Of Broken Ankles, Boredom, and Getting in the Zone

Well, here I am. I've got a jacked up ankle and I'm bored as all get out. Honestly, what do people do for fun if they're not out in the mountains? I've had some suggestions like Solitaire and Legend of Zelda (finally beat that stupid game), but, for some strange reason, those two things are just not satisfying to me AT ALL. I think the most satisfying things I do are study neuroscience, read adventure books, and keep training upper body strength so I can get out and crush some climbs when this ordeal is over!

Recently I've been reading a book called The Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler. I wasn't really expecting much, especially with his tendency to put adventure and extreme athletes on this high pedestal, but as I kept reading the book, he actually started going into some basic neuroscience principles describing the how and why and what happens when people "get into the zone" or "the flow".

This book has given me a couple insights into myself that I find intrinsically rewarding. The first is that this is the whole reason why I love sports. I do enjoy winning/achieving something, yes, but more than that, I love the act of dropping down into a "flow" or "rhythm" where every particle of your being is completely focused and you have no fear, no worries, no sense of time, and you know that you will not make a single wrong decision. It's an incredible feeling.

Throwback photo to the Team Mayfield ascent

Last month on Mt. Whitney, we had to trek an extra three miles just to get to the trailhead for the base of the mountain. We started in a big group, but then people started to peel off and we split into groups based on the pace we wanted to set. I am (or at least I WAS) in pretty good shape, so me and two other guys broke trail through all the snow and then waited at a difficult portion to help the rest of the group through.
When the group caught up, I got to talking with one guy who was discouraged that the mountain looked so far away (when he said this, I looked up at the mountain and realized that he was right but I hadn't noticed before, it kinda surprised me actually). He asked me how I could keep up a fast pace despite the fact that it was so discouraging. Honestly, I didn't know what to say. Obviously being in shape helps, but I told him that I don't really think about the end goal, I just take care of things as they come along, and eventually I get to the top of the mountain.

The tallest mountain in the top middle is Whitney!

Looking back on that conversation now, I've realized that what I said was only partially true. But what I just described can sound like suffering an arduous task. Just put your head down and enjoy the pain right? Because, yes, I was in pain. I'm pretty sure most people going at the pace we were would be!
What I realized, however, was that I loved the pain. But not in a masochist sort of way. It was more that I was in the zone. I was focused so sharply and was so aware of every step, every rock, and all the snow, that there was no way I couldn't love what I was doing.

The route we took is where you see the three guys headed up, just a big snow gulley to the top.

Turns out, moments like those are comparable to Franciscan monks feeling at one with God's love and Buddhist monks feeling at one with the universe.
Now, I don't know about the spiritual aspect of it, but I do know that in those moments, your brain releases a cocktail of dopamine, norepinephrine, endorphins, anandamide, and serotonin. All of those naturally occurring chemicals released in your brain are more potent than any drug on the market right now. But the amazing thing about them is that, while illicit drugs destroy our lives, these chemicals released in us, at the right times according to correct stimulation, build us into happy, more confident, and more successful people! That's pretty neat huh?

So people ask me why I like to do hard things, and I, in turn, wonder why people don't like to do hard things. Apparently, waking up at 3 in the morning for a mountaineering trip is not only good for the soul, but it's good for our brain and our general well being.

With all of that, I'd like to also say that it doesn't take sports and adventuring to get into this zone. It comes when each of us commits to doing a task that is demanding and challenges us. When we rise to that occasion, it's possible for everyone to tap into this. Try finding out what gets you into the "flow". I promise you'll loooooooooove it.

The Small Handholds of Life

You know what guys? It’s just been one of those weeks. One of those weeks where you feel like everything is working against you. Finals didn’t go as well as I had hoped, I broke my dang leg, friends went back home for summer or graduated and moved away, and, to top it all off, in Mario Kart last night, it felt like every time I was going to have an epic win, I would get bombarded with red and green shells from behind and would lose my treasured victories.

I'm the one getting blown up if you can't tell...

Maybe my priorities may be a little off, but, by far the worst and most lifestyle impacting thing this week was my broken leg. I’ve been making summer climbing plans since last December (including Torrey's Peak in CO, Capitol Reef National Park, Disappointment Cleaver-Mt. Rainier *ironic*, and busting completely into the upper 5.12s and maybe a 5.13) and now most of them, if not all, are going straight down the porcelain throne.

