Hello Austin
New state, new hustle - it's a fast lifestyle. Be grateful for what you have when you have it.
I just moved to Austin on New Year’s Eve of 2021.
I thought of the move being before new year as an emblem of a new beginning and a period of transformation for myself. I am constantly brainstorming about ways to grow and to be more productive. I miss the days when I was just in the act of being. I’m trying to find more time to be, but I think in the timeline of our lives this will often come and go. I am growing to accept that is a part of how life works.
There should be a thing called productivity fatigue too, or maybe that’s just a synonym for adrenal fatigue. Our world is obsessed with productivity and how to optimise things. We want everything to be faster, easier, more convenient in this instant gratification culture of on demand and immediacy.
I know I would also find it meaningless to just ‘be’ everyday. It would be meaningless to have too much fun everyday too. I’m finding myself revamping my way of thinking about balance. I used to hate the word ‘balance’. I think what I hated about balance is the idea of balance being a 50/50 split, but balance really has an infinite amount of combinations. There is really no right or wrong way to balance, but what works best for you with your energy and life baggage.
My thoughts : Sometimes I think of my daily routine as really mundane and that it doesn’t change much from a day to day basis. I train most of the day or think about how to do better with my training. That is the model day of a professional athlete outside of trying to build a personal brand and make a living through some other means. If I invested enough time and energy into anything, it was always just going to be a matter of consistency. If I stayed consistent and didn’t miss too many days off from my practice, my efforts would eventually compound on top of each other and I would be somewhere more favourable than where I started.
Other people’s thoughts about that : I feel like most people have this perception of me always jetsetting around the world, never in a place for more than a few days to a week at a day. People think I live a very glamourous lifestyle just bopping around from place to place. It’s hard to see the hardships that I encountered on the road and what I gave up in the process.
The things that I gave up are definitely not complaints, but they are just facts that I have lost parts of my twenties that other people the same age were out and about experiencing. I have a bit of fomo now that I didn’t have back then when I was in the moment of doing what I loved. In retrospect, I do wish that I had more desire to have a variety of experiences but I have the utmost respect to my former self. I did what I really wanted to do at that time. It’s just I have now changed as a person, I have grown up and my desires have shifted along the way.
I liked that perception and image of myself for a long time. I have wanted to be known as a travelling fighter, exploring the world and finding out who the f*ck I am since forever ago. At present, I am changing with each passing day, I want to fully experience life in ways I thought I would never want in the past.
I find myself sometimes craving for more of the sameness on same days when I feel overwhelmed from having too many things to do. I want to have more time to focus on training productively towards my career goals. I feel like my head is super fickle about what it wants but it’s all of my own doing. I place the internal pressure of wanting to meet the demands of all the major competitions of my sport. I don’t know how to not get lulled into the calendar. I want to do it all, I want to have it all. I wish energy was infinite. I’m manifesting and I hope to receive.
I’ve thought about doing fewer things in a day but just at a higher standard rather than leaving things off of my to do list and being disappointed by it. I think a lot of my personal pain and suffering is really set up by my own personal mental framework. It’s a little disappointing to think to myself that I am really my own biggest problem.
We can think things into existence and also out of existence. Pain is all relative. Acceptance of things happening or not happening often seems like the best way to be and to move forward. I have been thinking a lot about this idea of acceptance lately. It’s not bad that things didn’t happen the way that I originally intended them to be. It’s quite like fighting if you think about it. You can very seldom predict how a fight is going to be from start to finish - you can only be and see what happens. Fighting is my metaphor for life.
I didn’t realise this until more recently but I often reject the reality of something not happening and I react to it. I would say this occurs much more often in a solo setting than a group setting. I feel some subconscious obligation to try and uplift a group and give hope to my group and community by being optimistic and looking for the silver lining. The silver lining has done so much for me in my life time so far.
I watched a video yesterday of Tom Hanks talking to some other successful actors and performers on a TV show. He shared his experiences of both good and bad things that happened to him and ended each sentence with ‘…and this too shall pass.’
It made me think about all the bad times in my life that I had been through. Those times all passed. I made choices and I kept living and I am where I am today. There were good times that I wished would last forever…and those did also pass. We cannot attach ourselves to the good or the bad moments, they just are. All of the future moments will also be the same way. They too shall pass.
I was in a car accident Monday evening. I was sat in the front passenger seat and got T boned by a car directly into my door. We didn’t even know there would be side air bags. I was beyond grateful to be alive in that moment.
Once that moment passed and I acknowledged I was still alive, I did still experience mild whiplash and the airbag did hit me in the head pretty hard. I had intense paranoia about developing a concussion in the days proceeding the incident. With that cocktail of thoughts, I still think to myself now - this too shall pass. Do your best, enjoy yourself with good company and max out on what life can be for you.