This blog post will not apply to most people, but if you are like me, I can identify.
For the most part, I have not been the most social person on Earth for most of my adult life. I have always been very careful about who I let into my world of awesomeness due to trust issues, and because of that, I never learned the social skills that most people learn as they grow up.
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| "BeastWalk" on day 81. The early stages can be the toughest. |
As mentioned in a previous rebuilding post, my world was rocked in a negative way in December 2013 as one of the few people I allowed into my world and trusted for many years turned out to be not-so-cool. As a result of what I called, "The Tuesday Incident", I went from only trusting this person to trusting no one at all. The "Tuesday Incident" is also what ultimately planted the seeds for my rebuilding process.
Everything that I would do in the early stages, I did on my own. Working out in my living room, going for "Beastwalks", I did it all alone. Just me and whatever songs I felt like listening to on my iPod at the time.
As I started to see and feel results, my confidence grew. I would no longer look down when walking passed a stranger on the street. And as my confidence grew, so did my desire to form some kind of social circle. The social circle building deal can be told in an entirely different set of posts but they would have nothing to do with cooking or rebuilding. To make a long story short, after two years, I have no social circle.
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| Day 91. I had the day off and my head had been in a bad place for a few days, so I got up and went on a 3+ hour BeastWalk to clear it. |
After about a year-and-a-half of trying and being unsuccessful, I stopped trying to form a social circle. There are a few reasons, but I will just stick with one. While my lifestyle was changing and becoming more active, the people I was trying to build this social circle with were still the same. I will be the first to admit that it is hard to get started and very easy to become discouraged. So while I was trying to maintain an active lifestyle and include "friends", their lifestyle was, and still is more along the lines of, "I don't feel like doing anything."
I know that feeling all too well. Unfortunately since I've become more active, I find it extremely hard to not do anything. My days of sitting at home on days off, playing video games and watching moves for hours are long gone. And due to my lack of social skills, it is not so easy for me to go out and meet new people, although I tried and the way I went about it was a HUGE mistake (AVOID DATING WEBSITES, GENTLEMEN! THEY ARE A WASTE OF TIME AND LIFE!). I joined online meet up sites like MeetUp.com. Unfortunately, a lot of the "socializing" in those groups require paying money. That, too, is another story. Let me just say that I will no longer pay money to hangout with people.
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| Day 99. The Ultimate Warrior had just passed away and I went down to the site of Wrestlemania 6 which I attended in 1990 to do a tribute. |
In the end, I had to come to terms with the fact that the rebuilding process can be a lonely journey. You can find out who your true friends are and who they aren't. It takes its toll on your head and can make you feel very depressed at times. I have found that the best action to get rid of those feelings of depression are to use them as fuel to up the intensity of my workouts. It works, but the feelings still come back. Not as often as they did in the beginning, but they come back. Rebuilding can not only be challenging on your body, but on your mind, too.
It is an emotional roller coaster. In the beginning, there can be a lot of anger as you try to find people to join you and they either don't due to them not being up to it, or they will agree and then cancel on you at the last minute with excuse after excuse. As a result, you get angry and eventually depressed, then angry again. These are the times when you want to bust out the weights or put your shoes on and go for a walk.
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| Day 418. Head doing a lot better. Still get a bit down every now and then, but Sally is more than enough for Chef Nairby! |
My rebuilding came down to this: In the beginning, the reason for getting in shape was to get the approval and admiration of others. But as time went on, it became about being happy with myself and not caring so much about the opinions of others. Once I got to that stage, life did not feel so lonely anymore, although I will still go through periods of depression and loneliness. But it is nowhere near as bad as it was in the beginning.
You just need to remember that rebuilding and sticking to it puts you at a higher level than most people. It is not that there is something wrong with YOU, it is that you are asking too much of THEM. The things that you used to do are too boring to keep doing, but your friends are still stuck in that bubble. Rebuilding is about fixing YOURSELF. Fixing yourself means spending a lot of time alone. It's just the way it is.
Chef Nairby
