Mourning a part of the community

    I got up Sunday in kind of a weird depressive funk I couldn't quite place the cause of. It was a lovely day so I decided to put on my skates for the first time in while. I hit up the skateparks down by the Hudson as was wondering where everyone was on such a nice day. I then pulled up the I Roll NY website to see if there was any event I was missing. There was. It was for a memorial fundraiser session in Flushing, Queens for a rollerblader named Alex Nunez.
   After reading it I decided it was too late for me to head out there and I was just going to roll home. Somewhere rolling up Park Place I had to sit down. Before I knew it tears started to form in my eyes. I texted a rolling buddy of mine just kind of dumbfounded.
   Now I don't want you to get the wrong idea, Alex and I were not friends. We weren't even crew buddies. We had a couple of mutual friends/acquaintances so I had skated with him a few times. I wasn't sure why learning of his death hit me so hard. It kind of sat in my head for the rest of the day stewing. As sometimes happens when I have a strong emotional reaction to something kind of tangential to my immediate life my brain starts looking for the real cause. It got a stuck on another person I knew and started to loop. Because this can sometimes also be the result of a cognitive misfire I didn't really trust it too much either. So I rode it out.
   I wrote a blogpost about "brain looping" hoping the process would get me to some root cause, and also hoping if it was a cognitive misfire it would distract me long enough for it to pass. The loop passed but the emotional pain did not. I racked my brain a little to try and come up for a reason a "stranger's" death would hit me so hard. Then it occurred to me he wasn't really a "stranger."
   Alex was in a bunch of video edits I had so I was pretty familiar with him. I felt like I knew him a little because of this. He also won the East Coast Real Street Contest the year I really, really got into skating. It occurred to me that Alex was a part of our community, this little subculture we call aggressive rollerblading or whatever you might call it. More than that he was part of the New York scene, and even more than that he was really close to me in age. We don't talk about it much, and sometimes we don't act like it, but this little community is a family, and we'd just lost one of our own. Now, we were all getting together to mourn, as a community, in the only way we really know how, by skating.
   On top of that I realized that a part of my life was now done too. That competition was one of the last times I was really into skating, with a crew of friends to back me up. What I was mourning was a part of my life that was now gone. Suddenly I was very aware of my own mortality, and all the things I hadn't gotten done, and in particular, all the people I felt I hadn't told I cared properly. And then I freaked out. I think I may have texted/Facebook messaged three or four of my friends that night asking when I was going to see them again. I panicked a little when not all of them replied right away.
   Then, as often happens, some more time passed, and so did the dread. But if you are out there and you didn't hear from me: Know I still care, a lot, even if I haven't said it in while. And if you knew Alex, were his friend, are a member of his family, or just some random person who rolled with him, know that I'm there with you too. Don't be afraid to tell someone you care about them, that you are sad or in pain at this loss. Care for yourself, care for others.
   Be a family to each other.

There are donations be taken for the family here:
"Paypal at sales@createoriginals.com. Seriously, ANY contribution will help. Also, if you do decide to donate, make sure you send it as a “gift” so paypal doesn’t take a percentage of it."

Looping and Obsessive Thoughts

    I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets these, but one of the more irritating little side things I've noticed of my post-head injury life is what I like to call "looping." Looping is when a few thoughts, or more often one line of thought, starts to repeat itself over and over in your head. I'm sure everyone has had a version of this. A song gets stuck in your head, an event that happened to you gets replayed over and over.
    This is of course one of those lovely qualities those of us who tend to over-think things have had to deal with throughout our lives of mental disorder/disfunction. I have at least one friend whose habit of doing this borders on the pathological. I am also pretty sure (in fact I have a few pre-injury friends who can probably attest to this) that this is something I did before my injury and I only really became aware of it post-head injury.
   That doesn't make it any less frustrating or problematic when it happens, especially when bouts of it also can, and often do, involve strong emotions. The issue here is that when it happens, the brain tends to fixate on whatever that train of thought is, and can't navigate its way out of it. No matter how much I may want it to, or how inane the thought is, my brain will remain in that state until a) it is distracted or b) the cause of the thought resolves itself.
   Some of the more fun results of this "condition":
- inability to fall or stay asleep, which is great, because lack of rest really improves this condition (no, it actually doesn't, for those of you bereft of the skill of detecting the sarcasm in the word "fun")
- compulsive and/or obsessive social media checking, which usually starts as a attempt at distraction, and then all of the sudden its 2am and you are arguing with someone in Vancouver about alternate side of the street parking rules. This is especially a bad idea when said cause of train of thought is a person. Most especially when that person is someone you may or may not be romantically interested in/involved with (Wait, what was that? It sounded like the collective painful sigh of several of my friends who relate. Awww... you're adorable...now shaddup)
- compulsive and/or obsessive texting to friends (see above)
- compulsive and/or obsessive blogging about your "problem" (okay, so I'm guilty of that one right now, sue me)
- combination with a cognitive misfire, a most dangerous mixture

