Currently I am living with three different people that I had never met before the beginning of the month and have only seen a total of about ten minutes, almost entirely a result of my schedule.  It makes the whole prospect of getting an apartment for myself seem entirely unreasonable.  What comes next?  Most likely continuing to live on the town, build Zoosk up to the next level and maybe find a solid roomate to move in with…

The last few weeks in San Fran have been quite interesting.  As always Zoosk has been the main focus of my time, but I have also been starting to climb with some consistency again.  A few weeks ago I got in a bit of a bike accident where I ended up tweaking my thumb, shoulder and hip, but thankfully only real residual effect has been my thumb.  I’m starting to get my movement and onsight skills back in climbing more than anything else.  I have recently been re-motivated by watching some of Ben Moon’s old climbing videos and also by knowing that Bishop temps will be improving over the next few months.  Here’s to hoping that I will be able to get out there for a few days at some point in the Spring.   It is that time of year to make a winter working/training regime and to start following it.

Training is one of those things which seems to factor into all different parts of my life.  When I’m focusing on climbing I’m eating better, usin gmy time more effectively, reading more etc…  It’s interesting that having a few things which focus your energy have widespread ripples throughout everything else that is going on in someone’s life.

Music I’m listening to a lot lately:

• Biosphere – Substrata
• Move D – Misc
• Amplifier Machine – Amplifier Machine
• Sam Amidon – All Is Well
• Deadbeat – Roots and Wire
• Helios – Caesura
• Eric Cloutier
• Mike Shannon – Memory Tree
• Various Christmas Music (A Charlie Brown Christmas etc…)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!!