I am living a life I previously joked about having.

Much like most people, I learned a lot about Jiu-Jitsu by reading Graciemag. At my first gym we had it at the desk and I used it to figure out who was who in the sport, especially after realizing over time how important my first instructor, Romulo Barral, was to the community. I began taking notice of who else was the "Michael Jordan of Jiu-Jitsu."

Luanna Alzuguir was one of those people. I can't even count how many times I had seen her face before I really knew who she was. Turn the first page of a Gracie Magazine and most likely she'll be there in a Koral ad.

My first gi was a Koral gi. I was given a large judo gi when I took my intro class and learned about Jiu-Jitsu Pro Gear not long after I started training. When I took a trip down south, I saw the Koral navy MKM gi and wanted it bad but didn't have the money for it. So I bought a white Koral light gi instead. I eventually bought my dream gi and it was my competition gi for as long as it would last, holding up for a loooot of training sessions, through multiple patches, a switching of teams and at least 6 competitions that I can remember.

Not long after I started this blog I created Pulling Guard Zine out of necessity. I needed to talk about more than just personal issues on my blog, I needed to take the information I was getting from Romulo and put it to use. So I interviewed him in my first issue along with my friend Beneil Dariush. That was my first issue. As I noticed how easy it was to network within the Jiu-Jitsu community and how often these black belt world champions would answer messages on facebook, I branched out. For my second issue I contacted Luanna Alzuguir for an interview. She accepted and through a friend who translated, she became my first interviewee who wasn't already a friend.

While I was training and competing as a blue belt, I worked a full-time job. I sat in a cubicle and took phone calls to sell travel packages to rude travel agents who were ironically almost always named Deborah. I kept sane by putting up constant reminders of my life outside of those cubicle walls. I put up medals and made my desktop background pictures from competing and Jiu-Jitsu logos. And I ripped out pages from Graciemag issues to use as posters. At one point, it was Luanna in a Koral ad, even.

After a gap of time where I worked my ass off in training, in hustling for writing gigs, in building my site, in networking through the Jiu-Jitsu community, in finding jobs to fuel my lifestyle, in my college classes, I got to a point where I saw some results. I won some tournaments and I got some sponsors. I got some gigs for covering press at bigger events and my pictures and articles were getting noticed. I had such pockets of depression and disappointment and then I had pockets of success that were sometimes just random. A person like Tom Callos would find me on facebook and help me out with a paid writing gig. A guy from Brazil would offer me a paid gig to write articles for his website. I'd meet people who owned Jiu-Jitsu companies, have meetings with them and IBJJF where my opinions were heard and maybe, just maybe they mattered. My skills were being utilized.

Then I got a call about Graciemag wanting to interview me for a position. And I was exchanging emails with the CEO discussing options, hourly rates and a date for an interview. I got the email confirming my interview date one day during training. When class was over I discussed with my teammates about what was going on and how I was getting to work for Graciemag. And then I got in the shower and cried really hard as if I was sad but I wasn't sad, I was almost relieved. It was a weird feeling but intense whatever it was.

Back when I was first starting out with interviewing and writing, my training partners would sarcastically say, "oh you're gonna work for Graciemag, huh?" and it seemed like such a far fetched idea. But now I am a large part of the team here and I work every single day posting content. And I went to Abu Dhabi because of it. Abu Dhabi!

And by networking and getting my foot in the door, I'm getting a sponsorship with Koral, my favorite gi company. It's a form of support that, while I'm not a black belt world champion, is suitable for my needs at this point as a competitive purple belt.

This week I've been training with Luanna on my mats at Cobrinha BJJ. We roll and she treats me like a peer, giving me advice and letting me know when I do something right when I roll with her. For the time being she is my training partner and we're helping each other prepare for worlds and she's helping me more than she realizes. It is a dream.

If someone told me I'd have Rubens Cobrinha Charles as a professor, training with the best black belts in the world including my idols, getting support from my favorite gi company, working for Graciemag as a traveling writer, reporter, journalist, videographer and photographer and dating Gianni Grippo, I'd laugh. I'd laugh hard and I'd say, "yeah, okay. cool story, bro."

It's a sappy self-reflecting moment for me and you're probably mocking me as you read this but nothing can change the fact that I reached goals that I didn't even set because I never imagined they'd be realistic. At least not within this time frame. I think I can set some solid goals from now on knowing that I'm on a real good path already. I'll start with purple belt world champion.

