Grievance #3: Energy (or: Humans Aren't Pink Sunglasses-Wearing Drummer Rabbits, Pt. 1)
“¡Y’know, considering I’m 27, I certainly seem to be outlasting a lot of the people that are 5 years younger than me, tonight!”
In case you haven’t figured it out via the Spanish punctuation, that quote is definitely from me on the night that continued from my technical birthdate of December 21st, as celebrated in this year of 2009.
Most people in the room seemed to be bewildered by the state of this moment. The fact of the matter is that I clearly played 5 of the 8 sets that occurred on Monday, and 3 of them were entirely set up and performed in a solo presentation. I composed (or set the parameters of) everything, and I owned most of the equipment, which itself has hours of work invested into it.
Let’s start with the physical. Yes, I eat well. I cook curry, which itself tends to have antioxidants, the spices elicit endorphins naturally (one of the main reasons why I don’t need to bother much with drugs, honestly), and isn’t Americanized to have higher amounts of fat so that it’s quite lean (and why I thusly happen to look so fucking handsome). I get in multiple major foodgroups between this and making yogurt, along with having sensible shopping habits for individual ingredients that predominantly tend toward the local and organic for non-spice items (although I do have a curry tree that my parents are babysitting, right now), and cut corners mostly for relevant things (like having the occasional stock of bananas to flood my body with potassium in counteracting upcoming muscle cramps, which could occur if I ask it to do quite a lot, like in a situation where I am doing a huge amount of activity in one night). Since I don’t worship corporations for killing my health, this leaves a fair amount of money after saving by cooking to buy some outside food specifically so I don’t actually eat too few calories, along with exercise.
I sort of covered my running previously (and will a bit later, again), so let’s note the muscles themselves…
It’s really no surprise that a well-trained muscle can perform more activity for longer and prevents fatiguing to the point of temporary uselessness. This is why conditioning them is a good thing, and not just a jock thing to do. In particular, consider that many of these are stabilizer muscles: They are going to be forced to do their jobs whether you help them out or not, ¿so why not make things easier for them by leaving them stronger, and thusly more capable?
An example:
Picture your knees. Now, imagine how your legs around there felt when you last had to stand for more than 2 hours straight, or 3+ if you’re someone more like myself. They started to wobble, ¿didn’t they? If so, that’s because your knees are joints: They aren’t designed to support weight, per se. That cartilage is an articulation surface, and no more: It gets worn away with constant shifts of large pressure. That is, however, exactly what the hell you’re allowing to happen if you don’t condition your muscles above and below these joints: Those muscles stabilize the legs, instead of leaving your knees fucking screwed out of having a future where they’re not replaced with robotic workers that won’t bitch so much about the “good ol’ days.”
It doesn’t take a scientific genius to apply these principles to the support of the upper body by the abdominal muscles and the lower back, or the “core” muscles as the grinning fitness trainer will call them as you scream out in pain for being such a sedentary cow of modern convenience to not use muscles that any idiot from the 19th century would normally have to use just to fucking get anywhere at all of importance. Of course your back hurts, and of course you want to lie down more readily now than when you were younger, your lower torso muscles have atrophied a bit, but they’re being asked to do the same amount or even more work than before (¿How’s that posture working out? ¿Gained a little weight there, SANTA?).
But really, let’s be honest: You’re going to come up with a shitload of excuses for not strengthening a single muscle…
“I know I should, but I just don’t want to be a running dork like my Dad.”
“I don’t know, ¡I guess I just consider it more dorky to break a hip from something simple like walking!”
…despite the fact that, the more tension is put on your skeleton at various points, the more building of bone matter occurs, which is a good defense against osteoporosis in later life, and thusly bone fractures from total simple shit.
But let’s get off of that track for a second, because you’re going to become a whiny little jerk if I refer to something that you decided was jock territory when you were getting picked on in high school.
¿Why wouldn’t you want to work on every little thing (nutrition, exercise, etc.) that would guarantee you more energy without having to buy an “energy shot” container? Work might not be quite as soul-destroying (because you won’t be fighting gravity so viscerally the whole goddamn day, let alone won’t be on an energy rollercoaster of epic proportions all the time), vacations might actually involve more than just getting “real” sleep, and sex might not be such a chore.
Oh yes, fine, tell me that the last part doesn’t matter to women, because that’s the line you’ve been fed… just don’t come crying to me when your girlfriend leaves you for me because I can make love for longer than 5 minutes and you can’t, ¿okay? Yeah, they didn’t go with you for your looks per se, because you’re “sensitive” or whatever bullshit line they fed you, but you being too exhausted at the end of the day to really attend to her when she’s feeling feisty once in a blue moon just won’t work as an excuse forever. Neuromuscular tension and repeated actions are the core of quite a bit in love-making techniques, so it behooves you to actually maintain some of that (either gender, here) muscular contractile capability and good cardiac health if you’re not wanting your sex to be limited to fuzzy drunken blurs in your early twenties (I know that some of you had sex in high school, before you understood most of the concepts involved and before you developed a distrust of everyone, I was avoiding mentioning that because I don’t want to be depressed!), and your romantic relationships confined to a stagnant sort of Hell by your late forties (because the lack of that does destabilize quite a bit of those dynamics).
Then again, I’m also not burning out my receptors off of the artificial surges from externally abused drugs of various sorts, so this is going to all seem very confusing to you, this energy and vigor of mine.
On top of it, my own neurochemicals, let alone anything that could be externally introduced, aren’t being prematurely metabolized by hyperactive P 453 enzymes, so I get to experience the full brunt of my natural brain chemistry not just sometimes, when I have a stimulant in me, but nearly all the time.
At this point, I continued writing, but it branched off into other topics, which will be posted as I finish editing them.