Category: Blog

May be subject to the Uno reverse.

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Please review Municipal Code §7, wherein it is stated,

“You are harder than ten men.”

Not my words. I was amongst many on that day, and the following still occurred:

I rolled out of the parking lot for the regular Tuesday evening ride. Five of us missed the light, and as we waited, the occupants of a white SUV with plate number [redacted] began to holler at “blue shirt” (me) suggestively.

“Oh no, not me,” I said quietly.

The vehicle proceeded to follow us through two more intersections after the light turned green. They continued to comment on me as they passed slowly, to which I replied,

“I memorize license plates.”

They declined comment.

The driver paused briefly at the next stop sign, and I assumed they were still intent on this game. And, Your Honor, as I slowed the scenario down in hindsight, asking myself why I chose to respond the way that I did next, I realized that the absurdity of their behavior did not say “we are committed to threatening you,”

it said “we are playing with power we aren’t prepared to own.”

So I rolled directly up next to the passenger door of the SUV as they quickly rolled their windows up.

“Awww, roll your windows down,” I said.

Another rider told me not to egg it on, so I rode ahead and rejoined the group as the vehicle turned and disengaged.

A different rider let me know he had turned his camera on, in case anything was to escalate.

But, how was I more certain than not that that would not happen?

I grew up scanning for and reacting to threat in my own home. I lose my shit over loose dogs often. Why did a motorist objectifying me on a bike produce not fight, not flight,

but you won’t actually follow through here?

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One afternoon, I was walking out of Walmart toward the back of the parking lot where my van was parked. By a nearby car, I saw a couple in an altercation and the woman continuously getting in the face of a man who remained argumentative and braced. As I continued my line toward my vehicle, a single small bag in hand, I said,

“Hey, hey, what’s going on here?”

The couple immediately separated, the man began to walk toward the store, and the woman said something like, “If you knew how much this asshole was cheating on me,”

“Yeah, maybe not in a public parking lot,” I replied.

They continued to bicker covertly as they headed toward the building, but a beating no longer appeared imminent.

I got into my van and soon saw the man making a beeline toward the four-lane road on foot, walk out into traffic, with the woman now following him yelling again.

I hope they get that worked out.

The next day, the head of security came through the coffee line at work and overheard me telling the story to my coworkers.

“That’s brave,” he said, holding sharp eye contact.

And I understood the implication. Intervening could always go poorly, which is why it is never advised.

And I won’t recommend my choices to anyone else, either.

On the contrary, I have been the person that needed an adult to step in, and didn’t have it. I became that person, and I cannot revert to the bystander or passive object with a clean conscience.

Why has that been effective, even if only for a moment?

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Pursuant to the ongoing matter of “I bet you’re wondering how I ended up in this situation,” the following prior statement is entered into the record [Chiaroscuro].

One day, after about two months, I received a text at work from my roommate saying, “Come home please,” followed soon by a “Nevermind.”

When I got home roughly 30 minutes later, I saw two men leaning on my van with my roommate cornered in her car. I parked the loaner I had driven in the homeowner’s driveway and walked over.

“Please take your hands off my vehicle,” I said. My roommate’s husband, now out of jail, gave me the ol’ up-and-down as he stepped away and cloaked himself in smugness, while the 6-foot-something guy behind him had a general air of “Oh, f***.”

I locked eyes with her husband and asked “Do you want to explain what’s going on before I get it from her?”

“We’re just having an argument,” he replied in a small voice.

He wasn’t even supposed to be there. I told them both to step away so I could talk to the woman crying in her front seat. Her words told me a story of “not a big deal,” while her shaking voice and constant scanning for him as she talked to me suggested “this is not safe.” She left with him that night anyway, and I told her to let me know if she needed anything.

It was a week or two later when he was arrested again for assaulting her in a Walmart parking lot.

I have a theory.

In the event of conflict, perceived threat, discomfort, to any degree, we often respond with fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

But in my case, it seems to be focus.

And that mechanic is why I remember not only events, but can also casually write or talk about them with exact behavioral and somatic indicators like an artist describes their process.

Feeling is faster than logic, and I allow them to inform each other, not argue.

With that being said.

My former roommate’s husband met me at the bottom of the driveway as I approached. He and his huge friend both immediately complied with my insistence they stop touching my property, but only the little guy engaged directly. When I say he was “wrapped in smugness,” what I was watching was how his attempt to downplay the situation was accompanied by this stiffness in his body and his voice. It had an air of petulance.

Petulance is not a trait that is sure of itself, either. It’s a defense.

Why are you defensive if nothing is wrong here?

After I moved to talking to my roommate, my objective became ensuring the situation did not escalate again as well as determining threat level from her indirect feedback, everything she was not saying. Meanwhile, a red car showed up and after some conversation with the two men, the big guy left with it. As my roommate went inside to grab some items, I kept my position, leaning against my own van, and her husband came up and leaned against her car near me while he waited for her.

“Have you been riding a lot lately?” He asked.

“I am not interested in having a conversation with you,” I replied, not looking up from my phone, but still watching from the corner of my eye.

“It’s okay… I’m used to it,” he said in a lowered, victimized tone.

I ignored him.

You have zero influence here.

Over the course of the next few weeks, after the man was back in jail, my roommate began to explain how he had recently disclosed he was diagnosed with a psychiatric condition known as “psychotic explosive disorder,” as a child (if true, the correct term is intermittent explosive disorder), marked by uncontrollable episodes of rage and often violence. She invoked this condition when defending how much this man, whom she was clearly devoted to, needed her because everyone else had historically given up on him.

“Then why is he on his best behavior when I am around?”

She declined comment.

_____

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,

I once again return judgement to you.

I do want to leave you with the ongoing, lifelong experiment I seem to keep running, though.

An overwhelming majority of human communication is nonverbal. We’re all talking and reading even when we aren’t. Most of individual and group behavior, personality shaping, reinforcement, learning, etcetera are operating at a level that the conscious mind does not directly access by default.

“Actions speak louder than words,” exists as a nod to that understanding, but the information that behavior passes along isn’t just in body language cues or catching lies.

It’s in the repeated exhibits of what a person chooses to say, what they omit, inflection in certain words, pauses before responses, emphasis, sidestepping, criticism they project when they are questioned, “vibes are off, bro” feelings within yourself.

Reactions are automatic; they bypass reasoning and language filters and are accounted for after-the-fact.

And because of that, they are very, very difficult to manipulate,

prone to breakage when the unconscious is caught by surprise,

and only hold up to scrutiny when you stand on your shit.

Which is why when someone says to me “Genna, you read too much into things,”

I become curious.

And if you happen to be one of my readers who knows me in person, and has noticed how reserved I tend to be in public until I’m not, please review Municipal Code §7.

Every once in a while, I meet somebody that quiets the mind and has me paying closer attention simultaneously. Last spring, I was invited on a gravel ride and carpooled an hour and a half away with somebody that had that effect.

On the way there, I remember listening for how well this person seemed to stay with my dry humor and observational commentary, even as I was muted with it.

We got to the start of the ride and I noticed that neither of us took much conversational lead, which was further relieving. 90 minutes of proximity was enough to solidify my decision to take on a big route with someone I barely knew.

A quarter mile of highway took us from a park parking lot to crisp, fine gravel roads with a climbing profile that was almost immediately visible. And as it goes, the tone of the first 30 minutes of a ride are reliable in predicting my mindset all the way up until the final 30. It took hardly that long for me to make some sort of lively comment about how at home I felt amongst a landscape where the residents seemed less likely to have any teeth.

