Busy Going Nowhere
Numb, braced, or gone quiet. It’s all the same thing.
In this week’s newsletter: three ways of being stuck that look nothing alike, and the one move that works on all of them.
There’s a version of stuck that doesn’t come with an alarm. Nothing’s on fire. You’re not in a heap on the floor. You get up, you do the day, you answer the messages, you show up where you said you’d be. From the outside it reads as fine. That’s the version almost nobody talks about, because it doesn’t look like anything. It just quietly eats the years.
Here’s what I’ve come to think. Numb, braced, and gone quiet look like three different problems. They’re the same one. They’re all treading water. Working hard, arms going, lungs going, and not moving an inch toward shore. The effort is real. That’s what makes it so hard to see.
You’re tired at the end of the day, so it feels like you did something. You didn’t go anywhere, but you’re wrecked, so it counts. It doesn’t.
Numb.
The days blur. You can’t remember Tuesday. Food, work, scroll, sleep, again. You’re not sad, which is the confusing part. You’re just flat. Someone asks how you are and you say good, busy, and both are true and neither means anything. The volume’s turned down on the whole thing. You keep doing the work and it doesn’t seem to move, so somewhere along the way you stopped expecting it to. That’s numb. Not pain. The absence of it.
Braced.
You’re waiting for the other shoe. Running tomorrow at three in the morning. Bracing for a version of the future that hasn’t happened and probably won’t, and calling it being realistic. It isn’t caution. It’s a full time job you don’t get paid for. You’re so busy defending against the fall that you never actually climb. Tense all day, tired all night, and nothing to show for the effort except the fact that the thing you feared didn’t happen. Yet.
Quiet.
You stopped saying the true thing out loud. This one hits the young men hardest, the data on that is brutal, most of them will not tell a single person close to them that they’re struggling, and half are dead sure they don’t need to. But it doesn’t stop at young, and it doesn’t stop at men. You go quiet, you carry it alone, you tell everyone you’re fine because fine ends the conversation. And every time you don’t say it, the wall gets one brick higher.
Numb, braced, quiet. Three faces, one thing. You’re treading water and calling it a life.
But this part stings. It never trips the wire. There’s no rock bottom to treading water. That’s the trap. Rock bottom at least forces a move. This just holds you, warm and survivable, for years. You don’t drown. You don’t reach shore either. You just tread.
You didn’t fall in. Nobody falls into treading water. You chose it, a thousand small quiet times. The safe reply. The thing you didn’t say. The risk you talked yourself out of at three in the morning. That’s not a character flaw. It’s the most human thing there is, because treading water doesn’t hurt, and we’re wired to avoid what hurts. The problem was never that it’s painful. The problem is that it isn’t.
Which is the freeing part, if you let it be. A thing you chose is a thing you can choose your way out of. Nobody’s coming to pull you to shore. That sounds harsh. Read it again. It’s the most freeing line in this newsletter, because it means you were never actually waiting on anyone. You were waiting on you.
Now the reframe, because this is the bit I care about most. Being okay was never the goal. Getting back to fine is not the summit. Fine is the water. The goal is to perform at your own life. Not perform for the feed, not the highlight reel, not the version you post. Perform the way anything alive performs when it’s actually doing the thing it’s built to do. Fully in it. Facing the shore and moving.
You don’t think your way there. Nobody has ever thought their way out of treading water. You can analyse the water forever, its temperature, how you got in, whose fault it is. The water does not care. It just keeps you exactly where you are.
One thing touches all three faces at once. You move. Not a plan. Not a mood. A stroke. One real thing today that costs you something. The hard conversation. The email you’ve dodged for a month. The training session when you don’t feel it. The true sentence said out loud to one person. Movement does what thinking can’t, because it changes your actual position in the water instead of just describing it. That is performance. Not the highlight reel. The first real stroke toward a shore you can’t see yet.
I’ll answer my own question before I put it to you. I’m in it too, right now. After Greenland there’s been a down. Not depression, just the heaviness that can come after a big thing, when you stop and take stock of where you actually are. Sometimes that down is growth, you leveled up and now you’re quietly wondering if you’re good enough to be the bigger version of yourself. Sometimes it’s not growth at all, it’s just hard, and all you want is to get from the broken place back to normal. Both are real. Mine came with a healthy dose of anxiety these last few days.
