint, nearly every market is a bubble, and a market’s progression is just a sequence of inflations and pops. The general sentiment among crypto stakeholders seems to be that the price drop is unavoidable at some point, and many of the less viable projects will have to go. Further still, even the stock market frenzy around potentially disruptive technologies might be viewed as an unlikely means of accomplishing a greater good, opening up the floodgates of capital for industries would otherwise seem too novel and risky: “Nothing important has ever been built without irrational exuberance.” Read the full article

#Bitcoin #Bubble #Cryptocurrencies #MarketCapitalization #Markets

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mindfulrunner · 6 years

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#54: daring greatly: mississauga race report

the seed: rebellious child

I have a sassy, rebellious, high-energy toddler and I am still at heart a sassy, rebellious, high-strung child. I signed up for the Mississauga full as an act of rebellion. He was sick, and I was covered in snot and tired out of my gourd, but I did it anyway.

I thought: f*** it. I tempted fate.

Even though I have a rebellious streak, I fear and respect the marathon, and situations and circumstances I fear and respect tend to bring out the best in me. So that f*** it was also a tiny prayer: may I dig, dig, dig. May I get the most out of myself. Inspired by the openness of Shalane Flanagan and Gwen Jorgensen, I also put out my ambitious, challenging, yet within reach goal: to PB and break 3:07.

training: the limiting factor

Training this cycle went well overall, except for a major limiting factor: illness. Elliot picked up virus after virus at daycare, and I seemed to get every single one, except they lasted twice as long for me, and instead of taking off sick days to rest and take care of myself, I took them off to take care of him. Between January and May, I was sick with three upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) the flu (first time getting this in many years), and 3 GI viruses (at least one of the GI bugs was food poisoning, I think). In previous cycles, I got URTIs a couple of times that lingered, I assume because I chose to train through them, as long as I didn’t have a fever and my energy levels were OK. This year, the first of these infections struck just one week after seeing my naturopathic doctor at the end of January and telling her my immunity was great. Figures.

I was sick, or caring for Elliot, pretty much all of February, and I was intensely frustrated. At the same time, I was wrapping up a huge 5-month project at work that was overdue, and trying to maintain some fitness, mostly by running easy. Typically, I would feel OK after easy runs, but then the day after a harder effort like a long run or workout, I’d feel worse, and ease off again. On two occasions I took longer stretches off – 3 or 4 days— but had a hard time taking a full week off, which is what I probably should’ve done. My issue was I have zero faith in my immune system, and didn’t quite believe I’d get totally better with that amount of time off, since even when I’m not training colds and infections often last well over a week. In February, I averaged just 60k a week, ran only one proper long run of 28k, and 3 workouts total. In my last marathon cycle, I averaged 100+, hit all my long runs and workouts.

I raced the Chilly half sick at the beginning of March, another questionable life choice, and somehow ran a PB. It felt very hard from 6k on, which was early for me to push, and it was the first time in a long time I questioned my ability to complete a race. I coughed for a good five minutes straight at the end uncontrollably. In that moment, I really regretted what I had just done and had no joy in the PB, assuming I would get pneumonia or something, and screw over my work and family even more. Going into it, I wasn’t even sure I was going to race, but when I began to pick up the pace, I got competitive, wanted the PB, and somehow performed beyond my fitness and circumstances. Getting 100% out of myself on race day, despite only having 70-80% in my training, became my focus going into the marathon. I also figured if I could run 90 minutes on pretty bad training, the equivalent of a 3:09 marathon, I had a very good shot of PBing and, on a good day, maybe even running in the low 3s.

