When was the last time you truly found a breaking point in
your life? A chink in your armor so to
speak; a weakness you didn’t think you had, or that you had hoped deep down didn’t
exist? It isn’t a happy place to be, but
this was where I found myself last week.
We have had some significant changes at work in the past month (just
google Dean Foods earnings release to learn more), which have manifested
themselves into a much more stressful work environment than we had before. This time of year always gets tough with
next year budgets and end of year targets that need to be achieved, but this
announcement has had a significantly larger impact than even I expected. In short, it has created an amount of
additional stress than I just didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with as I was
trying to build and peak for Xterra Nationals.
The stress and workload from work by itself is manageable, but in
conjunction with the expectations that I put on myself to perform well at
nationals, in addition to some big bets that Jaime and I are making with our
clinic and the stress that comes along with that, I found that I had overloaded
the systems drastically. This was not a
gradual increase. Honestly, it hit like
a sledgehammer. I had to adjust. I sacrificed the one thing that could be
sacrificed, which was my goals and experience at Xterra Nationals this
year. It is a decision that is sad, but
one that I can’t really regret, as I didn’t and still don’t see another option.
I am a person who can deal with a lot; A LOT. I nearly double majored in college in finance
and math. I like it when people say
things like “this is really hard” or “it can’t be done”. I take it as a personal challenge that must
be overcome. I saw this situation as a
challenge to overcome. Sometimes though
even the most experienced and respected mountaineers abandon their summit
approach when it becomes clear that to continue to pursue the goal blindly will
lead to unfortunate outcomes. I came to that conclusion a little over a week
ago. I found out that I had a chink in
my armor. It is apparently not as strong
as I thought it was. It was a week ago
Thursday that I finally decided to pull the plug on this season. I had missed every workout after the previous
Saturday. I was working long hours, and
finally on Thursday when I actually had time to get a workout in, I had no
motivation to do anything. I was
mentally beaten down. You see, these
days at work are not only long, they are intense. To create an analogy to training, these are
LT workouts all day long at work. They
will leave you spent if done too many days in a row without a break. This is where I find myself now.
This place I’m in now, and where I will be in for the
foreseeable future… The real question
is, does this type of life make sense for me?
Is this what I want in life? Can
I accept these types of interruptions in the life I want to live, whether they
be 2 weeks or ½ a year long? Can I
weather these in the name of a “comfortable” living? I think it may be more of a philosophical question
than one of practicality. Can I do
it? Yes, of course I can. Will I be happy with myself if I keep
sacrificing the things in my life that make me “me”? What is the benefit of this type of
living? I can become a better “consumer”
and buy more shit that I don’t need or want.
Sure, and the GDP will be thankful.
But will I become poorer because I have sold my soul for pennies on the dollar? I will be asking myself these questions until
I find balance in life again with myself and my job. Honestly, I like what I do. I couldn’t ask for a better company to work
for, and even more so, I couldn’t ask for better people to work with. Unfortunately, the nature of a job in
Finance, at least in my experience, is that it will many times challenge your
work life balance. To be clear, my
balance is really quite difference from most of the people I know. I consider balance being able to train for an
hour in the morning and the evening, working 8 hours a day, and spending the
rest of my day taking care of the small things around the house, maybe doing
some reading and having good conversation, preferable with my wife, family, friends,
neighbors, Tucker, or maybe as a last resort the tree if that is the only thing
that wants to converse with me at the time. Honestly, I know the answer, I just
don’t really know the solution.
I haven often described this situation as a trap (my mind
immediately goes to that crappy kids game mouse trap where you set up the most
elaborate trap that hardly makes any sense, but it actually does work). When you have no financial commitments in
life other than just making rent and buying groceries and paying a few bills,
you have “one wall” of the trap built.
When you have debts of any kind, you have 2 walls built. When you get married you have 3 walls built
by the simple fact that you have someone else that matters in your life enough
to consider them in the financial equation.
When you buy a house that is a dramatic change in your debt profile, so
I count that as wall number 4. When you
have kids, you get the top put on your trap.
That means you really are trapped.
You’ve got to keep slaving away at whatever you are doing in order to provide
for your family. The only way out is the
trap door at the bottom. That is a
philosophical discussion for another day. It may be an overly simplistic way to think of
things, but you tell me if you see it differently.
I hope I can find the answer to this dilemma. Until then, I apologize, but this blog won’t
have any posts about epic training sessions, ridiculous gains in fitness or
even good paleo eating. It will most
likely be deeper in philosophy about life, and whatever I need to get off my
mind and onto “paper”. Ironically, I
often write these posts down with good ‘ol pen and paper because I like to
actually write. I do hope to not become completely detrained
and out of shape, but it most likely won’t be worth talking about. Until the next post, good luck at nationals
to everyone going. Keep the rubber down
and go until you blow!