In the midst of trying to make peace with this turn of events (I’m reading Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”), my over-enthusiastic brain has made many observations and I've come to some conclusions as well.

For those of you who aren't aware, getting around with a broken leg is a pain. You mostly use crutches except when you’re at home and you only need to travel a short distance, and then you hop. I’m sure it looks funny, but I haven’t quite managed to keep a good humor about it yet. It just gets a lot less funny when you are the one having to do it all day.

Anyway.

Don't let his smile fool you, I can tell he's thinking, "I JUST
got down the stairs and now you want me to go back
UP to grab something?!"

Moving around the apartment, sometimes I go Tiny Tim style and just use one crutch (slightly more or less humorous, depending on one’s point of view I’m sure). To alleviate the stress on the one arm and the one leg, I try to find other places for my free hand to grab and assist while traveling throughout the apartment. In the course of this, I've been pleasantly surprised to find that there are TONS of handholds everywhere that I can use just fine! I can use the door frames as a small crimp hold, or the bars going down the stairway as a pinch, my bed, trunk, and tables as mantles, and I've even snagged some bomber underclings on our coffee table that I can totally use to help me stand up from sitting on the couch! Who would have thought?!

All of these movements are natural for me and are even a little comforting. It’s as if the spirit of rock climbing knows my pain and has allowed me to at least relish the small tastes and reminders of climbing that I can get every now and then.

One day, while thinking of this, I realized that it’s likely that not every gimp in the world realizes and utilizes these holds that are almost essential for my happiness as a temporary monoplegic . It made me a little sad for them honestly. But I realized that this has a massive correlation to everyone's life, gimp or gimp-free.

In our lives, there are so many things that we can do. So many, in fact, that we really can’t do all of them or gain experience in all of them. But those things that we do gain experience in, we grow in them, we become better at them. As we get better, we begin to realize that within everything that we do are small steps, holds, inches to gain, or ground to cover. We can start to look at an overall picture, and then break it down to its components in order to understand the picture and what things we need to do to accomplish a goal or meet a task.

I think that everybody has the capability to do this, it is an essential life skill to be able to break things down into the small "holds" that make it possible to do anything. But I also think that not everyone dedicates themselves enough or has experience enough to see ALL the small "holds" that would make life easier for them and make them more successful. It takes time and effort and dedication. Not everyone really wants to do that. But isn't that what life really is? Isn't that what defines us as humans? The drive to progress, learn, and grow?

I think it does, and I think that this philosophy of seeing all the small "holds" or being able to see all the steps and pieces of a larger picture will lead anyone to eventual success and ease of way in whatever they're doing.

It's been helping this gimp anyway.

Brain Symphony #1

How is it that our minds work? I'm currently studying neuroscience and the subject of how the interactions between two or more cells develops into thought just fascinates me. I think that part of this comes from my background in biology already and part comes from my own struggles with anxiety and depression.

When I struggled with depression the worst, as per par for me, instead of giving up I decided to study and learn different techniques to overcome my depression. I always had this feeling that, if there wasn't a physiological problem, our minds are capable of change. Unfortunately, while studying psychology and discussing these issues with professionals and others who have had similar experiences, all I heard was that it was a chemical imbalance that wasn't my fault, and could mostly only be fixed with medication.

This wasn't what I wanted to hear.

So I kept looking.

Fortunately I found neuroscience and, with it, multitudes of studies that indicate just what I thought--our minds are capable of change and can become healthy again. Now I'm studying neuroscience at BYU and I'm mostly concerned with the physiological process our minds go through when we think critically (cognitive neuroscience), and the study of mental disorders and how best to approach fixing or solving those disorders (the goal being to help a person return to a point where they can stand on their own two feet without a crutch).

Going back to how the mind works though. While going through this time, my dear mother was very concerned for me and researched as well (she LOVES to research the heck out of any problem she comes across, a very admirable trait). Eventually she came across mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness mediation is style of meditation in which a person learns to be mindful and aware of all things and learns to accept current mind/body states or situations for what they are-- and cherish each current moment.

I was skeptical really. Meditation is what old Chinese men do in the movies where they call their student "grasshopper". How was it going to help me?

