Finding Balance That Doesn’t Buck

Maybe it won’t look catastrophic from the outside. You might not even see it coming, either, but there will be a moment when you’re hyper-focusing on not losing your balance, and you’ll know in an instant you’re about to get bucked.

Your eyes bulge nearly out of your face as you realize, despite your very best efforts, any ounce of balance you thought you’d wrangled is actually a farce. You’ve given it every single bit of your energy and, still, there’s nothing you can do now… you’re just going to have to watch every second of the impending crash in slow motion.

I don’t know what this says about me, but I’ve been swept up in that chaotic spin-cycle plenty of times, and at very different stages of life. Go through it enough, and you’ll inevitably find yourself starting to recognize when you’re on the other side of one, but not yet in another.

That’s the in-between kind of place where I found myself this week.

Maybe balance isn’t the noun we’re told it is.

I’m rounding the corner on my bike and looking over my shoulder in the opposite direction. No cars is a good sign since I’m coming up on the intersection and I need to cross. On the other side of the street, I notice a guy pushing a stroller with one hand and holding a cup of coffee with the other. He’s waiting to cross, but I can’t see his face because he’s bent down behind the stroller. Still, I’m thinking he looks a lot like my neighbor.

The light changes, we each start to cross and, sure enough, it’s my neighbor after all.

“oh hey!”

I see the flash of recognition as his face bursts into a smile. Then, we each go our own way. It was just a quick encounter, since it’s not like we could stop and chat in the middle of the road, but running into him truly made for a pleasant surprise. I’m still smiling as I head off toward my local coffee shop.

It’s a cool day; damp but not wet from rain the day before. It still looks like it might start raining again, but I figure the worst that happens is I get wet. While pedaling a bit absentmindedly, I’m reasoning I could just wait it out at the coffee place if I had to. Life as an athlete might have taught me that the best defense is a good offense, but life as an outdoor guide proved that anything which can go wrong, will go wrong.

That, and there’s no such thing as bad weather if you have the right clothing.

Juggling everything seems like it should never have been the goal, anyway.

As I’m walking into the coffee place, it dawns on me that I used to run into people I knew everywhere, and that I’d been going through a bit of a self-inflicted dry-spell there for a while. About five years’ worth, actually... give or take.

Once upon a time, my chance encounters even became sort of a running joke among my close friends. If we went out somewhere, they’d place bets on how long it’d be until I bumped into someone I knew that they didn’t. Then, they’d try to guess how many other times it was going to happen the same day. I was involved in a lot of stuff across many social groups back then. I never sat still, always bopping between them.

I just can’t imagine juggling that much now. Truth be told, I think I needed to let everything fall apart before I could learn how to hold a few things together well.

I’m ready to admit that, now, after having already watched the slo-mo crashout that landed me in rock-bottom and led me, very willingly, into sobriety. Since then, though, I’ve actually been afraid of maintaining too many moving parts in my life at once. I think, for a while at least, isolating felt safe because limiting social interactions meant fewer moving parts. Not to mention, it seemed like fewer things that could break if I lost my balance and crashed out again.

I was wrong about that, though.

That’s definitely not balance.

I work remotely, so I’ve been making a point of dragging my butt to local coffee spots like this. In part, I knew the change of scenery would be good for my overall mood, but I also knew that venturing out into my community regularly would be one more domino in the effort to rebuild my social life.

Settling into a table along the brick wall, I realize I’ve been running into folks again quite a bit. I literally ran into someone I went to high school with last week on the sidewalk while I was out jogging. And another friend from college biked past me by the water a few days ago. I even ran into an old coworker at a concert recently that I haven’t seen since leaving that company.

My spirits lift.

I’m feeling like I’m “back.” Back to being the more outgoing “me” from before I got sober; without the social training-wheels I feel like I’d adopted since. And I’m even thinking it’s time to tell my friends to start placing their bets again…

Leaning forward, I perch my elbows on the table and rest my chin between my thumb and index finger; right in the crook of my hand. With regard to balance, social or otherwise, Albert Einstein seemed to think life was like riding a bicycle. Basically, he said you have to keep moving if you want to keep your balance. For years, though, I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not balance is actually something you can keep at all. I recently read something from Austin Kleon and Adam Moss about how “art requires a balance of play and rigor in almost equal measure.” That, I like. It makes sense to me.

I let out a slow sigh and shake my head.

