Comfortable Fatigue
Mad awesome. Totally radical. Fucking gnarly, dude.
Alex DeOrio
I remember the first time I went skiing. Actually it was the second time. First time was at some bootleg-ass spot in New Jersey. There was more slush than there was snow and the only thing I learned was that walking with a pair of skis on is literally the same thing as walking like a duck. Hence, I remember the first time I really went skiing. Age 13. Breckenridge, Colorado. Courtesy of my uncle. Whereas most people treated skiing as a hobby, my uncle treated it more like a religion. Which is why we were in Breckenridge instead of Aspen. Aspen is for when you’re rich and want it to appear like you’re skiing. Breckenridge is for when your status doesn’t mean shit and the only thing that matters is that you’re ready to hit the slopes as hard as possible.
For all the things seared into my memory from that adventure in Rockies, the weather remains first and foremost. It wasn’t the overwhelming vastness of the mountains or the unsettling way moose and elk walk from one side of the road to the other just like raccoons and squirrels do in New York. Instead, it was a matter of winter accumulation; the incomprehensible, almost-apocalyptic level of snowfall. I’ve never seen anything like it and, more than likely, never will. At least not here on the east coast. Seeing so much come down so fast in such a barely visible marathon of torrents gave me an out-of-body shock I imagine I would get from seeing a tornado for the first time, minus the feeling of dread of course. It wasn’t until Colorado that I learned the reason they call the worst part of a blizzard a white-out is because it makes you feel like you’re trapped and floating inside a bottle of White-Out.
As nostalgic as this all may sound, it’s the only build-up I can think of for the topic at hand: Finding comfort in fatigue. (This one was Eli’s idea. The kid’s original. I’ll give him that). A loaded statement in the best kind of way. So many different meanings could apply to the same person. I’ll use myself as a basic example. The fatigue I get from jet-lag feels like a cross between a cold and a hangover. The fatigue I get from physical labor is foggy and clumsy. The fatigue I get from hitting the books - reading, studying, sometimes even writing - has a rewarding undertone that’s ultimately outranked by mental exhaustion, which in itself can be relaxing yet equally as draining. Then there’s also the fatigue of the extreme. Ya know. Mad awesome. Totally radical. Fucking gnarly, dude. Like surfing or winter sports. Particularly skiing.
On the first run, I went straight from the top of the trail to the bottom and wiped out head first into a snowbank. Swear to God, My uncle spent the next two years calling me “Cannonball.” Believe it or not, it almost went according to plan. Subconsciously, I already knew I was going to bust my ass no matter what. Seeing how it has always been in my nature to take things a step too far (always and forever), it’s only natural I’d make sure to go out with a bang. On a conscious level, however, it was a textbook display of the impulsive and dangerously fearless thinking that has made my life…well, a beautiful disaster. Really no other way of putting it. To make a long story short, I convinced myself that I could:
a.) Miraculously know how to stop properly without ever having been taught.
b.) Somehow learn how to stop on my own by the time I get to the bottom.
c.) Worry about it when the time comes and think of something.
The last one has always been my favorite. Funny thing, though. No matter how many times that time has come, very rarely do I think of something.
In all seriousness, the adrenaline rush I got made the whole thing worth it. There’s no form of fatigue more euphoric than the one you get after your endorphins crash. The second lap was a little better. The third was the game-changer. I felt the same high as the first one, except I managed to make a complete stop without falling. By the 6th, I was convinced I’d finally found the closest thing (besides street-fighting) to being in a real-life video game. I was still in that early part of my youth where the more I’d wear myself out, the more energetic I’d become. By the end of that first day, I was better than comfortably numb. I was comfortably fatigued.
As far as throughout my everyday life, virtually anything that combines endurance with passion allows me to live out that feeling again and again… though nothing induces it as strongly as when I’m working on my sobriety. If you ever ask a true veteran addict or alcoholic what it’s like staying abstinent on the worst and darkest of days, fighting the urge at every moment, they’re not going to give you an answer. Instead, they’ll let you judge for yourself by telling you, “imagine working an 18-hour shift as a cement laborer non-stop, without a break. Then imagine how you’d feel as soon as you finally clocked out and went home. That’s how it feels sometimes when you’re trying to stay sober.” Sounds like an exaggeration. But it’s actually a minimization. That back-breaking mantra is just an average day in the life of someone fighting their way through recovery. And even then, that’s only assuming they’re keeping busy. When you isolate, when your idle hands roam and search and inevitably are greeted by the devil, that’s when the real agony comes. However, that’s only if you allow yourself to get to that low of a place. To put an end to my point: embrace the relaxation that blooms from the fatigue of hard work. Treat it like a reward and give it the gratitude it deserves. Because if you don’t, there’s only one alternative.