I've found their are really only a few real solutions to "looping".
 - Distraction. Aside from the more dangerous forms listed above, comfort can often be found in watching television, a movie, listening to music and/or reading a book to get the brain working on something else. Be wary of movies, television, or music that reinforce your train of thought however, especially is said train of thought is a person. Also be wary of comfort eating, as a) it doesn't really work for this particular problem and b) is probably unhealthy either way. Exercise can also work pretty well too. And hey also, look at this, writing can also help. Unless of course you keep writing the words "all work and no play make Jack a dull boy," in which case please put the axe down and leave your wife and child in peace.
- Meditation. Meditation can help you clear your head but it takes discipline to do it correctly, and oh boy, can it take a while to do. Which leads me to my next point-
- Riding that shit out. Its miserable, it can stress you out, and even if you are meditating you still need to do it. Sometimes the only solution to "looping" is time. Sucks I know but thems the breaks. In fact, its best to ride it out a while especially if it lasts more than a day and you are forced to do the following step.
- Dealing with the loop's cause. This is generally only necessary if said cause is person and/or the loop is a recurring problem but I'm including it because its important. You need to deal with whatever issue is causing you to obsessively think about it. Since this usually involves a person you need to communicate with that person, preferably in person. Most often in my experience the thing you were obsessing over is actually not that big of a deal, and you are dumb. Every once and while however, it is actually a major issue and the sooner you deal with it the better.

   I have had this sequence of events (i.e. it's not a big deal and I am dumb) play out so often I beginning to suspect I might actually be a profoundly stupid person. Which is strangely comforting, actually, as it reminds me I'm still human. Also, I'm not sure when this blog somehow morphed into some sort of mental health self-help type thing, but here we are. Hopefully next time I will be back to ranting about Walking Dead, or giant robots or some such other nerdy nonsense, or (SHAMELESS SELF-PLUG INCOMING!!!) shall I direct you to my podcast: https://jaime-martin.squarespace.com/podcast/

On the CitiBike bike sharing program and bike lanes in general in NYC

The central problem with bike lanes, particularly in Manhattan, is that they DON'T ACTUALLY EXIST. Painting a line on the asphalt does not a bike lane make. Especially when anyone can walk or hail a cab, turn into that lane willy-nilly with no consequence. And completely and utterly ignored every, I MEAN EVERY TIME, one of these articles comes out is that bicyclers are NOT THE ONLY PEOPLE ON WHEELS USING A BIKE LANE. As someone who skates all over the city, I can say without dispute that bike lanes are infinitely more dangerous for me to navigate now since the implementation of the bike sharing. The lanes were painted on, but nearly none of the asphalt was fixed. In order to avoid potholes, I have to skate on the sidewalk, where I am in danger not only of hitting pedestrians, but of being ticketed for violating a law that was designed to keep bikes off the sidewalk. For some reason, this law applies to everyone with wheels under them without any consideration to whether it was realistic or practical to enforce. The same is true with the bike sharing and bike lanes. They were implemented seemingly without any thought to how they would actually be used.