But I listened to my mother and decided to give it a shot. I was also pretty desperate. I'm naturally a pensive person anyway, so it didn't seem too difficult to meditate.

I was really wrong though. Proper meditation is not a function of intelligence, critical thinking, or raw mind power. Meditation is the simple act of being able to direct the flow of our thoughts. We can think of our minds as a constantly running faucet. Sometimes it runs slower, sometimes faster, but it never stops. In these days of constant information accessibility it seems to me that the water that pours from our faucet often splits into many different streams that all go in many different directions. It also seems that our society doesn't provide many different resources to teach us how to really channel and focus our thoughts in a calm, passive, yet precise manner.

When meditating, you learn to direct the flow of your water so it flows in one steady stream. This isn't accomplished by force, actually, trying to force your mind to focus will keep you from truly focusing and will be counterproductive overall.

Our minds are not so naturally scatter-brained, but they also aren't so great at focusing either. When we sleep at night our brains do perform a little "cleanup" that allows us to be less scatterbrained during the days. It also preserves memories that are important to us (this is one of the reasons good REM during sleep is essential). But also, animals only really learn to focus under intense stress and loads of chemical response. The challenge of humans is to promote focus and relaxation within given guidelines without inducing major stress response or going into a coma.

Meditation is a powerful tool to focus our thoughts and calm our minds. I've been meditating for over a year and a half and now it's much easier. It's opened a world of disciplined thought that I've never thought was really accessible or even knew existed. It's also kept my anxiety under control and helped me to understand mindfulness in everyday life. The ability to enjoy and accept every situation and moment of life with love and without fear.

Whether you do suffer from a mental disorder, scattered thoughts, stressful situations, or you feel that you are doing just fine, I encourage you to take at least ten minutes a day to at least just stop and let yourself be aware of your life and accept it with love.
You may just find a new world that you never knew existed before.

Why are E.T.'s eyes so big?

Why are E.T.'s eyes so big?

Because he looked at his phone bill :)

What a week this has been! I was terribly sick last week and kind of the week before, so this has been one huge game of catch up. But I managed to get all of the most important things finished and most of my... less important schoolwork as well.
Thursday I was freaking out a little bit because I thought that I was only going to have time to climb once this week, but I managed to calm myself down and remember that there's always time to climb if you're willing to look/work for it.
Crisis averted.

So, basically, I planned an AMAZING weekend at the price of working my tail end off all week. I ended up, on friday, taking two exams (and doing really well on them), attending four hours of class (where I learned integration in calculus, awesome), establishing a boulder problem on the side of my apartment building(v4-v5ish), and hiking up Y mountain to camp at 8,520 feet in preparation for Mt. Whitney in two weeks! Busy day!

My boulder problem! I numbered the bricks here. It's actually a circuit that starts at 1 and 2 and goes to fifteen. I want to build up to being able to do four laps on it. That would really roughly translate to 100 feet or more of climbing! 

So, Cameron and I brought this random girl who wanted to hike Y mountain with us friday night (props to her, there really aren't a lot of people that I know that are willing to go to the top of a mountain and camp in freezing weather with two crazies like us), and did an awesome trek up in the snow! While up there I learned some valuable lessons to take up to Mt. Whitney with me.

1) It doesn't matter how nice a sleeping bag is, if you are not in a tent or on a full-length sleeping pad, the wind or the snow that your bag is exposed too can and will suck the heat out of you like a child demolishes a 7-11 slurpee. This is important to know if you want to get sleep.

2) Sleeping on level ground is the best option. Always.

3) Tennis shoes are cool for snow until you have to put your feet back in them the next morning.

4) Base-layer thermals are ALWAYS a good idea.

5) If nothing else, worry about your feet getting too cold.

6) Hot chocolate is worth carrying up a mountain for the end of the day.

7) Stop learning these lessons the hard way.

So I was pretty uncomfortable all night. Not really that cold, just very uncomfortable sleeping, and I only got 2-3 hours max.

The next morning we booked it down the mountain, got down by 8:30, and, after dropping them off, I got back by 9, just in time to get ready for my date at 10...

Against all odds though, the date seemed to have gone really well (I at least had an awesome time), and, by the blessing of deity I'm sure, I was awake enough to really enjoy myself!