I’m someone who’s always had a wonky relationship with rest, so I never really figured out how to rest before I absolutely needed to—regardless of whether I was focused on play or rigor. Staring into the coffee mug in front of me, I’m thinking of the first time I went on a winter backcountry trip as one such example. I’d been the only snowboarder, so I was hyper-aware of not doing anything that could slow down the group. We snowboarders have enough of a PR problem as it is without giving folks more reasons to be prejudiced against us. So on this one particular day, we’re hiking up to take another lap and I’m in front. And I’m absolutely hauling ass up this ridge. Keeping an extremely quick pace, my lungs were on fire and I had sweat pouring down my back. Still, when I hit the top of the ridge, I didn’t rest. Like, not at all. I remember grabbing layers from my bag, flipping my board and bindings from hiking mode to riding mode, and making sure I was ready to go by the time the last person in the group popped through the trees and plopped down on the ground next to us. That was when I rested… while everyone else was getting ready to move.

And here I am, sitting in this coffee shop, realizing how much I still have to be mindful of not doing that. I guess I used to see play and rigor sort of like opposite sides of the same teeter-totter, where the whole point of the teeter-totter is the back and forth—the up and down in constant motion. So in that regard, maybe Einstein’s right. But, as I’m shifting in my seat and leaning up against the red bricks beside me, I’m now thinking a boat makes more sense as a metaphor for balance than a bike.

I mean, bikes fall over when the effort stops, right?

Boats drift.

The tug-of-war between pushing through and letting go.

The next morning, I’m thinking more about my own teeter-totter relationship with play and rigor these days, and I’m starting to doubt all the confidence I’d felt in the coffee shop. So much for being “back.” It’s five past eight, I’m late, and I don’t want to keep getting ready to go meet my friend.

UGH.

Ok, fine. Yes, I do.

But I’m in my kitchen, still trying to finalize a game plan.

This friend of mine had called after I’d left the coffee place. We’d been playing a multi-week game of phone tag. It’s actually the same one we’ve been playing for almost 15 years, so I answered to end this round. Without preamble, he’d asked “what are you doing tomorrow?”

He already had plans for us by that point. I was sure of it. It was in the way he asked it. That’s what always gives him away... so I was well aware I’d just been ensnared in what would probably turn out to be an incredibly fun last minute plan. For a guy who lives and breathes procedural integrity as a med school student, he does incredibly well with spontaneity.

“Wanna go skiing?”

Um, what?

My mind starts racing. That hadn’t been what I was expecting him to say at all. Truthfully I’d already accepted the end of the snow season and was actually excited to go for a longer run in the sun by the lake. But then I realize we never got to go together this winter. Still, I briefly thought about countering with a proposal to grab coffee instead. But then did some quick math: car ride there, gearing up in the lot, time on the chairlift, car ride home. And that’d be a lot more time for us to chat and catch up.

So here I am, running late and scrambling between the closet and the kitchen while somewhat reluctantly getting ready to go. I slept like shit, I’m irritable, and I’m seriously considering just un-making the bed and crawling back into it. Of course, it’s a stunningly beautiful morning. The sun’s out, and I already know that if I go snowboarding, I’m going to be dripping sweat if I wear my hoodie.

In the kitchen, I hear the coffee brewing.

My heart’s beating, my jaw’s clenched, and I’m wondering if it would’ve just been faster to stop for a cup on the way. Probably. Too late now, though. I still need to fish my boots out of the closet and I should probably grab my board while I’m thinking about it so I don’t forget that either...

He’s lucky I love him.

Balance finally seems to show up once you stop expecting it to.

I catch myself and force a deep breath into my nostrils. I know this’ll be fun. Pushing myself to get my things and get my ass out the door is the right move. Especially because he and I don’t get to see as much of each other as we used to. So, sure, I’m tired, but I decide I’m going.

Besides, the thing I’m actually worried about is whether or not snowboarding will still stir up a bunch of messy shit for me. Spending time with my friend feels worth the gamble, though. In recent years, I’ve been feeling this gap between how much I’m supposed to love snowboarding and how much I actually do. And that has a tendency to, well... make me sad. Making it my job ruined it for me and I’ve never quite been able to get it back. Sometimes, I tell myself I’m supposed to love it because the me before burnout did. And, if I can love snowboarding again, maybe I can find my way back to playing around in life instead of holding myself hostage on the rigor side of the teeter-totter. But, since I’ve become aware of all this, I’ve been resisting more and more opportunities to go snowboarding at all.

Like right now.

So when I finally climb into my truck to go meet my friend, I’m wondering if, maybe, liking snowboarding’s not really what I’m afraid of anymore, anyway.

What if…

What if all this has just become a fear of... fear?

We find what we look for, after all. And I’d been so hyper-focused on getting ready and getting out the door that I never saw that coming. It hadn’t looked catastrophic from the outside but, in an instant, I found myself, once again, in the in-between kind of place on the other side of a crash, but not yet in another.

For now, at least, I know damn well I’m not about to get bucked.

onward. 

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