When many are told to think of sports that need extreme technicality, many people’s first thoughts would go to sports like golf, fencing, or F1 racing, however, my first and undisputed choice would be MMA. It is most definitely the most technical sport in the world, requiring multiple Olympic skills as well as multiple martial arts that can take years to learn. MMA doesn’t necessarily require profession in every single useful style of combat, but to stand a chance in an octagon, one must have mastery of some striking technique as well as a grappling technique. If a person enters the cage with a heavy background in wrestling and is completely lacking in defense and striking technique, they’re most likely leaving the cage with some fractured facial bones. The thing is, is that this would be the most likely outcome, but in a fight, nothing can be predicted. If the wrestler who only focuses on his wrestling is able to take down his opponent successfully he has a chance. If he lands a few punches in the ground and pound, as well as tiring his opponent on the ground, he has an even greater chance of submitting his opponent. MMA can go any way, it is a constant game of chess where every movement changes the possibilities of the match. One bad movement, with bad defense, while a fighter is fatigued can end a fight in a moment, but that’s only if they get caught in their blunder. This makes MMA a technical sport, however, if you want to make it more technical with advanced striking techniques like creating efficient combos where no movement is wasted, connecting the ending of one punch or kick, with the starting movement of your next strike, as well as taking into account the reaction and movement of the opponent. Things such as feints and reactions to feints can’t go unnoticed. Sharp observers and champions such as Isreal Adesanya and Sean O’Malley are masters of taking advantage of their opponent’s reactions and body language, while more instinctual fighters such as Kevin Holland, Jon Jones, and Jose Aldo are great at taking advantage of their opponents in quick thinking exchanges. It’s a brutal yet beautiful sport, that perfectly ties together technicality and intensity.
Albert Camus, a philosopher, once said “accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful.” Camus is stating that there is meaninglessness in life, but we must accept that fact, and despite its meaninglessness we must not become depressed. The only real answer to the newfound meaninglessness is acceptance, and with the acceptance of lack of meaning one cannot become depressed or stressed. Every situation no matter how difficult or troublesome it may seem, becomes simple. All that is necessary is to simply live, it is not a necessary reaction to feel that the task is useless or difficult, because everything is useless regardless. Camus talks about the “Myth of Sisyphus,” a greek myth in which a king is condemned to roll a rock up a hill for eternity. Every time he pushes the boulder all the way up the hill it rolls down again, forcing Sisyphus to start over once again. Camus stated that if Sisyphus simply accepted his menial task as absurd and fatuous that the task would no longer have ay level of difficulty, all that is left for Sisyphus to do is to push the rock and live his life.
I have two other brothers, and they always did everything better than me; which I always feel so much pressure doing something with them. I always doubt my ability to do anything, like anything. I began the thought of I just can’t do it right. This year, I become a senior, ready for college. You have no idea how much pressure I have on myself. I don’t want to give up and go to random college, meantime, I still keep believing that there is a 1 percent possibility I can make something beautiful. A couple of weeks ago, Penn State needs a requirement of 120 scores for the English Language Proficiency. I spent my own money and took it almost twenty times, my highest score is 115 still couldn’t reach 120. Penn State can be an easy school that most everyone can get into. However, I’m still stuck in that dumb English test and couldn’t think of any way to improve it. Recently, most of the decisions came out, I got rejected by UIUC and LMU. I am not surprised at all because I know those types of good schools won’t accept me. Until this Tuesday, I got an email from Syracuse University. I just want to say, I think I’m dreaming right now. I got accepted! At that time, I told myself that I’m not that bad, not bad. Meanwhile, I’m so thankful that my brother and friends are there always supporting me. I just can’t believe it, really can’t. I can say I am really proud of myself, and I should love myself more.
Doesn’t matter if I’m in a relationship or not, sometimes when I went back to my room and lay down on my bed; I just felt so lonely. Have you ever felt that way? Did you ever feel that you have no one to rely on but yourself? Yourself is the only person who knows what you have been through, and knows what’s your feelings and emotions were in the worst situation. Every time I talk about my feelings with someone, they always say they understand what it feels like. However, that is not true, no one has been through something terrible like you do. They’re not you, they don’t know what your pains feel like. Everyone is busy with their own problem, which doesn’t have time to help you. At this point, you realize you are the only person left holding yourself up and keep walking every single day. I always told myself that it was just progress of becoming a stronger me, but it’s really lonely. Even I found the joy of being on myself, loneliness is still bothering me sometimes.
