I am 30 years old, living at home with my parents after a while, as I move between countries, and start a new job after my failed startup attempts.

Living at home is fun because you don't have to do any house work. Mom takes a personal affront if she cannot cook hot meals, despite my relative comfort with days old refrigerated food in my past life. As I thought about how I can make life even more amazing, I bought a barbell and a few weights so that I can have fun workouts as I wake up at 10 in the morning. LFG (Life is Fucking Good).

Last week, I booked tickets to Bombay to meet my Bombay friends and generally hang out in the great city. So, I thought it'd be great to talk about my two loves, Bombay and CrossFit and because like all unrequited loves they are things I keep pursuing in my life - a house on Pali Hill and a muscle up.

This post, however, is about CrossFit.

CrossFit is a cult.

I wanted to diffuse the tension upfront and address the elephant in the room. And like any other good cult that we know, it claims to solve most problems in your life: depression, daddy issues, helps you get laid and launches your instagram-influencer-millennial dream shilling protein powder and yoga pants.

Just like this other cult we all know (rhymes with zrypto), it has a few hallmark features of a classic cult like being extremely welcoming to new members, unique embedded jargon, decentralized but has a supreme leader, you end up with less money than you initially started, solves most things in life, community is for life, is hard to extricate once you get in, has launched a thousand memes, has its fair share of drama, and one can easily incense a cult member by uttering one liners probably in the comment section of YT or a tweet saying "is that a pull up bruh? because thats a no-rep".

Also I'd really want to invoke Creed at this point.

Yes that happened too. Greg Glassman, the owner, founder, our supreme leader and CrossFit's ex-CEO got cancelled but he managed to sell the company and make great money, and I? I had a fun time watching the drama unfold from the comfort of my iPhone screen, and discussing it in class later. Fun times.

However like all good cult members, I love CrossFit and can almost look at it as a metaphor for life. So putting my internet charlatan, snake oil salesman and grifter hat on, here is what CrossFit teaches me about life.

You have to earn your day by paying the man. Exercising each day really unlocks a lot of happy hormones. Doing it regularly pays shit tons of dividends, but you gotta go through an hour of discomfort most days. You feel bad in the moment but amazing afterwards.

Is that CrossFit? Life itself? An abusive relationship? Or all three at the same time?

Sometimes showing up is all it takes. There will be days when you don't want to workout and on those days all I ask you is that you show up. Show up to the box!

Boxes are CrossFit-speak for gyms, we be cool like that.

Life is similar right? Show up each week with an empty page on a laptop and you will be a better writer. I did the same for this post. If you think this is bad now, you had no idea how it was earlier. Think Buzzfeed listicle.

Show up. Show up for the people, show up for the promises you make, to yourself and to other people. Show up for your job or that idea that has been ruminating in your head. Showing up is easy you know. Get out of bed and walk. Not asking too much are we?

Giving up is not really an option. And find a community that supports you. One of my most memorable moments in my box was when I struggled to do the last reps in a workout (funny how often it happened), and the people who had finished the workout used to circle around you pushing you to the finish line. Saying you cannot do it would be low-key met with feelings of letting down our coach.

Guilt. You have no idea how much it enables relationships to just keep going.

Anyways just reduce the weights, scale it down, take rests bruh but don't give up until the timer ends. Take this philosophy too far 🚩🚩🚩, but with the right balance, it enables remarkable things.