Don't quit at night

Last year I started participating in long distance cycling events. This came out of a conversation with a co-worker at lunch, who was telling me about how he would be riding the one way course of the Berlin-Munich-Berlin Super Brevet in July and I (half-jokingly) said I’d join him. To be honest, I doubted that I’d have the resolve to follow through on that. I liked riding my bike, but 850km in 64 hours was a different game entirely. I signed up anyway.

We both started pedalling on July 30th, making our way to Cottbus, Dresden, Marktredwitz, Regensburg, and finally Munich. Even though I was a few hours over the time limit, I was surprised to make it to the finish at all. I didn’t know how to fuel properly so I was completely exhausted and dopey. I had saddle injuries, my knees were on fire, and I had swelling around my achilles.

Across the whole ride, the last night was longer and more difficult than the others. It was darker than I was used to, riding in between towns and villages where there are no street lamps. I had to keep my light bright enough that I could see but not so bright that the battery would run out. It was cold, the fatigue was kicking in, bouncing between sweating and shivering. It was quiet. There’s almost nothing happening around you to keep you alert, even with what you can see on the road ahead. Occasionally there’s a car, a deer, a rabbit. Hours of nothing in between. A lot of empty space to let the mind wander: “why am I doing this. I should just quit. The train station isn’t far away. It would be warm. It would be comfortable. I could be home.”

I don’t know what I was trying to prove or what got me through those low points, but I’m glad I did. What I took from that and every event since then, is the the moment you notice the dawn light starting to grow, all of the negative self talk gets a little quieter. It seems a little more manageable. The pain is still there, now it’s not the only thing that’s there.

Every event since then, I’ve noticed that pattern. The day is strong, you make progress, then evening falls, the world starts to go to sleep, and you have to push on through the cold and dark where everything just feels harder, every problem another mountain to climb.

It reminded me of my first job in my current profession, when I definitely did quit in the middle of the night.

I’d spent the summer as an intern at the company, and after that they’d offered to keep me on part-time while I was still studying. It was a good job, too: they made space for me to learn, I had a very patient and skilled mentor, and the people were nice to work with. This was where I learned to use vim, a tool I continue to carry through my career. It’s where I learned Ruby and how welcoming the Ruby community could be. Some of my (pair-programmed) code from that time is still kicking around in the jira-ruby gem.

Not long after university courses picked back up for the year, and winter started closing in, I started to feel overwhelmed. I wasn’t even remotely healthy during university, it gave me some of the lowest points in my mental health journey, and I simply didn’t know how to handle everything that was going on or even recognise how much “everything” there was. I remember clearly sitting at my computer around midnight, crying, and sending an email to my boss telling him I was quitting. He replied a few minutes later, disappointed in the way I’d communicated, but understanding about why.

While “stuff is harder at night” is obviously a literal statement, I find it’s also a pliable metaphor that helps me in some of life’s other challenges. Winter is long, cold, dark, and has its own challenges. Mental health has its own waves, sometimes they sneak up and you need to be careful about what decisions you make when. You also need to be mindful about cultivating the metaphorical morning, since it requires deliberate work to come out of those dips.

Since that first night riding experience, I’ve joined more events, ridden with more experienced riders, and learned more about how to get through these things in once piece. One of the lines I have seared in my mind now is from a film about Further Elements, an adventure bike race through remote parts of Scotland I would like to join one day:

“don’t scratch at night, do it in the morning, it’s always better.”

It’s not surprising to hear this kind of thing at rider briefings and from those more experienced, yet this particular instance of it, the undramatic delivery (and probably the film’s editing), it stuck with me. It’s good advice, too: not some motivational “you can do it!” speech, but a more sober “don’t scratch at night”. It acknowledges the reality that it’s going to suck out there sometimes and you’re going to want to give up. At least give yourself some rest and the chance to see the morning before you do it.

This is all a long winded way of saying: make big decisions whenever you want, but make them quietly to yourself at first. Let them marinate. Find a quiet space to reflect before you commit to them.

For now, in this era of turbo-capitalism, it’s feeling pretty fucking dark. Daylight can come from many places. The sun, friends & family, hobbies, nature. Make space away from what’s creating urgency, and cultivate the things that give you opportunities to reflect.

After writing all of this out that, I remembered a lot of the people I worked with at that first internship were passionate about cycling. After leaving that job I didn’t really ride bikes for the next 15 years. It’s only now I realise how important cycling is, the kinds of experiences it can unlock, and the skills it gives me that help navigate other parts of my life.

I wonder what would be different if I’d waited until the morning back then.