I was entirely unbothered by the navigational error that led us up a large and unnecessary climb, and my friend missing the turn for a second time when we went back down. I stopped next to the turn and waited for them, and said,

“Eh, they’ll come back.”

Through the light-heartedness, every once in a while, I got the disclosures of past hard life experiences and fond anecdotes of people I would never meet. I told them how I wondered if I evaded substance abuse simply because I sometimes experience an endogenous high on cognition alone.

At the last supply stop they propped their feet up on the table and I wondered,

How are you that chill?

I got a huge laugh out of them later when I said “conservatives have little self-awareness and liberals have little self-control,”

and another one when I said that if they had not stopped ahead of me I would have rolled right off the washed out bridge at dusk.

“I told him no!” I shouted after a dog began to chase me down the road, then thought again.

“And he listened!” My friend volleyed back.

The route was one I’d love to visit again, but I may not because I don’t know how much of that experience was adorned simply by how calm I felt internally the entire time.

After loading the car back up at the end, we drove back into town and decided on takeout for dinner. We walked into the lobby of a restaurant and ordered separately. I took a seat on the bench to wait and they hit the restroom.

When they came back, they sat down on the other end of the bench, with about five feet between us.

Now, why did you think that?

The story is not the point.

Every sun that rises or falls while in motion is another volume I add to my collection.

Another thing I can say “I was there” for.

Another fraction of a millisecond in the universe’s observation of itself through my eyes.

Of which I only feel like I’ve done my job well when it’s paired with force.

There is no hillcrest where I am at peace in being passed by.

I cannot go gently into that pastel sky.

[Audio transcription]

I don’t have a template for resignation. I don’t even own a white flag. But if I did, I’d be liable to burn it.

I happen to notice when something repeats. I will almost never trust why it does, but I will keep track of how it does.

It seems like once my writing dispels my frustration, I come to understand better, and the navigation instructions come back online.

I’ve made so many appeals for help over the course of my life. The answer generally comes from me, and thus it becomes another branch in the exploration of what the human condition knows on its own.

And so I must ask you a question:

Is stressing self-sufficiency in an individual a cover for neglect?

I’m back with you again for an audio update. It seems everything is moving faster than it usually does, and I am fighting with a little bit of indecision — also for the sake of asking: how do I make sure that I am being intelligent about my decisions while also not giving up the ghost?

So, my Mishigami hopes are still alive.

I have gotten into a more comfortable state on the bike. We’re still a little bit broken, still a little bit rusty, but I think that as long as nothing breaks within the next four weeks — at least not catastrophically — I could pull this together.

Unfortunately, operating on the margins is something that I’m familiar with, but it does seem to increase my pressure every time I try it.

And so that’s what we’re here to discuss tonight: being an individual that is so independent that I get compliments for it, and yet I feel like I’m always operating at the end of a thread.

And I think that I might not be the only one that experiences that, if I have a hunch.

So, I was raised on the expectation that I needed to learn to work for myself, to cover my own needs, to be independent — which I think we can probably agree has worked.

But what that turned me into is a person that feels very strict about that independence and has never been able to really rely on consistent outside support.

And so it came to the degree that I moved into a van so that I could support my dreams on the bike.

A lot of that attitude from adults in my life when I was a minor can be boiled down to one quote from my dad.

I was dealing with a van breakdown and was trying to relocate from one city to another to pick it up after the only mechanic within several states that was willing to install an entirely new engine did so.

I needed a ride to go get it, and I was going to get as creative as I possibly could to make that happen while also trying to ask as little as possible from anybody else.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t really happening.

And so I called my dad and said, ‘Hey, if I cover the cost of fuel and lunch, can you drive from southern Indiana to St. Louis — about a four-hour drive — pick me up, and take me back to pick the van up and drive it home?’

I thought that as long as I made sure that this didn’t cost him anything except time with me, this would be workable.

And his response was:

‘I don’t think I can do that, because I don’t get anything out of it.’

And so I think you can probably understand where my sensitivity to transactional relationships comes from.

But it wasn’t until recently that I realized that there’s a significant part of the population that isn’t operating on that understanding.

And so when they see me feeling like I have to compensate for asking anybody for anything, they get a little uncomfortable with it.

This sort of individual ruggedness that is implied through parts of culture is revealing itself as not nearly as widespread as I thought it was.

And I’ve been applying an expectation to myself that is holding me back.

Now, I don’t necessarily have a whole lot of choices. I’ve been pretty open about this on the blog — although I haven’t necessarily put it all in one place — that I consistently face transportation, housing, and financial precarity, all in sort of a cyclical pattern, as well as not necessarily having the social backing to call for help if I need it.

If you can bear with me for a second:

Imagine the one or two people that, in an emergency — or even just a ‘Hey, I’m on the brink of something that could be really good for me, but I need help crossing this financial gap’ situation — you would call.

And then imagine they suddenly do not exist.

And I’m bringing you into a thought that might be very, very uncomfortable, because that is the reality that people like myself have to grapple with every single time we wake up in the morning.

And I am a person that has consistently grappled with the fact that the things I dream of doing with my life are incompatible with the support structures that I have had throughout it.

And yet I keep persisting.

And that’s why you continuously see this sort of unfortunate chain of events that tends to fall out from that: me picking myself up, dusting myself off, and — to a degree that could be perceived as obsessive — going at it again.

And a point was raised to me recently that I had actually considered:

Maybe the example that I’m setting is one of, ‘Genna’s really good about coming back and fighting for things. She doesn’t actually need any support.’

Even when I’m asking for it.

It creates a little bit of tension in another person sometimes to see somebody that is resilient also talking about all the ways that they fall short.

And it becomes a potential success story that people like to watch and observe from a distance, but not necessarily ever step into.

And that is a pretty complex thing for me to consider — that maybe the very act of being hard to kill, in a sense, might be perpetuating this loop of scarcity.

And I’ve also come to learn that there is a societal reality that the inverse is also true:

A person who is willing to show themselves being helpless, and needing other people, and not necessarily having that rigid independence, is more likely to attract community support.

I have observed that myself.

And that is something that provokes profound jealousy in me.

And I don’t attach that to the individual that is being supported, because if you have that opportunity or that backing, you might as well take it.

But as is the concurrent theme of my blog, I wonder what I could possibly accomplish if so much of my energy wasn’t just trying to keep things from falling apart.

Now, I want to pause here for a second and openly acknowledge that I do have people that kind of come in and out of my life, seeing the things that I’m trying to do despite everything that’s historically worked against me.

By name, Julie and Alex are my primary support system right now.

And they’re actually very different from the people that I even had this time last year.

Because I have observed — through a little bit of a naive lens, up until recently — that there are people who like the idea of being part of a story and part of a project that they find inspiring.

But then there is a little bit of a conflict in themselves about needing to control it in a sense, or needing it to constantly reinforce how important they are for the project to continue.

And in doing so, they take a little bit of my autonomy away — which is something that I simply cannot do.

I have been wired through the environment that I was raised in to believe that it is fundamentally unsafe and unreliable for me to assign responsibility to another person.

And so if they are going to step in and support me, they are going to have to do that in a way that doesn’t take my independence away.

They have to be able to cohabitate. They have to work with me.

And I didn’t realize how much I was actually asking by expecting that.

I am really lucky now that I’m in a relationship where we are two very independent people that do not need to reinforce each other to feel secure.

And to be quite honest with you, I’m not sure how I got to a point where I am that way.

There has been so much conflict in my relationships — with my parents, with my extended family, romantic relationships, jobs, you name it — that logically you would think those things would make me far more unstable.

