The Excitement And Fear Of Knowing When To Jump -- But Not Where

The Excitement And Fear Of Knowing When To Jump -- But Not Where
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When to Jump, an independent media partner of The Huffington Post, is a curated community featuring the ideas and stories of people who have made the decision to leave something comfortable and chase a passion.

My friend's book project, When to Jump, asks important questions about passion, sacrifice, boldness, risk. He follows "successful" people - whose success is measured by fulfillment - and tells their stories of taking leaps of faith, eschewing the comfortable and expected for the uncertain yet passionate. Their accounts inspire readers to make jumps of their own and to trust in the zigzag path that ultimately reaches "the destination," so long as the compass holds true. "When to jump?" he asks. "When to jump," he teaches. When to jump.

I'm in a phase where everything seems like a jump. Overwhelmed by the paradox of choice, feeling like I'm spinning in circles, I'll sometimes pull out a world map and let my eyes glaze over it, hoping that the energy of some painted corner of the globe will call out to me.

My compass is strong - I trust my general sense of direction. I know what excites me, where I find value, and what I want my days to look like. But beyond that, it's nebulous. "Something where I can write, advocate, and affect environmental and health policy," I'll say when someone asks what sort of position I'm seeking. I'm torn between the advantages of flexibility, knowing that being open has historically brought me to opportunities that I wouldn't have ever conceptualized on my own, and the costs of this - coming across as young, naïve, uncertain, and the obscurity that comes with a generalist outlook.

At 23, I feel at once young and old - wide-eyed and green, with a world of possibilities, but also old. Sheepish about my vagueness, embarrassed by feeling overwhelmed, self-conscious of my times of panic where I'll reassure myself with trail-living notions, I feel the oppressive weight of 23. I'm so young, but I feel that I'm too old to seek shelter if the going gets rough - that is, any shelter but that which my own hands have constructed.

This jump for me encompasses something much deeper than the start of a career. Having nearly killed myself running a couple of months ago, when I wound up in the hospital after years of cumulative overtraining with a torn lung and air rushing into my chest cavity and neck and throat - though thankfully not enough to constrict the heart to the point of stopping - I've been jolted to reality.

I memorized state birds and state flowers and Latvian epic poems in my youth, glided my way through long nights in high school to graduate first in my class, won state titles in track, had my pick of schools, and continued my academic and athletic streak at Harvard - a classic overachiever case. Headstrong but dutiful, independent but obedient, I prided myself in my bandwidth and my ability to drive myself into the ground for the sake of accomplishment. But when my athletic performance started inexplicably plummeting in my college senior year, I found myself completely lost.

I had consistently torn through days of up to six hours devoted to the track - feet pounding in circles, body buckling under barbells, arms pulling buoy-supported legs, too injured to kick, through the pool. "You're still here?" a coach remarked one evening, when I had hit the elliptical for my second cross-training session of the day. I loved it. But I loved it in an almost sadistic way, where I was thrilled by my ability to abuse my body, bounce back stronger, and win. I was thrilled by the praise.

Having been able to endure such a vigorous lifestyle for the previous three years at Harvard, I convinced myself that my senior year's suddenly dropping performance was an issue in willpower. And as captain, I felt bound by my sense of duty to the team. Even though it soon became clear that I was experiencing severe overtraining syndrome (who knew that existed?), I kept on accepting the guilt and doubt inflicted by coaches and teammates. Maybe I just "don't want it badly enough." Maybe I'm weak.

I kept pushing until my body gave out even more. My head coach, in an effort to strong-arm me into competing, told me that if I couldn't run at Ivy League championships, then I was off the team. Coaches and teammates treated me differently. Some of my worst fears were coming true - that I wasn't much without my accomplishments.

I didn't learn my lesson for at least another year. I decided to take a few weeks off, and then I started training again to run in my fifth year of NCAA eligibility, following some former coaches to Cal Poly, convinced that I could rebound and make the Rio Olympics. To compete for Latvia, I would only have to get the A-standard, a mere three seconds away, which had seemed more than doable going into the previous year. But this year had more of the same story, plagued with health issues (which, as I later found out, included an at least 70 percent reduction in oxygen intake upon exercise - I ran through this for who knows how long, relishing the severe headaches that marked a good workout or race) and the identity crisis that came with plodding across the finish line more slowly than my high school self (in gym class, in clunky sneakers, barely trying).

The blinders lifted while in the hospital, amidst the recognition that I had nearly killed myself running, and for what? I all of a sudden saw through the "higher purposes" - I wasn't serving some larger good running in circles; the "track gods" were only stopwatches and clipboards. The chimera was exposed, and I felt foolish. All of this... for what?

This San Luis Obispo summer has floated by in a haze of questions. "For what?" I ask. Knowing that only my own definitions aren't chimeric, I've been trying to feed the soul, calibrate the compass, to be able to feel them more clearly. When I talk to different organizations and conceptualize living in different places, I recognize the "soul connection" that sometimes jumps out - it's almost a color that I see when something feels right. I'm painting an internal map, overlaying the globe at which I gaze.

I think of my childhood summers spent in the Catskill Mountains, weaving Latvian flower crowns and frolicking through forests. I think of the feeling I get when gazing at some untouched natural landscape, similar to deep eye contact held. I think of the energy I feel when constructing an argument, when conceptualizing a strategy, when advocating, when pulling together interdisciplinary thought to arrive at a creative solution. I think of my overarching, guiding goal: to increase connection, between people and the environment and between people themselves.

Two of the things that had comprised my identity - exceling at school and at running - are gone, along with their definitions of purpose. The blank page left in their place is at once possibility-rich and oppressively white. I stare at it. Knowing that in retrospect, any line that I draw in any color will make sense, I still hesitate to make the first mark. When to jump?

When to Jump, an independent media partner of The Huffington Post, is a curated community featuring the ideas and stories of people who have made the decision to leave something comfortable and chase a passion. You can follow When to Jump on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. For more stories like this one, sign up for the When to Jump newsletter here. (Note: The When to Jump newsletter is not managed by The Huffington Post.)

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