I got lucky and oddly enough actually felt better after racing Chilly. In March I averaged 94k per week, and in April I averaged 94k again. However, I only ran 7 weeks over 80k, and 6 of those were over 90k. In the last marathon cycle, I ran 12 weeks over 90k. So my overall build was not, for me, high-mileage. Workouts went OK. I ran marathon pace tempos between 4:21 and 4:25 pace. 4:21 felt too hard and 4:23 began to feel like the sweet spot. I had some craptacular long runs and workouts, and I noticed that these were occurring during the high-hormone, mid-luteal phase of my menstrual cycle. That started to psych me out, as the marathon fell on the same day. For more info, check this out:

pre-race: zero chill workin’ mom

The week before the marathon, a colleague abruptly went on vacation, which added an unexpected amount of stress to my workweek. Jeff was on days, which meant I was responsible for both pick-ups and drop-offs to daycare, which was also a little challenging, since Elliot seemed to be going through a period of separation anxiety again: he literally wouldn’t let go of my hand at daycare, and it broke my heart to pry his little fingers off one by one. Major mom guilt.

Taking over my colleague’s duties meant I was responsible for a project with a noon deadline the Monday after the race. F*** THAT, I thought. I worked my butt off to get it finished up as best as I could by Friday, putting in a 13-hour day, and dealing with Elliot, who was still not doing great: really fussy and clingy. I did not even have the time or presence of mind to properly track my carbs that day, although I think I got in around 500g.

After an awful night in terms of sleep, stress, and— OK I’ll admit it— a piss-poor attitude on Friday, I was super grumpy and lazed around all day Saturday. Jeff brought Elliot in to the walk-in and it turned out he had a nasty ear infection, poor dude, so I was concerned about him as well and cancelled the post-race party at our house. We called in reinforcements, and my mom agreed to come in the morning to watch him, so Jeff could still come to the race.

It was only at 5pm that I properly started getting my head into the race. I realized all my gels and nutrition contained caffeine, so I zipped to the Runner’s Shop for some non-caffeinated ones and also picked up a sweet pair of Goodr sunglasses since I wasn’t totally sure where my normal running ones were. Then I returned home and got my bag and clothes ready with Elliot. Instead of being in bed by 9 as I should’ve, I made a pace cheat sheet with my goal 5, 10, 15, half, 25, and 30k times, as well as directions for the final really tricky with a bunch of twists and turns. I wrote out the directions moreso to ease my anxiety about the course, which I practiced running the previous week. I don’t think I fell asleep until late, maybe midnight, and was up at 4:40 to scarf down my oats.

execute: PB or bust

My goal was to PB. I didn’t care if I blew up. And I was a bit greedy. I wanted to run 3:03-3:04. I wanted to be well within striking distance of a fall sub-3. I wanted to prove this was my distance, this is where I shine. No plan B.

the race: hello glycogen depletion my old friend

Morning of, the temperatures were looking a bit warmer than expected, so I got a little nervous. And as with the Ottawa Marathon, I couldn’t properly go to the bathroom which was so weird. I wonder if carb loading messes up my digestion?

My teammate picked me up and we drove the short 30 minutes to the finish line to take the shuttle to the start. We missed our exit, and I ended up not really listening to my pre-race visualization and jams properly. At the start, I changed and immediately lined up for the bathroom and again tried to go but couldn’t. I very briefly warmed up, just 1k with a few strides, before searching for my teammates, Jake and Gar, who were going to run a similar pace. The plan was to start out at 4:23, but Gar was quicker after a few kms, so Jake and I let him go. Neither Jake or I felt great from the outset. We both had a shin issue that migrated into a hip issue, and I my calf started to cramp at 5k. However, I stayed calm, if not positive, knowing that marathons are long and these things can majorly shift. I especially tried to take the downhills in a controlled way to avoid slapping and aggravating my shin again.

As usual, the GPS watch just provided a guesstimate. This guesswork does tend to add some mystery and suspense into the effort, as I’m never totally sure if I’m hitting my goal, even if the numbers say I am, and I usually try a bit harder just in case. However, feeling that Gar was a very controlled pacer, and wondering why he’d gone ahead when he’d only wanted 3:05, I grew concerned we were running too slow. Between 8-14 k there were a few faster kilometres: 4:15, 4:17, etc. At 14k, I pulled out my sheet with the split times and some older women spectating chirped, “You don’t need a map, honey”, but the sheet told me that we were running well under our goal pace, that Gar was fast, and not to worry about him and just do our own thing.