But instead, they just made me more rigid in self-reliance.

And now I’m kind of meeting those people that are okay just saying, ‘What do you need from me?’ helping me with that, and then — and this is going to sound a little bit harsh here — getting out of the way.

And the fact that I both need the community that I am still clawing for while also needing my path unobstructed is the most complicated thing that I’ve ever had to go up against.

And so while I really put my head down and try to grind toward making Mishigami feel like less of a reach for me again, I’m trying to figure out something that I’m not even sure I have words for.

But it’s something like:

How do I set some of this weight elsewhere without letting go of it completely?

The last month was lopsided dealing with setbacks. That’s not acute for me.

What that means is organization and regimented progress simply do not work in the context of my life. It moves like the tide, not a wavelength.

I am finding more material I want to write about than I can keep up with. I thought that committing to a book would possibly steal from blog material; instead, it’s making my creative process more apparent to me: I do not bend to control. Not even my own.

Working on blog essays with Reorganism as a separate project, on top of trying to get back to normal on a bike, is forcing me to compartmentalize when I have already discovered and written that my mind naturally fights it. My material regularly relies on following how I naturally think, so I’m allowing myself to adapt my own announced plans.

Reorganism will be published here essay by essay as part of my regular feed, with the physical copy to be published once the path to that is more clear and manageable. My mind outruns time, and treating all of it as one rolling project prevents split attention even if the amount of effort is the same.

I’m headed out to ride. The list of upcoming essays is to follow:

Status [Handoff]– audio essay with transcription.

In All of the Ways We Resist Being Human– A longer piece on how I see society conditioning us to avoid ourselves.

Reorganism Essay 2: Good Morning, Vietnam

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An object in motion stays in motion.

[Audio transcription]

On days like this, I put my earbuds in and play the last song that gave me goosebumps, desperately trying to summon the fuel that got me even here.

That is the only prewritten line that I have today.

This is another audio essay, which is essentially going to be another diary entry in the current state of things I’m trying to accomplish. And as I have previously mentioned, audio material is going to be longer because I do not pre-script this. I have a list of bullet points in front of me, but I just want to speak freely in these.

So, um, with that, I am also going to provide the written transcription of the audio so that you can follow along with text, or you can just choose to read. But just bear in mind that this will not be as artful as my written material needs to be, or as compact. So you can choose how you prefer to engage with that.

I am at home, sick today, and that is probably going to be, um, discernible to you. And I am not thinking as clearly, and my voice actually kind of hurts a little bit, so I hope that you can bear with me there. But I am here today primarily just because I need to talk.

I went to a race yesterday and had to turn around 10 miles in. And before I could get back to the start, I backtracked on the course, made a turn, laid my bike down, and kind of lost all of my composure. And this doesn’t really happen much in front of other people, but when I’m alone—believe me—I come apart.

And this is off the back of essentially eight months of not being comfortable on my bike. Last year, in the fall, somebody that was positioned to support me sort of removed my decision-making process in getting a new bike. I was presented with the information that I needed a new frame. Unbeknownst to me, there wasn’t anything really wrong with my frame until I learned after the fact.

Somehow, the decision was just made that that was the best option because the frame was old, and there was a single proprietary part that was stripped that needed to be replaced. That part, I was actually able to contact somebody else to help me find, and it only took less than a day to source.

And so there was a major communication breakdown there, and that resulted in me tearing the bike that I had been comfortable and productive on for over five years—tearing that down to build up a new frame that just didn’t work for me.

And my options at the time were limited, even then. And so, after a couple months of struggling to make that work—trying to get it ready for ultra-distance pursuit, in doing 300 miles in 24 hours, basically from border to border of Missouri—we ultimately ended up backtracking and rebuilding my old frame with newer parts.

And unfortunately, that still wasn’t right. And here now, in almost May of the following year, I am not functioning anywhere near my capacity because I’m uncomfortable.

I get on that bike, and I’m hoping that the last adjustment that I made was the winner, and, you know, everything is getting close, and that maybe I can just adapt. And it doesn’t happen.

It started with back pain that was causing me to just not sit on my bike correctly, and thus I’m not producing the efficient power that I normally can—to now, I can’t even sit on my saddle comfortably. And if you can’t sit on your saddle, that’s basically it. There’s just no being on a bike.

And I haven’t been able to convince myself to just stop riding yet. That isn’t what I want. That isn’t what I built my goals around. That isn’t what I’ve built my blog around. Getting off the bike is not really an option in my mind.

But right now, my body is starting to force that, and that is the reality that I’m looking at.

And unfortunately, this is just my perspective on the matter, as the person that has been implicated by this. But I do feel like there have been supporters in recent history that have worked closely with me—kind of dropped the ball with that. They look me in the eye and can’t produce an answer, despite having the means to help me find one.

It was just this avoidance pattern of: “You being uncomfortable makes me uncomfortable, and I don’t want to feel at all responsible for that, so I’m going to step back.” That is how I perceived it.

And as a person that has historically had to solve my own problems—even very complex ones like this—I naturally will kind of say, “You know what? Don’t worry about it. I’m going to figure this out for myself.”

And that is part of why I’m still struggling now, because I’m reaching my limits with that.

I have a tendency to ask AI, with a lot of proprioceptive information. I tell it, “Hey, on the ride today I noticed that I’m rocking my pelvis backwards, and when I want to engage the pedal stroke I tilt forward, and that is not where I’ve historically been. I also am having this interesting left-sided pinch and a hot spot in my right foot—that is not historically my pattern either.”

And so I’m giving it really specific information, trying to figure out what adjustments that I need to make.

And so every ride that I’m going out on, I’m having to stop every few miles and—okay, here’s what’s changed—and I’m feeding this new information. It’ll give me a good breakdown, like an analytical breakdown, of not only what I need to change but why, and how this is going to change how I engage with the bike.

It’s very detailed stuff. But every single ride is plagued by that, instead of, “Oh hey, I need to make sure that I stop for water at this location so that I have enough to get the next 35 miles and not have to stop again.”

The logistical part of the ride is what I need to be focusing on, and how my body feels is bad enough to where I can’t do that. None of my rides are free anymore.

And that is pretty devastating for me at the moment.

So right now, I am looking at Mishigami two and a half months from now and not sure if I’m even going to be able to show up, because I am uncomfortable and I can’t find the solution despite countless hours of analytical process.

That is not simple.

And I am fearing another season passing me by, in what will be almost a year coming up, in combination of having burned myself out last year and then having these bike fit issues start later indefinitely.

What has been the most inconsistent, painful, and least satisfying year of my life on a bike—which has now spanned going on 12 years—that’s a pretty heavy blow for somebody who has revolved their entire life around this pursuit.

And let’s be honest: I will continue to do so, because I’m tenacious to an unstable degree, if you will.

My fear at the moment is also tied to, with the content of my blog and being so honest online—both in written and verbal format—that I’m going to, if I haven’t already, become this person that is associated with just constant struggle.

And it’s something that I’ve actually been questioned on before. Like, “Hey, Genna, is your whole sense of self tied to this identity of struggling and trauma?”

And it’s not.

It’s actually the fact that I know that I have a serious amount of potential if I can just get barriers out of the way. And a lot of the things that I’ve written about are said barriers. And I consider barriers downright offensive—they’re not necessary.

And most of them I would not consider things that I instigated. They’re just very unfortunate parts of being human in a very, very inequitable world at the moment.

And I would like to be a person that is actually telling the satisfying story that I know a lot of people come to my blog wanting to see.

