Attempting Balance

My life has metamorphosed over the past decade. I went from simply preaching, to practicing what I preach. My journey, while challenging like many others, has become a complete circle and now that circle will needed to grow.

For the longest time I was just a great bullhorn. I barked the mantra “Do as I say, not as a do”. As a Certified Athletic Trainer I didn’t have the time or the energy to stay physically healthy, and my emotional health was in the gutter since I wasn’t entirely happy with my life. I enjoyed my work, but I was missing so much.

When I found nursing (or should I say it found me) I knew I had found the emotional link I was longing for. I was actually mentally, emotionally and intellectually challenged on a daily basis. Something I didn’t know actually existed. I enjoyed my work, I enjoyed the work I actually did, and it financially provided a new-found security I had only dreamed about. I was finally earning a living. The icing on the cake and the additional gift my career of nursing has given me is the soul-touching and soulmate discovery of my beautiful wife. Without nursing’s intervention I would have never met, courted and married my best friend. 

But I was still only preaching. I still wasn’t finding my balance. I was not physically well, or should I say I was not optimally well. The balance I wanted to achieve was both the yin and the yang. 

It took another handful of years, but I reached optimal physical health through better eating, better exercising and just better living. I was healthy and physically strong.

Finding Balance

As my years as a nurse progressed, I found I desired more. I wanted more. I wanted to do more. So I dove back into the academic world. I followed the logical steps. First I finished my bachelor studies in nursing. Upon completion I immediately entered my graduate studies. As my grad studies progressed I worked towards a new goal of becoming an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner.

During my time as a grad student I still strove to improve my physical well being. I wanted to be more fit. I wanted to tackle my weaknesses and I wanted to find better balance by eliminating as many chinks in my armor as I could muster.

CrossFit was the answer I was looking for. I found my strength. I found a passion in my physical fitness. I found balance in my strength and I found more strength with my balance.

My circle was almost complete.

Maintaining Balance

As I close the chapter on my graduate studies, I find myself on the cusp of closing the circle.

I have only to pass through a couple more doors and my professional goals will have been achieved. I can then begin to balance in totality. The next step is to find some semblence of this balance I have been working towards. With my new career, comes a new home, a new set of responsibilities, a new schedule, quite simply a new life. The life I have been working toward.

Now to find out how to balance my work and my play (CrossFit). It seems that my indomitable will and desire need only fit the pieces together to find my balance.   

“After a long day of work, if I had to do something heavy or intense, previously I would get it done … but now, I’m not sure how much benefit there is in doing something just to do it,” he explains. “I wanted to avoid ‘spinning the wheels’ in training, so recently I have just hit workouts that I feel I would be able to do effectively. I’m achieving more in the long run, saving the intense, heavy days for when I’m a little more rested.”

This mentality makes sense for his profession, too.

“Sometimes I do have to tailor my workout to cases I have coming up … a toasted grip and (unsteady) arms make for shaky hands in the OR, especially for micro-vascular cases,” Martin says. “So the balance takes place in working out when I can, and accepting when other priorities like patient care come first.”

Via As Prescribed: Gary Martin II | CrossFit Games

If others can find the time to balance their own physical health while caring for the ill, then so can I.

I have to take care of me, so that I can take care of others.

I need only find my balance. 

Image sources Google:  “balance”