Tony, I appreciate you starting this thread and sharing your current struggles. I have always viewed you as one of the more successful chasers, so it is comforting to know that even you feel this way. It is also refreshing to see someone share their frustrations and chasing failures, as opposed to those who are all ego and bluster, quick to broadcast their successes while pretending they never fail.
As others have said, your situation is unique because chasing is your job. In fact, my perspective from my own professional career in business is probably more relevant than my chasing perspective. From a career perspective, it is absolutely normal to feel burnt out and unmotivated from time to time. I'm going through that right now, having had a particularly busy period completing several major projects right up until my chase trip, continuing to work during my chase trip (more on that later), and now having trouble making the mental transition back to work. I have no choice but to keep working day after day. Some of those days are less productive than they should be; I allow myself those days, because I know how hard I work the rest of the time. Eventually I regain traction, enthusiasm and a sense of engagement. It helps when I make a trip to one of our offices and get energy from my team, a nice change of pace from working remotely. One issue you have with chasing as a job is that you cannot do it every day. So what for me might be a couple weeks of "not feeling it" with my work, for you could be a whole season's worth of chase days. But I think a lot of it is just about riding it out. Also, to be successful in any challenge requires discipline more than motivation. Motivation is an emotion that, as you are finding, will not always be there. Discipline is a choice, to just do what you have to do. Even if you are going through the motions without enthusiasm for a time, trust that motivation will return and results will come.
As for my own enthusiasm for chasing - which will get into John's topic about aging and chasing as well -
This year I made a couple of now-embarrassing posts about being ready to quit. I have been chasing since 1996, so I seriously doubt I'll be quitting anytime soon. I was similarly frustrated and ready to quit after a number of failures in 2019. At that point, I had not seen any tornados in any season from 2013 through 2019, with the exception of 2016. But then Covid cancelled my 2020 season involuntarily, and by 2021 I was ready to go again (and I'm pretty sure I would have went in 2020 too, if I could have).
I don't think I am a particularly good chaser, but maybe I am just too hard on myself because I'm comparing what I missed on a given day to what others got. But someone else is always going to see what you missed. NOBODY is catching everything every day. Chasing is a lot more about luck and randomness than I think any of us would care to admit. You can have the perfect forecast and the perfect storm, and simply not have available roads. And although chasing may be *easiER* than it once was, it is NOT easy. It took me a long time to realize the simple fact that "success" in chasing would never mean success on every chase: instead, chasing is like baseball, in which a 30% success rate is pretty good. I don't know if that's the right number, but you get the idea. Even on that scale, I'm not so sure I'm a .300 hitter anyway; I'm probably more .250 or .275 at best. But I used to compare that to batting 1.000, which is definitely not a valid comparison.
There are reasons I'm not better. Only chasing two weeks per year, including in some very poor seasons, probably adds up to six months total chasing time even after 25 years. I don't "study" as much as I should in the off-season. Every year I say I'm going to study my chases from the trip and figure out how/why I screwed up, but I can never find time. This is partly because I get too busy with work and other aspects of life (I've been home two weeks from my chase trip and haven't even written up all my chase reports yet; it took me over 24 hours to even be able to write this). The other reason - and this will probably sound stupid - I resist investing so much time and energy in something that is going to get me so jazzed up about chasing only to find that the season sucks, or that my trip is poorly timed, or that work or other circumstances may keep me from chasing at all that year.
Warren said, "There were times I would go nuts thinking I had made target errors, but realized I cannot be everywhere and my choices were complex and correct at the time." Unfortunately, I still go nuts, especially if I am unable to figure out exactly why/how I went wrong. I get particularly down on myself when I can't even say my choices were "correct at the time"; sometimes I literally don't even know what I was thinking - for example, why did I completely ignore the SW OK development on May 23 and keep heading north into SW KS for a blue sky bust? Why did I head east toward Midkiff instead of south on route 349 during the Midland storm of May 30? I wish I knew... It crushed me to miss those tornados (although I still felt pretty happy on May 30 because of the great structure). But I think we all make inexplicable decisions during the sensory overload of chasing, especially if alone. Chasing is a breeding ground for self-doubt. We have to remember not everything is in our control, and someone is always going to see what you miss, even if it's just a local resident with a cellphone camera.