Seasonal depression is wild. I’m not a depressed person, don’t really have reason to be depressed, and have never been depressed, but this winter I was feeling kinda sad I’m not even gonna front. Since the start of December, I had a fog hanging over me. I lost my drive to seek new relationships and became content with what I had, which was a good thing in some aspects, but I was incredibly unmotivated. I was bogged down by hours of college work, AP classes, soccer practices, and late nights during the school week. On the weekend, I would drive down to LA and it would feel like I had to choose between my family and friends when spending time with people. I was in the pit of despair.
All of the sudden, I have snapped out of it. I have moved past soccer, college apps, and have embraced senioritis. This has given me time to meditate during the school week and afforded me much more clarity. I have also started sleeping in LA on Sunday nights, which gives me more time to balance hanging with family and friends. Also, my convertible whose clutch I totally melted a month ago is back from the shop so I can take friends out in it. ALSO, I have a new friend who is the perfect candidate for a cruise in the Boxster.
Everything is coming up, Alden. I don’t know how things just magically turned around, but I’m here to ride out this wave of good energy.
I have discussed this with my friends and feel confident to be on the baseball team. However, after two weeks of practice, my baseball career ends right away. I didn’t practice a lot because I was on a camping trip and then the winter break happened, so I’ve been sitting on the bench for the first couple of games. I started to think about if I should switch my sport to weight lifting instead of sitting on the bench while not practicing for baseball. The game is happening almost every day. I decided to quit baseball because, during the last game, the coach came to me and said: “You will be the pitcher for the next game.” It sounds pretty good, right? The coach is so nice that he is thinking of giving me a chance to play, but do you know it’s impossible for me to be the pitcher. I, as a beginner, can’t even throw a baseball that far or fast and couldn’t catch every ball they throw. Then how do I become a pitcher? Plus, there are only a few practices I will be able to hit and throw. With this short amount of time, it was just impossible for me to be the pitcher. It is kind of him that he gave me hope to push myself more, so I might play in the future. I pretty much enjoy playing baseball and I love it, but I just don’t want to spend the rest of the time sitting on the bench.
I’ve been traveling a lot recently, and it’s just reminded me how terrible traveling is for me. I really can’t ever travel healthily. It always ends up with me needing days to recover and feeling completely out of it both mentally and physically.
Mostly I hate flying on planes. The altitude really affects my ears, so I’m popping them for even weeks after I fly sometimes. Not even eating something or chewing gum helps. I have to be wearing the special pressurized earplugs and chewing gum to even feel somewhat okay when the plane takes off or lands.
Besides my ears hurting a ton, I get super swollen from flying. My fingers get too big for my rings to fit on them and my feet swell up so I have to loosen my shoeslaces a ton for them to fit into my shoes. Probably because I don’t drink enough water, but I lose my appetite and feel sick when I eat or drink anything when I fly, so I can’t really force myself to drink. Also, nobody likes going to the bathroom on planes. I avoid it if I can.
photo credit: tibco.com
When I get to my destination, I’m always so exhausted that I can barely even remember the events that happened when I look back on the memory. I get overwhelmed so easily when I travel that I’m on the edge of having a meltdown. It’s not super fun to go through a ton of pain just to forget why I was even there and only remember being agitated.
When I get back home, I need several business days to rest before I really feel like myself again. It takes a long time for my body to readjust to being home, but it takes my mind even longer. I have super realistic dreams every time I sleep, and when I’ve just traveled they’re even worse because I wake up and don’t even know where I am. It’s hard for the fact that I’m home to register in my brain, and I’m still in fight or flight mode from the new environments freaking me out, so I just end up in a terrible mental state for a week or two after traveling for even just two days.
Needless to say, I need a good few months of being strictly at home again. Honestly, that was one part of lockdown that I didn’t mind- I didn’t get to travel anywhere.
I’m not a very confident person, but I can say I’m pretty humble. I started to realize that the people around me always show off something they feel so proud of. There is nothing wrong to show others your success, but how they show their success will affect me looking at this person’s personality. I always don’t like the person who always thinks they are so cool or they just think how good they are at some area. I always feel so disgusted. For example, one of my friends from Taiwan he keep doing some gang signs because he watched some people doing it on TikTok. He just keeps doing it even he doesn’t know what that means. He just thinks he is so cool doing that, and keep doing the same thing over and over again. I mean I also do gang signs as a joke with my friends sometimes but I don’t know how he can do that every day. Speaking of being humble, I’m good at swimming and I also do it for my previous school team. At the swim races in Taiwan, I also broke the record, and be the fastest swimmer in the race. However, I never tell others how good I am at swimming or do some actions to get the attention of others just to get respect or admiration. I still respect those people who are overconfident, but I just don’t like it that’s all. What do you think?
OVS Journalism Blog 
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