I am constantly learning about myself. Sometimes I spend hours on google looking up information that suits me and branching off from one topic to another. Mental issues, like the ones I sometimes google, all correlate and the fact that there are lot of theories and studies in place of fact it makes it even easier to assess multiple possibilities.

Figuring yourself out is a constant journey. You know that already. You know, it's the journey not the destination, that whole thing. You can change. People change but not unless they want to and so self awareness is a requirement. I think about how I am with other people, why I do the things I do and why I have so much trouble in certain areas. Knowing yourself in terms of mental disabilities is a whole nother genre. I mean anyone can take their downfalls and "flaws" and put them into the right holes and come up with a category. But it does help in most cases with me.

"You could be ADD or you're just smart." That's what my therapist said when I asked if I could possibly be ADD since I have a lot of symptoms. My brain moves faster than normal. I do everything fast. I drive fast, I eat fast, I talk fast, I walk fast, I take exams fast. I've gotten in two separate fender bender accidents where I was the one doing the rear-ending. I eat more than I should because I'm too busy stuffing my face to let my body tell me when I'm full. I often interrupt people and have conversations with the intent to reply rather than to simply listen because I want to and I do butt in as soon as I know where they're going with their sentence. I usually can always tell before they've closed their mouths but it's not courteous to cut people off. I found out people rarely want a solution, they just want someone to listen.

I signed up at the Disability Resources and Educational Services office at school because I found out I'd get a better registration date for classes. I was asked what other ways they could help me but I didn't need it. I've found ways to cope but it's the whole loss of enthusiasm that gets me. He said he couldn't help me with that.

I'm a big picture kind of person. I don't pay attention to details because in the grand scheme they rarely matter. What's the purpose of something? That's more important in the long run. I don't really care how exactly it happened, just that it did and the impact it made. Maybe that's why I hate history so much. Just tell what we've learned so that we don't repeat the mistakes and let's move on with our lives, shall we?

I didn't get my ADHD diagnosis until last Friday. I got an ADD diagnosis when I started going to my psychiatrist 8 months ago. Being impulsive and hyperactive makes me extra distractible, giving me the "H." It took me a long time to choose the path of medication. But traditional talking therapy once a week wasn't doing it even after 9 months. I still will never take anti-depressants despite being recommended them multiple times but Ritalin in its slow-dosage form has less side effects and doesn't make me feel like a whole different person.

I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder a long time ago. That still lingers but who knows whether it's a real behavioral problem or a side effect of some other personality disorder. It's all a spectrum, really.

Either way, I'm here researching ways to be organized. Constantly figuring out why I'm not and ways I can help myself. Ways to feel fulfilled, too. It takes a lot of effort on my behalf to feel happy even though I still can't tell you exactly what that is. There's happy as an emotion and anytime I drink starbucks, win a Jiu-Jitsu match, eat Korean BBQ, hear a good joke, etc., I feel that. But that's temporary. 

Happiness is a state defined by stability and confidence. It means you are where you are meant to be without any regret or apprehension. "There's nowhere I'd rather be." And while I've said that before, it was again just temporary. 

Cobrinha once told us that winning a world championship is easy. Winning a world title for the second time, the third time, fourth, fifth, sixth. That's hard. I take it that he means it's hard to maintain that top spot. And so happiness is similar. It is a constant struggle. Money can't take you there but without it you may have a more difficult time getting there. A balance between personal relationships, financial stability, existence of goals, ability to find and feel self-worth, reaching of goals and a slew of other things. Now consider mental disabilities and it could make happiness virtually impossible regardless of attaining every other ingredient necessary.

Jiu-Jitsu gives you a lot of those parts. With certain circumstances it can bring you financial stability. But in the beginning it gives you the network of support in terms of relationships, it gives you the physical means necessary to get and stay healthy, it provides the goals and ability to find self-worth. It gives you something to constantly work towards regardless of being a black belt or world champion. It puts everything in line and shapes someone into a worthy recipient of that great gift called happiness. 

I can't preach it enough and I can't tell you how many times my depression, anxiety, ADHD all of their side effects have not only been relieved but also given a chance to surface through Jiu-Jitsu. You can't fix something that isn't there and you can't address something that doesn't always surface. But given the right atmosphere like, say, the competition mats, you give yourself the opportunity to face your inner opponent and deal with it. With that network of support, physical exertion and achieving of goals.

What an evolution of a post.