That’s the feeling, and the feeling is the part that connects, because the facts only ever explain.
So here’s the fact. I’ve committed out loud to something that isn’t real yet. The resources aren’t there. The confirmation isn’t there. And to have any shot at it, I have to start now, training and building my life around a thing I can’t promise will happen. That’s the strange law of it. You have to work toward something, and believe in it, before it’s real, or it never gets the chance to be. And underneath the doubt there’s a quieter thing I can’t argue my way out of. Something in me says this is my road, and I have to follow it. I know how that sounds. Go to the mountain, Frodo. I’ll say it anyway, because it’s true.
Most people are doing a version of this, whether they say it out loud or not. So some days I keep my head above water and call that the work. I know this down for what it is now, and I know it moves. So I keep going. Not because I’ve beaten anything, but because moving is the only thing that works.
I’ve spent my life around performance. In sport, on the ice, and now in the work I do with people. And the longer I do it, the more sure I am that the highest form of it isn’t a podium or a summit. It’s a person facing their own life and actually moving through it.
So two questions, and sit in them for a second before you answer.
Are you performing at your own life right now?
Or are you busy going nowhere and calling it fine?
Move one real thing today. Something that costs you.
Then do it again tomorrow.
And that’s it for this week.
I’m heading back to Mashatu, the game reserve where I was working with a client a week or so ago. Four more days with her, out in it, having the kind of conversations that matter. And it’s not just out there. It’s every client I sit with, whether it’s on Zoom or out in the bush or across a table. That work fills me with a deep gratitude I don’t always have words for. And it’s all still performance. Sometimes performance is getting better. Sometimes it’s just getting back to neutral. Often it’s both. Being able to sit in that with someone is one of the things that keeps me moving.
I’ve been sharing more lately, and I’m going to keep doing it. I’ve started a new podcast, The Road to the Pole, and over the next four years I’m going to tell this whole journey on there and across everything else I make. Not just the good days and the highlight reel. I’m going to be as honest as I can about all of it, the mental side, the physical side, the training, the nutrition, the supplements, even the gear and the brands I choose to put my trust in. And it won’t only be me. I’m going to bring on people who know a thing like this from the inside, explorers who’ve already done it, endurance and marathon athletes, mindset people, nutritionists, anyone who can add real depth and a perspective I don’t have on my own. The trailer and the first episode are live right here on my SubStack as well as on whatever podcast platform you use. And on that note, I also had a fantastic conversation with Mike from Coffee Charged Conversations. That one’s out in a week or two and I’ll share it when it goes live. Good food for thought in there.
Before I leave you, I’ll be honest, I feel exposed sharing this much. But it’s a commitment I’ve made to myself, and part of it is keeping myself accountable, saying the thing out loud so I have to move on it. It also makes the whole thing richer to live. I’m telling this journey for me first. But I hope somebody takes something from it too, whether that’s just the story, or the push to go chase their own South Pole, whatever theirs turns out to be. And if anyone wants to be part of the journey, I welcome that. This isn’t meant to be an echo chamber of one.
With my first solo expedition on the horizon in February, a twenty day crossing in Northern Norway, I’ve already started talking to a few brands about backing what’s coming. That trip is a qualifier, one of the boxes you have to tick before anyone lets you attempt a solo to the South Pole, and it’s only the first step on a much longer road.
Let me be clear about one thing though. I’m not an influencer. I’m never going to hold a product up to a camera, do the little smile, and pretend I love something because a payment cleared. That’s not performance, that’s theatre. The brands and businesses I want next to me on this live the same lifestyle I do. A lifestyle built on the outdoors, adventure, resilience and performance. The ones who back dedication and hard work because that’s who they already are. If I use your gear or stand next to your name, it’s because I actually believe in it. If that sounds like you, or your company, we should talk.
Last thing, and this is the real ask. Whether this is your first one of these or you’ve been reading for twelve years, I challenge you. Send me an email or a WhatsApp and tell me the one thing you’re going to do this week to start moving. That’s it. I always read every one, and this week in particular I’ll answer every single email and every WhatsApp that comes in.
You can reach me directly, email or WhatsApp or my website. If you have any questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you!
If any of this resonated, share it with someone who might need it. Would really appreciate it.
Do good work.
G.