Being scared has its place in life. It is a normal emotion to feel. If it was not normal, then why was it added to our portfolio of feelings? There are many categories that the emotion fear can fit into. There is the flavor of fear that protects you from a painful death. Another one is makes it difficult to perform various social activities, such as talking to one or many people. There are some that are rational, while others are not. However, the brand of fear that I will be talking about is "the fear of something unknown".

There are many things that I still do not understand about myself. For the most part, I can find the various motives for most of my actions. Most of these just feel like rationalizations to things that might inherently have no meaning. Though it makes me feel good, so how bad can it be?

What bothers me the most is the uncertainty of not knowing when a specific and inevitable action is going to occur. This feeling may be fear or even anxiety. Whatever label is given does not change the fact it is not pleasant.

Setting the Stage

Adopting Essentialism.

The practice of Essentialism is to let go of anything that is not really important. In turn leaving more time and space to appreciate what you value the most. You could argue that this is just Minimalism, but with a different attitude. While you would not be wrong, I tend to steer away for calling myself a Minimalist. The label does not really give justice to the actual purpose.

It is not necessarily just the act of getting rid of things and avoiding the ownership of many possessions. No, the concept is more about making space for the things that matter most. When everything is important, then nothing is important. My attention can only be given to a small subset of things. Therefore, I want to have the capacity to dedicate a large portion of my focus to a small set things that bring me great meaning. Maximizing life satisfaction. This is why I feel as though the meaning is better conveyed by re-skinning Minimalism as Essentialism.

Owning stuff or buying the next new flashy item stopped appealing to me after some period in my life. Searching for the next gadget to buy or video game to play lost its meaning some time in the past. Having things did not necessarily satisfy my need for purpose.

Another thing that I also wanted to keep more to myself was my head-space. Having a clear mindset where I can be present and not having the constant need to be stimulated is something I deserve. However, I live in a world where everything is buying for my attention. One of the first things that I dropped like a hot potato, was paying attention to things that are out of my control. Why do I need to know about the news or what people are doing around me, if there is not anything I can do about it? The only thing that I can control in that respect is my attention to it. Sure this may be a close-minded approach to life, but I have found the things that are really important find another way to reveal themselves outside of media.

When Will I Stop Caring?

I am quite aware that all of my eggs are currently placed in a select few baskets. Each of these proverbial baskets combine to give me a sense of value, purpose, and meaning. What bothers me the most is the lack of diversity in my "purpose portfolio".

There is this ever lingering feeling of "when will I stop caring about this so much?". Over the course of my life, I have never really been able to stick to one thing for a long period of time. The most recent example of losing interest is: my relationship with video games. All throughout my school life, before higher education, I have always had video games. That was the only thing that could fill in the hours of the day. Anything else seemed auxiliary. However, once I reached college, my interest in video games start to fade.

Picking up the controller felt like it was losing its meaning as a fulfilling pastime. Once I entered junior year of university, almost all interest was lost in playing video games. Playing video games became an empty task, like I was just playing for the sake of doing it. How could something that I spent so much time on over the years, not be interesting anymore?

Looking back, I think it was more that I enjoyed playing with friends than I did playing video games. The interest started to fade as high-school started to come to an end, and everybody was starting the next journey in their lives. People moved on and my circle of video game friends started to disperse.

The uncertainty when my interests will change and I might be left with nothing, is unsettling. It has happened before, to something I once held close to me and invested so much time into. Ending up becoming a pointless activity.

There is Hope.

Thankfully, after a fair amount of reflection, have been able to find a bastion of hope. There has been one thing that has remained constant throughout the majority of my life.

My constant has been, being the best version of myself as I can be. This goal has manifested itself in many ways, but the underlying concept remains the same. It helps settle some of the unknowns about the future, with the reassurance that this will remain constant.

I can say this because the memory of when I first started playing video games, is so vivid. The amazement of the skills that my friends possessed, inspired me to be able to play like them. The road to improvement was slow, but as time passed, I could feel myself getting better and better. I could beat video games on really hard difficulties. I started to be able to pull my weight in player versus player matches. Before I knew it, I was at an intermediate level of skill. Essentially being at the cross roads of "not being good enough to be a professional" but, "not bad enough to be a scrub." The best word that I could use to describe myself is that I was "Try-Hard."

Thankfully, right as I was losing my interest in video games, found interest in programming during university. Currently, my interest in programming has not waned yet. The difficult part of programming is figuring out what should be worked on next. I have a special set of skills, that allow me to build anything I desire on a computer. I have a blank canvas and seldom have a good idea. I stumble across some good ones, but for the most part I am just searching for the next interesting problem to work on.