How Losing my iPod was like ending a 3-year long relationship

  So a couple of months ago I lost/someone stole my iPod classic after going to see Star Trek, Into Darkness (great movie by the way, despite what the critics say, but more on that at some other time). As with many things that happen in my life, this was after a particularly amazing two days. And life doesn't ever seem to allow me to have a really nice time without subsequently kicking me in the balls somehow. I realize this may be a self-fulfilling prophecy to some extent, but you shut your damn mouth, little voice in my head.
  Like the ending of many relationships, this one was the result of carelessness and/or sheer stupidity, possibly both. I was so focused on sharing my joy in my movie-going experience I wasn't focused enough on checking to make sure I had everything until after I left the theater. Now to be clear, I was miffed, but after several trips back to the theater and costumer service, I finally just shrugged and kind of accepted it. It wasn't until a few days later it started to sink in how much the content on that iPod had become an integral part of my life. The more psychoanalytical of you might see this as a crude metaphor for a lot of my relationships. That thought has not escaped me, but I've found dwelling on it just makes me sink into a cycle of questioning myself, which I do enough on my own, thank you very much. Also incidentally, it make me miss the damn iPod more, so I decided to let it go.
  For one thing, there was an accumulation of about three years worth of music and podcasts on that thing. Some of which is not backed up because it was essentially stolen from other people and will now have to be purchased. Proof that sometimes I am both lazy and a bad person. I also didn't realize how much of my daily routines, and therefore, a certain extant of my mental stability, was based around playlists on that thing. It's like living with a significant other and waking up the next morning after breaking up to find your whole daily routine now has to change. I realize that's a over-exaggeration, but a lot times you don't realize how important all the little things are until they are gone. Obvious? Yes, but it never fails to surprise you when it actually happens.
  To get into some specifics, here are some playlists that I had and the reasoning as to why not having them actually became a issue for me.

On the Go: Basically a playlist of all my favorite songs. Like a giant blueprint of the randomness that is my brain, and a profound comfort blanket whenever or wherever I am.

Wake-Up: Music that helps me get out of bed in the morning, and adding to this, a couple of educational podcasts I listen to get my brain moving on groggy days. This was the first one I didn't realize how integral it was to my morning routine until it was gone.

Aesop to Sollila: A carefully curated mix that could be started at the beginning of the day skating and ended on the way home at night.

Battlestar Meditation: I ostensibly stopped meditating for a period of time without it. I initially panicked then I realized that I only really used a couple songs on it to actually meditate. This was one of those moments where I realized having an abundance of choice wasn't necessarily a good thing.

I am a Superhero: Have we not established that I am massive nerd? Another one I didn't realize its importance until it was gone.

Skating: A comprehensive playlist of all the music I like to skate to/gets me amped. And holy shit that was a lot of goddamn music...

Other playlists I created were not as important, but are still missed.

  I have since been using my smart phone, which only has 4gigs of storage. This has been a interesting exercise in paring my musical life down to the most important things. It's weird how much you take all that space on an iPod for granted. It kind of makes you lazy when it comes to music. I often found myself using it on shuffle. And I am almost certain there are albums I have put on there that I have not given a true chance because they have been lost in the sheer amount of choice on the damn thing.
  Maybe there is some epiphany that should happen here about how limiting your options actually improves your life. Maybe. But I'm still going to buy a new iPod classic.

AJ and EP

( A lot of this is lifted/inspired by “Remember This,” Joshua Foer, National Geographic, November 2007)

               

                There is a woman known in medical literature as “AJ.” She remembers almost every day in her life since she was eleven.  There is also a man known as “EP,” who remembers only his most recent thought. “My memory flows like a movie –nonstop and incontrollable” – says AJ. Her “inexhaustible memory for autobiographical details is so unprecedented and poorly understood” new medical term had to be coined for it: hyperthymestic syndrome.  EP’s memory loss was caused by the herpes simplex virus, which left two walnut size holes in his medial temporal lobes.

                There is one medial temporal lobe on each side of the brain. This space includes the hippocampus and several other regions responsible for turning our perceptions into long-term memories.  The memories are not actually stored in the hippocampus, they are located an outer layer called the neocortex, but the hippocampus is what makes them stick. EP’s hippocampus was destroyed, which means that he can perceive things, but not store them. My brain works a little differently. I perceive things and also store them, but this stored information is mixed with invented things from my subconscious. I am sure this happens with other people as well, but I believe in my brain they are more pronounced.

                There are two types of amnesia:

Anterograde - which means you can’t form new memories.

Retrograde – which means you can’t store old memories either.

