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Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

seattletimes.com

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Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#91

Post by mikestew »

blinkingled wrote: post #34
mothsonasloth wrote: post #2

Great read. I have a "free spirit" in my family, a really gifted man who just couldn't settle. He's now in his 60s and does mosaics for people all around the UK. He doesn't own a house and is constantly staying with friends and family. He tried working in construction jobs and other things, settling with a family and buying a house. However after his divorce and other things he is most happy with his campervan conver…

> constantly staying with friends and family I wonder if truly free living is possible - looks like someone is always paying some price/ doing unfree things to make it happen.

Of course it is not possible, starting with the question of where to lay your head at night without payment. The only thing I come up with is U. S. National Forest or Bureau of Land Management land. Any other options I come up with are quasi-legal at best.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#92

Post by exabrial »

> “Once you’ve done something that feels like you’re born to do it, it’s hard to find anything that’s that good of a fit,” Twigg says today. “Anything else that feels that way.”

If she has a mental health issue, she should seek care. But if you take the above quote at face value (and likely out of context), then I would give her this advice to start building her life:

"Flipping Burgers in not beneath your dignity" - Charles J. Sykes

An entire generation has been romanticized that if you "do what you love" you'll end up a billionaire. The complete opposite is true. It requires doing thing you dislike, discipline, financial management, and focus on the correct things.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#93

Post by jl2718 »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #79
aladinator wrote: post #64

Great story. I kind of agree with many others here that it sounds like a mental health issue. But I also think that the story is more complicated than that. We shouldn't neglect the impact on the brain a professional sports career has. I've seen it many times. The amount of sacrifice and energy put into something like this leads to a very unbalanced lifestyle, which is usually encouraged from all sides (parents, coac…

Yes. I was a competitive athlete for years and filling that void after leaving the sport was very difficult. To be honest I dumped a lot of that energy into my work but I've realized over the last few years that I need something equally satisfying at home that has some type of competitive aspect to it. Otherwise I get very bored very quickly at home and will spent way too many hours in the office.

The problem with dumping extremism into your profession is that it doesn’t work the way sports do. In career, you can’t measure yourself, and it doesn’t even matter because pedigree and politics beat hard work and skill every time.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#94

Post by jniedrauer »

Balgair wrote: post #86
aladinator wrote: post #64

Great story. I kind of agree with many others here that it sounds like a mental health issue. But I also think that the story is more complicated than that. We shouldn't neglect the impact on the brain a professional sports career has. I've seen it many times. The amount of sacrifice and energy put into something like this leads to a very unbalanced lifestyle, which is usually encouraged from all sides (parents, coac…

Arguably the most accomplished athlete ever, Michael Phelps, has struggled with these same issues [0]. Today he is more upfront about his suicidal issues and what strategies he uses to help with his mental health. Such issues are incredibly personal, but there does seem to be some correlations with 'Black Swan' people (per the Natalie Portman movie) and later term mental health. [0] https://www.menshealth.com/health/…

I know that posting suicide hotline numbers seems like the right thing to do, but it's generally not helpful. People who call these numbers run the real risk of being detained against their will for extended periods of time while running up large hospital bills, when they just needed someone to talk to. Then there's the lack of statistical evidence that suicide hotline numbers actually prevent suicides in the long run.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#95

Post by tasuki »

mtw wrote: post #71

She won a medal which puts her at the top 1% but most athletes who go to Olympics or international championships don't win any medals but nevertheless have to through the same training and invest the same commitment. If she can't make it, it makes you wonder what happens to the rest who also saw their golden years pass by but without any medals or achievements to show off.

Well, if you worked hard, yet never won an Olympic medal, settling for a "boring" job might actually be easier.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#96

Post by LargeWu »

inflatableDodo wrote: post #89
harias wrote: post #4

>It was a far cry from winning medals for Twigg, and beyond that, she said the solitary nature of programming troubled her. I would like to know what HN thinks about the 'solitary' nature of programming? Isn't programming more or less a group endeavor now?

A friend of mine likes to point out that only in programming would two people working together earn itself the moniker of 'extreme programming'.

