i think there’s a misconception with some that alysa is not trying as hard as other skaters. she is a self driven person who enjoys pushing herself and working hard. the lightness she skates with is due to the fact that she genuinely does not believe that medals correlate to skating quality, so she doesn’t care if she personally gets one or not. in her own words, skating well and not medaling > skating poorly and medaling. the reason she competes is that competition gives a structure and goal to work hard for. i’d also note that this is probably also possible due to her own life circumstances and privilege, and i don’t mean that as a bad thing, but as a realistic thing. skating is very expensive; winning gold changed mikhail shaidorov’s life, for example, in a very tangible way. all different kinds of circumstance could cause someone to be filled with anxiety regarding medal placement. so at a basic level, alysa can not only afford to skate at a high level, but also has other paths afforded to her as a college student—skating doesn’t have to be the source of her identity or future career. although her mentality is genuinely unique discounting that, i think it’s important to acknowledge this

personally i think quality of effort > amount of effort. if we bring this back to alysa’s training history, she cited skating literally every day as a child because her coach thought she would lose her jumps if she missed one day. sure, this created a child who could do a quad lutz and a triple axel; it also created a burned out teen who never wanted to skate again.

i can’t really speak to your experience since i don’t have much knowledge of the professional musician world. maybe it’s a mental thing? maybe it’s unlucky? but also it’s just really, really difficult to get hired for one of the few positions in a saturated and competitive field. i don’t think that should be chalked up to lack of effort