One Step at a Time

Hi guys! My name is Trevor Crowder, I'm currently a student at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, and this is my new motivational blog! The goal of this blog is to not only share my story but to share with you my everyday highs and lows as I'm still dealing with many things in my day-to-day life.

To connect with you guys more I feel like I should give some background about myself. I come from a conservative Christian family, who is very supportive and is my rock most of the time. I'm an ex-college baseball player who now transitioned over to the coaching side of baseball. When most people look at me they probably see a typical college kid, I mean sure they're not wrong but there's a lot more to my story like every single one of you! In this opening post, I'm going to go into a deep dive into my struggles to hopefully connect with guys.

Growing up I was heavily into sports, I played basketball, soccer, and a little bit of football, but my pride and joy was baseball. Gosh, I loved baseball, I lived and breathed that sport up until last year. It was my purpose, it was my meaning, and it was my first love. The issue with it is I was never the best at it. I was a smaller kid growing up, I never passed the eye test making it a lot more difficult for me to be seen at almost every level. With this I developed a work ethic like no other, I would spend hours hitting off a tee, going to facilities, and working with trainers, I did everything I possibly could to be something at this sport. By the time high school rolled around, I actually became pretty good at it! My freshman and sophomore years I excelled as a pitcher. I threw multiple no-hitters and dominated almost every game I pitched in. This finally gave me a sense of meaning, purpose, and belonging. I loved it! I felt like I was finally worth something. But then disaster struck the next few years. My junior year covid struck and the season got canceled, I was devastated. But I decided to take this time off and view it as a time when I can outwork everyone and that's exactly what I did. I trained harder than I ever have before and when tryouts come around I expected to be a star. But on the first day of tryouts, I blew my arm out, and that was the beginning of the end of my baseball career.

My entire senior year I sat out and ran the scoreboard so I at least felt like I was still a part of the team. My entire sense of self-worth was gone, I was lost, but I ended up getting an offer to play college baseball at Cornerstone University and I didn't hesitate to take it. That summer I took some time off to train and I worked hard, and when I got there that fall I was ready to go. But, again, tragedy struck and I got re-injured. Again self-worth was gone, purpose gone, and I hated life. But I refused to give up and come the next summer I worked so hard, again harder than I ever have, and again I got hurt, and this time I had to make the decision, to try again or to quit. I ultimately decided to quit and transfer to GVSU which is what brings me to present day.

Did you catch a common theme throughout my baseball career? My self-meaning, self-worth, purpose, self-esteem, and everything that controls happiness and fulfillment in a person were wrapped up in that sport. You could probably guess the effect it had on me when I ultimately called it quits. To be perfectly blunt with y'all I sank into a depression that was essentially crippling. I had no understanding of how to function in day-to-day life. I would catch myself disassociating from life, I never had a smile on my face, and anger burned within me, but worst of all, ending it all didn't seem like such a bad idea.

My life was in shambles all because of baseball... right? That's what I thought at first but I soon figured out that it ran so much deeper than that. What I soon began to discover is that baseball was more of a cover-up for significantly deeper issues I had. I realized that I struggled with my identity, my existence, and most importantly, why I'm worth being loved. If you really digest what I typed you can see that I thought everything had to be earned. Purpose, meaning, self-worth, love, all these things were only given to you if you earned it; you weren't deserving if something wasn't accomplished. Obviously, this isn't true and we all know that, but how do you un-condition a mind that grew up on that understanding? New hobbies, religion, friends, all these things were ideas that I tried but found myself still feeling empty, I realized that it ran much deeper than those things. The deeper I dug the more I realized how messed up I was and how much work I had to do to find true fulfillment in this life.

With this brief overview of my life and struggles I hope this draws you in to join me on a self-fulfillment journey. In the next post, I will go over what I have been doing to improve my everyday life and the struggles I still face. Posts after that will be updates on my life, new things to try, and new eye-opening discoveries to help make something out of this crazy yet beautiful life.

To all those who are willing to join me, I truly thank you for taking this brave step. Take everything one step at a time and I promise you life will get better. DO NOT GIVE UP, no matter how bad it gets, you are worth everything to somebody whether you believe that or not. I will do everything in my power to help you through this platform.

Thank you,

Trevor Crowder