I felt something similar after running my first marathon. I was always a sedentary kid who could barely finish a mile in grade school so this was a huge accompl

I felt something similar after running my first marathon. I was always a sedentary kid who could barely finish a mile in grade school so this was a huge accomplishment for me, but the emotional roller coaster of training and racing and the post-marathon blues hit like a truck [1]. I also felt the same after living in Japan, which was the brass ring I'd been chasing for as long as I could remember. I had to confront the realization that what I thought would make me happy ultimately didn't (these experiences yielded both the happiest and saddest moments of my life) and could never have lived up to my perfect idealization [2]. What helps me is to think of myself as a verb instead of a noun [3]. This helps me avoid putting all eggs in one basket and realizing that my self-worth does not come from a single persona that I wear, but is a weighted combination of everything that makes me a human being. [1] https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a20804968/the-postrace-blues/ https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a20804968/the-p... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5R8gduPZw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5R8gduPZw4 [3] “We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.” - Stephen Fry