Everybody loves the feel-good story of seeing this person basically go from rags to riches—not in the literal sense—but coming from the bottom, having things work against her, to accomplishing great things.

And the reality of the situation is: I’m not there yet.

And I don’t want to wait to tell the story until that happens and then speak from hindsight. Everybody does that. I don’t feel like that is actually doing the story justice.

I’m writing from within it. I’m writing from all of the things that I do not have solved, which does make people kind of uncomfortable. It makes them perceive me as more negative.

That’s, in a sense, them reacting to themselves and not to me. And so I remind myself of that.

But this right now is a pretty dark point for me.

It’s quite fascinating, um, because I have been at points where I have felt less stable in every other point of my life—like housing insecurity, vehicle breakdowns, income insecurity.

Those three things are actually functioning pretty well for me right now, and they’ve done so in less than two months. Like, I’ve been able to flip that.

So I’ve had success on that front.

And now the bike is the thing where I am not put together.

And so it’s almost like this cosmic joke—okay, I got the systemic barriers kind of covered right now (that could change at any moment; I’m used to that), but now the place where I usually put that energy is not available and parked.

And that’s, um, I think the more complicated part to solve.

I’m not educated in biomechanics, but I’m having to learn quite a bit just to get this solved. And because I’m convinced that there’s a lot more to be explored in my life, I refuse to kind of drop it—even though my body’s like, “Please give us a break.”

Which might be why I’m sick today.

I actually had somebody, interestingly enough, tell me yesterday, as I’m talking to Chat GPT, giving it all this material, trying to decide if $124 is worth spending on a new saddle (and the saddle on my bike has been the longest-running one for me; why has that spontaneously changed?)—he said, “Hey Genna, you’re in that scary mood again.”

And he was talking about how intense I get when I’m trying to figure something out.

When things get tough or complicated, I tend to not necessarily discuss those with other people, because it is a lot. AI doesn’t get overwhelmed with the constant influx of information that I’m having to feed it in order to self-solve.

So I take it to AI, and that takes a significant amount of my attention away from the outside world.

And so I started thinking about that too—like, how much of my social battery is being depleted because I am trying to solve something that is very complicated, and I can’t lay that down until it’s solved because it’s holding me back.

I’m not very good about bookmarking things and coming back to it tomorrow and saying, “Hey, let’s just chill out and have a good evening.”

It’s: I’m very wrapped up in, “Hey, can I get back on the horse and start producing again what I feel capable of?”

Not thinking about that—so that adds another layer of complication.

And so I think you could probably consider that an update on where I’m at right now.

I again only have two and a half months left until Mishigami, and it’s taken eight months to even get a semblance of progress. And I’m still currently unable to create the conditions where I can go ride the back-to-back 100-milers that I need to be doing right now to prepare for that race.

So I’m going to have to have things turn around for me within the next couple of weeks, or else I’m going to have to start thinking about how realistic chasing that race even is.

I’m also looking at the potential of using my other bike for this event. It is primarily paved, but there are some sections that are gravel, and I have basically zero flexibility on tire clearance on this other bike.

Which will make those sections a bit threatening—both from a comfort perspective and, you know, having tires that can tolerate gravel.

It’s also just not as compliant, not as smooth of a ride, especially with weight on it.

And so I’m concerned about the comfort of my hands—like, am I going to have numb hands from more shock being absorbed through my body because I don’t have wide tires?

There’s a significant amount of detail involved with considering races like this—or even races not this big—that isn’t visible to everyone unless you’re doing it.

And I am highly ambitious, but I’m also realistic about:

• what do I have at my disposal right now
• what are my weaknesses
• how am I prepared to accommodate those weaknesses in the unknown

And all of that is very much being tested by my equipment right now, and not my ability to adapt.

And that’s the difficult thing, because the equipment part is a lot less controllable for me than training to be capable of a long race.

And I think ultimately the most difficult part in processing this is: if I had more knowledge or more resources to throw at this, I could probably solve it—and then that would be fine. Then I can go ride and get myself physically adapted to this demand.

That physical training is the easier part.

And that’s hard to think about.

When I’m able to exit the brain fog of a very bad race yesterday—if you can even call it that—and being sick, I do have an upcoming blog post that I’m looking to finish.

You can probably expect a little bit of quiet from me for the next week or so while I try to figure out if Mishigami is even possible.

It’s not something that I can really set aside and focus on anything else at the moment. I don’t know if that’s healthy or not, but that’s where we’re at.

And so with that, thank you again for listening. I saw that last time this was pretty well received, and so I really appreciate you tuning in to listen.

We will talk again soon.

This platform has been transitioning from a sort of online diary for me into a concrete publication. Because of that, I will the machine. is as much a primary focus of mine as the life and thought that feeds its material. I continue to have regular site traffic even during periods that I don’t write and visitors deep diving my material weekly. I have to thank you again for your interest in my work.

The next three months are going to be dense. I am carefully ramping toward an 1100-mile race and will be balancing work, increased training on the bike, publishing regular essays, dedicated blocks working on Reorganism, pitching writing to outside publications to increase my reach, some short social media amplifiers, and managing sunburn.

I would like to ask you a favor. If any of my work has resonated with you, it would be incredibly helpful for my growth if you would consider sharing any of my material with others that you think may find it engaging. Expressing my internal experiences is easy—networking? Not so much. Subscribers also receive all of my posts in full directly in their email inbox, and it’s free.

Below are some pieces that serve as useful introductions to my viewpoints, and have been the essays that have travelled well:

Goin’ Up on a Tuesday: A Question of Ethics and Advantage for a Record Ride

Preview of Reorganism— The opening essay of my upcoming book.

Chiaroscuro— A psychological essay dissection my own cognitive dissonance.

Some upcoming works include:

Genna v. ChatGPT, where I show you how I discern AI-generating writing and scripts from creators who present it as their own material, and how I have used AI to analyze me through my own writing.

And a profile piece with Sarah Rice, the current women’s record holder for the Mishigami Challenge. I will be sitting down with her for an interview the day before I take the race on myself.

As a final note, I will be integrating my online library with my physical presence with an official jersey. I am open to potential sponsor logo placement for this season, so if you’re interested in affiliation with my projects, you can reach out to me directly with my contact form.

Funding for likely my only major official event this year is tight. I am self-funding necessary gear upgrades for a 6-7 day effort; as is discussed in It Catches You, an Incredible, Ghostly Rider, overnights at hotels are the best strategy at performing well at this event, and I am looking for assistance with those costs. I have a primary backer that is willing to match contributions up to a certain amount. If you’re interested in being a part of this story, you can reach out to me via the Contact Me page or Julie at jfkoirty@gmail.com.

And so, I raise my sword.

If you’ve wondered how I arrive at the decisions to write about some topics, or are newly encountering this blog, I sat down to talk about the following points tonight in free speech:

• Brief athlete background
• Personal code of ethics for my writing
• Philosophy of social autonomy > seeking acceptance
• The “observer” personality
• Why I continue to write publicly about sensitive material

Step into my office.

“You make everything a fight.”

Actually, I’ve realized I’ve tolerated too much again.

In summer of 2024, I moved out of my van and into a house with someone in a rural town. I had told myself that I always had the van as a backup in case that relationship didn’t work out. After having been threatened with removal and called “pathetic” for breaking down over the fact that I had to choose between abuse and homelessness, I used that insurance policy. I spent a couple weeks in a friend’s driveway before sending a cycling contact a text about my situation and was told “you can use the guest house.”

