I have made it back up to the Pacific Northwest and have been making it out a bit to the local areas which has been fantastic. Bishop was amazing climbing with lots and lots of skin being eaten up along with a stark reminder that I need to get my closed crimp strength way up for that patina. Since I have gotten back I have gotten on the training wagon again. I ended up getting a copy of Mike Doyle’s training program out of a recent copy of “Rock & Ice” which should keep me on the right track, and I’m watching what I have been eating more closely than I have been.

I’ve been really excited to get out to Leavenworth and have made a few project lists for Goldbar, Leavenworth and Squamish. I should be spending four days this weekend out at L-town with Ari starting to tick off projects and doing some easy trad on the rest days.

Yet once again things take an unexpected turn and I have bronchitis and have strained something in the back of my knee. I was able to get a couple fantastic days of bouldering in up in the Buttermilks and the Happys before having to take some time off to heal. It has been a good time to start making a dent in my huge pile of books and get a bit of personal time to relax and take stock of things in general.  I’m super excited to get healed and get out back climbing, but that will happen only when the time is right.  For now, more reading, relaxing and ‘puting.

Magically I have made it to 30 years old without incident.  My twin brother ended up coming down to San Francisco for a couple of days to catchup, escape Portland and soak up some sun.  My older brother has put together a few dinners and we have been going out on the city a bit.  Last I blogged, I was still working at Pollection a bit.  As of Feb 3rd I finished that up and have spent the last week and a half training for climbing, changing the pace of my life and catching up on sleep.

Last Friday I ended up entering into a climbing competition and was happy with my performance.  It is incredible what three good weeks of training can do along with a little preparation and motivation.  It is going to be great to get back outside again regularly when I get back from Washington.

Note: This was written just before I went back for a 3 week contract at Pollection.

Here it is, finally 2008 and I am without employment, traveling around in my van and generally getting along on the path that I have been working toward for a good couple of years now. It has been sad leaving Seattle, Pollection and the life that I had for what I am doing now, but so far it has been rewarding and refreshing in many ways.

The transition from working most all of the time when I was awake to having almost endless free time has been an interesting transition. The first couple of days mostly consisted of trying to get on a semi-sane sleep schedule, but once that was done I was able to start paying a lot more attention to the world around me. For the preceding two months I was so focused on work and the things that I “had” to get done that I stopped paying as much attention to people, the weather, my personal mental state and a variety of other important things in my life. I have found it critical to my personal satisfaction to stay connected to the little and big things which are going on around me. Over the years I have found that I readily dive into whatever commitments I create for myself and don’t spend nearly enough time reflecting, paying attention to where I am taking my life and what specific things I want to foster in a new way.

Sorry for the lack of updates lately… Life has been crazy busy, but I thought I would put up this lovely photo of a cup of coffee…

mmmm.

Recently a friend of mine loaned my a copy of the book “Illusions” by Richard Bach to read on the condition that I write up some of my thoughts about the book. It is a relatively lightweight book so it didn’t take much time to get through it. When I read it I was in a very different mental space than I have been in lately (vacation vs. full time work) so I’m raising a caution about this writeup with that in mind.

First off, I have been reading a lot of “life journey” books (or whatever the name would be) as of late. Carlos Castaneda among others have made it to the short list. I found that “Illusions” had a very interesting way of talking about the core subject of ways one can live their life. The nuances of daily living can be great learning experiences and the ways in which the main characters deal with their feeling of what is possible and impossible changes throughout the book. A lot of it related to me because of the life decisions that I have been making lately and the personal breakthroughs that I was having with my climbing. I’ve been very aware lately with how much people’s internal mental dialog can sap people to accomplish their potential.

Another aspect of the book which I found to be meaningful to me personally was the existence of God like figure as an everyday person. It has been a long time since I have sincerely looked at others as inspiration for how I would like my life to be and have developed a lot of that internally. Part of that I’m sure is the ego as well as where I have been emotionally and mentally over the last few years. In some ways I feel that this book helps me to come more to terms with that and confront it for personal growth.

I think Pam (the friend who let me read the book) was right when she made a comment about how it is a book that can resonate with someone depending on where they are with their lives. Even if you aren’t “open” to the book, I think that you’ll be able to gain something from reading it.

Today I injured myself climbing.  This isn’t one of those “I’ll be better in a few days” type injuries, but more in the category of me being unable to climb at all for a month or two.  Considering that I have been looking forward to climbing full time for almost seven years now, this is a major set back.  I’m still dealing and mentally processing what I’m going to do with what has happened to me but I don’t really blame myself.  It is interesting that after all of my sacrifices and hope that I don’t feel that anyone or anything has cheated me out of my dreams.  More than anything else at this time I see it as an opportunity to take a breath and see what I want to do with the time that I am going to have in the near future.  Right now I am in San Francisco and was planning on being here at a week at most, but now my stay is potentially going to be much longer than that.  I have some serious decisions to make, but those will wait for a day or two when I have a better idea as to what my near term physical health is going to be.

Over the years I have had a variety of different websites in a variety of different styles. In this vein, I have decided to remake my website yet again, but this time in a way which takes the least amount of effort possible. This time I am setting up a blog to record the things which I am up to as well as to give people a way to keep track of where I am and what I am up to. It seems interesting to me in this age where we have facebook, myspace, e-mail, phones, twitter and all sorts of other communication to setup up yet another way to communicate through technology, but here it goes. A lot of the other ways in which people communicate seem very poorly composed (facebook is a fragmented experience at best, e-mail is stop and go with very little effort places on layout and context etc…). Having a blog gives me a more composed and therapeutic way in which to record some of my more public thoughts. I hope that you enjoy my new blog!!