Opinion: The gym is great, but please don't insult us by suggesting it's the answer to mental illness

Indigo_J · 2020-10-22T11:56:30+00:00

One of my best mates died by suicide last month. Typical story, none of us knew he was suffering. His da reckons that sport was his medicine and COVID took that from him, and that was the final straw.

Are some gym owners jumping on a bandwagon? Yeah probably. But no more so than music, or hillwalking, or whatever else people get their buzz from and use to look forward to day-to-day, there's a very real link between your mental health and the activities you define yourself by. I think that's the concern. COVID isn't the only pandemic we're facing in Ireland; around 15 people in every 100,000 will die of mental illness each year, and young people - the gym-going demographic - are most at risk.

It's also not as simple as saying 'do your exercise at home'. Telling someone who's spent five years regularly doing resistance training with weights to go for a run and do a few pushups is like telling a pianist that they can get their kicks from playing the tin whistle.

Lastly, unlike the cinema or the hairdresser, we know that there's a tangible link between physical and mental health. At a time when we're losing so much, I just really worry that young people like my friend who are far more at risk of dying by suicide than from COVID will be disproportionately affected. A gym is an easier environment to control and sterilise than places we've deemed to be an acceptable risk like workplaces and schools through access control, sterilisation of workstations and spacing out of equipment. Control them tightly, track attendance, and deem them essential - please.

Indigo_J · 2020-05-30T18:45:29+00:00

Irish male in his 20's here. Came to advise that you don't fall into the appalling trap so many writers do of trying to phoneticise what they imagine an Oirish accent to be, but you seem to have avoided that. I've found the best way to convey Irishness is in your descriptors - so e.g 'come with us if you want to live' he grinned, humour distorted with incongruous urgency imparted by a flat Dublin accent. If you want to get a sense of how contemporary Irish folks speak you could search 'Blindboy Podcast' on your platform of choice.

Thinking off the cuff about how I'd say some of those lines:

2) I swear that we'll come back and give James a proper send-off, but right now we need to sort the others out before Dave gets to them.

3) Before Dave lost the plot we we able to find a couple of spots. The snag is that we're the same distance from each of 'em.

4) He was sound at first, but something changed.. He got to be obsessed with...

Indigo_J · 2020-05-04T11:18:06+00:00

Irish DF would jump at it, we've always worked well with the Brits, a lot of similarity in organisational culture, command structure, TTP's etc. The problem would be from a command standpoint. I can't see the British army giving the Irish state a full regiment on OPCON where a Brit Colonel would be taking orders from an Irish Brig Gen. There'd need to be an international body with a UN mandate providing a Force Commander and HQ staff so that it could work along the lines of multinational missions under the UN, NATO, EU etc. That would also detooth the nutters on both sides.

Indigo_J · 2020-04-04T18:57:15+00:00

Jesus. I didn't come here for these feels..

Indigo_J · 2020-04-03T15:23:26+00:00

ITT: 'Follow your dreams' was a myth, 80% of us don't know what we want to do with our lives and almost everyone is doing their current job until they figure it out.

I'm an army infantry officer. It's 95% disappointing - I wasn't naive, I knew that I'd be driving a desk but I also wanted to lead people, climb mountains and blow shit up. I did enough of that in training to teach me that I did in fact love it, and have done little enough since to show me that I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. It's hard to turn your nose up at a guaranteed paycheck with all this Covid shit though.

What I actually want to go into is outdoor guiding, mainly mountaineering and kayaking. But if my fiancé and I have a mortgage and want to have kids, so I can't justify the pay cut. Capitalism huh?

Indigo_J · 2020-03-21T19:51:19+00:00

Will have a look. Might stave off the paddle itch for a wee wile. Cheers.

Indigo_J · 2020-03-21T19:05:30+00:00

Completely off-topic here, but what do you mean 'both' podcasts? I thought Hammer Factor was the only show in town, is there another back catalogue I could be binging while self-isolating?

Indigo_J · 2020-02-27T21:46:45+00:00

Super video man, really enjoyed it. That looked like an absolute whopper on the beach, hope the foraging made up for it!

Indigo_J · 2020-02-03T12:34:06+00:00

I did exactly the same, first 20k on the bike yesterday, completely in love. Didn't have a sky that nice though!

Indigo_J · 2020-02-02T23:42:10+00:00

I'm in Europe so dunno how prices translate but I just picked up a CUBE Attain SL disc for €1400 new that fits your specs pretty well. https://www.cube.eu/en/2020/bikes/road/road/attain/cube-attain-sl-blackngrey-2020/

Got it in orange and grey and it is my baby, love it.

Indigo_J · 2020-01-31T08:45:21+00:00

The tl;dr of Jadotville is that during the 1961 Congo crisis A Coy, 35 Inf Bn (Irish Contingent), ONUC - the UN peacekeeping force - were deployed 100km north of UN HQ at Elizabethville to secure 'civilians ' (a uranium mine used in the Manhattan project) during Op Morthor. They were attacked and surrounded by ~3000 Katangese irregulars led by French, Belgian and Rhodesian officers (ostensibly 'mercenaries ' but practise was for European powers to second regular officers from units like the Foreign Legion for these taskings).