I had just started a new job after ten months of inopportunity. Two months in, my van became unsafe to drive and eventually broke down. I spent nearly three weeks taking the bike to work from the guest house while trying to organize a costly repair. Those 80-mile-per-day commutes crushed both me and my work performance, and my job cut my hours after my 90-day review. I came back to the house in shambles and asked the closest nearby support for help. I described the experience in tears to the homeowner, a friend, who had children near my age, and he told me he would not sit with me if I was going to only focus on the negative.

I was losing my already menial income again in a life where a van had been the most stable “home” I had ever had. I was still grieving having to jump from temporary to temporary over and over, trying to find a foundation that didn’t require concession to control, but in that moment it translated to “Hey, this is a boundary of mine.”

You aren’t a person I can go to when I am coming apart. Okay, I understand.

Over the course of the summer, he encouraged me to go to school, to enjoy this time of my life because I was “being taken care of.” I was told I was “brilliant.” I was invited over for dinner with his family and on bike rides. I was told I was an “investment,” and was gifted a new bike frame to, in his words, “get you on a bike that matches the kind of rider you are.”

I was “being reparented,” he said. A man who had a reputation for being a voice of the community, once platformed me next to him, and rooted for the underdogs of the sport, also knew how much weight those words carried to someone whose parents had historically been chronically untrustworthy at best, and outright manipulative on the regular.

I started to exhale.

Another month passed and I got back to work at a horse farm that quickly taught me that I was not recovered. I struggled with continued burnout while trying to maintain my ultra dreams with a 300-mile time trial across the state that failed. I was still living in the guest house rent-free with a new roommate introduced to me by the homeowner. She was recovering from living in a small car for months, had no family support, and her husband was in jail. She was offered a room to get back on her feet. The homeowner told me that if it didn’t work out, he would cue her to move on with “I have offers on the house.”

But I was reassured that I would not end up back in my van.

One day, after about two months, I received a text at work from my roommate saying, “Come home please,” followed soon by a “Nevermind.”

When I got home roughly 30 minutes later, I saw two men leaning on my van with my roommate cornered in her car. I parked the loaner I had driven in the homeowner’s driveway and walked over.

“Please take your hands off my vehicle,” I said. My roommate’s husband, now out of jail, gave me the ol’ up-and-down as he stepped away and cloaked himself in smugness, while the 6-foot-something guy behind him had a general air of “Oh, f***.”

I locked eyes with her husband and asked “Do you want to explain what’s going on before I get it from her?”

“We’re just having an argument,” he replied in a small voice.

He wasn’t even supposed to be there. I told them both to step away so I could talk to the woman crying in her front seat. Her words told me a story of “not a big deal,” while her shaking voice and constant scanning for him as she talked to me suggested “this is not safe.” She left with him that night anyway, and I told her to let me know if she needed anything.

It was a week or two later when he was arrested again for assaulting her in a Walmart parking lot.

He was inevitably released again under a protection order they quickly violated, and she texted me while I was at work that “they were at the house just getting food,” and “I don’t want you to freak out.”

The rule was clear.

Since verbal boundaries were not effective, I took my safety concern to the homeowner. He sat down with both of us and provided a lecture, and soda, about how we needed to handle this amongst ourselves because he didn’t want to deal with “roommate drama.”

“Why is my safety concern being labeled as drama?” I asked. Her husband had a clear history of theft and assault in public. I knew from a lifetime of exposure to domestic violence how those relationships don’t deescalate in private spaces, and she was not interested in respecting the space.

But a wave of low rage came across the homeowner’s face as he snapped “Why don’t you just tell me how big of a piece of shit I am.”

He let me know that he could sell the house so his wife could have a new car, but he wasn’t. And if I felt unsafe, I could just leave.

The next morning, he left cash for us to go work out our issues over pancakes.

He had previously told me this was “your house,” and that I was “the bearer of the law.” Because he didn’t want to be bothered, I delivered to her a 30-day notice to vacate myself, and she mostly avoided the house except for brief stops to pick up belongings. She showed up with her husband again, and I called the police to report him for trespassing. I had to leave for work, but the officer kept me on the phone while he viewed the man’s record and called for backup before going to the house.

He told me the previous warrant had been reinstated, and understood why I was concerned. He called me back later to let me know he was back in custody.

“Drama” was conspicuously missing in the officer’s language.

_____

The arrangement in the house was ever-moving. The homeowner and his wife understood rent was a tall order on barely $1k a month, and my pattern was one of being stuck in positions that expected self-sacrifice for low pay (see The Thoroughbred), or were built on inconsistent management structures that notoriously viewed me as a liability (I speak to problems directly, see… literally anything I write).

“I’ll get my pound of flesh,” he said when I verbalized the concern that I couldn’t bridge the gap. We worked out odd jobs for me to help around their house with, then the communication would stop. One day, he asked me to come over again for coffee, and among other things he said, “I’m not getting a return on my investment,”

and shortly thereafter,

“I’m spending too much time alone.”

Dear reader,

Because I write publicly about my own experience, the disclosure of others’ personal material does not weigh heavily on me. I live at depth. Oxygen is rich there. I feel a sense of honor to be a person others feel safe with in than zone.

So, when the homeowner eventually had me sit in his room, on a couch by the door, for another conversation where I said very little, disclosed how “women no longer look at me with awe,” and “my wife gave me permission to have a girlfriend,” I categorized it as objective.

I was raised by a 101st Airborne Brigade veteran, am almost unnervingly independent, and tend to be more suspicious of validation than flattered by it. I am serious, reserved, and view myself as “neutral” in presence and appearance in most contexts.

He said I’m a friend. This isn’t pointed at me.

I received it the same way the two other times I remember hearing that same statement.

The comment about how I was nice to ride behind, how he thought horseback riding boots were attractive and was looking for me a pair (I no longer rode horses), calling me a “slut” when I shared I was dating someone within the local cycling scene, and references to how big he was were all innocuous beneath being called, “buddy,” “stud,” and “not prey.” I laughed most of it off.

He’s a little out-of-touch, but I can trust him.

I thought I was especially unobjectified by being told I was “harder than ten men,” with irritation when I was firm at an auto parts store for them not honoring a warranty. “I do business in there,” he then said.

He’s concerned I made him look bad?

I also just did not want to see the boundary probes from somebody in control over the roof over my head.

He’s been helping me in a huge way.

And being transparent about my discomfort was a non-option because I had already seen how he responded when challenged.

I started to hold my breath.

_____

I used to get invites to rides early. Then, I got them 10-minutes before roll time.

They stopped when I asked for a little extra notice.

As was asked of me, I found a solid potential new roommate and sent the homeowner a text with the update. He replied, “That’s good news. We are also considering a couple offers. Was planning on talking with you.”

A couple of days later, I was summoned to his house and greeted with a general air of excitement over his new bike. He delivered the details of multiple options for the fate of the guest house, and transitioned into a monologue about his racing plans. He invited me to the race the upcoming weekend, and I replied, “I can’t really focus on racing right now,” as the reality that the arrangement was ending was sinking in.

“Good,” he said.

And at some other point in a conversation about my housing transition, he stated “I am not getting my dream car, or chasing my dream girlfriend, I’m going to race my bike.”

The studio space in his own house he had previously mentioned as a safety net was presented now as an almost-forgotten afterthought. I also knew by now getting closer in proximity to this person was a very bad option.

Acknowledgement of my newest problem was condensed into one sentence amongst over an hour of his own goals.

“I’m sure the news doesn’t help.”

You have to notice where light isn’t to appreciate the entire image.

_____

That weekend, I did go to the race just to support my new partner.