Well, the awakeness was short-lived. As soon as I dropped my date off at home, my body decided that it had enough and started to shut. me. down.

Just then I got a text from a friend reminding me that I promised to climb with him right at that time. 

This was a good opportunity to evaluate how I really felt about climbing. Did I really want to go out while I was dog tired and start exerting myself by carrying all the gear up the canyon and then try to climb something really difficult? Or would I rather spend a warm evening at home, maybe watch a movie, and go to bed early to catch up on sleep?

Matt and I ended up on a climb called Double Jam because I was able to convince him to do some trad routes instead of a multi-pitch climb (for those of you who don't know, trad climbing is a style of climbing where, as you climb up, you place gear into cracks and crevices that will keep from hitting the ground if you happen to fall Here's a little, not great but better than what I want to write, article on trad climbing). I just wanted to work on my placement of protection and see how Matt broke down the climb for placements. He led the climb first and I just followed him and took his gear out of the wall so I could look at exactly how he placed it and what he was thinking.

I'm pretty sure Matt and Craig were scheming at the bottom because, when I got down, they both asked, "well, are you ready to lead it now?" 

This was probably the crux of the climb for me, I ended up having to climb up past my protection (pro) and hoping that I wouldn't have to put a cam to the test that day.

I have to admit, I was really tired and actually a little bit upset with them for even asking me if I wanted to! I freaking fell when I was on toprope trying to get the stupid gear out of the wall, how in the world was I going to lead it??

Well, five or so minutes later I find myself thirty feet off the ground and messing with a large cam trying to get it into a crack from a very exhausting position on the wall. What can I say, unless I really see a safety hazard from doing a climb, I can't say no!

So I sent the climb after a pretty hair-raising runout that I think scared Craig and maybe Matt a little bit (gotta work on feeling the need to place pro more often), and felt pretty dang accomplished!

After that, as if I wasn't enough of a glutton for punishment, I asked Matt if he'd belay me while I worked on my project Meadow Muffin (first bolted 5.12a climb in Utah!). So I actually remembered all the beta I had figured out before and then sent most of the climb after a third-or-so try. Matt wanted to give it a shot, and, with me shouting beta and encouragement to him, got way past where I did on my first try. That guy is crazy strong even though I'm pretty sure he doesn't realize it!

Now today... I think I'm just going to revert to that, watch a movie-stay inside-go to bed early tactic that I mentioned earlier. I earned it this week.

Let's see what damage we can do next week. :)

What is our purpose anyway?

I'm back! After that Timpanogos trip I didn't sleep for another number of hours totaling almost 40 HOURS OF NO SLEEP. Some of you folks out there may scoff t that whole idea. "40 hours? This kid's a wimp..." But let me remind you that it was 40 hours of being straight up active on a mountain and I'm like a little princess that needs her 8 hours of sleep every night or else I turn into a little grumpy princess. No one likes grumpy princesses.

Anyway, I didn't sleep and got incredibly sick. This was the most sick I've been in a long time, it literally laid me out for a whole week. Boy I'll tell you. Being sick is the worst! You sleep all the time, have no willpower, and have nothing to do because you can't go be active and people don't want you around! Miserable!
But after a close shave with death in the doctor's office (our conversation, "You need to drink 20% more water." "My pee is clear EVERY time..." "You need to lay off the junk food for a few days." "I never eat junk food!" "And you need to sleep 20% more." "Dang." "Gotcha.") I managed to get away and now I'm feeling so good that I climbed a three pitch route on friday and climbed all day saturday. So good to get out!

Two or so weeks ago I watched a movie titled "Hugo". I thought it was going to be pretty bad honestly. However, I became pretty interested in the very first few moments of the movie with the vintage color scheme and the scenes of clock pieces revolving around in the picture. I also have a soft spot for movies that feel a little off the beaten path and also want to convey a message, it seems like I hit a jackpot.

While I wasn't thrilled with the ending to the movie, there was one moment during the movie where the boy Hugo said a couple things that really made me think.

"I'd imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn't be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too."

"Maybe that's why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn't able to do what it was meant to do... Maybe it's the same with people. If you lose your purpose... it's like you're broken."

The purpose of a person has always drawn me to thought. Do we have a purpose? If so, what is that purpose?

