This is undoubtedly a realistic, healthy and positive mindset.
But I’m at a slightly different place at the moment. While I have had great chases, I am still looking for that “peak experience.” Maybe there is no such thing; no matter what I see, there can always be more. But at this point I can objectively say there’s a lot I haven’t yet accomplished in my chasing career, and that frustrates me because I’ve been at this a long time. I vacillate between feelings of inadequacy as a chaser, and recognizing that even all these years doesn’t add up to as much total chasing as others have, at the average rate of 10 days to 2 weeks per year of chase vacations, during which of course not all days are chase days.
Your 'peak' experience is a moving goalpost, James. I can tell you that from 29 years of experience. I've had numerous peak experiences, Tipton '08 to Geneseo/Solomon '12 to Pilger '14 to Dodge '16 to Akron '23. Akron 2023 being the peak of peaks for me. I think one of the ways to look at that is that after 28 years, I can STILL achieve that feeling with something new. Hell, even this year with Grinnell, one could call that a peak of its own.
It's hard to really define a peak; and I think that's part of the magic. Akron was the peak in terms of quality and quantity; Grinnell for experience, Tipton cause it was the first probe deployment with Tim for me. Each had their own standard. I could also argue I I had a peak over a span of five days with the May 14-18 intercepts this year. Again, the point with all this is that you're gonna 'peak' multiple times, and some of those peaks are gonna come waaaay further down the road than you expect.
I don’t watch a ton of live-streaming, and I don’t “follow” any other chasers outside of this forum, but one guy I have ended up defaulting to watching in a lot of big events, for whatever reason, is Connor Croff. I have to confess to no small degree of envy and frustration when I reflect on the fact that this kid has seen more great stuff in the past two years than I have in 25. I’m at the point personally where I’m burnt out in my professional life, and frustrated by the constraints placed on me by it and by family commitments.
Rigsby was that for me last year... search in the threads somewhere in here and you'll see my topic on "not feeling it in 2024"; but constantly seeing his successes among my self-dubbed "failures" ands straight-up misses became an unhealthy part of my issues last year. I had to "sleep" him on my socials just so I wasn't being reminded of my own short-comings. In the end, I moved past it. There was nothing against him at all, in fact, I like the guy a lot, but it was feeding into a cycle I needed to pull myself out of and removing it from my vision while I got my shit together helped out.
Most "kids" now-a-days have numbers and successes that could almost out-number just about anything I've done in my career. It's a new generation with new tools and new ways to finance their journeys. Social media, monetization, donations; all that accelerates their levels of success (or at least the opportunities for success) beyond anything most of us veterans could ever imagine. Hell, I have a all-expense-paid avenue to go out pretty much anytime I pull the trigger, and a lot of why I have seen zilch in July this year has been more out of lack-of-desire to be out. If those setups were within a few hours of home, I'd be all over it. But the idea, at this junction of the season, of being out for multiple days on end just don't appeal to me as they do when I'm fresh going into a season. Not to mention the pending hurricane season, which will burn me out in no time, I am trying to prepare for that, so being out for days on end with a 1,000 mile one-way trip out and another one coming back, it's hard to motivate myself for that.
But going back to "kids these days"... I think we justify their existence in every way possible (they're missing out on this and that, health insurance, blah blah blah). We've all done it; but it's a difference generation catering to that same generation. They were brought up in this era that allows them to take advantage of the constant stream of revenue. Is it healthy? Is it sustainable? Who cares... it's the now. Most of them will eventually have to pivot due to life circumstances, changes in media, etc. For a lot of us who aren't full time streamers, we've become to victims of this new era. And we could cite that to any number of particulars. For most, it's life circumstances more than anything else. I know I'm the exception in my age-group as I have a job which allows me to chase at my whims, but most of us have lives outside of this. There's nothing wrong with that. Even now, I have a life here at home, and with that comes many opportunities I choose to pass on because of that. Yes, it sucks, because deep down, we want to chase. And its a guy punch when these awesome events you miss don't happen in your specific windows (spatial and timing).
Yes, each miss is a temporary nut-punch; there's no doubt about that. I'm more 'butthurt' over the June misses (i.e. Wellfleet) as that was within my spatial domain and in my "regular season", But even that has waned because...
I see these out-of-reach tornadoes-of-the-year every other day as character builders. Watch how fast everyone forgets about them when the next big event happens.
And that's the magic of it... if you miss it, it will disappear from your view, unlike your wins which are always on your computer/wall/TV. It's amazing how I've adapted that point of view over the years. Sure, there are standouts that linger, but overall, you forget so many of these days that the immediate aftermath of, you're wallowing in. I think it's perfectly healthy to feel crappy about it, but moving on ASAP, even in the midst of a parade of awesome days, in time, most of these will never cross your brain again.
Forgive the rambling... I was typing this out between/during Zoom meetings, so hopefully my points got across.
Bottom line... let it suck for a minute... but in the end, you'll forget most of these missed events even happened. And with that, you can't miss what you didn't have.