From that point on, Jake and I took turns leading until about 24-25k when I was officially slowing and starting to feel pretty crappy and let him go.

I don’t fully remember why I was slowing, if it was just overall discomfort or a negative mindset, or if my calf or hip were bothering me more. But I remember consciously letting him go, yet wanting to keep him in sight, and beginning to feel like the race was slipping from my control. I remember too, trying to quiet the needling thought: this is too early to feel so bad. I must’ve quieted most of my thoughts successfully, because I don’t really remember much about the next hour of the race. Maybe I lost focus? Or maybe I was incredibly focused on just hanging on. I don’t remember.

Something I struggled with that I could have controlled, maybe because I was distracted by what my teammates were doing and not running my own race, was fueling. I didn’t have a written plan, didn’t take the little baby bottles (literally baby bottles, ha ha!) of Maurten Jeff handed me, and didn’t take Gatorade at every station as I did at Ottawa. I think I took 4 gels total. I began to bonk around 34, 35k pretty hard. My watch was mostly in the low 4:30s, whereas I had wanted it in the low 4:20s. Around 35k, my heart rate also dropped according to Garmin? I’m still wondering if this was a fluke.

It was suit of armor hard, like in my first marathon. But I was reassured by the fact I was breathing pretty well, which to me signified it was still a manageable, if intense, effort. Not dead yet. I don’t think I took in any fuel after 37k, which again was silly, but I finally took one of the little bottles Jeff handed to me just prior to that. After 37, the effort to take Gatorade or a gel at that point seemed overwhelming. I need to learn to mentally prepare to work with this feeling and override it.

Luckily, during this period of bonking and serious effort, I did focus mentally, since I had women around me I was competing with. One woman in blue was wearing headphones and had very strong surges; we ran alongside each other for parts beginning at about 34k. We eventually caught up to a woman in black, who looked strong and was being paced by 2 male runners. I took their encouragement to her as my own “You’re doing great” and “Now’s the time to push if you have anything left” and we played cat and mouse a bit. I took the tangents straight, a bit aggressively, elbows a little out.

Because the course was so twisty, I did not have the finish line in sight until the last 100m or so, although I could hear the crowds. Finally, with about 20m-50m to go, my competitor in black, who I later learned was named Karoline, had a huge kick but I somehow responded (despite apparently not using my arms at all!) and caught her at the line and came 4th woman by 1/10 of a second. My teammates were pleased I put on a funny show at the end.

I had snuck under my PB of 3:07:36 by 50 seconds, running 3:06:46. It was a satisfying result, looking back, but I still somehow felt I’d messed up the race and felt a bit deflated, if not disappointed. Immediately after I felt terrible and needed my puffer in my bag, so I just focused on getting that instead of soaking in the accomplishment as much.

Next time, I will be more grateful. PBs are PBs, and they don’t come forever.

But there are things to improve: higher mileage. Immunity. Fuelling. Form.

after: and when it was bad it was horrid

After the race: I. Was. Trashed. Possibly worse than after my first full. My calves and quads were dead, my lips were blue for a good hour despite wearing multiple layers, my cough was bad, and my old groin injury had somehow resurfaced. I was a GD mess. I was in pain standing and walking, but afraid to sit and cramp up.

Nothing looked more appealing than a woman, probably late 50s, laying on the grass with her legs up and feet on the trash can. I laid next to her and we chatted and both had the sillies and shared some jokes and stories. She asked my time and I asked hers. She was late to running, and expressed joy at discovering it later in life. She asked me “how’s your mind”? And I said, “Fine. I think. But you know. I shouldn’t drive” and we both cracked up laughing. She had a beautiful laugh. It was probably my favourite moment in the race besides…

BESDIES MY TEAMMATES ABSOLUTELY CRUSHING IT. Jake, Heidi, Martina, and others had absolutely mind-blowing races. I was elated for them.