                Most of us exist in a nebulous realm in between the two.  That three pound or so of wrinkled flesh attached to our spines is a weird goddamn thing. You remember useless TV trivia but can’t remember where you put your keys. What is memory? The best neuroscientists have been able to come up with is that “memory is a stored pattern of connections between neurons in the brain.” Real poetic isn’t it? There are about a hundred billion neurons, each making maybe 5,000 – 10,000 synaptic  connections with the other neurons, which makes about five hundred trillion to a thousand trillion synapses in the average adult brain. You got all that? Here’s more. Synapses are strengthened, weakened, or formed anew constantly, even when we sleep. The very physical substance of us is always changing.  Do you have a headache yet? Me too.

                Damaged memory can profoundly affect your sense of time. EP has both kinds of amnesia. He does not remember he has a memory problem. He forgets that he forgets which makes every causal slip just an annoyance. He has no real sense of time, trapped in an eternal present. He is a happy all the time presumably because there is nothing in his life that can cause him stress.  With my own memory affected, I am often struck with the perception that time is flowing way too fast around me. I am aware this is also something that everyone feels from time to time. But with me its effects past events as well – I can remember details from events in my life but not precisely when they happened. I go to bed some nights and wake up some mornings feeling as if several days have passed without my knowledge. That the memory of them is a blurry illusion my brain has cooked up for itself.

                You can also learn things unconsciously without knowing you are learning them. This is because there are two kinds of memory- declarative and non-declarative – sometimes referred to as explicit and implicit. Declarative memory is things you actually remember, like what you ate for breakfast this morning. Non-declarative memory is things you know without consciously thinking about them, like knowing how to ride a bike. Those memories don’t rely on the hippocampus to be put together and stored, they occur in completely different parts of the brain. Motor skills are learned in the cerebellum, at the base of the brain, perceptual skills in the neocortex, habit learning in the brain’s center.

                Most of the metaphors we use to describe memory suggest mechanical accuracy, but memory doesn’t really work that way. If you were to use an electrical probe to touch parts of the temporal lobe in a person, that person would describe vivid experiences that would resemble recollections, but they are actually closer to fantasies or hallucinations than to memories.

                AJ’s memory would seem to embody the sort humans have idealized since ancient times. But your memories exist the way they do to protect you. Remembering everything is maddening and lonely for AJ. Like the Jorge Luis Borges story, if you remember everything, it becomes difficult to distinguish between the important and the trivial. You remember good things and bad things with equal clarity. Our modern technology has been quickly replacing our internal memories with external ones, and in the process something has been lost. The whole point of our brains and by extension our whole nervous system is to absorb present information and apply it to future events so we can react to it in the best possible way. Memory is  our brain as a prediction machine, and a consistently crappy one at that.

                EP takes the same walk virtually every day; he meets the same neighbors but reacts as if meeting for the same time. He responds to them in a friendly way because he’s learned through habit that these are people he should feel comfortable around. In other words, an unconscious learned feeling of comfort can trump your memory. I find this comforting. I have emotional connections to memories I am not sure actually happened. Many of these “memories” influence fundamental ways in which I interact with the world around me.  In this way my emotional connection trumps my desire to know the objective truth about these events, particularly because some are virtually impossible to trace. They have become defining characteristics of who I am as a person.

Homophobia and Aggressive Inline

   You know I hadn't really given this thought until now, but a bunch of the insults thrown at my Aggressive Rollerblading brethren (or whatever you want to call it) are also homophobic. And also inline skating itself in any form seems to be associated with homosexuality. When did this happen? And now that I think about it double-fuck the Human Giant joke about it for being both ignorant and homophobic. This is how stupid homophobia really is, that ignorant and dumb people use it to mock things that aren't remotely related to it. The biggest throwing of stupid insults to rollerblading has been from the skateboarding industry. A so-called "outsider" culture (you are no longer a subculture when your pros can afford "cribs" style houses and people use your image to sell car insurance) that should fucking know better. 