Like Hugo, I've been led more to be inclined to think that every person does have a purpose. Honestly, at a point in my life I struggled with severe depression and I think that the only thing that kept me from giving up to hopelessness was that I was and am sure that everything has a purpose. A greater purpose than the simple biological term for success (survival and reproduction). A purpose that transcends our ability to reason and falls more into the category of what we would call our heart or soul.

Also, I think that filling your purpose, the intended reason for you and I being here and now, is a major key to happiness in our life. I think that each of us must find our own purpose according to our talents and passions but that we'll all find that while every purpose may be different, they will all be good (no one has a purpose to propagate world hunger I believe...). I also reason that we don't need to go on some epic quest to find our purpose in life, but that we can't idly sit by expecting a 3x5 notecard to be given to us with our purpose on it.

We have to actively live our lives and understand, eventually, what abilities and gifts we have and how we can use those to better the people around us, our societies, and, ultimately, the world.

If the whole world is a machine, maybe you are a gear, a cog, a humble screw, or even the master switch. Just make sure that you're able to complete you purpose when the time comes.

Trip Report on Everest Ridge, Mt. Timpanogos!

Well people, it happened. I went on my first mountaineering trip! For those who are interested in a trip report (this should be everyone), here it goes!

The whole thing started on the morning of friday the 7th. I had to get up at 5:30am to cover a shift for one of my coworkers. The snow conditions had been iffy that week and friday morning Darren and Matt were going up to the base of the mountain to dig a snow pit a decide whether the conditions were too avalanche prone or not. The plan was that, if it was too dangerous to climb Timp, we'd make the three hour drive over to Nevada to climb another peak instead.

Thankfully Darren sent out an email around 9 that said the snow conditions were great and the trek was on!

So I spent all day trying to do homework and focus on other things, but of course I couldn't! This was my first mountaineering expedition!

My buddy Cameron was good enough to give me a ride to the trailhead for Dry Creek Canyon where we were going to meet up with the rest of the climbing club. We got there right at 10pm and spent some time getting our gear together while the rest of the group (about 30 people!) decided to start making their way up the canyon. Thankfully they weren't moving too quick and we hoofed it up to the group in time to get a breather before the self-arrest practice.

Self arresting (not like cops, we did not throw ourselves in jail, this is a method of stopping yourself on the ice and snow if you start to fall off the mountain) was at the Baldy Saddle and was really fun, but the snow was so powdery that you didn't really need to even use the ice axe to stop yourself from sliding. Good practice nonetheless!

After the brief self-arrest clinic everyone strapped on their crampons and warmer gear and we took off straight up Everest Ridge. Most people were using their headlamps, but the lit up city in the valley and the moon were so bright that I found it unnecessary most of the time. It was a pretty cool sight to see some thirty-odd headlamps moving up the mountain in a single file line. I wish I had snapped a picture of it!

After a while people started to peel off and different groups were formed according to how fast you wanted to climb the mountain. I found myself in the front group of five or so people and even got to break trail for a while! I realized that climbing a mountain this way was all about the patient, methodical progression up the side of the snow-covered slopes-- pretty different from sport climbing, but just as awesome, if not better.

At about 2am something happened (I may have peeled off for some water or food or something) and my front group kept going and I found myself pretty alone on the mountain for the next three or four hours. I didn't mind this too much because I could still see the front group ahead of me and got to follow their freshly broken tracks. Eventually someone caught up to me (I think it was one of the Matts...) and we caught up to the group right underneath the Hillary Step (if you look on the map above, the Hillary Step refers to the rock outcropping right below the ridge line on the mountain).

In my humble opinion I thought this was the absolute sickest part of the whole climb. It was so steep that if you fell there was no chance that you could self-arrest and stop yourself from falling... so don't fall haha. We traversed underneath the straight cliff faces for a bit and then climbed straight up when there was a break in the cliff that formed a snow covered chute. From there you make your way up to the summit ridge line. When we broke over the ridge the sun was just starting to come up over the mountains farther east of us and it was absolutely gorgeous. I'm so lucky that I go to school here...

Then we traversed the summit ridge line over to the summit of Everest Ridge and then chilled there for a little bit (kind of a pun, someone guessed that, with the wind chill, it was about -15 up there). I decided to break out one of my celebratory bananas and we had ourselves a little mountaineering feast on energy goo, powerbars, shot bloks, and, for me, a banana as well.