Walking to the truck wasn’t possible, so after I picked up my age category prize (4th overall, 1st in age group), we walked a little until Jeff got the truck and drove back to get me. Congratulatory texts and posts started streaming in. The satisfaction of the accomplishment moreso came to me secondhand.

gone gone beyond gone.

During the race, the heart sutra surfaced. Gate (pronounced: gah-eh), gate, paragate para sam gate, bodhi svaha!

I first learned it after I listened to Michael Stone’s podcast during a cold, wintery sidewalk run in the suburbs at my parents’ house. In the podcast, Michael said it’s a very good sutra to say after someone has died; for me it comes up in the blank part of a run that’s just effort, where I’m struggling to settle back into it and just accept. Instead I cling to it for distraction, for something to hold on to. One last clinging thing. I also just like the rhythm of it. It’s like counting to eight again and again in a run, but better.

We chanted it at Spirit Loft and at Downward Dog after Michael died in his memory.

Sometimes it arises out of nowhere, which was what happened in the race. Michael translated it as: gone, gone, beyond gone, across the other shores (the tone of “across to the other shores” is a bit celebratory because of the “svaha!” like a bit of a hooray thrown in).

After the result on the car ride home, I squirmed and fished around, looking to find what was gone, struggling to settle in my accomplishment, in the extreme effort of crossing to the other shore.

I texted my brother, and Jeff previously texted my mom. Fourth woman sounds kinda cool, and it’s the type of thing non-runners usually find more interesting than running a certain time. Maybe what I needed was the validation. I scrolled through the congratulatory messages I received, searching there too. Trying to find the hooray on the other shore, the bit of joy. But I couldn’t.

The truth is I always feel a peach pit in my throat and ache in my chest after a race since my dad died. A text was never sufficient for the depth and breadth of his enthusiasm for my running. He would want a phone call with a detailed play-by-play. He would’ve looked up the result. He probably would’ve been there, cheering, telling me to kick butt. He would have gasped with amazement and interest that I’d outkicked someone at the line with an “Em-chen! You’re kiddin’!” and a big WOW, and would’ve called me “fast twitch” in the next few emails or texts he sent me.

I didn’t make the mistake of trying to search for my dad in my mom. They are different. I am growing. I didn’t begrudge her for not being him. The night before the race, she told Jeff that after my dad ran his first marathon, she let him know she wouldn’t support him running them anymore. I asked her about it when we got home from the race, curious but also already knowing why. She said, “It’s too extreme, the training takes too much time, you get too thin. My friends were asking what was wrong with him, he got to 145 lbs. 10ks, those are fine. But I said, with three little kids, we wouldn’t come to your races. You could do it on your own time. But we won’t support it.”

At one time I would’ve seen a jab in these words, a pin to deflate my victory balloons, which were already pretty sad and deflated. But now I frame it as touching: a mother’s concern, her sharp attention, even though I am grown up now, noticing and worrying about the lines in my face, the cough that won’t go away, the apparent lack of rest and pleasure in my life, the strange seriousness and intensity of my hobbies.

I sent her a text thanking her again for her help with Elliot and explaining, “I know running isn’t the most pleasant/healthiest hobby but for me it is very exciting to discovery athleticism, teammates, and a sport I have some skill at. Really really appreciative of your help.” She responded, “You are welcome. Glad you were happy with results. My bias will always be for optimal health. Which everyone perceives differently.”

My dad perceived optimal health differently than her, too. He sprinted the last part of his easy runs with his running mates, racing for fun. He always beat Rob, and mostly beat Sean. He ate the burger and the chips. He sometimes had the extra drink. He got chippy in the corners at hockey and didn’t control his emotions very well at all when fishing or playing golf. From the outside, his leisure time sometimes looked stressful. He had a rebellious streak, too. And he savoured the juices of life.

shore up

I am my father and my mother. I am the rebellious, intense child, but also the patient, steadfast mother. I don’t want to run reckless. I try and do things that impact Elliot the least: lunch runs, run commutes, 5:00am runs while he is sleeping. I don’t want to compromise my long-term health in a serious way, or my connections with Jeff and Elliot. I don’t think I am.

