Stress and Comebacks

June has been an intense month. I've spent most of it really stressed out and anxious. There's been a lot of waiting for change at work and it's been pretty unsettling. Both my boss, the director of our service for the last 7 or 8 years, and another employee, my good friend and mentor, are retiring in 3 days. There's a lot of uncertainty about the direction of things to come and I will be inheriting a lot of new duties. Not knowing who will take the director's place and there being a very real possibility that it won't be someone who has any experience in our field makes a lot of us really nervous about the future. That alone is enough to make me stressed out, but it doesn't really help matters that my mentor is a very beloved employee by our field staff and has been the go-to guy with all the answers for many, many years. I have very big shoes to fill and I feel that there is a lot of expectation for me. We've also been going through a server change-over for our main software package and working on a possible new project that could mean even more changes for me. I'm also taking over facilitating the training for new field staff and I'll have to be in Kansas City for two weeks straight this August. It's been a lot of waiting, learning, and trying my best to be calm and patient.

In the midst of all that was a semi self-imposed break from CrossFit and weightlifting that put me in pretty dark place feeling like I had no direction. I felt like I was losing my drive, my purpose, my outlet for stress relief, my source of happiness. I got myself attached to an attitude that if I didn't have to fuel my performance and workouts it somehow didn't matter what I ate anymore. Logically I knew this was wrong and terrible for me, but I started to not care again. I had high expectations and lofty goals that I would continue to be strong and workout on my own and do everything I could until I was able to get back to CrossFit, and it just didn't happen. Not only did I not maintain, I backslide and lost ground on the progress I had made, which just upset me even more and buried me a little deeper in the muck and mire of my unhappy place. I wasn't writing like I should have been to try and work this all out. I opened up my blog several times and just couldn't find the words.

I was finally able to get things in order and go back to CrossFit and for the first time in long time I felt like everything was right in the world again. Since January, with the exception of the Open, I haven't been involved in the CrossFit world or consistently going to traditional group classes. District CrossFit has two locations, NW and SW, and I'd been going to the SW location to use the platforms and work on Olympic lifting, mostly on my own, for the last 5 months. As much as I loved lifting, it was very isolating and I was feeling physically beat down. All the time. I really missed the group dynamic and the endorphin rush I got with CrossFit and when I had to pick one over the other, it wasn't as hard of a decision as I thought it might be. I decided to go back to doing CrossFit full time and also transfer back to the NW location as it is a more manageable walking distance from work. It's also where I started when I first moved to DC.
 
From the first night back I knew I'd made the right decision, but I also knew that the road ahead was going to be tough. Starting over is much harder than starting. I have to be okay with the fact that I'm going to struggle for a long time. My endurance and conditioning are pretty much non-existent. The weights and reps that I can do are lower than they used to be. Everything is a little (okay a lot) more difficult than I remember it being. It's hard to know what you were capable of not so long ago and not being able to match the intensity that you used to have. I'm sure I'll get back there eventually, but it's going to be a slow climb.


Even though I'd only been back a few weeks, several months ago I had signed up for a CrossFit competition that was held last weekend in Raleigh and I decided to go ahead and still compete. I know how much competition fires me up and my hope was that it would help keep the ball rolling in a good direction as I worked on restarting my journey. I also knew a lot of friends from home were competing too and I was excited to see and compete with them. I was surprised at what I was able to accomplish and happy that I didn't come in last (10th out of 11), but the weekend ended with an interesting and difficult conversation that I hadn't quite expected. I ended up driving home confused and conflicted, with a lot on my mind. I'm still sorting out my thoughts and I'm still not sure how I feel about everything. I hope I'm able to put it all into words soon, but I do think this conversation may have given me useful insight that I'm going to need in the next few months. It was upsetting and hard to hear, but I'm grateful that it happened. Sometimes the medicine we most need is difficult to swallow.

