Newborn at 43
Updated: Jul 16
I didn’t realize how exhausted I really was with my life till my body forced me to accept it on a gas station floor in Austin, Nevada. This weekend I was reminded of how far I have come in my recovery in the last year.
The following timelines all blend together and overlap between about 2019-2024 at various stages.
Missteps in the Mud
A sport that I coach -and to which I have devoted a great deal of my time, attention, and financial resources- has taken both a physical and mental toll on me over the course of more than a decade. The drama and pettiness that can sometimes emerge within any community finally came to a head one year after an incident that involved a misstep on my part.
It didn't matter that my intentions had been good, or that I was apologetic, willing to learn, and committed to doing the work necessary to repair the harm. I had to sit there and take the beating, as it were.
While the people who truly mattered stood by my side, I listened as others openly debated the value of more than a decade of experience, service, and dedication. I watched as people dragged my name through the mud in public. I listened to hateful things being said about me by individuals who neither understood the situation nor sought to. And I did nothing.
I listened to every criticism. I did everything that was asked of me. I tried to carry myself with grace and resolve. I wanted to show humility without surrendering my dignity.
What had once been a place of joy, community, and refuge became a source of anxiety and anguish. Every time I walked through the doors to coach, I knew I was choosing discomfort. Looking back, I can see how much it affected me. My coaching changed. I became less confident, more hesitant. My shoulders began to slump. I stopped lifting weights. I stopped going to the gym.
I still loved the sport, and I still loved coaching. That passion never disappeared. But the nature of the accusations and the intensity of the vitriol struck something much deeper than I realized at the time. The punishment did not fit the mistake.
When I came home that day hoping to find comfort and a soft place to land, I found only more chaos and turmoil. It was there, in the aftermath of everything, that something inside me finally broke.
For a long time, I didn't fully understand how significant that break had been. Looking back now, I can see it clearly. I lost the will to fight for myself. I stopped advocating for my own space, my own needs, and my own boundaries.
The wild horse that had once charged forward with confidence and determination became something smaller and quieter. Wounded. Tired. Resigned.
My body seemed to accept a story that my mind had not yet put into words: that there was no point resisting anymore.
Personal Ethical Boundaries
While I have always considered myself a forgiving and compassionate person, there are certain ethical lines that, once crossed, are difficult for me to move beyond. One of the biggest is loyalty. I don't mean blind or unwavering loyalty. I mean loyalty to what is good, honest, and right. Of course, I would prefer to be the one who benefits from that loyalty, but I can step back and appreciate when I am not chosen if it serves a greater good.
Unfortunately, there were several instances in which people close to me betrayed that sense of loyalty. At the time, I didn't fully understand the effect it was having on me. Looking back, I can see how each betrayal nudged my nervous system a little further toward vigilance. I became increasingly aware of the possibility of being hurt again. I found myself waiting for the surprise, wondering when the next person would disappoint me, abandon me, or turn against me. What began as caution slowly became hypervigilance.
My nervous system kept ratcheting upward, and my body began to pay the price.
It wasn't a dramatic collapse. It was a gradual malfunction.
Then, in January of 2025, my personal life came to a head. A relationship of thirteen and a half years, one that I believed was my forever partnership, came crashing down around me. My life had become deeply intertwined with this person. We weren't just partners; we shared passions, hobbies, dreams, routines, and a vision for the future. Nearly every aspect of my life had become connected to theirs.
When it ended, everything was suddenly called into question.
I don't want to dwell too deeply on that relationship here. It remains one of the more painful chapters of my life, and there is still much for me to process and understand. Even now, parts of that experience continue to challenge my personal ethics and beliefs about trust, loyalty, and love.
There is truth in the phrase, "the body keeps the score."
I can still feel traces of that loss woven through me. It lingers in places I don't expect—in old habits, fleeting thoughts, moments of hesitation, and sudden waves of emotion. Long after the mind begins to move forward, the body often tells a different story.
Mine certainly did.
Scooter had a great song about it: F*CK 2020!
When COVID hit, all of us were understandably under increased pressure. I was already teetering on the edge of creative and emotional burnout, and then the dial got turned up to eleven. On one hand, I was grateful. Many people at my company were laid off, and I kept my job. On the other hand, being one of the most junior inspectors meant I was left largely on my own for nearly two years. An office that once housed twenty-six people was reduced to two. Day after day, I sat in a small, windowless cubicle trying to manage responsibilities that often felt beyond my experience.