Calling XP "working together" is extremely reductive. And pair programming is only a small part of it. When it was introduced as a methodology, it was a pretty radical departure from widely accepted development practices at that time.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#97

Post by jniedrauer »

exabrial wrote: post #92

> “Once you’ve done something that feels like you’re born to do it, it’s hard to find anything that’s that good of a fit,” Twigg says today. “Anything else that feels that way.” If she has a mental health issue, she should seek care. But if you take the above quote at face value (and likely out of context), then I would give her this advice to start building her life: "Flipping Burgers in not beneath your dignity" -…

> An entire generation has been romanticized that if you "do what you love" you'll end up a billionaire. The complete opposite is true.

The implication that flipping burgers will make you a billionaire is patently absurd. You should never feel ashamed about your work, but menial work in $current_year actually leads to poverty and hunger because it doesn't pay a living wage. An "entire generation" doesn't have illusions about how the world works. The 2008 recession was more than sufficient to dispel that. They just want food and shelter.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#98

Post by jdietrich »

aladinator wrote: post #64

Great story. I kind of agree with many others here that it sounds like a mental health issue. But I also think that the story is more complicated than that. We shouldn't neglect the impact on the brain a professional sports career has. I've seen it many times. The amount of sacrifice and energy put into something like this leads to a very unbalanced lifestyle, which is usually encouraged from all sides (parents, coac…

>We shouldn't neglect the impact on the brain a professional sports career has. I've seen it many times. The amount of sacrifice and energy put into something like this leads to a very unbalanced lifestyle, which is usually encouraged from all sides (parents, coaches, friends).

I think you might have the causal relationship backwards, at least for a lot of athletes. Elite sport is a really good way of not dealing with your emotional problems. It's a socially legitimate form of obsession, a path in life that makes eating disorders and self-harm look like the determination to win. You can lead a lifestyle that would be obviously pathological for anyone but an elite athlete and people will applaud you for it. It's an all-consuming kind of avoidance coping that nobody scrutinises too deeply.

When athletes retire, they lose their structure, they lose their support network, but they also lose their excuses. All the problems you used sport to escape from are now front-and-center, and you've got nowhere left to run. It's like sobering up after a 20-year bender.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#99

Post by mindslight »

docker_up wrote: post #88
jawns wrote: post #85

Former editor here. This is a really interesting story, but if I were Greenstone's editor I would feel really conflicted about running it. There's the elephant in the room -- mental health. What did the reporter get on record? "She did not want to discuss mental health but feels it should be treated more seriously in Washington." Then there's her family. What did the reporter get on record? "Her immediate family in t…

Agreed. Those were the things that I spotted instantly. The first thing when you think of for homeless people is mental health. You don't have to be full-on crazy to have mental health issues that bring you down the wrong path of bad decision-making. The fact the family doesn't want to talk, that she was asked to leave by her parents, that she kept losing her job, these all speak volumes. It's terrible, but it happen…

Because abstracting one person's story to "mental health" is extremely dehumanizing. In fact, the article does address the topic head on:

> "What (Twigg) has is a great trait," Thompson said. "Unless you get into the workforce."

The truth is that personality traits aren't really considered disorders until they affect your ability to lead a normal life, the chief aspect being to "hold down a job".

So we lauded her when these traits helped her be exceptional in her field, but now that she's used that up and didn't pivot it into some more lasting form of wealth, she's left to the shitty support structure.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#100

Post by selestify »

docker_up wrote: post #88
jawns wrote: post #85

Former editor here. This is a really interesting story, but if I were Greenstone's editor I would feel really conflicted about running it. There's the elephant in the room -- mental health. What did the reporter get on record? "She did not want to discuss mental health but feels it should be treated more seriously in Washington." Then there's her family. What did the reporter get on record? "Her immediate family in t…

Agreed. Those were the things that I spotted instantly. The first thing when you think of for homeless people is mental health. You don't have to be full-on crazy to have mental health issues that bring you down the wrong path of bad decision-making. The fact the family doesn't want to talk, that she was asked to leave by her parents, that she kept losing her job, these all speak volumes. It's terrible, but it happen…

Wow, that's scary. Did he have any signs of schizophrenia before?
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