Over the years, I have posted a couple of pieces titled similarly, “Why I…”
I’ve written these because, to get know a part of me, successively one piece at a time, is to (eventually) know all of me; what we do daily or habitually can tell an awful lot about who we are, what we believe, and what keeps us going.
For those who have kept tabs on me as of late, you may have noticed a shift in my online presence: I rarely post about training, instead opting to post photos more and more. And this isn’t just a facade on social media. If you are around me in person you would certainly notice that I tote along a camera with me darn near everywhere I go – everywhere it is socially acceptable anways.
Ask my family and close friends and they will agree: I don’t do anything halfway. Not physically, not professionally, not academically. Whenever I decide to pick something up, I invest in it fully and rarely put it back down. And creative endeavors appear to be no exception.
Photography might appear to be one of those new things that I have added to that list of can’t-put-down’s, this is actually not my first forray with a camera. In 2016, as I was in the fledgling stages of my professional career, I got my hands on a Canon DSLR camera. I had no idea what I was doing with it, however I had a strong affinity for the device and craft. What’s more, I also had this sense – albeit only a slight one at the time – of wanting something for myself, personally, outside of the walls of our profession, completely untethered from the world of sports performance and coaching.
You see, although 2016 was only my second year as a true post-undergrad professional, it was, in all reality, my sixth year of coaching, as I had already tallied four years of coaching thoughout my bachelors degree; four years of voluntarily spending 8-12 hours per day (nearly every day) on a baseball field or in a weight room, writing programs, reading literature, and completing my college coursework. High school baseball, travel-ball, collegiate strength and conditioning, private sector, and professional baseball – you name it and I was getting experience in that area, all while still being a college student. I should say, getting that experience while forgoing the traditional “college experience”; being a kid, having fun away from work, social outings, hobbies not involving training (sure, I had my own lifting, but I treated every lift as a chance to become a better coach back then). Thus, unbeknownst to me at the time, by 2016 I was starting to feel just a slight tug from the world outside of sport. Hence that Canon camera.
However, I can’t imagine I tallied up more than 200 clicks of the shutter button on that camera. By the time Spring Training rolled around and I reported to New York Mets camp to begin the season, guilt had already won: how could I spend time frivelously taking photos when I could be doing things away from work that made me better at, well… work? Let alone spend even more time doing the “work” necessary to actually get better at photography. In my mind, I could have (no, should have!) been studying, watching lectures, taking notes, training myself, networking, programming.
And, so I did; I also sold my camera.
It didn’t seem like much at the time, but little did I know that this would not be the last time I felt that desire for a hobby or passion-project (nor would it be the last time I picked up a camera,)
But, I kept that same nose-to-the-ground mindset for the better part of five or six years, setting aside anything extra-cirricular in order to focus on professional development. And, honestly, it is likely a major driver behind my growth in this field and ability to maintain a place in it.
However, somewhere in the last two years I have experienced a shift in perspective. It wasn’t an immediate one; over time the balance has just trended away from what I thought was best for me, and toward what so many others around me were trying to tell me over the years (both those who were years ahead of me in this game, as well as those on the outside looking in). While I was getting professional, intellectual, and physical fulfillment from the sports performance world, something was missing. That low-level tug of wanting something that was truly mine away from the confines of sports science and performance training – well, it became stronger. I didn’t just want something else, I needed it. I needed an outlet to challenge and express myself in ways I never had before, and I had only just realized it.
What’s more, working in today’s sports landscape means living and operating in a highly objective, oftentimes binary and somewhat corperate world. There is, in fact, a right and wrong way to do things, say things, and even create things (and for good reason too). And then you look at the vacuum that is the strength and conditioning or sports science social media environment, where everybody has a take on what others are doing wrong… well, altogether it can be a lot at times.
For me, picking up a camera has unlocked something that I had forgotten I had access to in life: freedom to express, create, and do meaningful things in a subjective way that, ultimately, needs to be judged by no one other than me. You do not need to like my photos. I can take them the “wrong way”. I can over- or under-expose, select the “wrong” lens, color-grade an image incorrectly, over-saturate my colors… none of it truly matters unless it matters to me.
Trust me, I don’t want (or need) a world that is entirely made up of these shades of gray (or a rainbow palette of hues). In fact, I love the binary world of coding – that if I mistype one piece of syntax, I will get an error forcing me to try again. I love the politics and interpersonal challenges that come with working in a fast-paced, high-pressured environment like professional sport. I love that, yes, sport science involves some style, but it is not wholly an art form – it is science after all. And, I am impassioned and motivated to continue to develop as a practitioner, teammate, coach, sports scientist, and analyst.
However, something I have learned now in my early thirties is that there is truth behind what so many successful people who have come before me tried to impart on me over the years:
They said, “there is more to life than work.”
And most of them also recited some rendition of, “we are at our best professionally when we are doing things to be our best selves personally.”
To a certain extent, I think going “all in” professionally was necessary to build the type of career that I expdected from myself. However, at some stage, there becomes that tipping point of when being balanced – or more aptly put, being wider in interests and endeavors – will yield greater gains, holistically, than continuing to chip away at just one narrow slab of life.
So, I’ll continue to work hard and learn professionally (in part by going back to school); I’ll still train myself hard and collect my own data to track my progress just like we do our athletes. But, I will also make sure to bring my camera with me wherever I go and write more often as a means to create, and to challenge myself in new ways. But also because, well, there is just more to life than work I suppose.
Ryan J. Faer 
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