The homeowner greeted us both once, and we returned the gesture. But later, he rolled up to us again, and said, “Are you mute today, Genna?”

That is bait. Do not take it.

“Yeah,” I said, flatly.

I could see his tension rise, and as I continued to stay unengaged in casual chat with someone whose decisions and words were now in stark contrast, he quipped,

“I just thought I’d say hello,” and rode away throwing one arm in the air.

I’m not really your buddy anymore.

_____

The willingness to trust is a manual practice after the environments of my earlier life. That work is why being more discerning when contradictions appear is a reflex.

The cold whisper at the back of my mind says I still believed too soon. I’ve been told I focus on the negative, yet the pattern of my own dissonance rests in everything I have given the benefit of the doubt.

When unspoken expectations surface, grand gestures start to feel less like support and more like trespass.

This is yet another thing I have to recover from.

And if you’ll excuse me for just a moment here,

while I continue to reach for more than countless rug-pulls have allowed,

I take that shit personally.

This essay is accompanied by an audio version below. Additional spoken commentary is included at the bottom of the page.

“It does not bargain with you. It does not compromise. If you don’t respect it, if you fight back, you lose. You fail. You are not safe.”

I understand. I hope you will forgive me for working against you, Genna.

_____

On July 11th, I will begin my attempt of the 1100-mile Mishigami Challenge – a complete circumnavigation of Lake Michigan, beginning and ending in Chicago.

In 2024, I began the inaugural Rule of 3 200 and retired at mile 70 around 1:00 a.m.

In 2025, I made it to mile 170 of the first Central Missouri Circuit and called for extraction after another overnight that robbed me of all faculties.

Later that year, I stopped 163 miles into my solo attempt to ride border to border of the state inside of 24 hours, again coming undone before dawn without recovery.

On the contrary, I rode from St. Louis to Louisville, KY, 420 miles solo in five days. I was morbidly uncertain I could pull it off, but arrived at the Ohio river feeling something like… “that’s it?”

And finally, I rode 465 miles through the heart of Missouri to intercept Lael Wilcox in the final days of her Around the World record attempt. The plan was five days again. On day 4, I wanted to be home and rode the remaining 189 miles at once. That was my strongest and best feeling ride of that trip.

I think you can see where I am going with this.

As I have previously written in Depths Too Dark, the cognition of a trauma-adapted mind seems to interact poorly with the circadian disruption, heightened risk perception, and lowered emotional processing in the overnight hours of ultra events. In my last attempt, I made the critical error of thinking that limiter could be bartered with and more simply, I just didn’t want to accept limits.

I kept trying to force myself through races that struck every single weakness I have, and experienced shutdown every time.

1100-miles, on the other hand, is incredibly too long to be that negligent, and history suggests my legs get better with age.

The distance was never the problem, and neither was I; this format simply did not work for me.

In races past, I have unknowingly simulated the same survival states I have had to navigate off the bike. A chronic, internally decimating sense that anything (or everything) could fail at any moment and I have no safety net. An ever-nagging, unrealistic standard to remain entirely independent, trained into me early by parents that said things like, “I can’t help you with that. I don’t get anything out of it.”

As it turns out the unconscious does not differentiate between being broken down in a vehicle you live in and a dark bike race where help would actually disqualify you. It reacts to threat the same for both.

The attitude of “just keep pushing” is both necessary and a confrontation of all you cannot handle alone in the middle of the night.

Meanwhile, the fastest woman at Mishigami to date describes herself as a “diva” and stays in hotels every night. (An interview with Sarah Rice is on the calendar.)

Of all the things I want to prove still, whether or not I can make it through anything isn’t on the list, really.

I just want to see how hard I can ride without arguments with demons that seem to come out only at night.

_____

This story is ongoing. I am fortunate to have support for this plan right out of the gate. If you would like to contribute to additional equipment and logistics needs for this event, you can contact Julie at jfkoirty@gmail.com.

uh, Podcast?

On a quiet street, a lone figure approaches a weathered Victorian home. The roof over the porch is sagging, the paint peeling, boards and railings brittle and bleached from countless lonely summers. Along the roofline, gargoyles are perched, and all are missing their heads but one. The surviving creature looks out into the lawn, its mouth gaping as if cast in stone the moment before cataclysm.

The figure steps carefully toward the delicately carved double doors with a large moving box in hand. They step inside to survey the molding ceiling, the bubbled wallpaper, and the fireplace caved in on itself. A large hole in the floor groans in the corner as the wind creeps beneath the house. After setting the box down softly, they begin to pull out collectibles of bronze, glass, and light. They set sculptures on the dusty mantle just as golden hour licks them through the windows. An exotic rug is rolled out in the foyer. A replica of a Van Gogh is mounted over cracked plaster.

Someone from next door delivers a vase of fresh roses with a card that reads “I’m so sorry for your loss. Welcome to the neighborhood.”

And the figure places the flowers in front of the hole in the floor as the moving truck pulls up to the curb.

“But where light is sourced and directed is the marginal part of the picture. You have to also notice where it isn’t to appreciate the entire image.” -10/18/25

1. Transistor Radio

I spent one night in a youth shelter after insisting to my case worker that I needed to be out of the house. I remember nothing about the conflict that drove me to that conclusion, but it’s arbitrary against the longstanding pattern in that environment. 

The building felt sterile, detached, and the other wards of the state were like cold little lab mice. Their immediate needs were met, but there was something missing for all of them. I was allowed very few belongings as I was placed into a white room with the door left open, and harsh light beaming in from the hallway all night. Any younger and I could have confused this place for prison.

The next day, it was determined that there was no verifiable reason for me to remain outside the home, and I was brought back. I climbed out of the car, somber, tense, but watching. It was then that one of my parents said something to the echo of “Are you done throwing a fit?”

I pulled my brand-new glasses from my face and shattered them against the concrete stepstone.

I looked my dad in the face as he stood entirely still in the yard. Within moments of his teenage daughter returning from the quieter of two oppressive places she did not feel safe, a man who was known to react aggressively and engage in frequent, looping fights with anyone who reflected him negatively was in one of the calmest states I had ever seen him. He didn’t ask why I was upset, or even what was wrong with me. Instead, he watched me snap in silence and without expression as if I was a dog on a chain.

The person with the real power need not flinch.

_____

My mom and I were engaged in another loud conflict in the living room one evening. I saw her as the central antagonist in a household where arguments would accelerate quickly, and as I grew older, I would point at the behavior that only seemed designed to provoke reaction. One moment she’d be light and engaged in banter. The next, she would go unresponsive to a comment or a quip, and my muscles would calcify. From here, she’d scoff, or narrow her eyes at me, and sometimes, my dad would respond with a grenade, like

“What is your problem?”

And the whole room would go up in flames—each of them spitting fire until she would retreat to her room for the night, either before or after something would be thrown, broken, flipped, or I would step into the middle. It wasn’t effective, but I was growing into someone who could not remain idle. When I raised my voice at her, she’d at least be pulled out of combat with the person with the record of physical violence and take it out on me instead. I’d raise my shield as she’d shrill about how little I knew, how “sarcastic” I was being by speaking up. 

Even as I was dead serious. 

During one particular fight, though, something I had said struck a nerve deeply enough that she stepped closer to me than she ever had. Rage consumed her face with those narrowed eyes encircled red. Like she had tripped a wire, I slapped her on the cheek for the first and only time. As my mind screamed that I had just made a critical misstep on hostile soil, she froze. Her face softened slightly, in a way that seemed to say this isn’t what was supposed to happen.

