Everything and Nothing

And just when I try to walk away - I find that I can't.

The life that I had when I started this blog bears little resemblance to the one that I have now. This isn't me anymore. Even now I'm in the twilight hours of further drastic change. This interim place too shall soon be no longer. I sometimes wish that it didn't have to be so dramatic. I now look back and wonder, was it really that bad, but sifting through the debris of past few years will get me nowhere.

It's difficult to admit that I will never climb at a reasonable level again. Last weekend I went bouldering indoors a few times. I guess it was in part to say goodbye. I've always had an odd relationship with climbing and the end is no different. I am angry with climbing. I wish I could just look back and see all of the good times, cool places, achievements, but all that I see is a person struggling her hardest and never achieving anything approaching her potential. I am mad at myself for letting climbing distract me from a life that was falling apart and in desperate need of attention. No, take it all away, it was never worth it. I look over my past blog articles and feel pathetic. Angst in the form of a not even partly committed training diary, but this was never really about climbing. Actually climbing was never just about climbing. It was about a person who was lost and found something hidden behind a rock flake in North Wales, a dusty cave in California, a limestone pocket in Spain. It was a belief that had long vanished.

I've recently come to the conclusion that while hard work is no guarantee of success, it makes it more likely than not trying and it often takes much, much more than you can ever imagine.