But I can’t deny I’m curious. I’m hungry. I’m keenly interested in limits. I want to be a student of limits. There is a spark here, there is a flame. I’m protective of it. I want to tend to it.

As a teenager and in my twenties, I shrank myself to accommodate my parents’ expectations. Risk-taking was out of sight, never in the open. The dark parts of my personality were hidden away the best that I could and came out in sulking and silence. My seriousness and intensity came out in academics, the secret crushes I had, and maybe our political and philosophical arguments around the dinner table, but I didn’t express it openly in my hobbies. I wrote but always in secret. I wrote with expletives, experimentally, raw and weird and my mom came across my blog once, the F bombs and all, and was shocked and disturbed, and never again followed any of us on social media. I published a poem but later requested it be removed from a website, ashamed of my rawness. I hemmed up all my raw edges.

But my goal this year is to neither puff myself up, press on foolishly headlong into bad decisions, stubborn and imagining myself so alone, nor shrink into the background resentfully, obediently, and only do-- on the surface-- what’s normal or expected or desired from others.

Neither puff up nor shrink. But also ask: why not me?

I see no reason I can’t achieve big goals.

I see no reason I can’t go sub-3.

I say this neither puffed up with ego, or shriveled with shame about the intensity of my own interests, the extremeness of my personality that befuddles and perhaps annoys others, even those I love the most.

So many of the skills I have as a runner– equanimity, understanding and maintaining boundaries, mental toughness, a desire to research, detachment, a deeper spiritual faith or purpose underlying my actions, the deeply joyful appreciation of nature on the trails and recreational paths– all of these things come from my mother.

But some skills come from my dad, too: taking corners aggressively with elbows out, the cycling between anxiety and excitement, the runner’s high, the chicken-leg calves, the competitive show-boat streak, the hacking cough, the imagination running wild late at night or at work with fantasies of fast finishes and faster times and unimaginable improvement.

The fascination with something like the heart sutra appearing unannounced at the end of a hard effort? Well, that one is the best. And that one is both of them.

I am a blend of the two, one measured and questioning, one seeking and a little recklessly enthusiastic.

And I am so much more: a mother, a partner, a sister, a teammate, a spiritual seeker.

Why not me?

#mississauga marathon #mother runner #race report

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sentrava · 6 years

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In 2017: Highlights from the Year

At the end of every calendar year, I think the following 12 months can’t get any better, and yet they always manage to exceed expectations. Well, except for 2016; that will forever be the year that nearly did me in.

Still, 2017 started off with very little on the calendar by way of work and wound up being our most fulfilling and lucrative year ever. For 2018, we already have a solid dozen projects booked, so I can’t wait to see what this year holds!

Work

This was the first full year that SVV and I worked together full time. To clarify, he always served as my manager of sorts—well, at least from the time I started monetizing this blog about three years after its 2007 inception—but he also always had a “day job.” I was getting to the point where I was making enough between magazine writing, content projects, photography and blogging that I could pay someone a healthy salary, so it just made sense that someone was him. We also had a paid intern this summer (who we would love to bring back next!) and a VA. This year, we’re toying with the idea of bringing in more part-time subcontractors on to fill some holes.

It’s worked out better than we could ever imagine, too; having extra help has allowed me to expand my roster of anchor clients—we also have a micro-agency specializing in consulting, strategy, copywriting and other such tasks for the corporate world—and also really upped my blog partnerships.

Speaking of which, we had SO many fun content collaborations last year and I’m truly thankful to get to work with every single one of them. Among them: Google Fiber; Visit Franklin; Tru by Hilton; Oklahoma City; St. George, Utah; American Refractive Surgery Council (for LASIK); Fairmont Hotels; Visit Florida; Zappos; Mars Petcare; Grand Ole Opry; Wrangler; Blount Partnership; Savannah; Twin Creeks, Tennessee; New Orleans. I started a monthly highlights series this past year to share more about my work and track both hits and misses.

