bio (cont.)

After college, I moved to San Francisco to work at a dot-com, while continuing to train and compete as a pole vaulter. Most of the people at the company were very nice, but, nonetheless, I found the job horribly tedious and oppressive, and it was a great moment when I decided to leave. I'm positive it was good for them, too.. I mean, who wants to work with someone who hates what they're doing? No one, that's who.

I started doing contract web development work, which gave me more time and flexibility to focus on pole vaulting, which was what I loved. After a while of training and competing in the Bay Area, I decided I wanted to train even more seriously, so I moved to Jonesboro, Arkansas to train with some of the world's best at Bell Athletics.

Training in Arkansas was joyful and deeply disappointing. I loved what I was doing, training and competing. And the cost of living was so low, I didn't have to work very much to get by. My fitness level and my vault technique improved immensely, and I woke up everyday with passion and enthusiasm for what I might accomplish. But I never seemed to have a breakthrough. I never jumped better than my personal best from before I moved there. I remember feeling constantly disappointed. I always wanted perfection. I wanted every practice and every meet to be the best, and if they were less than that, it amounted to failure in my mind.

I'm sure my constant dissatisfaction read to everyone around me. Eventually my coach and I had a falling out, and he asked me to leave. It was in the middle of the indoor season, and I still had about six months left of competing ahead of me. It was crushing. I was healthy and fit, and I still had the burning desire to break through. But now I had no place to train.

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