I don’t remember that I was ever disciplined for that, yet I had been for much less.

During this same period, I do remember the exact moments when I would begin to cry as her verbal assaults landed on me, and the first night that I did not. She lost authority over my emotions once I stopped showing them to her. The pause was palpable then, too.

As my power over myself grew, she became even less predictable. Even as I can hardly remember the subjects of our arguments now, there is but one appeal I made to her as I tried to contact the part of her that was still my mom. 

“You’re supposed to be our role model!” I shouted.

“No, I’m not!” she yelled back.

The command over who I was going to be,

was permanently forwarded to me,

as my dad became oddly docile on the couch.

_____

In late winter of 2013, when I had turned 18 but had not yet finished high school, my parents kicked me out after another dispute. I moved in with a boyfriend I had only had for a couple of months, and his family. Not long after that, my dad called me and said that I could return. But I had noticed that there was again no trace of awareness that anything about their behavior was a problem. They spoke like I had been forgiven.

So, I said no. I knew this was not a misunderstanding, and it would not be a one-off event. Now, I had no legal protection from a roof over my head being contingent on my silence.

My dad said he’d give me the documents to the car that my grandpa had given me once I had insurance in my name, but the insurance agent could not issue a policy without the documents. He only gave them to me once enough pressure was applied from other adults. 

After all of it though, he told me I could not say I was kicked out because I was given the chance to come back, and I chose not to. The sharp, quiet little voice rolled in like smoke through the cracks to the sound of this is your fault.

And my mind called all available forces to the front line.

“Through the ether, my peace is dispelled by the wrath of How Dare You, an invisible cobra that spits venom anytime I remember what I had and through it recognize what was stolen.” –If You’d Known Me When I Was Older

“The ground keeps moving. The snake moves beneath black dunes and I am immobile with my blade across my chest.” –A Foundation of Sand

“Something is changing. My base isn’t sand, it’s… magma.” -A Letter to My Readers

And Mount Etna is covered in snow.

_____

I don’t write what I feel, but what I observe. I don’t just watch what is happening, but also how it implicates everything around it.

I learned the value of this early. Emotional appeals did not prevent the chaos I grew up in, but staying tuned to how a room operated let me parse what was mine and what was not.

Stating things plainly also let other parties know I was not manipulable. The fact that this habit made me the target of displaced blame changed nothing, because I had to choose between being sane and being liked.

_____

Saying the quiet part out loud isn’t necessarily a trait I need anymore, but it is what makes my writing effective. What remains felt but never spoken for many is on auto-dictation for me. Every once in a while, I write something that I think should be obvious while also weighing the chances that it doesn’t make sense to anyone else.

Those essays predictably garner the fewest website reads and are forwarded via email at 3-4x my subscriber count. That is exactly what just happened with We Interrupt This Program.

My social media links get very few likes. My follower count is not climbing. I rarely receive direct feedback to anything I produce, and the almost silence could be mistaken for indifference. Internet culture trains you to take all of this as a hint that, Honey, you ain’t got it.

And then, I zoom out and see that people come back steadily month after month, whether I’m publicizing some big project or not.

In a world consumed with hype and reaction, my material is taken underground.

_____

This is a statement of trajectory.

I am aiming to have the manuscript for Reorganism finished by June. I do not know what to expect from the publishing process, so I can’t estimate a timeline for that yet.

This season, I will step back into criterium racing, then switch engines to target the Mishigami Challenge in July and take another run at the Katy Trail FKT.

The blog will continue to serve as both an ongoing documentation of my pursuits as a cyclist and a backbone to a long-range career as a writer and a speaker. I had planned this as my objective after attending college for the first time, but I was spinning tires with the bureaucratic process of even getting admission. This thing has traction now.

If you want to support my growing body of work, there is a link to my Patreon in the navigation bar. Subscription to the blog is always free through email, and Patreon is where you can help me keep it free of ads as well as access additional spoken content at least once a week.

I turn 31 this week, and I’ll spend that day doubling down on motive. Last season wasn’t what it should have been, and I learned countless words and actions that do not work for me. I’m memorizing the ones that do as we speak.

If a friendly gesture that is not returned is followed by a negative reaction, what was the real intent?

_____

In 2023, I was almost exactly in the middle of my first fastest-known-time attempt when I passed another rider stopped on the edge of the trail. Minutes later, this same person rode up next to me, looked over, and started to speak. I didn’t hear what they said, but replied,

“I really want to ride by myself today.”

This person looked at me for a moment longer and then dropped back, without protest.

On another solo ride, someone else approached me from behind and settled into my draft, without a word. After a moment of internal deliberation, I silently turned up the gas until I was on my own again.

While chatting at a trailhead with a friend at the end of another ride, a stranger approached us with questions like, “Where are you ladies headed?” and at one point, physically stood between her and I. This individual took the cue from my minimalist replies, in sharp contrast from my friend’s warmth, and went on their way.

These three interactions prompted an appeal on a relevant, regional Facebook group where I asked that, as a collective, it be considered how we welcome ourselves into close proximity to unfamiliar people without invitation.

I looked back hours later to see that the post had gone just a little viral, garnering over 300 comments with reactions all over the map. A significant number of people understood my point, while another group pointed out, fairly aggravatedly, that people were just trying to be nice, while simultaneously mocking my decision to say anything about it.

I received one direct message reading, “Go back to Indiana. In Missouri, people are friendly.”

_____

Here is my position. My work regularly carries a priority theme of autonomy and social agency that challenges cultural norms. I am regularly misread, and the following is written from that perspective.

_____

I came across an Instagram reel recently that followed this premise—a cyclist encounters another, greets them, and responds with satirical grievance when the other rider does not respond.

The comment section mostly stays at the same level of humor as this creator. Some examples of those that break that pattern are:

“Those are passive haters.”

“People should be less afraid to be positive.”

“I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. They probably had earbuds in.”

“Not sure what some people’s issues are. Being nice costs nothing.”

In my case, it’s,

I am able to think the most clearly when on the bike, alone, and I don’t experience greetings from strangers as mundane pleasantries. Instead, they feel like,

*Snap*

“Pay attention to me.”

I wave, or nod, or exclaim, “Hello!” to those I recognize when I am not in that zone. When I am, and I choose not to break it abruptly, it’s implied there’s something wrong with me.

But I don’t keep score if anyone responds or not.

_____

Professional cyclist Jonas Vingegaard crashed earlier this week, on a solo training ride, while attempting to create space from an amateur rider that was following him.

A quote from the fan was published in an article posted by IDL Pro Cycling on MSN.

“Jonas crashed when he tried to drop me at the Queen’s Fountain, and when I stopped to ask how he was, he got angry with me because I had followed him. I don’t do this for my work; I’m an amateur like most people, so I don’t understand his anger as a professional.”

This scenario echoes current and historical discourse around fan interactions with public figures. What I see in them are larger, more news-worthy examples of the same social assumption that operates within my above anecdotes—you are assumed available for interaction any time you are in public, and narrated as the questionable party if you respond against that expectation.

In this article, fellow professional rider Paul Penhoët asks the following question:

“Why don’t they just ask if we mind them staying close?”

_____

I have proposed this same idea before, with the caveat that a person’s honest answer, or lack thereof, be accepted even if it provokes internal disappointment.

The brain has a predominantly unconscious process of sorting behaviors into “positive” and “negative,” or if you’re more critically minded, “it depends” buckets.

They said “Hello,” let me sit at their table, join them in their workout, have a conversation with them at work, so they were nice.

They did not reply, declined conversation, said they were not comfortable with someone being so close to them, so they were not nice.