Eli Kimbell
If you don’t know who Paul Salopek is, I highly recommend learning a thing or two about who he is and what he is doing. To put it briefly:
Paul Salopek’s occupation over the last decade has been “adventurer.” He’s a journalist by trade, but there is no better way to describe what he is doing than adventure. Since the beginning of 2013, he has been walking across the world in the same path that early humans did millennia ago. His project is called “The Out of Eden Walk,” and along the way, he picks up fellow adventurers for a spell and tells stories from the front, in what is perhaps the purest form of slow journalism anyone has set out to do since the term became commonplace. Here is a man who has had the same goal for a decade, and completely gave his life to it in the pursuit of telling a story.
The act of storytelling can be overwhelmingly draining at times. It is a form of sharing the core of who you are with the world, and there are many stages of the journey of storytelling that include a number of very, very large question marks. The process itself contains multitudes of unknowns–a completed story is almost never what it was meant to be from the start (Rick Rubin has often emphasized the idea that a story has its own agenda, and the artist should do what they can to not get in the way of that agenda), and with each decision made in the course of telling a story there are an infinite number of directions it could have gone, but didn’t. Even when the story has escaped the grasp of the storyteller’s hands, it is unknown whether or not the passion put into it will be received with the same passion by others, or if it will be received with a different meaning than the storyteller intended. I recently submitted a short story to a number of publications, and who knows if any one of them will publish it? And even then, who knows if it will be received positively? The story drives the storyteller, and it’s not up to the storyteller to say otherwise.
In one of Paul Salopek’s recent posts, he quoted a fellow adventurer, Becky Xiangnan Lin, with whom he has been traveling: “My body felt fatigued, and my steps were getting heavier. Yet, oddly, my mind was getting lighter. The rains had washed away my concerns, lifting my spirits. Walking with my own two feet, the most ordinary activity humans can engage in, had gifted me a tremendous fresh power: The earth is waiting to be touched, the rains to be heard, and the trees to be seen. In this way, at my own pace, I am walking toward enlightenment.”
It’s no secret there are an alarming amount of unknowns in both my life and Alex’s at the moment. Not only are we engaging in the act of traditional storytelling on a regular basis, but the stories lodged within our daily lives leave a lot to be answered. For me, this fatigue can seem insurmountable at times. I’ll let Alex tell you how he feels, but I imagine there are a number of interweaving stories within him that are each as fatiguing as the next.
Yom Kippur had great timing this year. On a day when Jewish people practice self-denial in the form of foregoing sustenance, the mental and emotional fatigue that is a natural part of all lives is transposed onto the most natural form of physical fatigue: hunger. It was on this day that I came across Paul Salopek’s post, and in a perfect storm of self-reflection, self-denial and primal instincts, I was able to shift my feelings of fatigue from something that is difficult to overcome to something that should be embraced, because all of it ties back to sustaining humanity. There is a very silent, still peace that comes with that, particularly without the distraction of food. It’s like a runner’s high–the dark world in your head fades away and all that is left is the nature around you. I imagine that walking through the entirety of the world’s nature very slowly has the same effect, which it seems to have had for Becky.
Sure, it’s reassuring that National Geographic is sponsoring this adventure for Paul. But by no means is that a guarantee of success or completion. Really, it’s still up to him. It’s very likely he’s had countless moments along the way when he’s forgotten why he’s doing this, or he can’t envision being satisfied with whatever result comes of it, or he doubts himself and the sacrifices he’s made. During the COVID shutdown, he may have even considered giving up. But Paul is still truckin’ along. Something continues to lead him along the path of migration, or many things are, maybe. It’s repetitive. It can catalyze impatience. It’s fatiguing. But he’s embraced it in only a way that he could, finding peace in the fatigue.
Maybe it’s that he knows (or suspects) his story could have only gone this way, and the story is what drives him. Maybe that prevents him from postulating on whether or not the grass is greener back home. Maybe it’s not even his home anymore. And if he doesn’t have a home anymore, how can he also have grass? And if there is no grass, how can it be green? And if there are grass seeds underfoot along his path waiting to be touched, maybe they will materialize into a pasture so green that it would be impossible for anyone to look at it and say that there is greener grass for Paul somewhere else. Maybe. Isn’t that nice?
If you’re interested in Paul’s journey, here’s a link to the Out of Eden Walk page on National Geographic’s website: Out of Eden Walk National Geographic
He also has an Instagram account, linked here: Out of Eden Walk Instagram