I’m Bored!

Dear Roy

the most important thing is that we are enjoying ourselves when we are jumping

I’ve been doing 4-way for more than 10 years now. When I first started jumping I loved 4-way from the beginning and just threw everything at it. I’ve been on a few different teams, the last one for 4 years, and we reached a 16 average. The trouble is, that last year I started to get bored. I found I was in the plane counting down the jumps till I could stop and have a beer, sort of wishing them away, which is a waste of a lot of money. (We were doing 14 a day.) I had nagging thoughts in the plane like, ‘I really don’t care how many points we do on this dive’, or ‘what on earth am I doing here?’ I even felt like doing something radical like going into a stand-up at 9,000 feet just for the hell of it!

So, at the end of last year I decided I’d had enough and resigned from the team. Turns out everyone else felt a bit burned out too, so we decided to take a break from the team, have a year off and re-evaluate at the end of 2014. What do we do now? I look at the events calendar or go to the DZ and nothing appeals. I’m not very interested in doing average dives or going to boogies or joining ‘tracking’ groups. I need a challenge to keep me interested. Are there events arranged that would be appealing for ex-competitors like me?

Sorry if this sounds really naff – I used to love skydiving so much I can’t believe this has happened to me. But now I even feel I might stop jumping. I go to the dropzone and don’t feel like anything appeals. Surely you must have seen this happen to others? Do you have any suggestions because I want to stay in the sport, I love the people so much. I just want to get the spark back that I had before.

Thank you
Sven

Hi Sven,

From reading your story, the first thought in my mind is that it’s probably healthy for you to give yourself a break from jumping. How long that break should be, I don’t know, but remember that you don’t ‘have to’ keep jumping just because you did this for many years. Of course, you are used to this lifestyle and mentally it can be a big change if you step away from it. But you can welcome it, instead of ‘forcing’ yourself to stay in the sport and try to get back that feeling that you once had. No need to have doubts, or even be scared to take a break, you can come back at any time you want.

that taking a break is no shame at all and it is not about being weak, I just have been very stubborn

Some people keep jumping fanatically for all their life, other spend a few years in our sport and move on to a new challenge. But no matter what, the most important thing is that we are enjoying ourselves when we are jumping. Once you take away the ‘fun factor’, it doesn’t make sense to keep jumping anyway, but this goes for almost all the things in life. Of course it is very strange to find ourselves not passionate anymore about the sport that we love(d) so much. We have the desire to feel in that same way again because it used to make us happy, but we cannot force it, we have to sit it out. I guess we can compare it with a relationship, once the ‘fire’ is gone, it has to come back in a natural way, otherwise it will never last in the long run.

From my own experience I can give you this example; I have been a very passionate rock climber for almost 13 years. I climbed 3 or 4 times a week for many hours and I just couldn’t get enough of it. But in those last 18 months I started to feel a bit bored. I was going through my routine but I missed that spark that I love so much. First I thought that it was just temporary and that I just need to keep climbing and things would be fine again. So I kept climbing as much as before, but slowly, each time I went climbing I lost more and more passion for it. I made the big mistake of just keeping climbing and climbing, even when I didn’t feel like it, until I reached the point that I totally had a burnout of the sport. I couldn’t care about it anymore and I didn’t touch my climbing shoes for many years. I had been forcing myself to get back the passion again and kept pushing myself, despite my heart was telling me not to go…

What I should have done is follow my instinct and give myself a break to recharge my mental energy. Now I know that taking a break is no shame at all and it is not about being weak, I just have been very stubborn. What I wish for you is that you don’t make the same mistake I did. Just stop jumping for a while if you don’t find other challenges in our sport at this moment.

Probably if you take a break now, it is the best thing you can do. Just accept that mentally you need to re-charge and that is just fine. We see this constantly in other sports as well; even top athletes need some time off to recharge their batteries. Maybe it takes you half a year, maybe a year. In the end it doesn’t matter how long, if you don’t feel passionate about jumping, it doesn’t make sense to do it anyway. I recommend trying new stuff while you find yourself with lots of spare time in the weekend 😉

And your ‘family’ is there anyway; ready to serve you that cold beer at the end of the day!

Roy