My Favorite Hobby Is Being Uncomfortable

Just a few steps off the main trail at the Latvia National Cemetery, amid a verdant, overgrown wood, my great-grandparents are laid to rest. Their graves are surrounded by tall grasses and shrubbery, as if nature itself were swaddling them back beneath the earth. The placement is deeply fitting — my maternal surname is Krumins, which quite literally means “little shrub” in Latvian. My grandfather always boasts about our Pagan roots. We Latvians are very in-tune with the natural world, he says.

There’s a photograph of my family and me from the one and only time we ever visited my great-grandma, Vecmāmiņa, ahead of my freshman year of college. In the picture, I stand about six inches away from the rest of my family, awkwardly leaning into the frame, as if afraid to get near my own ancestors.

And I hate to admit it, but it’s a little bit true. Because my ancestors’ graves were surrounded by bugs. Big bugs. And back then, bugs freaked me the fuck out.

I vividly remember being incapacitated by my irrational fear of insects at this moment. I refused to kneel down to look closely at my family’s resting place because I literally just saw a giant ant-like creature crawl next to Pops’ name like thirty seconds ago and I’m so uncomfortable and I can’t be here anymore and I just want to go back to the car where I can be comfortable and not have to worry about creepy-crawlies disturbing my peace for the foreseeable future.

But two summers later, I’m sitting on a giant rock on the edge of the Amazonian rainforest, gently shooing spiders off of my banana peel. I’m smiling from ear to ear.

I would describe myself as somewhat of an outdoorswoman today, but that wasn’t always the case. Pretty obviously. Steering clear of all things dirty was my specialty — I couldn’t even hold a bagel correctly as a child for fear of the cream cheese contaminating my fingers. I was a grade-A overachiever in high school and fully accustomed to putting my brain in uncomfortable situations by way of AP coursework and mind games (I was, after all, the reigning queen of Wordle among my peers), but I never once thought to transcend this mental fortitude to the physical world.

My foray into uncomfortable experiences began at the outset of my freshman year of college, when a UF scholarship offered me the opportunity to go sea kayaking off the coast of Maine for a week with ten other students. I’d never camped before, let alone packed my life into the few crannies of an 18-foot, oblong ocean vessel. I wasn’t expecting to love my week on the water by any means, but I certainly wasn’t expecting to hate it as much as I did.

Maybe it was the criminally excessive number of tortillas we consumed on account of their packable and nonperishable nature, or the fact that we had to shit in bags and carry it along with us (#leavenotrace policy, text me if you want some unrelated disturbing shit stories), or maybe it was simply the feeling of mild discomfort for seven days straight — with no bed to relax in or phone to safely scroll on. The only peace I had came from the sky and the sea. There wasn’t a moment of relaxation for over a thousand hours (believe me, I was crossing off each hour in my notebook as it passed).

That week on the water was probably the worst week of my life. I complained constantly to my new friends, our connection forged almost solely through trauma bonds. I scribbled angry words into my tiny notebook in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep because my back hurt from lying on the hard-ass ground. I specifically remember one moment when I had haphazardly left my tent open for less than 45 minutes and unintentionally invited a horde of beetle-like insects into my sleeping chamber. I whacked them all dead with my left yellow Croc through tears.

On paper, nothing about the experience was enjoyable. And yet, somehow, I think of the experience as one of the most special weeks of my life. I can’t quite separate the struggle from the positive sentiment — when I think back to Maine, memories of intense discomfort are the first I recall. But perhaps that is what I savored most.

There’s a part of our brain called the Anterior Mid-Cigulate Cortex that is assumed to host a person’s willpower, or tenacity. According to researchers at Harvard Medicine, pursuit of hard things reaps a host of positive benefits for health and achievement. The aMCC is also a neuroplastic region of the brain, meaning that in repeating hard tasks, your brain gets better at handling them, not unlike the act of lifting a weight.

Outdoorsy people call it “Type II Fun” — or the kind of fun that is deeply unpleasant in the moment, but pleasurable in retrospect. It’s not unlike the psychological satisfaction of solving a puzzle or playing a strategy game, in which the mental strength required for the task reaps deeper feelings of self-efficacy and satisfaction upon completion.

My week in Maine was painful, no doubt about it. But in learning to paddle on the open ocean, build a tent, and deal with the sweat, dirt, and bugs, I was subconsciously building a tolerance for what was once intolerable. And that tolerance has stuck. These days, almost everything I do for fun objectively sucks. As a hiker, I actively seek out the kind of strenuous, multi-day endeavors that make you crave clean sheets and a McDonald’s Happy Meal. As a fitness instructor, I sink an inch deeper into squats right alongside my students with the biggest, most punchable smile on my face. And as a college student, I look forward to the moments when I get to speak up in class or test my knowledge — the moments I get to be brave. They make me feel a little more like myself. I improve my confidence and personal satisfaction with each effort.

Again, I wasn’t like this in high school. Like, at all. And I still get backhanded compliments from old friends and parents’ friends whom I haven’t seen in a while, saying something along the lines of “Wow! I can’t believe that you’re the one doing all these outdoorsy things,” or “I didn’t think you were very adventurous.”

News flash: People are allowed to change, even if it’s kind of uncomfortable. I’d recommend learning to love it.

I think back to that moment in the cemetery every once in a while — my sweaty hands and anxiety-ridden brain registering everything but the beauty of the quiet, nature-soaked plot. If I had only embraced the austere surroundings, I would have found a whole lot of happiness beneath the layer of dirt and discomfort. It’s what my Vecmāmiņa would have wanted.

There’s a little discomfort in anything worth doing.

Strike Out,

Writer: Laila Mayfield

Editor: Ria Pai

Copy Editor: Gabriel Gonzalez Marino

Laila (pronounced LIE-luh, actually) Mayfield is a writer for Strike Magazine GNV. When she's not writing, she’s probably messing around in the weight room at Southwest Rec or forcing her roommates to watch a scary movie. Got any questions (or film recs)? You can reach out to her on Instagram @lailamayfield or send inquiries via email lailamayfield@icloud.com.115

My Favorite Hobby Is Being Uncomfortable

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