It being pretty cold, Andrew was the first to leave, followed by me and the two Matts. Andrew and Matt 1 BOOKED it down the mountain and Angela ended up going back up the mountain with some friends that she was ahead of while Matt 2 and I just kind of enjoyed an easy pace on the way down.

Instead of having to downclimb the Hillary Step we just went around it on a longer, but more timid slope. The whole way down Matt was a good sport and answered all of the beginner questions I had for him. From crampons to recognizing snow formations, he answered them all and answered them really well also. For the sake of our pants and because the snow was warming up, we chose not to glissade down and instead just kept trekking. By the time we got to the bottom of the snow fields we both were sunburned pretty bad because we didn't put on any sunscreen and I thought it was hilarious to see a sunburned guy with a big 'ol beard.

We made our way down pretty quick, but Matt was pretty tired and decided to ease up on the pace (I think he ended up stopping and taking a nap) while I kept up a pretty good clip to the bottom where I hung out with Jen and Andrew for an hour or two until Cameron got down and we made our way back home. It was pretty funny sitting there because the trailhead is in a pretty nice neighborhood and I swear we looked like homeless people just chillin' in this really nice place.

One family passed by and somehow it came up that it was really cold on the summit and the dad said, "yeah well I've been in -55 before."
Yeah. Big deal. Did you do it for fun at the top of a mountain?

Most everyone was really nice though and it was pretty funny to see all the exhausted climbers coming off the mountain and staggering to their cars to go home and sleep for the rest of their lives!

I think I learned lots of valuable lessons from this trip. Some of them were life insights, but I think the biggest one was that you really need boots that fit well when you do things like this. My feet still hurt!

But it won't stop me from doing this again :)

This is what Summitpost has to say about the climb

Sunday! The end of the week! Or the beginning if that's what you think of it as. I kind of think of sunday as being its own little thing, not really a part of the week, just kinda, set aside.

Anyway. This week has been nutso! Amid the struggles of mmbio tests, physics homework, looming calc tests (which I'm actually really excited for the calc test, I LOVE that class), and sleep deprivation, I somehow managed to visit a few friends (some new, some old) and to have a great time. I would like to apologize right now to everyone that I was really late to picking up, didn't keep in very good contact with, bailed on, and anything else I probably forgot about. It's not you, it was me trying to keep my head from exploding with busyness!

What with all this busyness though, I had an interesting experience at Mountainworks (the local climbing gear shop) this week.

I was at the Quarry (climbing gym adjacent to the store) and decided to go into the shop to ask the store owner some advice on the next pair of shoes I was thinking of getting. There, I got to meet a man who actually just finished a tour of climbing/hiking each of the high points in all 50 states (here's the news article for your reading pleasure: Provo man summits all 50 states' highest points)!
This is pretty impressive, not really because of any technical skills required per se, but mostly because of the sheer time and dedication that it takes to do something like that.
But, because I was more interested in getting my shoe advice and getting out quickly, I offhandedly said something like, "Wow, there's no way I would have time to do something like that."
Aaaaaaaaaand that's where the experience got interesting.

I learned that Andy (50 summit man) is actually a lawyer, has a wife and children, and still somehow manages to gather enough time to be a mountaineer. He was a very humble guy, so the majority of the story came from Jen (the owner's wife), but she told me of multiple occasions where they would drive for a total of 24 hours in one weekend just to be able to snag multiple peaks before he had to return to work on monday.

Then Andy told me that you just have to figure out what you want to do and plan out your life and priorities in order to achieve your goals and dreams. And I think that's what really struck me.
Here was a full-grown man telling me, a college student who's supposed to be well practiced in spending inane amounts of time doing things I consider fun, how to commit to a dream! And he was schooling me!

I think, as humans, we are meant to dream and aspire. I actually think that having a dream and aspiring to do or become something is what fills us with a purpose that's vital for a satisfying life.
The thing is, though, how many of us toss our dreams aside as "implausible" or too difficult to mesh with our current life? Are we scared what that change might bring with it? How many of us fail to see that we could achieve something if we were willing to make the effort?

Enter "time".

