On a Sunday, redux

A while back (upon further examination just over a  year ago, weird) I wrote a post, On a Saturday, where I attempted to write down how I was trying to deal with the social changes in my life.  Many of those stemmed from CrossFit, triathlon, and other social-athletic activities.  You make fast friends with cool people, then everyone wants you to do their thing.  And if you can’t say no, you quickly run out of time.

So it’s 0830 on Sunday morning.  Normally I would still be sleeping, but instead of nursing a hangover, I pulled the ripcord at Molotov around 1230 and took off.  One of those nights where nothing I drank was getting me drunk, and I felt uncomfortable in my own skin.

I’m in a funk, and I can’t figure out how to get out.

I feel like I’ve allowed the following things to happen:

• I’ve managed to piss off or otherwise irritate some new friends of mine (you know who you are).
• I’ve stopped progressing in CrossFit.  I’ve stopped progressing in triathlon.
• I’ve stopped caring about my job.

Until I took a few minutes to pause, all I had for the above things are excuses, no real reasons.  I can blather on about feeling unwelcome, or not training because I don’t have time, or work being just plain annoying.  But all of those things are my refusal to provide the one thing that I demand from everyone else around me: respect.

Respect, and with that, loyalty, are the two things I demand from any relationship or community I choose to join.  That’s because those are two things that I fiercely provide in return.  For better or worse, I will throw myself in front of a bus for someone I just met 5 minutes ago, if they fit into the respect-loyalty relationship.

I spent the afternoon Thursday listening to Robb Wolf’s podcasts, and one thing he mentioned is the notion of training without ego.  Ego belongs on the field, when you’re competing, but it doesn’t belong in your training.  You’re not too good for drills, you’re not too good to practice a lift at 95lbs before you lift it at 135.

Same goes for life and relationships — it’s not a competition, it’s more training.

I’m not too good to expect that new friends will treat me like they’ve known me for years.  I’m not too good to expect that I can PR on a race without training.

In the words of Jimmy Eat World’s A Sunday, the inspiration for this post (again):

The haze clears from your eyes

On a Sunday

So to those who think I’m a total headcase, I’m not, and I’m sorry for the bullshit.  The bullshit is over.

To my other communities, I’ll find that vigor, fire, that so many of you have seen.  It’s somewhere.