Sidequest
Fighting for Mental Health Europe
After moving to the Netherlands for my PhD in 2021, I rediscovered my passion for Muay Thai and Kickboxing about 2 years ago. I used to train Muay Thai back home in Germany for some time during n high school, but had to balance it with club football and never competed. Early this year, I decided that at 31yo, it’s now or never to step into the ring and so I started preparing for a local tournament. After a failed attempt to compete in May due to injury, I finally won my first amateur fight in early November this year against a strong opponent who I much respect. It was a thrilling, terrifying and humbling experience! On December 1st, I’m competing again and I’m hoping for another clean fight and, of course, another win.
Diversification Builds Resilience
In some ways, the failed attempt in May has been a blessing in disguise. It forced me to take a step back and reflect on what I got out of an intense training camp that led seemingly nowhere. As cliche as it sounds, I truly realized that the journey really was the destination. Despite not getting to compete, I was in a really good place mentally. The sense that I had worked really hard on something that had no direct link to my professional career out me at great ease. For the first time during my PhD, I felt like I would be just fine, even if whatever academic milestone I was planning to reach next would not materialize immediately. I knew that I would just take it on the chin and feel reassured that academic success is not the only leg I’m standing on.
As with so many things in life (financial investments, gambling, societies and cultures, gene pools, …), I believe that diversification builds resilience when it comes to managing personal goals and priorities. My supervisor, Cynthia, never fails to amaze and inspire me in this respect: she is a highly respected, award-winning academic, an active performing musician and an advocate of public outreach. She has recently been recognised for that by Harper’s Bazaar, who presented her with mutliple awards this year includgin Woman of the Year. I think that Cynthia manages to do so many things things successfully1, not only through hard work2 but by getting her priorities straight. I think that we have a tendency to focus too much of our energy on a single priority A, thereby losing track of priorities B, C, etc. only to end up frustrated about the latter even if and when we accomplish the former.
Fundraiser Initiative
Following May, I decided to keep up my training to potentially compete later in the year. Having learned already that this whole journey was not just about me stepping into that ring, I was looking for ways to create meaningful impact beyond that, ideally also for others. The event I will be competing in is not a charity event but thankfully these days you can turn everything you want into a charity: just come up with a charitable cause and start a fundraiser. So that’s what I did and here I am still trying to raise a few more funds for my charitable cause of choice, namely—you guessed it—mental health. If you’re still reading this and you can relate to any of the above, please consider supporting the fundraiser below. Everything you donate will go to Mental Health Europe. I will cover all of the GoFundMe fees and match total donations up to 500EUR (which by now means I am 500EUR poorer). If you cannot donate, please consider sharing the fundraiser with anyone you know who might be interested in supporting it.
Thank you!
Finally, a massive thanks to all of the friendly people who have already supported this journey and the fundraiser in one way or another. Dankeschön!
Footnotes
Citation
@online{altmeyer2024,
author = {Altmeyer, Patrick},
title = {Sidequest},
date = {2024-11-27},
url = {https://www.patalt.org/blog/posts/sidequest/},
langid = {en}
}