Quitting Is Easy

Most of my adult life has been transient as I’ve moved from place to place, job to job and so on. I’ve managed to pick up some amazing experiences and friends along the way, however it’s becoming more clear to me that memories fade over time unless we make a commitment to memorialize important milestones in our life. Nothing can be truer to me as I’ve watched the first 6 years of my son’s life go by in what seems like an instant. While I’m certain no moment of my past or future will be as significant to me as the birth of my son, I want to remember my life in more vivid color on the margins, rather than allow the pace of life, thinking about the past and future, blur my memories of the whole thing too much.

Last month, fortuitously on the same day as my son’s birthday, I got promoted to purple belt at my BJJ academy after spending nearly 10 years at blue belt. I can imagine that some observers would think it’s a bit silly for a man who’s about to turn 40 celebrating a belt promotion with such emotional reverence, however I’d like to share a bit about what this promotion means to me and why and maybe even inspire someone else to stick through something difficult and elusive a bit longer.

In January 2014 I was packing up all of my possessions into a 2008 Toyota Yaris and setting a course up north through Wyoming, across Montana, the Dakotas, into Minnesota, Chicago and so-fourth back from Boulder, Colorado, where I had been living since early 2010. I had just gone through a tough breakup and had been let go from my job - debts had been piling up for years and as I was just about to turn 30, I felt like my entire 20’s was a lost decade. While I’ve always been light on my feet and able to adjust to life’s challenges one way or another, I’ve often blurred many major life events into hard-to-remember summaries that don’t do justice to what actually happened and truthfully, it’s always bothered me.

What I will never forget as I was leaving Boulder were two things. First, the kindness of friends I had made who supported me through thick and thin as I was leaving with my tail between my legs, with barely a penny to pinch and no real plan for what was next. Second, were my BJJ instructors, fondly referred to as “professors,” from Easton Brazilian Jiu Jitsu - Amal, Foster, Ian, Mike, Brian and others who I had only gotten to know two years prior. My ex-girlfriend at the time was actually the one who had helped sign me up for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu after endless hours of me droning on about how interested in it I was through my long-time interest in MMA (as a spectator), so I have to give credit for that!

I won’t sugar coat it - I started off BJJ as someone with almost no combat sport experience and I was about 100+ lbs overweight. Between then and now I’ve gotten my ass kicked so bad, so many times, it’s not even useful to count. I was often older, slower, fatter and less skilled with most of the people I trained with, yet I had so much fun enduring it, learning and somehow getting better.

I just kept showing up.

That move from Boulder was not to be my last big move as I found my way to South Korea to teach English and eventually wound up at a small gym with a really cool black belt owner who I became friends with named Young. At this point I had started taking my training, diet and health much more seriously and it began to show - besides the number on the scale being much more pleasing to me after spending most of my adult life way too overweight, I actually started to get better at a faster rate. At the new gym I joined in Seoul most of the people there were still younger, fitter and faster than me, but over time I was able to really get to a tuned-in place and was winning more rounds than I was losing. It felt good.

Moving back to the US after nearly 4 years in South Korea was great for my second-act career, but was quite hectic. When my wife and I rented an apartment in Brooklyn I was lucky to have a Renzo Gracie academy a short walk from where I lived and worked. I got some good training there and another stripe on my belt, cumulatively having earned 2 stripes in South Korea and one in NYC. All things being equal, I was probably a matter of months from getting promoted to purple belt and I was SO ready for it.

But life had other plans as my career accelerated simultaneously to finding out that my wife was pregnant with our son. What followed was a whirlwind of moving out of the city, becoming a brand new dad and living/working through all of it in the first really big crypto bull cycle ever. It was and still is somewhat of a blur to me. I didn’t get to take as much time off as I should have when my son was born - the stress and weight started to pile back on and I fell back off of training.

Even though I had a couple decent BJJ gyms near me in the new city I had moved to closer to where I grew up, I didn’t train. I made up lots of excuses, some valid, some total bullshit. I had somewhat of a serious and recurring eye injury where my cornea would tear open from mild contact - it really did scare me that I might lose vision in that eye as accidents had happened in sparring in years past which landed me in the emergency room. Everytime I’d spar hard, especially with people I didn’t know well, or who were less experienced, I’d be worried that I was one spazzy motion away from getting my eye grazed, one step closer to becoming blind in that eye.

This is the time when I almost gave up BJJ permanently - thoughts of quitting were alluring to me as I wanted to be able to shrug off the question of whether I’d ever return or not. I picked up my blue belt at one point and just held it in my hands wondering if I tossed it in the trash along with my gi, whether the urge to learn and train would subside in time and be replaced with a new, safer, more convenient physical hobby that I’d feel comfortable with.

Thankfully I kept that faded old blue belt and went about my life working on my career, building a better home life balance with my family and eventually moved once more to a smaller town about an hour away during the pandemic that was more centrally placed in nature and outdoor activities that I enjoyed.

Shortly after my move I was daydreaming about BJJ, as I regularly did, seeing videos pop up on my social media feed showing not just elite athletes who dedicate their whole lives to BJJ competition and the hardcore life that comes with it, but also examples of older family oriented men and women who had stuck with their BJJ training over the years, getting better and receiving promotions along the way. It struck me to do a quick search of BJJ gyms in the area and found an established branch named Team Link about 3 miles from my house that I would eventually decide to reach out to. I showed up for a tour of the gym during a time when the kids class was starting and I saw a bunch of tiny humans learning BJJ and it was so fun and cute to watch - I instantly wondered if my son who was then 4 years old would like it. I went home to my wife after that and suggested the idea to hear that our son try out a class and she agreed.

