How Do You Get Good At Stuff Again?
I write about riding my bike at this site a fair deal, but cycling isn't what I would call my "main" sport. In fact, I never really did sports at all until I got sober in 2019, when I got into rock climbing. This happened the way lots of new interests emerged in my sobriety: desperate to find something to fill my time in those early days, I looked up activities near me that I'd never done before and systematically tried them out until some stuck. Climbing was something I immediately fell in love with, followed by running when my sister signed us up for a half-marathon in early 2020.
You can probably imagine what happened there: both sports got curtailed by the pandemic, and I had to regain my skills in them once things opened back up. This worked out OK: I spent a ton of time at the climbing gym while unemployed after leaving Kotaku, and I remembered how to run enough to do the New York Marathon in 2022. But moving to DC screwed everything up again: I got shin splints after the marathon, and the climbing gym nearest me in DC wasn't that great. All of this led me to sideline running and climbing in favor of cycling, which was a great way to explore the city and the surrounding countryside.
Now that I'm back in New York, I'm trying to get back into the climbing habit, which has been a challenge with my hectic schedule running a business. I climbed earlier this week, and it's such a bummer to have the mental and technical skills to climb a route, but not to have the strength, flexibility, and confidence that I used to. I found myself flailing and grunting up a couple lower-level bouldering problems that I would have done with ease before, and it was hard not to feel thoroughly dispirited by how much I've let my skills go.
I feel the same way about running, which I desperately miss and just have been putting off getting into again because I know it's going to be hard and feel terrible and I'm going to hate myself about it. I take some comfort from the fact that my start-and-stop approach to sports means I've been here before: I've re-learned how to do every sport I love more than once over the years. But I also hate how this makes me feel flighty and uncommitted, and how I can't help wondering where my skills would be if I'd just stuck to a consistent routine.
But a balanced routine is one of the biggest things lacking in my life these days, closely followed by leaving my computer, and I know that a couple weeks of soreness will be a small price to pay to get those back. As much as it sucks to feel like I'm always starting again, I also know I can, and that there's so much joy to be found on the other side of being a beginner again. I also know that I'm getting on in years, and that I have a bum knee that only has so many more miles left in it, so it'd be smart to get back into my hobbies sooner rather than later. If you have any tips for getting back into maintaining a routine, or how to go on a bunch of garbage runs without screaming "I used to be good at this!" to everyone who passes you, please let me know.
