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.

I’m not really sure which places I will be going to over the next few months, but I am looking forward to Bishop and hopefully Joe’s Valley.  Once I hit the road fully life tends to get into a good rhythm and I have a better feeling as to where I will be going to next.

Here is a short video of me climbing at Mickey’s beach down near San Francisco a few weeks ago. Enjoy!

Untitled from Brad Henrickson on Vimeo

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.

Portland will most likely have my attention for about three or four days before I continue my journey down south to San Fran and eventually over to Bishop, CA.  One of the things which I hope to do better with in general is being present in the moment and not dwelling in the past or over planning my future.  I suppose the first bit of that already happened for the last few days I was in Seattle and will continue over the next few months/years.