I did my best to stay on top of things, but I felt trapped. Looking back, I could have done a better job of getting outside and moving more, but like many people during that period, I was going stir-crazy. The resentment slowly built. The isolation deepened. Eventually, I burned out. It didn't help that the gyms were closed, my sport had effectively shut down, and many of the parks and trails I loved were inaccessible. I tried to respect those restrictions.
(Politics aside, I was actively involved in Search and Rescue at the time, and I saw firsthand the strain that outdoor recreation was placing on emergency services. Some local SAR units responded to more calls during that period than they had in the previous decade combined. Resources were stretched thin, and volunteers were exhausted.)
Even when I did get outside, I often found myself picking up trash left behind by new trail users. It was a small thing, but it felt symbolic. Everywhere I looked, people seemed tired, overwhelmed, and stretched beyond their limits.
Near the tail end of the pandemic, as coworkers slowly began returning to the office, I accepted a temporary assignment supporting a turnaround project in Sioux City, Iowa. I was hoping for a change of scenery and an opportunity to learn from more experienced inspectors. The plan was simple: spend a month working six days a week, twelve to fourteen hours a day, gain some experience, and return home.
What I walked into was a disaster.
There were inspectors on site with far more years in the industry than I had, yet many struggled with basic organization, planning, and work processes. Layered on top of that was rampant sexism, excessive drinking, glaring safety violations, and a general disregard for COVID protocols. Everything felt exaggerated and dysfunctional. Rather than engage with the chaos, I kept my head down. I packed my lunch, showed up on time, planned my day, completed my work, and went home.
Within a week, the team's productivity numbers had drastically increased. Upper management noticed, and they noticed it was because of me. To the other inspectors this placed a target on my back. I had arrived expecting to learn. Instead, within two weeks, I found myself informally doing many of the tasks that should have belonged to the supervisor. He was not pleased. The truth was, I didn't want the position. I just wanted to do my job and collect a paycheck. Still, the atmosphere became increasingly tense.
Then came the first major safety incident.
While conducting an inspection, a scaffold crew dropped a sheet of plywood from high in a pipe rack. It crashed to the ground less than two feet from where I was standing. In our industry, that qualifies as a serious near miss and typically triggers an immediate safety review. I followed protocol and reported the incident directly to the client.
Later, my supervisor pulled me aside and demanded to know why I hadn't reported it to him first. When I explained that I had followed established safety procedures, the conversation deteriorated quickly. I was called a variety of names, many of them rooted in sexism. Fortunately, there wasn't much he could do. The team's performance had improved dramatically, and management knew it. Letting me go would have created problems they couldn't afford.
My contract was extended, and what was supposed to be a month stretched into more than two. As the weather turned colder and Thanksgiving approached, two additional safety incidents occurred. In both situations, I was working alone and felt that my health, and potentially my life, had been placed at unnecessary risk. That was enough. I called my branch manager back home, explained the circumstances, and told him I wanted out. To his credit, he listened, understood, and supported my decision. By the end of the week, I was gone.
Three days after I left, someone set fire to a fence near one of the process units. It happened to be a unit I had been working on, in an area containing highly explosive materials. The fire went unnoticed for hours.
The news felt less surprising than it should have.
While I was in Iowa, there wasn't much of an outlet for me. I couldn't find the connection to nature that I normally relied on, and there were few opportunities to be active outdoors. The one thing I did have was a membership to the YMCA. Almost every evening after work, I went to the pool. I was too exhausted to lift weights or complete a meaningful workout. After spending all day climbing through industrial equipment and working long hours, I had very little left in the tank. But I could swim. So I would get in the water and swim laps. Back and forth. Back and forth. For an hour at a time, I could focus on nothing except the rhythm of my breathing and the movement of my body through the water.
It was repetitive. Sometimes it was boring.
But looking back, I think it may have been one of the first things that helped preserve my sanity.
My body was carrying an incredible amount of tension, and I had no real outlet. No place to ground myself. No place to exhale.
The water, even chlorinated YMCA water, gave me a small measure of relief. For an hour each night, I could feel some of the weight leave my shoulders.