But an honest response is not good or bad.

It just is.

It means that forward motion is authorized internally.

The mantra predates this blog by nearly a decade, and for most of that time, it primarily revolved around bikes.

But I have determined more recently that it’s also the language of a self that has always operated from endogenous permission because the authority structures in my life were historically sources of harm. Seeking support, guidance, or simply conversation from the real world was unreliable and cause of conflict, so I stopped.

And even more recently, I’ve become privy to the idea that when I remove the firewall by writing or speaking to a group, I encounter the very agreement between inner and outer worlds that I was denied as a child.

The one that, if it had been present the whole time, might never have driven me to look so closely at me.

The fact that I am so cerebral means that I am frequently a cat that keeps to the edges in public settings. That is, until I am asked to speak to them.

I have had the privilege to speak to regional civic clubs on four occasions now, and have been able to see the live impact my material has on people that I can only view through confusing website statistics with my writing.

“Firstly, thank you for having me in to speak to your organization today, because in doing so I am getting to fulfill a childhood purpose.”

Knowing, in my young torment, that one day I wanted to express what I learned from my experience, through watching how behavior operates in a family structure well before I should have had to understand that, and now actually doing it,

is something I am going to be chewing on for… possibly forever.

And when I contradict myself by being outspoken in some settings, and quiet in others, I’ll say,

so is the weather station at the summit of Mount Washington.

When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I answered that I wanted to be a jockey. But I was the tallest kid in my class by the fourth grade, so even then, I quickly accepted where I did not belong.

When I was still new to bike racing, a fellow cyclist that worked as an exercise rider in Kentucky showed me a door if I wanted it.

But in that world, just like any that revolves around horses, balance and momentum are ironically the first to be sacrificed if you want to stay employed.

I decided to not set myself up to fail.

_____

I am speaking to another local service club tomorrow and I know that amongst the questions I’ll receive after condensing a decades long story into 20 minutes, I’ll again be asked,

“How do you support yourself?”

And I’ll have to answer the same way I have been, with some version of “I’m scraping by,” that makes less and less sense to both me and the room the more people I meet.

Last winter, I was called to interview for a receptionist job. I sat across from a hiring manager that asked me more questions about who I was than about what was on the impossibly weak résumé on his desk. At the end of that interview, he said “I really want to offer you the position right now, but I’ll be honest, I’m worried you won’t stay. I think you might be better suited to a sales role here that you would be more engaged in, but we don’t have an opening at the moment.”

It was the most complimentary way I’ve ever been written off.

_____

An online cycling publication recently replied to me that they are interested in article contribution from me after I sent a pitch in my current period of unemployment. This is number 3/4 that has responded with a soft green light, but there remains a caveat.

Accompanying photo quality is paramount, and I have a $200 phone at my disposal. My participation in races this season already has a question mark next to it from a resource perspective, as is usual. A real camera hasn’t been on that list.

_____

Last summer, my van went down and I spent weeks riding 80-miles-per-day to a job that inevitably cut my hours back for performance issues. I couldn’t continue sustainably.

Then, I worked for another horse barn that fired me on-the-spot for calling out for fatigue. That was undoubtedly residual from season-long burnout that also knocked me out of racing (and feeling like myself) for the rest of the year.

The résumé now tells a story of a person that has predominantly physical work experience, quickly fades while there, and does not stay anywhere very long.

The Reason for Leaving line isn’t a friendly box for the truth, “Working under chronic survival conditions while still reaching for higher rungs” if you expect even a preliminary interview.

_____

This fall, I intended to pivot toward being a student instead, to which a university said, “Only prospects who graduated high school after 2020 can apply without test scores and yours from 2012 are no longer valid. You’ll have to retake the SAT at 30 or enter through the community college door that will require significant commute time to meet all prerequisite coursework.”

Okay, thank you for letting me know.

I look over my digital shoulder at the quietly growing readership that comes to this blog—the sprout of a long-range career focus that I already intend to build with or without credential. I think about how manageable it would be for me to manage work, courseload, commutes in my 13mpg 41-year-old van, ultra-endurance endeavors, and maintain even basic interpersonal relationships without unconditional family support.

And I wonder if I could be as present with them there than somewhere shoveling horse sh** in all weather for minimum wage while my mind mistakes the requirement of zoning out in monotony as existential threat.

_____

Meanwhile, I’m mirrored as “brilliant” by some parties while the thoroughbred throws itself into the bit and I have but one forefinger on the reins.

She’s coming into the final furlong with a rider that can’t stay with her.

The crowd will praise the jockey for the good showings,

and call an inquiry if something looks amiss.

The number one rule in equestrian sport is “It’s never the horse’s fault.”

May God have mercy on the rider who is put on the wrong one.

So, if you know of anyone who has the right one—

Through the Fog on the Harbor, I come to port.

_____

Someone told me recently that it surprised them that I still care what anyone thinks. I replied,

“What people think of you informs how they treat you.”

I spent so much of my life in waves pulled upward by the storms of people that quiet waters served only as a brief respite—time enough to reinforce the hull again in a frenzy.

I told them that, “If I get to a point where I don’t feel like I have to worry about that anymore, I’ll be-“

“Unstoppable,” they said.

I was going to say, “The Joker,” but I digress.

_____

I landed here by accident. I moved the van from Illinois to Missouri’s capital in the middle of the night with no plan in 2024. I drifted for a few months before moving to the rural town of Salisbury for nearly a year, and came back to Columbia in the van desperately clinging to agency I felt I was losing.

I had lived on the edge of three major cities in that van, and in all of them, passing vessels were indistinguishable from serpents at a distance. And in return, I was only identifiable as the transient.

But here, I started to see beacons and flags raised by those in range, and I signaled back in a language that more of them understood than I had experienced before.

I’ve come into the harbor reconciling how “Hello” sounds more like “Welcome,“ than “You’re not from around here, are you,” in recent months.

What may be a gentle coastal wind for many,

is loud like cannon fire for me.

So I prepare to make fast, before I truly even know what the hell that means.

“Fake it ’till you make it,” does not work for a person whose survival has depended on orientation to cold truth.

And I’ve already received my rejection letter from the Dissociation Association.

_____

The person I was riding with that day pulled ahead up the climb, and I felt my body raising its fist at me despite both of my hands staying on the bars. I throttled down and said, “You’re okay. Stay with me.”

During this ride, I had been thinking about impending change I did not want. I was looking loss strait in the face even as the power to choose otherwise was firmly mine. Yet between the relief of getting out on the bike and the confrontation of reality that could afford to wait for those two hours, I descended. And as I crested the hill where my friend had paused to wait, I held an entire reckoning behind an unaffected face as I said, “I’m holding back a meltdown again.”

I am permitted to ignore nothing.

I remember how my previous boss spoke over me as I shared something in earnest by saying, “You have to compartmentalize.” I have met more people that are downright professional at this than I can count.

I know well that between the hours of 9:00 and 5:00, you must shelve yourself for the sake of the job. Life is not happening during the day. If you can narrow your focus like a laser to the task, there are no problems to solve until you’re relinquished to be human again.

Yet I also understand that if I had learned to do so, I would have had no defense against inheriting blindness.

I would not be a person I can live beside, and speak to without torment.

_____

My investment in writing Reorganism came from observing my habit of interrogating complexity—witnessing opposing truths operating in tandem and in combat.

Emotion versus logic.

Movement versus statis.

Watching versus looking away.

None are reliable rules; all are unannounced variables.

I’m not sure I’m willing to shut down the lessons just to appease the most efficient one.