I wrote a pretty personal post about myself considering the profession in another thread, "The IFBB Rulebook-An Analysis".
No one responded though.
http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=86861.200Imagine this now. A person dedicates himself to bodybuilding 100%. Trains with the intensity enough to fall an elephant, eats according to the clock and sets a bedtime. He loves bodybuilding. LOVES bodybuilding for whatever reason. It's what makes him happy.
Unfortunately, he dreams of becoming the best bodybuilder in the world. He's been told that he was meant to achieve this sometime in his life. He knows that if he wanted he could actually become a professional bodybuilder.
He has a difficult decision to make. That is to take an illegal drug to enter a legal industry. He knows he HAS to take steroids to compete with the pros! Know why? Because EVERY OTHER PRO HE MIGHT EVER COMPETE WITH ALSO TAKES STEROIDS. OK, everyone reading this knows that already but that fact is far more significant than it's perceived by the public (because bodybuilding remains unknown).
If he is intelligent, this person will accept bodybuilding as nothing more than a lifestyle or hobby. As long as he has his options, pursuing a position on the pro ranks in bodybuilding will be something he will forever regret. Dedicating himself to what he loves to do will get him nothing in life because:
1.) He's risking his health/life
2.) He will make no money at all unless he chooses to up his doses of anabolic steroids (increasing the likelihood of reason #1).
3.) He might die living with regret over his career choice.
I'm glad to have the ability to accept all of this as a fact, as it remains to be for now, so that I'm sure to be able to explore more options to choose a respectable profession to dedicate my life to. What I'm saying is that deep in my heart I love bodybuilding and to not be able to put that part of my heart into this sport is something I have to will myself to do for my own good.
I'd like to share an excerpt from Bob Paris'
Gorilla Suit, one that changed the direction of my life and put me into better perspective as to what I should do with it.
"A vision-a fantastical, imaginary movie clip-has continually run through my mind during the last year. I am climbing, climbing, climbing all alone, to the top of this enormous mountain. I fall sometimes-a lot, actually; hurt myself; get up; climb some more; fall down again. It seems as if I've been climbing this mountain forever. After a while, when I'm close enough to the top to see it through breaks in the cloud cover, I pull out my map, to see where I am and discover that I've gone up the wrong mountain. Now, this mountain that I'm on is a high one-I can tell this from the map it's every bit as high as the one I thought I was climbing. It's just not the right one. The other mountain is the one that many dream of climbing because the hand of fate has lent it greater prestige. It is easy to get them confused; the way my map is drawn the two look a great deal alike. But it's still the wrong one. And I get mad at myself, and I cuss out the mountain, and I cuss out the mapmaker, and I cuss out all the rocks I've tripped over and the crevices I've fallen into on the way up. But in spite of all that cussing, I'm still on this mountain."It's really quite depressing from this perspective.
