The blinding headlights were flashing, the horn was blaring into the moist air of the post-rain dawn and I could hear the brakes screeching (jarringly) as if they were desperately clawing deep into the tarmac to find grip in the wet.
My heart was in my throat – the container truck was headed straight for me.
The mid-ride thunderstorm had already ceased and I was breathing a sigh of relief that I didn’t have to fight against the rain anymore (although the winds were still cold and strong).
I unclipped my left foot, as I always do when slowing down at a traffic light junction, and stopped with my front wheel turned to the right, to prepare to make a U-turn. Cars were zooming by and spraying a bit of water onto me, but I was too tired to react.
It was about 6am in the morning.
Suddenly I noticed there were no more vehicles. I wearily looked up and saw the traffic light was red, so I pushed off on my right foot (still clipped in) to execute the U-turn. And that was when I put myself in a near-death situation – I had turned right into the path of a container truck. Oh fuck.
The red traffic light I saw was the one perpendicular to me at the cross-junction! Shit, shit, shit. I couldn’t pedal backwards and my left foot was still unclipped, and in my panic I couldn’t get the left foot clipped in as it kept slipping on the wet pedal. All I could do was use my right foot to keep pushing to the side of the road – and pray.
Everything happened so quickly.
Just as I reached the side of the road, the container truck just managed to swerve and avoid me. The gust of wind shook me hard as he rumbled past me… just inches away. He then stopped his vehicle, right there in the middle of the road, just to stare at me angrily.
It was my fault entirely. How the fuck could I have read the traffic light wrongly? I could only apologise, raising my hand meekly with my head slightly bowed. He drove off after a lorry came up behind us and honked at us to move on (the lorry driver had no idea what just happened).
There was a bus stop just ahead, so I stopped to collect myself. I was shaken from what just happened and gulping hard to swallow that lump in my throat. I am very, very fortunate that I came out of this incident unscathed. It could have gone much, much worse. And no, your life doesn’t flash in front of your eyes, unlike what movies often portray. I was just thinking of how to get out of danger asap!
Upon some deep reflection, this served as a wake-up call for me to declutter my life.
There’s just been too many things going on in my life lately and I’m being worn down. For the past two weeks since I got back from Japan, I’ve been feeling very, very fatigued. Initially I passed it off as PMS, which usually makes me lethargic – a kind of tired that you can’t fight with sleep or food.
But as the days wore on, I found myself becoming sick of everything. I was having problems waking up everyday, I was dragging myself to training and even things that usually excite me started to feel like a burden.
Triathlon training is my highly-lauded ‘me time’ that I always look forward to, but I started to question the purpose of my commitment to the sport more and found it harder to find the motivation to continue the daily grind. This was really bad because you know how much triathlons mean to me, but suddenly I feel like it’s consuming too much of me – not just physically, but emotionally too.
These questions kept coming up – How long are you gonna do this for? How much more are you gonna spend (the recent Queen Bitch I incident didn’t help)? What do you want to get out of this? It’s only a hobby, don’t you think you are taking it too seriously? Are you trying to be a full-time athlete? All the time you’re putting into the sport (training, racing, getting stuff sorted for the sport etc), don’t you think you can better use it elsewhere?
Internally I was fighting a battle harder than ever – I usually can answer these swiftly and easily with legit justification but lately I had hesitation because my mind was weak from all the fatigue in my life.
I don’t have a deadline to how long I want to do this sport; obviously I want to do this for as long as I can. I guess there will be a time in my life where I might have to cut back on spending and training and racing; like when I get married and start a family for example. But to be honest, right now I am happy with the progress and I have settled into this lifestyle that I’m comfortable with.
The financial bit is starting to eat into me though – admittedly I’ve spent quite a bit on this sport and it was still manageable, until I moved to my bachelorette pad and the bills started to pile up along with the housing loan. It is easy to get carried away and throw your entire life into the sport, but I have to remember that my work has to come first because if there’s no work, then I’ll have no money for the sport. I’m sure this is commonly experienced by the other “lifestyle athletes” (which I define as normal people with normal jobs who have great sporting aspirations) too.
Thankfully, I enjoy my work and I’m always grateful that I am able to make a career out of my passions.
Well, I don’t intend to give up the sport or quit being competitive in it; it’s just that I found it harder to answer to myself than usual that’s all. And it’s time to tighten the purse strings too.
So I was just becoming very stressed and I was carrying a black face everywhere, I was highly irritable and I was struggling to control my emotions. In short, I wasn’t fun to be around and I was giving out negative energy to others. And I also believe that when you’re negative, you will attract more negativity – so for some reason, I kept getting into disagreements with people and it drained me further. On that note, I apologise if I was being a bitch.
After speaking to a few close friends, who understandingly tolerated my tantrums (love you guys), I realised it’s time to do a realignment of priorities. I’m just one person and I cannot be doing everything, as much as I would like to. I’m human too.
Kelly gave me this piece of awesome advice (bless her beautiful soul) – write down a list of things that you are doing in your life now, eg. work, external projects outside of your work such as church or volunteer stuff, training, family, friends, relationship, pets etc. Are you getting your priorities right? How much time are you spending on each one? Are you misplacing your effort and energy?
If you’re like me and want to get your hands into everything, the prioritising is DAMN HARD can… because I want to do everything! Unfortunately we only have 24 hours in a day and there’s only so much we can do.
The sport of triathlon is something I enjoy and I always believe that it’s time to take a step back if you stop finding joy in what you do. I am in Phuket for a week now and even though I’m a bit tired of airports and travelling, I think this trip is timely because I can refresh myself some; more mentally than physically since I will still be training but it is the soul that feeds the body anyway. Being away from Singapore always helps and I am totally appreciating this downtime. I am just sprawled on the bed in the apartment with no plans and nothing to do for the rest of the day after a long ride this morning. It’s been a while since I’ve had a quiet Sunday like this!
Don’t get me wrong – I love my ‘happening’ life but I think I need to learn how to manage my rest properly. Not just getting more sleep, but finding time to chill and reset so I can get going again.
During this weary time, I’ve also learnt that life is too short to load yourself with unnecessary drama. If you think you’ve done what you could, then just move on. These things can really wear you down more than you think. You already have so many things on your hands; learn to take care of yourself first.
Oops, this went on longer than I expected. I haven’t shared my feelings this intimately since last year, but thank you for “listening” and I hope you can learn something out of it too. I will soldier on and hey, the rainbow is just on the other side. Life is like cycling; you go down one direction against the headwind but you will come back down the other direction with the tailwind and FLY. Where there’s an uphill, there will always be a downhill. Sending lots of love your way too!! xx