Face meets grindstone

Knowing that my seemingly endless pool of devotion is filled in part by my constant also helps me feel better about my athletic goals. When I first started building up my body, I went all out. I had nothing better todo and no idea what I was doing. I just knew that I wanted to press my face into the grindstone and see how I handle it.

It got to the point where I would wake up, workout for 2 hours, go to work, ride my bike for an hour and a half after work. That process of working out twice a day would be repeated 6-7 days a week, for a good solid year and a some change after I started my professional career in 2015. That was my object of attention, before I decided that I should be spending most of my free time writing code. My athletic goals consumed my entire life, I had no free-time, it was just either, working out, cycling, going to work, preparing to work out/cycle, or sleeping. I filled my entire schedule, and had no free time. Though it was nice in a way. I did not have to think about anything else and did not have to search for purpose or meaning.

Since I did not know any better, I would drive myself into the ground and ask for more. I was dead set on seeing what I was fully capable of, rain, shine, below freezing temperatures, to riding over tar boiling on country roads. Nothing was going to stop me from seeing my full potential. Being so focused on running myself down made me overlook the fact my performance was declining.

In all honesty, I did see my declining performance, but I chose to ignore it. It was something that I thought I could fix, by just getting tougher. That is what happens when you work out you get stronger, right? What I had not learned the full importance of rest. I would have heard the fact and refused to believe it.

You cannot expect your body to adapt, if you do not give it a chance to recover. The mindset that rest was "an opportunity to get weak", "a form of giving up", or "possibility becoming dis-interested in working out", taught me a valuable lesson. I was insecure about any sense recovery, because it might make me want to give up, stop, or become a quitter. Never stopping means giving up is impossible, a body in motion stays in motion, right?

Yes, but no. The point where I could not even fully perform my regular set of exercises, was when I suspected something was amiss. This would be brushed off and I would continue to push through what was very clearly becoming a problem. It took me almost 15 months to realize that I have a problem and need time to recover.

This is the only time in my life that I have been able to over-train my body. I went way past the warning signs, in fact I went even harder because I saw them. All because I was afraid of giving up and not finishing want I started.

This story is relevant because, because it has also instilled the confidence in my constant. As time passed, I was still fighting myself to get some rest. However, my life had reached a point of inflection. I got a new job, in another state, which required me to move. This was done to prevent a large part of my life from being spent in a car commuting. Which resulted in a major change. I was put in a foreign area, and I could no longer cling to my safe cycling routes. I also was in a gym that did not have any spinning equipment (stationary bikes).

What did I do? I picked up running, in place of my previous obsession. Instead of cycling myself into the ground, I ran myself into the ground. At the time, I still was not wise about recovery, but knew that it should be considered though. So I compromised, and ran 3 miles 3 times a week, with a goal of finishing below 30 minutes each time. This would happen in between strength training sessions.

It got to the point where I would need compress my legs in sports wrap, because it hurt running without it. I saw all the early warning signs of over-training, but continued to ignore them. History almost repeats itself, but I knew just a little bit better this time. At this point, I still had no idea what I was doing in the gym. I would go in, move some weights around, get some cardio in, and call it done.

The X Factor

There was no purpose or goal other than busting my butt. Eventually I got wise, and decided, I should find somebody who knows what they are doing. Finding https://athleanx.com was the start to the ideal path to actualizing my full potential. Though I did not know much, I did know that wanted to be like Jeff. He acted like he knew what he was talking about. He put a lot of fancy letters at the end of his name, so that seems legit.

One of the things that he emphasizes on in his training programs, is recovery. It took me trusting Jeff, that I will not spontaneously combust, die, or give up, if I take a break. I think it was the fact that the program had scheduled breaks, and easy weeks, is what helped a ton. I could get over the uneasiness of resting, because I trusted my instructor.

It has been well over three years since then, and I am just about getting to a place, where I can start to take it easy. I fully understand the importance of recovery and taking days off. I have learned that because I take days off, I can demand more from myself on my active days. The fear of ever having the thought giving up working out, has long since left. Right now, working out is something I cling to, my recovery days currently still prevent me from doing what I enjoy. Except leg day, leg day sucks. My legs are my biggest muscles, and also the biggest complainers. So they get their due first.

Anyway, that was a long-winded way of saying that I found my constant of trying to be the best version of myself. This will remain with me for the foreseeable future. Though my interests and what I do may be changed, they will just be a different variation of trying to reach the same goal.

What I am currently curious about is what is going to replace my infatuation with anime girls?