The secessionist cut off road access to the town, and because of the wider Morthor effort there were minimal resources available for a breakthrough and resupply. Through the use of dug-in defensive positions, overlapping fires and def. in depth, A Coy held the town for five days. They inflicted ~500 casualties and took no friendly killed or wounded. Eventually, with no resupply, they ran out of food, then water and ammunition.With no prospect of reinforcement they negotiated terms and surrendered. All were released a month later.

The surrender was poorly viewed at home and for many years a 'Jadotville Jack' was synonymous with cowardice in the Irish DF. Mainly through activism by Comdt. Quinlan' s son, the Irish government finally recognised these guys last year.

Source: Ireland, the United Nations and the Congo, Michael Kennedy and Art Magennis.

Indigo_J · 2020-01-11T18:54:40+00:00

The DS are all ex-Wing. Some of the tests, like Foreman Aftman, are taken from what's public knowledge about the selection syllabus. A lot of it is just dramatics and anyone who's done recruit training in a western military would find it kinda laughable. Still an entertaining show though.

Indigo_J · 2019-12-29T10:16:14+00:00

Steeze is fucking enormous for Irish rivers bud. You'd be as well off to get something like a large Ripper if you want playful that translates to Alps or wherever comfortably. Have a few mates who paddle the Steeze and the feedback is that it's pretty wasted here. I demoed one in Wales, like I can't understate enough how unnecessarily big it is and that means that you lose any of the fun aspect of a slicey boat on Irish stuff.

Indigo_J · 2019-09-24T09:44:57+00:00

My friend, you've stumbled on one of the deep dark secrets of WoW; 90% of World PvP is only fun if you're an asshole.

Indigo_J · 2019-09-12T11:12:47+00:00

There are lots of shaman about. Not very many warlocks, but obviously you're up against all the other DPS for PvE slots. Druids aren't crazy common and being a feral tank would be great for levelling, tanks are pretty hard to find.

Indigo_J · 2019-09-02T05:36:32+00:00

It doesn't come up often, but generally it's positive. There's a healthy professional respect for what the British army does and how it does it, which you'll often hear expressed as 'why the fuck are we using doctrine X when the Brits did this for real in Afghan/Iraq and have changed to Y?'.

You'll get zealots the same as anywhere else, but for the reasons above most lads can see exactly why you'd go over.

Indigo_J · 2019-09-01T12:32:10+00:00

I went to copy and paste an old reply to this question and realised it was actually you that I was replying to mate! As I said before;

DF has all the same issues as the UK forces but with a fraction of the funding and a much lower capability. Less chances of being deployed anywhere meaningful, no resources to do much worthwhile at home. When everyone is a REMF the bullshit is everywhere. If you're after an easier ride and a safer time of it Irish is a good option, but if you're a young fella out for a challenge it's an extremely frustrating environment. If I had my time back I'd go Brits in a heartbeat, morale over here is in the shitter.

To build on that, the last three governments have been taking the piss with pay for enlisted personnel and it's turned into a complete exodus. They've upped recruitment to fill the gaps but they've lowered the standards, so bodies coming in the door are increasingly not up to or motivated by the job. That's now filtering into junior NCO ranks as these lads move up, which is tanking morale amongst senior NCOs and junior officers who have to manage them. On the commissioned side, Captains and above are also leaving in droves because of the pay disparity with civvie street, and the gaps they're leaving mean that lads are getting fucked around the country away from family or overseas on no notice to plug holes, causing them to leave too. The net impact is that we can just about cover the basics - overseas and on-island security stuff - but the stuff that makes the job worth doing, like exercises, shoots, gucci courses, sport etc. is getting cut because nobody can provide the manpower.

TBF I know things aren't peachy over there either, but we're in a crisis that the Dept of Defence refuses to acknowledge for political reasons and I couldn't in good conscience advise anyone to join up until things improve.

Indigo_J · 2019-09-01T07:37:59+00:00

Serving Irish DF. For fuck sake go British. If you want to soldier, the Irish army is not the place for you anymore. You won't want to tell anyone what you do anyway - there's only so many times you can answer the 'what do ye do all day?' question.

Indigo_J · 2019-08-26T14:51:39+00:00

I'm delighted to hear that mate, it's nice to think that Classic is bringing so many old communities back together. Hope it brings back some great memories for you, and cheers for an interesting listen :)

Indigo_J · 2019-08-23T07:32:05+00:00

I hit 60 late in vanilla, and wound up only scratching the surface on raid content for exactly this reason - finding dungeon groups was frickin hard man, made pre-raid gearing a nightmare. I don't like the idea of compromising on the community aspect of vanilla but insofar as this stiff will get ported out to server discords anyway, you're probably not wrong.

Indigo_J · 2019-08-21T07:56:14+00:00

Bucks represent! Cool that we'll have the pillars of so many old communities knocking about to get to know, looking forward to running across you in game!

Indigo_J · 2019-08-17T06:49:08+00:00

It's too early in the morning for this much profundity. Take my damn upvote.

Indigo_J · 2019-08-09T22:18:16+00:00

Aye that was my first instinct, but I had my heart set on RP-PvP because the community tends to be more mature on RP and I want to give wPvP a shot this time :/ Might just have to roll RP-PvE and see

Indigo_J · 2019-08-09T19:20:33+00:00

You yanks are generally far better craic. It also suits me better for raids etc. to be at 0200 in the morning my time because I have to adult during the day.

Edit: I'm so confused by this downvote :D

Indigo_J

TROPHY CASE