It’s amazing how different people treat you not only when you lose, but when you lose bad. This weekend was a real eye opener of just how many shallow relationships I have in my life. People who could give a flying f*** about me as a person and were quick to jump on the bandwagon telling me how lazy and ungrateful I am.

I get it, I understand I haven’t been training hard enough and need to change. And I am going to change, but I’m also going to change the way I view a lot of people in my life. The thing is judo went from something I spent a lot of time doing, to a lot of who I am as a person.

So the lines between a professional career and my personal life have started to become inevitably blurred.

So this weekend was a big wakeup call.

I have a superficial relationship with almost every person I’m associated with in judo. I’m extremely ashamed of the way I fought this weekend, every person within earshot was telling me how “Ronda wasn’t here today. That person fighting wasn’t the same Ronda, it was someone else.”

Then please tell me, where was I? I didn’t even have to be at this thing, I would have rather been home in Santa Monica, so was I there instead? I’m sure it would have been a much better weekend if I was.

But no. That WAS me. I fought horrible, sometimes I do. People who are my real friends don’t care. They would be more concerned about asking what was wrong, was I okay after throwing up, whatever. Not telling me how I’m a lazy horrible person that needs to be dragged out to the back yard and shot like Old Yeller.

But I saw barely any of them this weekend. But I’m kind of glad things happened the way they did; not only do I see what I need to change in my training, but now I see much more clearly who actually has my interests at heart, and who is just a coworker.

I almost got seriously hurt a couple times this weekend, no one cared, they just cared about me not fighting well.

Well whatever, at least after this Olympics I’ll be able to take a step away from all this have the freedom to be much more selective in the company I keep.