The Gas Station in Austin
So there I was in late April of 2025, sitting on the floor of a gas station in Austin, Nevada. I had just ridden my newly acquired Tenere 700 through miles of cold, ice, and wind. My hands had frozen to the grips. My shoulders and back were locked tight. Waves of nausea rolled through me, and I had nearly run out of fuel before reaching the pump. When I finally pulled in, I almost fell over trying to stop.
The bike was tall. I was a new rider. The motorcycle was still unfamiliar to me, and this was supposed to be its shakedown ride. It was not the ride I thought it was going to be. I happened to be on Highway 50, the Loneliest Road in America, and in that moment I felt the truth of that name deep in my bones.
Just a week earlier, I had left my home on Whidbey Island and pointed the bike east toward Moab, Utah. The trip was supposed to be many things at once. I hoped to meet new people, explore back roads, learn the bike, learn more about myself, process some heartbreak, and maybe begin unpacking a few old wounds.
I accomplished some of that.
What I didn't expect was that within the first few days I would be laid off from my job, crash the bike in deep sand, separate my shoulder, dislocate the thumb on my throttle hand, severely bruise my wrist, and take a massive hit to my ego. More importantly, I cracked open something inside myself that I wasn't prepared to face.
Now I sat on the floor of a gas station in Austin, trying to warm up. A cup of weak coffee rested in one hand while I stared blankly at a display of garishly colored Beanie Babies. For the previous several days, I had been wandering alone through Utah and Nevada. Now I was heading west toward home, feeling completely defeated.
I had no job.
No clear prospects.
The person I believed was the love of my life had decided I wasn't the one. I thought I might lose my home. And something was happening inside my body that I couldn't explain. My system felt completely out of balance. I had gained weight. I felt hypervigilant and sluggish at the same time. I would swing between feeling overheated and chilled to the bone. Sometimes I would begin shaking for no apparent reason, my body trembling as if I were standing outside in winter. I felt angry and sad, hopeful and hopeless, emotional and completely numb—sometimes all within the same day. I felt like a failure. And, if I am being honest, I felt a little bit crazy. What I didn't understand at the time was that nothing was actually wrong with me.
My nervous system had simply reached its limit.
A Season Of Rest
My nervous system finally hit a wall that day.
Looking back, I don't think it was a sudden collapse so much as a long-overdue surrender. My body had been carrying stress, grief, disappointment, hypervigilance, and exhaustion for years. Eventually, it simply refused to carry any more. For the remainder of 2025 and into the first part of 2026, I gave myself permission to just be.
I stopped worrying about the gym. I stopped worrying about productivity, performance, and trying to fit some idealized version of who I thought I should be. Instead, I focused only on what was immediately in front of me. I took care of the essential responsibilities and let everything else wait.
Thankfully, I was able to lean on relationships I had built throughout my career. Within a month, I had another job lined up. I was able to keep several planned trips and activities that brought me genuine joy. Beyond that, however, I stepped back from nearly everything. I let go of obligations, commitments, and even many of the hobbies that had once defined me.
For perhaps the first time in my adult life, I rested.
Not for a weekend. Not for a vacation. I rested for a season.
And slowly, without forcing it, something began to change.
Today, I feel like I have emerged from that season renewed.
I wouldn't say that everything has disappeared. There are still echoes of that difficult period. Certain memories and experiences still leave faint ripples behind. But the chaotic crashing waves that once dominated my life have largely settled.
I can feel the difference not only in my mind, but in my body.
My shoulders rest lower. My muscles carry less tension. My joints ache less. I am less reactive to stress, less sensitive to extremes of heat and cold. The constant feeling that something might be wrong, that I needed to be prepared for the next crisis, has quieted.
More than anything, I no longer feel like I am fighting myself.
For years I believed that healing would come from pushing harder, trying harder, and becoming stronger.
What I eventually learned was that healing sometimes comes from doing the opposite.
Sometimes the most important thing we can do is rest long enough for the body to remember that it is safe.
Like a Newborn at 43
Over the weekend, my friend Hei-Hei took me out riding my DRZ-400 on some forest roads he knew well. It was something I had been looking forward to for weeks. Then, on Friday right before we left, I received a message containing some emotionally unsettling news. It caught me off guard.
A few years ago, something like that probably would have sent me into a full spiral. This time, while it still hurt, I handled it differently. I think my response was something along the lines of, "Well, this fracking sucks, but I guess I misunderstood what the intention was."
