Very tempted to use a Celine Dion song for this title.

I’ve been trying to write this post for the better part of a year now, but haven’t really known where to begin. I love words — and we all know that I use a lot of them! — but even so, there are some concepts where it will just never not be tough to strike the right note.

The very first thing I have to acknowledge is that we athletes are so phenomenally lucky. This is, truly, such a privileged life. I have food, shelter, clothing, a ‘day job’ that (usually) doesn’t consume me, and I get to spend hours every week training to become better — because it fulfills me, because it’s nudging me to learn and grow as a human, and because if I ever want to see how good I can truly get, this is the time to make that push. This is what I would want to get up and do every day even if there were no such thing as competition with other people, just because of how much the process is giving to ME. The day that that stops being true is the day that I’ll need to shift my priorities.

But there’s a flip side, and that’s the part about which I find it difficult to speak honestly without inadvertently negating the above paragraph. Because striving to become a high performer is also ridiculously difficult. Beyond just the physical exertion and muscular recovery, it is emotionally exhausting. Anything to which we fully commit — anything we truly love — is going to be that way. And it’s tough to find the right words to talk about it being hard, while ALSO simultaneously acknowledging how incredibly fortunate we are to have the time and the resources and the drive to live this way in the first place.

I even reached out to Chasing Excellence (episode #108) to see if they might have insight; while they did give me a good giggle by aging me up to a 57-year-old, they also mashed my question together with one from a teenager, and spent most of the podcast addressing ‘how to ignore the haters’. Which wasn’t really what I asked. I mean, I’m 36 years old (or 57, I guess, LOL), and I’ve had plenty of time to practice that part of it. I know what feels true and right for me, I know whose opinions matter to me and whose don’t, and I know how to filter my environment to support that.

My actual question revolves more around the ‘loneliness’ aspect of high performance. In short: to what extent is it inevitable, vs how hard should I be trying to do something about it?

I recently posted about singledom, and how I see it as having been an asset for me — not that I don’t want a relationship; rather, that I suspect I’ve learned and matured more than I otherwise might have by virtue of having spent these years this way. I’m independent and capable and I do all the grownup ‘adulting’ things I’m supposed to do, without question, because there isn’t anybody else to do them. I also genuinely savor my singledom — the freedom to come and go as I please, to eat and drink what I choose, to accept only the social invitations that I genuinely want, to see a movie or go to a show or take a trip by myself. I don’t have to take anybody else into account. When you’re single, you get to do things on your own.

But also, you HAVE to do things on your own.

Like when you walk out of work after an eleven-hour shift to discover a flat tire. Like when you’ve got a dozen bags of groceries in an uncovered parking lot and it’s pouring rain outside. Like when you’re seven hours into a road trip and so tired that you’re just not quite sure you’re safe to continue driving.

Or like when you contract norovirus at 2:00am in the middle of a Philadelphia snowstorm — when you are so ungodly sick that you pass out and strike your head on the bathroom floor — and when you come to, with a black-and-blue forehead, your tears aren’t because you’re sick, but because you are vulnerable and scared and acutely aware that if you hadn’t woken up, absolutely nobody would have known to come look for you.

Most of the time it isn’t nearly that dramatic. But that (unfortunately true) anecdote supports my theme: that there is a point where the logistical difficulties of singledom become emotional difficulties. Where the luxury of independence is outpaced by the loneliness of not being closely ‘known’ or understood. And that is the part that leaks into our athletic mindset.

I feel like I have to give a thousand caveats here. Yes, of course not every relationship is perfectly satisfying in this regard; yes, of course lots of people have family and friends who totally ‘get it’ and are enthusiastically supportive; yes, of course training partners (if you’re fortunate enough to have those) can be absolutely crucial in terms of making one feel less alone on this journey.

I’m simply saying that it’s possible to be both lucky AND lonely. Because there’s an inverse relationship between the things we pour ourselves into and the hurt we feel when those heartfelt efforts are misunderstood — or, worse, not ‘seen’ at all.

Example: my most recent training cycle was strength-focused — and it was really, really tough. Barbells were heavier than ever before. Everything was tempo. Sessions took 4-5 hours, to the point that I had to eat extra food mid-workout. To be clear: I wanted it and I loved it — it’s incredibly satisfying to look back six months and see that I’m now capable of managing far more volume and much heavier weights. I felt, and still feel, ridiculously accomplished. It was three thousand percent worth it.

But it was also a second job. By the time I’d eaten, trained, eaten again, done laundry, meal-prepped, and squeezed in some active recovery, any time off from my ‘real job’ had virtually disappeared.

That wears on a person, every bit as much as a 70-hour work week does. (Because that’s essentially what it is.)

And, in trying to explain that phenomenon, the vast majority of people will ‘hear’ it in one of two ways.