Good Day, Soul Shine

Today has been an alternating mix of gross and muggy and torrential downpour. The good news was that the times that I was outside today were only mildly muggy and the rain was light. Today started kind of crummy because I am still hurting from being on my feet all weekend at the Mid Atlantic CrossFit Regionals, couldn't make my bacon in the oven because the pilot light is mysteriously out again for no good reason, and then I left my ID and Metro card on my dresser and didn't realize it until I was all the way inside the Metro station, had to turn around and come back for them, and was an hour late to work. Basically I was having a Monday.

Wednesday I had a good day. Henceforth having a good day shall be referred to as "Having a Wednesday." On Wednesday I walked from DC to Virginia. It was awesome.

I almost had a bad day on Wednesday because a conference call I had mid-day didn't go quite as I had hoped it and found myself getting discouraged and stressed out. I was also epically hangry because said conference call was during my usual lunch time. So, during my lunch break I went out and discovered that unlike the climate in my office that rivals the arctic circle, outside was a gorgeous late spring day. Sunny and breezy and beautiful. I went to the Corner Bakery and got a really good chopped salad and decided to sit outside and enjoy being outside for the little time that I got to spend there.

I've been on a three week break from weightlifting and CrossFit and it's been pretty miserable and I have been trying to figure out ways to motivate myself and get more activity into my life. In talking with my friend Janis about this dilemma she challenged me to either get on or off the Metro a stop or two early. I initially told her that the stops were way too far apart, but after my amazing half hour outside, I wanted more. I thought about her challenge and did some route mapping on Google and decided to walk to Virginia. If you aren't really familiar with DC and Northern Virginia geography, it's only a little over two miles from my office to the Virginia border and I decided that a two mile walk wouldn't be so bad after all.

I get off work at 5pm and usually I leave right on time to get to the Metro to catch the train home so I don't have to wait around and sit in traffic. The station is really crowded at 5pm and everyone is rushing to get home. No one talks. Every day I get packed tightly into a small train with my headphones on (that I've had on all day) and get jerked and bumped all around for a half hour and then get in my car and sit in traffic for another half hour and then spend a few hours in my apartment alone and go to bed. I'm not sure exactly what I've been rushing home for all this time. I'm not like other people on the train who might have a family they can't wait to get home to. There's no one that's waiting for me to make dinner, no kids to be picked up from daycare or taken to soccer practice. There's no dog to walk and feed. I do have Stetson, my watch duck, but I'm pretty sure even he doesn't miss me while I'm gone and doesn't mind that I leave him alone for long periods. I mean, he's never complained. Why the rush to get home?

Without a CrossFit or weightlifting class to go to, and nothing to go home to, why not take a few hours and walk to Virginia? I'd also never been to Georgetown and I mapped out a route that would take me from my office near the White House, through Georgetown, and into Virginia to the Rosslyn Metro station. I set off down Pennsylvania Avenue (headphones on, because I dig music) for an adventure. I sent Janis a message so that someone would know my plan, in case I got kidnapped.

The walk to Georgetown was nice, but the first part of it was mostly like my normal commute. It was exciting to me because it was a new path, but for everyone else, they were just on their way home. The closer I got to Georgetown I could feel a change in the people around me. People were on M street to shop and eat and be with friends and family. People were excited and were out enjoying the evening. I felt like I was part of the world again, even though I was alone. I was getting a little tired and sweaty, but the sun felt nice and the whole walk was worth it when I saw this:

 

I could have stood on the Francis Scott Key Bridge and stared out at the water until the sun went down. It was so peaceful. After an hour and half of walking, all the stress of Wednesday had melted away and all that had been weighing on my soul wasn't quite so heavy anymore. It didn't take much to turn things around. Just a stretch of road, some sunshine, and the Potomac.

 

I am definitely going to make this walk a regular, maybe weekly. occurrence. Next time, I'm wearing tennis shoes.

I also need to figure out what this place is, and how I can get out on the water. That looks like it would be amazing for the soul.