On the editorial side, I’m starting to scale back on my magazine writing for myriad reasons (mostly time and a decline in rates), but still managed to write for National Geographic, PEOPLE, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Marriott Traveler, AAA Living and AFAR.

Travel

I estimated that I spent more than 200 nights in hotel rooms, friends’ houses and Airbnbs this year. Dang, that’s a lot! In 2018, I really hope to spend more time in the home we’ve worked so hard to rehab.

The year started off in Washington state with our beloved NVR Guys, then quickly followed with a trip to Grenada, an island nation I absolutely fell in love with and one that you should consider putting on your radar right away.

Next, in February, it was off to Florida for my birthday at Universal Orlando Resort.

It would actually be my first of two Florida jaunts in less than a month, as I headed back in early March when my BFF Lemon and I road-tripped from Georgia to South Carolina for a wedding, then down to Jacksonville, where I got to see my girls Angie and Jade (and team up with Visit Florida on a content project!).

April saw us taking visitors around Middle Tennessee before hopping a plane to Boston for a Fairmont project, then taking the train to NYC. We also drove back to Charleston to attend the wedding of my college suitemate, as well as up to Myrtle Beach for her bachelorette weekend.

From there, we headed to Savannah, where we kicked off the month of May with a content project. That month, I also went to Utah to play in Zion National Park, then back to Orlando for the opening of Volcano Bay.

June had me sticking close(r) to home: First, to the Smokies for work, then to Knoxville for a wedding, then back to Middle Tennessee for CMT Awards and Bonnaroo. Then, I went to Knoxville again (this time for work), followed by a yoga retreat at Loretta Lynn’s Ranch.

In July, I was mostly homebound. SVV went to visit his family in California for 10 days, while I tended to the pup (and my cousin’s kids). We did bop on down to the Florida Keys for five days mid-month, but then came home in time to throw my blog an epic 10-year-old birthday party.

August was jam-packed, beginning with five days in New Orleans, then I flew to meet SVV in NYC for a wedding, then we were home for a few days before heading out to Oklahoma City for the first time. One of the biggest surprises of the year was just how much we became obsessed with OKC; it’s such a dynamic, friendly and fun place to explore!

In September, we went to Sweden—one of only two international trips we took this year—and it made me fall in love with Scandinavia all over again. When we got back to Tennessee, it was festival season in Nashville: Music City Food & Wine and then Pilgrimage the following weekend.

October took us all over the state of Tennessee—literally, we hit every major city (Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Clarksville) and several small guys in between—for our big whiskey trail project and also to Georgia (for a Hilton campaign), where we got to see Team Mayhem and Team Vagabond3.

We thought our final work trip would fall in November so headed to South Walton on an actual vacation for four nights en route to Orlando for my final project with Universal for its holiday experience. On the way back, we decided to swing through Crystal River for the night BECAUSE MANATEES. I will definitely be going back to the Florida Springs in the future, as that was just too cool.

I thought that was it for 2017, but then! Travel Mindset called and wanted to send us to another awesome Fairmont Hotel for a project at the beginning of December, this time for a Christmas campaign with their D.C. property, to which I said: count us in!

The year ended with our annual Colorado jaunt, this time a week in Breckenridge courtesy of my mom. What a way to close out a fulfilling year!

Health

I started off the year by running like mad—and completed the harrowing Jack Daniel’s Oak Barrel Half Marathon in April—and then just … stopped. Or rather, my travels picked up and I had no time to train. That’s going to change this year (as soon as it’s not 8 degrees here in Tennessee!) as I’m slated to run the Fargo half-marathon in May with Lemon.

