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The Warrior Is No Longer in The Garden

Why I stopped writing to start fighting again.

4 min readJul 28, 2025

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My opponent and I embrace after our match. Credit: Rage MMA

Apologies, my dear readers. I haven’t written anything in over a year.

I’ve absconded from my growing writing gig, put my third book on pause, left hundreds of readers high and dry, wondering why I was missing…all so I could step in the cage again, all so I could challenge myself against grown men in hand-to-hand combat again.

Sounds crazy, I know. But it’s the truth.

Sometime last year, I hit a quarter-life crisis of epic proportions. I had just turned 29. All of a sudden, it dawned upon me that I was aging.

Sure, I was young, objectively speaking, but 29 for a regular person isn’t the same as 29 for an athlete. Especially for a combat sports athlete. We fighters have short shelf lives. Research indicates that a fighter’s prime hovers somewhere between 33 to 35 years old. After that, the decline begins dramatically.

I realised, all of a sudden, that I only have three to five years left in the tank, should I want to fight again.

And I’ve always wanted to fight again.

My long-time readers will know that I stopped fighting because of injuries. Over time, those injuries…

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Alvin Ang
Alvin Ang

Written by Alvin Ang

👑 7x Top Writer. Singaporean. I write deeply personal stories. Contact me: sgbjjopen@gmail.com. BUY my books here! amazon.com/Alvin-Ang/e/B0BCQZKCG4/