Hey, Miss J!

@2:47AM on 10/7/2023

So… working on my lesson right now. I am also doing a load of laundry and the dishwasher is running. As usual, my mind began to wander and I wandered my way right off of my lesson.

I want to smack myself right now.

I have an excuse! Not a great one, but it’s still an excuse!

For a long time, I’ve teased the idea of what one of the last chapters of NtC will be. So… that mod I tinkered with left such an impression on my tiny mind that I went video scrolling. And I’ll be looking at a few of them for reference.

… This will probably be a bad idea.

@11:59PM on 10/7/2023

Okay… funny story. This post was supposed to be before ‘Justice.’ Wups. However, all things considered, it makes more sense too. It was something burning bright in my tiny mind. Plus, I felt sick. It took ginger candy and a half-frozen ginger beer before I felt alright. Sleep deprivation combined with a bit too much mental activity did that… and who knows what else.

@12:00AM on 10/8/2023

I guess I might as well start it now, no?

Here’s hoping that I pay attention – add additional information as it comes up and post this at the proper time later today.

Off my comments around 2+AM in the morning on the 7^th, I was looking up birth videos. Why? Well, for a chapter… in the potentially distant future.

Thank you, YouTube for all the uncensored videos…

@_@

I’ve learned more about the human female body than I could have imagined, and I am a woman. Yep. Cue eyeroll. However, to properly write, I had to watch many videos and make many mental notes.

Note #102: Don’t forget to include shivering and/or shaking. Let’s not mention pooping. Now let’s see if I remember that potentially next year when the chapter should be up.

• Knowing me, I’ll forget the shiver/shaking and graphically detail pooping. Because, why not? -_- Mmm. Maybe I should start working on snips of that future chapter now, while the mental note is still fresh?

Now then onto the actual subject of this post… I’ve felt myself dealing with a decline in energy and strength for years. At first, I didn’t handle it well at all. In my 20s, I was bodybuilding. Got tips from the old man. He’d powerlifted back in the 80s. I was approached at my previous gym at one point by a woman who was a pro bodybuilder and wanted to train me.

I took her information but promptly forgot where I put the paper.

Yay? Blah.

Anyway, it’s probably a good thing that happened, because an inherited organic problem presented itself in the form of spinal issues. At first, I wondered why it happened.

Now, I know that my aunt has had two back surgeries, one of my uncles has had two surgeries on his back. My other uncle has had 1 back surgery… and my dad is the latest one to be diagnosed with back problems – but he forgets sometimes… until he starts to hurt.

Then it’s a whole, “Oh!” thing from him.

When I was younger, the low energy was helped by taking proper vitamins. I powered through hitting the gym 7 days a week – primarily lifting weights – for 3-4 hours, taking care of my grandfather and working for 5-6 hours in the evenings… 5-6 days a week. At one point, I did all that while commuting about 48+ miles roundtrip five days a week for college.

Now, let’s figure out how on earth I did all that and was able to cook, eat, shower and sleep. Only 24 hours in a day, right? I never needed much sleep, usually running on 4-5 hours. 4 at the minimum.

I didn’t finish college… in case anyone is wondering. At this point, I’ve given up on college. I can’t afford to go and I refuse to get a student loan that wouldn’t be paid off before I died.

Once the back problems presented themselves, I got super depressed. I was already dealing with undiagnosed major depressive disorder, but that made it so much worse. I had to stop weight lifting and wanted to cry. I really liked having all the muscles.

It felt nice to feel strong. I would pick up and lift 50- or 60-pound bags of sand like it was nothing, and once I even had to go toe-to-toe against a male cousin who was having a meltdown. I ended up pinning him off the floor and against a wall, and he gave up struggling and swinging at me… and got wide-eyed when he saw he couldn’t break free.

My grip was too tight, my reflexes too fast.

My cousin is mentally handicapped. He was crazy strong, but I was even stronger than that.

I remember my words back then. “You need to calm down. If you hurt me, I’m gonna hurt you.”

As soon as he heard that, my dad interceded. I looked right at him, while gripping and squeezing the skin on my cousin’s chest.

I forgot to mention that. I had handfuls of my cousin’s skin and was pinning him while twisting it. I’m pretty sure he was hurting a lot more than me from this exchange.

I told my father this… “The next time this happens, I’m going to step out of the way. I’m getting too old for this and he,” – meaning my cousin – “Is also getting too old for this madness.” It wasn’t just that though. I knew that as he got older – we were both in our 20s, but I’m older – he was going to be able to barrel right through me one day.

I did not want to see that day at all. The sheer amount of violence he nearly unleashed then was terrifying. If I hadn’t been there, he would have easily hurt or even killed his mother and probably beaten my father half to death.

None of them noticed either, but I felt the muscles in my arms trembling from the force it took to keep him in place. I’d thrown my bodyweight against him too, and I knew the fatigue was going to set it real soon. Muscle fatigue is a nightmare. I would have dropped him at some point and been unable to defend myself.

See, people who train in bodybuilding don’t build up slow twitching muscles. Slow twitch muscles = endurance. Instead, we have fast twitch, which is fantastic when we need a burst of speed and/or strength… But we don’t have the stamina to keep things up for very long.

It explains why boxing bouts during matches aren’t very long. 2-3 minutes at the most. Both opponents need time to rest, hydrate and get their focus back in place for the match. They get 1 minute to rest… which is enough time to rest the muscles and reset without having them relax too much and completely cool off.

Cool off = Less blood flow. Then you gotta them warm back up again, which might take a few minutes.

These days, I just wave if I see him. I don’t say or do anything to upset him. Thankfully, he’s calmed down a lot more since we’re both now in our middle-late 30s. However, he has packed on over 20lbs of muscle alone since then.

For me to go from being able to lift 60lbs to struggling some days to pick up a 7lb cat… It’s quite a change. My muscles get tired with me raising my arms over my head for too long.

By too long, I mean for over five minutes.

How sad is that?

But… I’ve accepted what has happened. I had to.

It’s so much best to focus on what I can do. Less pressure.

~J. Lyst

Let’s be real too. I’ll probably post for a second time today based on the inanity of the day.

Now, I’m gonna make myself some moar delicious fries and sit down and read one of my fanfics again. If it’s NtC, I’ll need to grab a pen to note areas that need help.

Done @ 12:56AM