Our son was allowed to start classes despite being a year younger than the minimum age because the gym owner thought I could be a supportive force during class given my experience training over the years. After about 4 months of training, my son settled into going to class twice a week and enjoyed it and my wife, who had trained briefly with me in New York before getting pregnant decided she wanted to join as well.

6 months had passed since my son joined and my wife was training again as well and I was still on the sidelines before the gym owner approached me and asked me why I wasn’t training yet. I had mentioned my eye issues to him originally, but he wanted to challenge me on this anyways. He let me know that at this gym, which wasn’t common at other gyms I had joined, sparring of any sort was totally optional. Where I was used to the expectation before that promotions would be hard to come by without hard sparring on a regular basis or even impossible without competing at tournaments, I was given the explicit permission to just come to class, train technique and not spar if I thought that was before for me. No stigma was attached to the idea that some people were at different phases of their life and not everyone would or could be the idealized competitive athlete that was so commonly celebrated.

After a bit of thinking I decided to start coming to classes again and while I was quite sore and reminded of how out of shape I was at the time, I was having relatively safe fun learning new techniques at my own comfort level. The head black belt at the school who was also part owner of the gym spoke to me before classes and pointed out a few people in class who he thought I could confidently spar with if I ever chose to do so. He wasn’t pointing out weak or inexperienced people that I definitely could beat whenever I wanted - no on the contrary. The people I was encouraged to spar with were high level purple, brown and black belts who I’d have little to no chance of beating, but would not be injured by because they were so experienced and controlled.

This really was a paradigm shift for me and gave me the confidence to show up to stay after technique class for sparring occasionally. This not only got me back into the mindstate of using my BJJ technique in live action sparring, but also gave me the opportunity to get to know more of my teammates and gain their trust as well that I was not an injury liability waiting to happen.

Over time I’d settle into a routine of going to class about 3 times per week on top of my strength training regime I did at home to get in better shape. After 6 months of joining there was a school-wide promotion ceremony and I was more or less certain that I’d not get promoted for a variety of reasons held in my mind. I was encouraged to come to the promotion regardless of the likelihood of getting my 4th stripe or not to show support for my teammates who were up for promotion (including my wife and son). So I agreed.

After an hour of taking turns demonstrating techniques I knew I lined up at the end of class, tired, sweaty and increasingly excited as one person after another got called up to the front of the academy and rewarded their promotions. I clapped, screamed, whooped and hollered for everyone and forgot all about myself and my doubts for that time and it felt really good - until the moment I was shocked to hear my own name called. I slowly walked up in front of the head instructor and gave him a hug and just said “thank you” - my voice trembling holding back tears. As he put a stripe on my belt, he quietly told me that I deserved this and that he was happy to be a part of my journey.

So there I was - a 4 stripe blue belt, just one promotion away from purple belt, a belt that lies halfway between total beginner and expert. I was grounded by the support I had for my BJJ journey to date, my wife and son also got promoted and were very proud of themselves. I had to pinch myself because years prior the idea of having my whole family train together seemed like a pipe dream. But in that moment it was a reality and I was determined to lead by example.

The following year of training went well for me - I spent most of 2023 getting familiar with a lot of the foundational basics and some advanced techniques I had learned prior and getting a lot of instruction on new moves I had never tried before. I didn’t see a hockey stick line of improvement for myself in knowledge or performance sparring, but I did improve noticeably. For the first time in my life I had structured my time and efforts into a more sustainable practice schedule that served longevity and consistency over sprints that lead to burnout and injury.

While I didn’t become a gym warrior when it came to sparring, I did increase my sparring sessions to 1-2 times a week consistently and over the course of 2023 I realized the next promotion test was coming and I went through all the same feelings of self-doubt as before. The difference this time was that while skipping the promotion in order to save face in the light of my own perception of not being good enough, I was going to study and practice my ass off to show exactly how much I knew. In BJJ, you often don’t know when exactly you’ll be promoted or what exactly you have to demonstrate to be eligible. While my current BJJ academy does a good job in creating a curriculum to follow, there’s always the sense of uncertainty around the outcome for hobbyists like myself.

The difference from this promotion and the year prior was that purple belt is in fact a distinguished accomplishment in BJJ - statistically you’ve made it past the point of being more likely to quit and never reach black belt than not. The realization of this, plus the trust I’ve placed in my instructor(s) enabled me to give the decision for my status totally up to their judgment - and regardless of the outcome I was going to keep training because I wanted to be there with my wife and son for their own progression.

With a remarkably similar experience to the year prior, I did my best come test time and watched, cheered and supported my wife, son and everyone else at the academy as they had their turns for promotions - and when I finally got called to the front, had my dusty old blue belt removed and was presented with a pristine new purple belt, a feeling of relief, gratitude, commitment and honor flooded over me unlike anything I’d ever experienced in life. I could now call myself a purple belt, regardless of how good I was comparatively to others.

It’s been about 2 months since receiving my purple belt and I’m still training regularly. While sickness, holidays and other road bumps in my training schedule have occurred, the process of coming to class, learning and testing what I learn is still as fresh and rewarding as ever. It took me a long time, over a decade, to achieve this milestone and I realized that I was not just mentally committed to learning the art of BJJ, but I’m suited to it. The journey has taught me more about persevering through adversity, self-doubt, external life obligations and focus through life’s seasons than any other self-chosen activity in my life.

The reason I am sharing this story is because I hope you, the reader, can experience something in your life akin to the long journey of progressing through the BJJ belt system. BJJ isn’t for everyone and I’m not trying to sell it as some panacea to all of life’s challenges. But to develop a physically challenging skill and truly enjoy it, to have to put it down and come back to it later through adversity is something I’ve never really done in my life otherwise.

Thank you for indulging this personal story of mine and I hope it brings some value to your life as you navigate your own challenges and questions of self-development in the rapidly changing and often chaotic world we all live in.