Is it just a rut or (just) an existential crisis?
Is anyone else tired?
Also guys 🍿
Every year as the sun sinks earlier and the days feel darker and colder, I find myself questioning things. Whether training and competing like a full-time athlete is the right path for me. Whether I should be following a different calling, one that fulfills me in a different way.
I usually drop the training volume down a bit and fight through it until the motivation returns. Then, come spring, high on sun-fuelled dopamine, I’m loving life again and feeling grateful for trusting the process even when consumed by doubt.
This year, I’m back in that same rut. Except I don’t know if it is a rut, or something more. Perhaps I felt the exact same way last year? Perhaps it’s the same as seeing life through PMS-fogged lens that magnify the negatives and force you to squint to see the positives.
Then it passes, like it does every month, and you wonder why you felt so sad about things you hardly even notice most days.
Maybe that is the case, maybe it’s just a short-lived rut. But, also, maybe it’s an existential crisis.
As somewhat of a seasonal depressive, I tend to just carry on. I get out of bed every morning (albeit slowly), I still train, I still get my work done, I still function. But it’s like my body is there, whilst my mind is not.
I’m going through the motions, like I’ve rehearsed, but seemingly small every day tasks take a much greater effort. This inevitably leads to guilt; I’m lazy. Unproductive. I lack drive.
Logically I know this not to be true. I am extremely driven, arguably unhealthily so, when it’s something I’m passionate about. At school I sacrificed a social life, my health, my happiness, in the pursuit of perfect GCSE results. I got the grades, but I also got the most extreme case of burnout I’d ever experienced.
In the months that followed, simply going for a walk felt challenging and was enough to make me fall asleep after. When I reached A-levels, I couldn’t find it in me to go back to the place I’d been in mentally for my GCSEs. I still worked hard but I didn’t do as well because, mentally, I had checked out.
I started signing myself out of school as ‘sick’ in Sixth Form to go home and study there instead. Around my final exams I developed the worst acid reflux I’d ever had to the point where I was lying in a ball on the floor the day before an exam, whilst my mother anxiously asked if I needed to be taken to A&E.
Every time I turned up at school my anxiety reared its ugly head and the acid reflux accompanied it; a learned response to just seeing the building where I’d pushed myself to breaking point.
The pressure I put on myself was totally internal. There were no conditions placed on my performance, no external pressures that made me work so hard. Maybe it was vanity, maybe I was seeking some kind of validation. Or, more likely, it was a form of control. A way of clutching at some kind of stability in a world where everything else was slipping.
The mindset I had back then took me to such a dark, miserable place that I have spent the last few years trying and failing to feel productive again.
I channeled my drive into training because it gave me a purpose and it also earned me recognition. When I started out in fitness, I was a small, skinny kid. I didn’t fit into the fitness industry, other ‘fitness people’ were rude to me, or ignored me as if I wasn’t worth their time, but I was determined to earn their time.
CrossFit was a relatively new concept in the London area at the time, and I found it ahead of the curve. Stringing Ring Muscle-ups together as a 20-year old got me noticed and included. The hard work I’d put in had gotten me to a place that I’d wanted to reach, but more importantly I was enjoying training and I was eager to keep improving, keep impressing.
Now, it’s different. Perhaps if I was top of the game or inundated with offers from sponsors, it would seem more worthwhile. Yes I am an ‘elite’ athlete by most people’s standards, but the sport I choose to compete in is far from meeting professional standards and it does not pay the bills.
I can lift more than the average person, move my own bodyweight better than the average person, run faster than the average person, swim further than the average person, but, ultimately, I am not paid to do so.
The death of one of CrossFit’s finest athletes during competition this summer due to negligence (a term not yet legally decided but, in the eyes of this viewer, as well as others’, interpreted) has delayed the process of CrossFit gaining professional recognition further, leaving the upcoming season in jeopardy. This situation has pushed me to think about other interests I might want to pursue.
The standard of competitor in this sport is so high and, in complete honesty, I am just not sure I have what it takes, or even that it’s what I want. If not physically, then mentally. And I have really struggled to admit that because it’s scary.
It’s scary to consider that this might not be just another negative thought, but instead more solid than that, more formed, like a belief.
This in turn, has left me with some kind of identity crisis. I have spent the last 6 years building an identity around CrossFit. I don’t regret this, it’s responsible for a lot of joy and a lot of wonderful relationships in my life.
The problem is that I have poured everything into this cup, at the expense of other cups (please just go along with this metaphor) - I have built a reputation and livelihood from being @laurenifhunter, CrossFit athlete and Coach. No room for anything else. But maybe I don’t want ‘CrossFit’ or ‘athlete’ to be the first word that comes to mind after my name.
That begs the question: without being all-in on CrossFit, who am I?
So here I am, little old me, wondering what my other options are. Only 25 years old, but still feeling like I’m running out of time. Painting advent calendars in my spare time because it nourishes a part of my brain that has long been neglected. Researching Masters in Journalism because, surprise, I like to write.
Feeling scared of being seen to quit, embarrassed that I’m having some kind of quarter-life crisis when I’m privileged enough to have so many other options. Worried that the people I’ve met through CrossFit won’t see me the same way if I’m not just CrossFit anymore.
Often, when I feel down, I don’t respond practically. I don’t do, I hide. I bury my head in the sand because I feel overwhelmed, crippled by the prospect of any action and the fear of making the wrong choice.
But this time I am trying to seriously consider my options. Is it a slow process? Yes. I am tired. I want to rediscover my spark and I want to enjoy my training and competing, even if that means not doing it to the best of my ability or taking it as seriously.
I’m already planning some fun competitions to do next season - I love CrossFit far too much to ever want to quit - that I hope will help me to rediscover my joy for training.
CrossFit is about forming the well-rounded athlete and that’s something I love about it. But maybe it’s an approach I want to have in general life too, not just in sport. Maybe I’m OK with not being the best. Maybe I still want to be great at CrossFit and coaching CrossFit, but to also be a decent writer and creator.
So off we venture, on a new journey of self-discovery. Wish me luck!
P.S. I promise I’ll invest in a S.A.D lamp so that you don’t need to read much more of this depressing drivel x