Since getting back from Joshua Tree, I’ve started climbing almost with the same enthusiasm and frequency as when I first started and felt like I was living from session to session strung out on chalk dust and overwhelmed with the idea of having found something by which I was entirely enraptured. All over again, there’s the ache in my fingers when I think about climbing, there’s the way it sits on my chest and makes it hard to breathe sometimes.

Naturally, I’m getting stronger again…and dealing with a lot of the same mental hurdles. Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about limitations and lack of commitment. Were I to be totally honest, I’d say I have a harder time with the latter, but blame it on the former. I can count on one hand the number of routes I’ve projected, inside or out, because frankly, I don’t like the idea of failure or incompletion. I don’t want to get three quarters of the way up a tough route and spend a month fighting for the last ten feet just to not have it happen. And so I’ve been stuck at the same grade ceiling all year.

I can physically do the moves required to make that jump to the next grade. I’ve flailed and struggled up a few, realizing that I’m searingly stubborn. I WILL finish, if it takes me an hour. When I’m in, I’m all in. In climbing, in life…I’m a both-feet-in-at-the-same-time kind of girl. So here I am, stuck at the same grade because I won’t commit to trying something harder and either succeeding or failing. I have these self-imposed limitations that come crashing in on me, keeping me static.

So then, how do I make it the last ten feet? How do I fight for those last few moves? How do I take my hesitations and limitations and turn them on their heads so I can stop struggling against them?

Tags: Climbing

This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 4:24 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.