Around the time my travels became crazy, my trainer had knee surgery and then came down with pneumonia so she was out of commission for quite a few months. This means, my weight-lifting this past year really went downhill; I’m hoping to change that starting now and get back on a weekly routine with her. Being a former college athlete, I don’t really need someone to train me, but I have no gym buddies where I live, and having an accountability partner is so clutch (plus, I just really enjoy hanging out with her, too!).

SVV got his own paddleboard (copycat!), so we were able to SUP together many of the warmer weekends we were home in summer and fall. Ella, in particular, was thrilled with this arrangement!

One thing that didn’t suffer, though, was my AcroYoga classes, which I take one day a week, then jam with friends on another. Acro is truly my fitness love—so fun! such a good team-building activity—and a damn good core workout at that.

Family

Dad is doing much better, 23 months post-stroke. Speech is still hard, but we’re seeing him get more and more words back as the months progress. He also finished his first book since the stroke (a John Lescroart novel) while on our trip. He’ll never fully recover to the point he was pre-stroke as the clot was too big by the time they got into his brain to operate, but he’ll have a comfortable (and hopefully, happy!) life.

Of course, the BIG news for the year was that my sister is pregnant! Charlotte Rose Clarey is joining our nutty clan sometime in March, and I couldn’t be more stoked to have another niece—and one just down the road at that (my two other darling nieces live some 2,500 miles away in California).

Friends

2017 was a year for friend hangs, and I love that so many projects took me to see so many of my besties! Lemon and I got to see each other a handful of times—in Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, South Carolina again, Tennessee and NYC—and Jade and I almost managed to get back on our every-other-month visitation schedule.

I saw the Mayhems several times, in both Georgia and in Tennessee. And I stayed with Angie Away at her new house in JAX; Angie, Alex and I took a trip to New Orleans together; and Alex also spent nearly two weeks in Tennessee with me for Bonnaroo, during which her lovely mother and her fiancé also joined us. It was a packed house, as another three friends from Tennessee stayed with us, in addition to an extra canine body. The best way to spend Bonnaroo, in my mind!

Of course, there’s my Nashville squad, too, and I squeeze in as many happy hours and dinners with them when I’m home and their schedules allow. I also run a media networking group that just hit four years, so I know that at least once a month I’ll get face time with that crew.

House

We continue to plug along at our house (mostly SVV), but to be honest, we’ve had so many other projects that have taken precedence, including a house he’s fixing up for my parents that’s in bad shape and the new commercial property we just bought in our backyard. So many house projects, so little time!

This past year, we did manage to finish our master bathroom (which the TODAY Show then featured!), stock up on some awesome MCM furniture, finish our fence all the way around (the only missing part is the electronic gate), build a kick-ass garden (again, all SVV) and add a few new pieces to the inside (like a custom-built island and table).

Biggest Wins

This post on why you can’t pick my brain went viral.

My guide to Savannah was my best-performing travel post of the year.

I still can’t believe I’ve been blogging for 10.5 years; I shared some lessons on this crazy journey.

I finally put together the Nashville murals post I’d been working on for years, which prompted this Google Fiber partnership.

I teamed up with Kristin Sweeting to plan a Portugal retreat for creatives next summer (there’s still time to book!).

I started a SEP at the tail-end of 2016 and have contributed to it three times thus far (as a freelancer, no one’s got my back when it comes to retirement!).

Biggest Headaches

The never-ending fight with Expedia that resulted in my family losing $10,000.

SVV bonking his noggin and having to get stitches while in Charleston.

A major destination’s PR firm stole dozens of my images, played dumb when we called them out on it, and while we are still contemplating a small-claims suit our court system makes it fairly easy for a shady company to rip off freelancers like us.

2017 by the Numbers

Blog posts written: 102

Countries visited: 3

States visited: 12

Flights taken: 33

Trips to Florida: 6

Weddings attended: 5

Books read: 14 (pathetic! I blame the news and social media)

What were your major highlights of the past 12 months? And what would you love to see more of from C&C in the coming year?

For past year-end reviews, see my recaps here: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008.

In 2017: Highlights from the Year published first on http://ift.tt/2gOZF1v

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