First, there’s the easy way out. “You’re working too hard. It shouldn’t make you feel that way. You’re overtraining. It should be fun. Maybe take a break.”

That’s the ‘gimme’ answer. And it’s also the wrong answer. I have a coach, I have a properly periodized training plan with regular deload weeks, and — most importantly — this is what I want to be doing. I chose this. I’ve chosen it for years, under all kinds of circumstances, and I keep showing up and choosing it all over again every single day. Nothing is fun all the time. In fact, the stuff that’s NOT fun is usually the stuff we’re proudest of in the long run. How many exams did you have to take in order to earn that advanced degree? When your kids were small, how many times did you clean up vomit or wake up at 2 AM with a hungry infant? You do the not-so-fun things because you accept that they’re part of something much bigger.

The people who respond this way are the people who — well-intentioned as they may be — don’t share these priorities and usually aren’t interested in really trying to understand them. They’re sympathetic, but not empathetic.

The second group consists of the people who only see where you are, not where you’re going. Sometimes these people are accomplished athletes themselves; in other instances, they’re armchair quarterbacks. But they see a number on a barbell today, a struggle with a muscle-up this week, a score on a metcon in this Open, and quickly assume that your effort must not really be that significant. These are the dismissive ones — the people whose fixed mindset extends to their estimation of those around them — who don’t see the thousands of tiny bricks that are coming together every single day. They assume one snapshot represents the whole photo album.

Both of the above groups could stand to benefit from #showyourwork, by the way — whether they gain insight, respect, or humility. Which is why I’m here in the first place.

And that’s also why I’m trying so hard, right now, to find the right words.

Because although you know those 2 AM feedings will yield a healthy, thriving child who brings you boundless joy — it’s also frustrating to go for months on end without an uninterrupted night’s sleep. Even though those grad school exams are leading to a degree and a career that you desperately want — it still sucks to have to consistently miss family obligations and social opportunities because studying is the priority. And one of the absolute biggest pieces of support — with school, with parenthood, with anything difficult — is the community. In school, you have classmates; you guys are all undergoing the same trial by fire. Parenthood, too, is common enough that friends and colleagues can commiserate and share camaraderie. And we all know one of the best things about ‘regular’ CrossFit is the community that it forges.

Yet, beyond a certain point — when striving to move to the next level — you’re doing it mostly on your own.

And so I think there must be a third group out there: the silent ones. At least, I assume they’re out there — the people who are assuming that I must have it all figured out, that I’ve got plenty of confidence, and therefore they don’t need to say anything.

And I can sort of see why they’d think that. I don’t see myself as a particularly good athlete (yet) — but just as I tend to focus on only the people who are better than I am, there are probably others who see me that same way. And, outside the gym, we’ve established that as a single person, I’m required to do all of my own ‘adulting’ shit — which actually makes it easy to prioritize the things that are important to my athletic performance. This isn’t to say that I do it all strictly and perfectly one hundred percent of the time — but people are often impressed by (what I see as) low-hanging fruit. I already know how to fuel my body to support my training. I already consistently get 8-9 hours in bed. I already drink my water and do my accessory work and take my prescribed rest days and get my bodywork. I’ve had alcohol maybe five or six times this whole year. I literally don’t know where the snooze button is on my alarm clock, or if it even has one, because I’ve never used it. There are plenty of other things that I’m terrible at (I don’t clean my house nearly enough; I struggle to keep plants alive; and don’t ask me — a licensed medical provider — about the last time I had an annual physical). But the food and the sleep and the recovery — these things are just not optional. These things support what is most important to me, and therefore these things are not hard.

But see — being good at your life is incredibly fucking lonely. Because, on the inside, I don’t think any of us ever FEEL any more capable than the next person. But if you aren’t visibly struggling — if you kind of have the basics figured out — people conveniently assume you’re fine.

And that is, in its own way, so much MORE isolating.

I still don’t have an answer to how much loneliness is ‘expected’ here, and maybe I’ll never quite nail that one down. But here’s one small thing I did figure out. I’m not sure where I ‘learned’ this, but somewhere along the way, I internalized the idea that I shouldn’t ever need any outside validation. I think it’s because I KNOW exactly how fortunate I am on so many levels, and therefore, I don’t feel like I have the right to ask for support. As much as we talk about ‘connection’ being such an essential human need, it still makes me feel pathetic on some level to have to actively ASK for it. And… I’m not sure I should be ashamed of that.

But if I feel that way, others probably do too.

So — y’all? You’re doing great.

Seriously. Everybody’s ‘hard things’ are different — but each of you is doing really hard things every single day. In case no one has told you lately — you’re crushing your life.

And if you think I am too… well — I’m just saying it’s okay with me if you want to let me know that once in a while. :)