  I think what has happened here is really pretty simple and a story so old its become a cliche. Skateboarders are now the jocks of the extreme sports genre, and rollerbladers are the nerds. And what do jocks do to nerds? By extension, what does any part of mainstream culture do to something deemed uncool? We shit on it, push it into the edges of society. And homophobic language is still, despite all the supposed work towards "acceptance," used to demean anything that is deemed as lesser. So rollerbladers become fruitbooters, rappers still use the word "fag," and fucking idiot jock douchebags coming out of a Knicks game beat the shit out of two gay men in broad daylight outside Madison Square Garden. And those same type of homophobic dickwads try to mess with me when I'm on skates for the same reason. I am in no way trying to equate the two, just pointing out that intolerance doesn't always just effect the minority being persecuted, it can also effect people who are only vaguely associated with it.

Cognitive Misfire

   I was going to make this most recent post about the inherit fallacy of dieting, but I'll hold off on that for awhile and instead address a little thing I call the cognitive misfire. We are familiar I think with this occurrence: you are looking for your keys and realize they are in your hand etc.  When you have a former or current brain injury these little misfires can come not only more often, but can be a little more troubling, especially when they pertain to emotions.
  Now to be fair, I'm not a nueroscientist, or have any degree in psychology or psychiatry, so all that I am about to tell you may be bullshit. But I am just doing a lot of research on all three of these topics for a book I am currently working on. I am going to share a little bit about those moments where your brain not work so good.
  One of the more troubling things that happens when you have a major head injury is that your emotions can be thrown all out of whack. You have rage that bubbles up for no reason, you get really sad and tear up sometimes without explanation, you laugh uncontrollably at inappropriate times. In the past, my friends and I used to make a joke about these occurrence and call them "male PMS." More recently I have begun to suspect this is one of the long term affects of an brain injury I sustained in 2003.
   Most of the time, I work pretty diligently to maintain and control these outbursts of emotion through meditation, herbal tea, yoga, exercise etc. Occasionally though, I don't keep up with these things as much as I should and occasionally, people have to deal with one of these seemingly out of character emotional outbursts. A lot of things can exacerbate the situation like alcohol, lack of sleep, stress at work or at home etc. Every once and awhile - and a lot more before I learned how to manage these issues - people around can be hurt by these outbursts. Especially when it comes to anger. One of lovely things your brain does when it gets conflicting information is it tries to make order out of chaos. Unfortunately when you have a damaged brain, you brain will try to "order" things that don't really belong together. For example: you are angry and don't know why, and at that moment you randomly think of your grandma. All of the sudden, your grandma becomes the object of your anger, even if you are really angry about something else, or as can be the case with brain injuries, you are angry with no actual concrete cause. Bingo! Cognitive misfire.
   Usually when I have these, I have the good sense to sit on the thought for at least a day. Nine times out of ten, I realize it's irrational and let it go. Even if it is reasonable, I still sit on it for while to make sure its actually worth dealing with. Again, nine times out of ten its nothing and I just let it go. But every once and while, one sneaks past my better judgement and wrecks havoc.
   This is one of the reasons I try really hard to AVOID THE INTERNET during times when this is happening. Amongst your friends, if you send a bizarre out of nowhere angry text to someone, you can explain the next day and hopefully eventually forget about the whole thing. On the internet however, that shit can become everyone's business, and suddenly you've involved fifteen or more people in you cognitive misfire. It also stays there, in the cloud, forever, like a giant dead rat no one can locate in your radiator.
   One of the other frustrating things about these occurrences is it is in my nature to try and explain them when they happen while not necessarily acknowledging it may be because of my brain issues. This is also usually a bad idea. I have the amazing ability to compound the problem when I do this. This is where the situation leaps its way from cognitive misfire to neurotic stupidity. Up until this point, I kind of still have an excuse for what is happening, although granted, had I been better at keeping up with the maintenance exercises, this might not have happened. Afterward however, I am past the point of an accident, and have now buried myself in a blackhole of stupid. This, as many of you know, is what happened to me a couple of weeks ago.
   One of the other more unfortunate things when these cognitive misfires happen is that you are not aware they are happening until sometimes days later. When this happens, the best thing you can do is a) immediately apologize for whatever it is you have done/said b) explain the about your issues, honesty is the best policy at this point, c) be more aware of the things that may trigger you (i.e. lack of sleep and alcohol in this case), and d) avoid the goddamn internet for a least one night