The thing is that those magical days make all the failures worthwhile. In fact, the failures are what make the great days so fulfilling. If it was an automatic success every day, would chasing be as satisfying? I have always said, if the science ever gets to the point that tornados could be predicted at specific times and places, chasing would no longer interest me.
You need to love the *process* as opposed to just the outcome or the goal. That's harder when it's a job I suppose, but I would propose that it's still possible, because I try to bring that mindset to my work too. Anything worthwhile, any challenge, comes with some level of pain. There are some things where the pain is just not worth it. But with chasing, the pain feels worth it. Another success will make it feel worth it again.
Now I'll get to the age question. I'll be 57 before next season. My enthusiasm and motivation is no less than when I was younger. If anything, I have more of a sense of urgency, because I know I have fewer years chasing ahead of me than behind me. I feel like I am still looking for that "peak" experience. My top days so far were Campo (2010), Canton Lake (2011), Dodge City (2016), Selden (2021) and Silverton (2024). Not a very impressive list given all the years I've been chasing, is it? Lots of big days missing from the list, either because they didn't occur during my chase trip, or they did and I just screwed up. Those screw-ups still haunt me. And even in many of those events I did see, I regret not getting closer, as I probably could have done safely at Campo or Dodge City. Events like April 26, or Eldorado, or those big Iowa days in 2023, something like a Hallam or a Manchester, or even an El Reno, are still on my bucket list. So that's what keeps me going.
Even when I was younger, I was never the type to chase everything everywhere. Even though I was on a chase vacation specifically to chase, it was still a vacation - meaning I wasn't going to make myself miserable driving 8 hours just to see a severe thunderstorm and then go back in the opposite direction the next day. Sure, you may see something magical, but as John said, you can't know that in advance. You need to think in terms of probabilities: Being willing to drive 6 or 8 hours for a low-probability event may seem sensible, but would you be willing to make that same drive 10 or 20 times for a 100% chance of seeing a tornado? Because mathematically, that's probably the choice you're making. From that perspective, you can't kick yourself for not being willing to make the drive for such a low probability of being in the right place at the right time. (And of course, if I miss something I'll still kick myself; but I'm being aspirational here). I hate feeling obligated to stay with a storm until dark just in case there's a miracle, when I really just want to have a nice dinner and a drink, like Todd said. But I was always like that, not just now that I'm older. And my chase partner has a similar temperament.
I don't post on social media, and I'm not in competition with anyone. But yeah, it bothers me to see another east coast chaser get so many more big events because he goes for it more than I do, including with short, targeted trips for synoptically-evident events. I can't do that, not because I lack the physical stamina, but because my professional and personal life are simply filled with more commitments. And yes, sometimes it is laziness, because it doesn't seem worth the trouble for something that is more likely than not to leave me empty-handed. But like I said, I've never been the "chase everything, anytime, anywhere" type. Like John, I am also curious about David Hoadley's chasing these days. He used to make separate trips all the way from the east coast, too - several of them per year. Chasing with someone should extend one's chasing career much longer - and I've never liked chasing alone anyway. Hopefully my son will always chase with me, and drive his old man around one day
In the meantime, I work out a lot and try to keep in shape, for many reasons, but now I'm also starting to realize that even just being able to chase will depend on staying healthy and fit.
Now that my kids are older, and I have more autonomy in my job, and can work remotely, I plan to spend more time on the Plains, not less. No more throwing a dart at a dart board with a "best guess" two weeks. This year, I just worked remotely, and chased whenever. But it only marginally extended my usual two weeks, because the active period in late May was short. It was a double-edge sword arrangement - distracted with work on chase days, never really mentally on vacation more than a half-day at a time. But it's worth it, if it allows me to be out there longer and catch more events. My mistake this year was not keeping my calendar more free so that I could have made short, targeted trips for some of the early season outbreaks, or stationed myself on the Plains earlier in the season. I'll try to do better with that next year, and also intend to finally upgrade my technical knowledge from the plateau it has been at. In short, as I age, and especially when I retire, I hope to double-down on chasing, spend more time on it as work and family obligations decrease, as long as I am able.
, a few more scattershot observations -
