Too Many Aims or Not Enough Effort: Struggling to keep my tick-list manageable and to turn my excitement into concentrated effort
 
Training over the past few weeks has, alongside other events and meetings, got me entirely psyched about my climbing again; perhaps even more-so than when I began climbing (which is certainly saying something!). I have begun to believe in myself again and the joys that can be found through the way you approach a simple piece of rock. I have seemingly re-connected with the urge to start living every move; every tenuous grip on every hold and every triumph over many failures as if happiness itself was reliant on this long-winded process… Indeed, almost as long-winded as that last sentence!

O.K., so maybe it hasn’t been quite that intense (yet), but it’s been surprisingly refreshing to be so focused on something I love so much again! It’s been a real wake-up call to a realisation of something that’s really grown to be such a fundamental part of my being: Pure freedom defined through the silliness we call climbing.
 
I write this after realising how many times I have wandered past boulders strewn over mountainsides and wondered whether anyone had bothered climbing them. As well as this, there are the hundred’s of times that I have wandered over bogs; away from the path I’m following, to feel holds and look at the complexity of the moves it might take to climb the boulders; usually to the annoyance of my friends. This has happened far too many times for a return trip to some of these potential boulder venues not to have happened. For this reason I became hugely excited today to realise (as if it hadn’t even figured in my mind so far) how amazingly close I am to some of these spots now that I have ventured northwards!
 
And so, after looking through maps and photos I have picked out a few potential areas for the coming year(s) and I couldn’t be more energized by the idea of venturing out with only my own ability to stop me climbing whatever routes I can create in my mind’s eye.
 
As regular readers of this blog may have noticed, I have a lot of aims for this coming year and, more than likely, most of it will not happen if I don’t stop making up new adventures. But maybe this is the best thing: Maybe the more adventures I have currently, the more I will get used to failing whilst also using each adventure as training for the next. And if I do succeed in climbing F7a, and the first 4 moves of that indoor F8a+ etc, etc; the more reason there is to have future projects to meander towards. This, I feel, is very exciting!
 
I realise that having tonnes of unobtainable goals, at which I would fail with every attempt, would most likely hinder and limit my potential. However, as long as I can attempt to be realistic with my goals, the psyche I am already getting from the idea of them will surely help to focus the time and energy I have available to putting in some real gritty effort. After all, being human means we need incentives to do things that are, most likely, going to be completely tedious after a few weeks’ effort! Perhaps the dream of freeing some untouched problems whilst surrounded by the places and environments that I really do think about constantly is exactly what I need to push myself in my development as a climber.