forced to sit still for a moment

In the end, climbing is what I love, my own expression of joy. Everything else is just noise. -Steph Davis, High Infatuation

I have never loved any activity the way I love climbing. It's what I dream about, what I think about when I'm doing other things, it's what I talk about, it's what I want to be doing. I can't articulate properly the palpable camaraderie that exists when I spend time with friends who are as infatuated as I am.
Thus, upon the recent flaring up of shoulder pain on account of the fact that I'm pulling too much plastic too often and getting strong too fast...I'm having a hard time. I get angry because the one thing I want to do--my escape, my balance, where I process and express--is painful and difficult. Instead of feeling capable and strong, I feel weak and frustrated.

Though climbing can be hell on a love relationship, it offers an unparalleled sense of community. [...] being a driven person is hard. Being in love with that person can be even harder. -Steph Davis, High Infatuation

I've not been healthily single in some years. And I can't help but think that my hunger for movement did not build our relationship. How do I reconcile my emotional needs with those of someone who wants nothing to do with the very thing that is most therapeutic for me emotionally?
And so here I am, a week out of the split, frustrated over a shoulder injury and fighting to move and to process all that's going on in my head but not wanting to wreck my body.
My tendency to fixate can be my greatest asset and conversely my hugest obstacle. I can focus and I can fight, but I struggle so much with stepping back to see bigger. I'm immediate, I'm driven. I need resolution and expectation.

Right now, in this moment, I am content. I am not anxious or angry. I want to seize the quiet surging of motivation in my chest and ration it across my days so that I can keep breathing, just like this.

traces of ambition

I need goals. Repeatedly I am reminded of this, especially lately. It's sometimes hard for me to set them, because I am so impulsively obsessive that I have a hard time existing outside my immediate reality. Also, I am so sensitive to what's going on with other people--what they think and what they feel--that I often have trouble discerning what exactly it is that I need and want.

So, in the spirit of my burgeoning adulthood and the implied lack of direction I have, I suppose I ought to set some goals.

1) I will finish cleaning my room out this month
2) I will make more friends that climb trad and will teach me, and find some way to offer my gratitude
3) I will climb 5.11 and boulder V5 by the end of the year
4) I will earn As in my graduate school classes
5) I will put some money away so I can start saving more, and I will take over more of my own expenses
6) I will write more songs
7) I will climb El Cap by my 30th birthday
8) I will teach my sister how to love music the way I do
9) I will spend more time with my brother
10) I will learn a new language
11) I will figure out how to tell my parents I'm a vegetarian, despite the fact I'm pretty sure they're worried I'm a hippie as it is
12) I will run a 5K

I've enjoyed lately the sensation of settling into my personality and my life. I can't say this has always been the case, but the worst of it is over and now I feel like I'm becoming who I want to be. And the person I want to be needs moments of intense solitude in as much quantity and intensity as the moments of entire engagement with others that I love so dearly. She needs lots of sleep and she's awkward in the way that keeps her grounded--usually. She dreams of new places and adventures and new people with whom to connect. She appreciates the unknown and is comfortable with uncertainty.

adventure day

Originally posted December 29, 2008 at 10:42 p.m.

It's time to start a new one. Fresh and as-yet unspoiled by my frantic musings.
So here goes.

I'm still caught up in the heady experience of Yosemite-in-winter that occupied my day. I fall more in love with that place each time I visit. Maddie, Jillian and I drove up this morning to spend the day bumming around the Valley. Maddie and I have both been aching for the mountains lately, which warranted at least a day trip.

Living so close allows for a late start, which we had. I find it exceptionally easy to wake up if I have something exciting to do. Conversely, if I'm headed to work or class, getting up might as well be a lost cause better left to the more motivated and serious.

So much of the day was downright pleasant--the company, the new people (like the ones I met from Australia whilst waiting for the shuttle), the traipsing through calf deep snow among the powder-covered boulders just outside the boundaries of Camp 4.

I find myself utterly captivated by the prospect of someday climbing those big walls. I am astounded by the perspective that apprehends my consciousness when I consider how massive just those little Xs on the maps are when compared to my little reality. Imagining myself climbing like that unsettles my stomach and makes my heart pound. I have so far to go.