Time is curious because it seems to be like a vessel for something. Let's say that time is a pitcher and what we do with our time is what we choose to fill the pitcher with. There are lots and lots of good things that we enjoy drinking and there are probably more things that we don't enjoy drinking. If we waste our time or squander it doing something that we don't enjoy, it's like filling our day to day pitchers with things that we hate (for me that would probably be a mixture of muddy water and radishes, gross.). But we can also spend our time by doing things that are productive, enriching, and that will give us ultimate satisfaction. That's like filling our pitchers with delectable refreshing goodness (pure spring water with lemonade and mixed berry juice for me!). At the end of the day we have to drink what we fill our pitchers with, so we've got to be careful. Although we may fill it with something good, maybe some days we prefer one drink (or activity/thing) over something else. Both are good, but we want our favorite.

This all boils down to the fact that we get to choose what we do with our time. Whether that's summiting 50 peaks, spending more time with family, training for sport climbing (my little plug here), or just taking a well needed nap, we have the decision and there's never an excuse, "Well I just don't have the time."

Anyway, sorry for the long post this time, I'll try to be less long winded in the future!

Simple Simon has been crushed!

Whoooo!!
This morning Anson and I got up to Rock Canyon at 7am (37 degrees, a little chilly) to put another project day into our favorite Super Bowl Wall climb! Simple Simon (5.11b)!

Simple Simon has been a huge goal for me because it's basically a crazy overhanging roof sequence that was just jumping and yelling for me to redpoint. Unfortunately I stink at overhangs.
But after three days of 2 hour work sessions each, I finally figured out all the beta that worked for me and went for the redpoint!

I tied on my shoes, made sure my hands were warm(ish), and took off my puffy. Right as I went to start the climb, the sun crested into the canyon and warmed up the climb just for me! The funniest thing was that, right after I sent the climb and Anson was lowering me, the sun was covered by the mountain again somehow. It was literally only bright and warm for my last attempt!

The picture here is from the first day of working Simple Simon because Anson couldn't take pictures this morning, he was belaying!

One Step at a Time

Well hey everyone! By "everyone" I mean those who I've been able to convince to follow my brand new blog so far (including mom, my roommate, a few very loyal friends, and some coworkers of mine who were surprisingly supportive).
I'm starting this blog in an attempt to share the insights I've had into life. These range from how we can be happy to why is it that when we don't want loose change it's always there and when we do want it, it's nowhere to be found. All of these insights are what I've gained through my lens of rock climbing, the pursuit of scientific truths, healthy eating, and yes, just messing around.

Patience.
What a word.
I remember from a very young age that people say that patience is a virtue. I remember being told to, "have patience" when I would work on a project or try reading a book or try learning anything new.
Unfortunately I am not a naturally patient person.
Some people say that they're impatient, but I think that they'll start to learn about what it really means to be impatient when they start having an anxiety attack because the dryer at the laundromat HASN'T FINISHED RIGHT AT TWENTY MINUTES LIKE IT SAID IT WOULD.

But I digress.

Recently I think I've started to realize why it is that people have said that this "patience" thing is so great. It seems that something changes in us when we learn how to wait "patiently".

Before I mention that though, I think it's important to know what patience really is. Patience isn't just sitting on the sideline and waiting for the coach to call you in (an experience I've never had since I never played football and there really isn't a sideline in cross country or karate or rock climbing) but thinking that you'll never get to play. I like to think of patience as "active" or even, "hopeful" waiting. It's waiting because you believe in or expect a certain outcome, but you know that you can't do anything to expedite the process.

I guess a good example of this is found in rock climbing. When starting climbing, lots of really athletic, strong people want to just jump in and do really hard climbs and climb all the time. Over time though, they start to develop tendon injuries, thin skin on their fingertips (hurts a ton), and they lose motivation to keep up the sport.
Contrasting this are the experienced climbers (or smart beginners) that realize that, if they push their limits too hard and for too long, they will get injured one way or another, and that will ultimately set them back further than the gains of impatience will throw them forward.

So back to how it changes us.
When we wait with a purpose (my new definition of patience) we are not simply idling away time, but we are being more effective with it. When we learn true patience, we actually learn to trust people, things, situations, and even ourselves. When we learn to truly trust, we can trade our fears, anxieties, and pessimism for confidence, hope, and optimism. This in turn helps us to be happier, live our lives more meaningfully, and enjoy the journey.

Who doesn't want that?