Still, the conversation stayed with me. The entire ride on Saturday, I found myself replaying it in my head, along with a separate conversation from a recent therapy session. Twice, I drifted wide in corners and slid into a ditch. Somehow, I managed to stay upright and ride back out. Then I locked up the rear tire at speed and skidded hard across the road. It wasn't a particularly dramatic moment, but something about it made me stop.
I pulled over.
Hei-Hei had already started down a sandy embankment toward a riverbed, but I remained where I was, leaning over my handlebars and staring into space.
"What's up?" he asked.
"I just locked the back tire and skidded really hard."
"So what?"
"I know. I just need a minute."
I watched him disappear down the embankment and begin picking his way through the baby-head rocks below.
Frack.
My mind went completely blank.
Then I realized something.
The sensation I had felt when the tire locked wasn't fear. At least, not in the way I was used to experiencing fear. It felt more like I had been dropped into a new body. My reactions were different. The physical sensation was different. It was as if my nervous system was experiencing something for the first time, while my brain was still operating from old software.
Part of me was running calculations based on years of experience, remembering how I was supposed to feel. Yet another part of me was noticing that I didn't actually feel that way anymore.
Instead of panic, there was curiosity. Instead of dread, there was awareness.
It felt strangely pleasant. And strangely unsettling. I wanted to sit with the feeling and examine it, but I was also deeply distracted by it.
By the time I reached the rocky riverbed, I picked a terrible line. I knew it was a bad choice the moment I committed to it. The bike stalled, tipped over, and I found myself lying there wondering what had just happened.
Mentally, I had checked out.
Hei-Hei came over, picked up my bike, rode it down closer to the water, and we sat there for a while. Eventually my mind cleared.
I rode back out on my own. I chose a better line. I stalled the bike several more times, got stuck once or twice, and had to work through the problem, but I made it.
Later, reflecting on the ride, I realized something important. For at least five years, my nervous system had been sounding alarms.
The problem was that I kept silencing them.
Every warning signal, every moment of exhaustion, every indication that I was overwhelmed: I interpreted it as weakness. I assumed the alarm meant I wasn't working hard enough, wasn't resilient enough, wasn't measuring up.
So I pushed harder.
What I never considered was that the alarms weren't telling me I was failing. They were telling me I was overloaded. My nervous system wasn't struggling because I was doing too little.
It was struggling because I was carrying too much.
Now, at forty-three years old, I am trying very hard not to rush past moments like these. For so long, every uncomfortable realization was something to overcome, analyze, or fix.
Now I am learning to pause when those moments arrive and simply pay attention. The truth is that something fundamental has changed. In some ways, I do feel like a newborn.
Not because I have become someone entirely different, but because I am experiencing familiar things through a system that no longer feels trapped in constant survival mode.
That is both exciting and unsettling.
It is strange.
It is uncomfortable.
It is fun.
It is scary.
And for the first time in a very long while, I think that is exactly where I am supposed to be.
(if you want to see a short video of the ride including me tipping over on the river bank, you can find it on my instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DZ3KxU2SFs7/ )
BOOK: Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach This is a small short book, and I don't know if this was just a book that all of us 80s/90s pacific northwest kids knew about by word of mouth, or if others read it as well. It's about a seagull that seeks to master better flight. It touches on concepts of individualism, conformity, mastery, mentorship, passion, and artificial limitations. For such a short novella it is actually pretty deep. I have read it probably 20-30 times.
SONG: The Work - Rob Riccardo
A song that was on my playlist during my season of rest to remind me that hey, you need to let things happen. Sometimes it is hard work, sometimes it is patience, sometimes it is pain, sometimes it is letting life do its thing
Thank you for reading my post. This post/essay, like many of the ones I write, is a blend of my personal experiences, travel, memories, stories, and shared conversations. These solely represent myself and my opinions and thoughts. When it involves personal friends I have given them nicknames unless they have given explicit permission to use their given name. There are times that I am able to pull from what I wrote down in my journals at the time an event happened, others I am trying to recall memories that have been altered by brain injuries and a lifetime of simply living. I may not always get it right, so please forgive me for some unintentional variations.
I always welcome feedback and thoughts on my posts. Please feel free to send me an email or comment below.
Love from the road,
Nic & Rally
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