Definitely climbing today!!!

I’m so excited!  I can’t wait!  I made some arrangements in my life today that will allow me to go climbing right after my doctor’s appointment (also sorely needed)!  I’m looking forward to going and having some time to spend without worrying about anyone else’s demands!  It’s not that I don’t have other obligations today.  I do.  I took the first step toward getting my life back yesterday, though, and it feels great, even though there’s a nagging sense of impending doom about the communications that are going to result from that step.  I’m going climbing, though, and that always calms and centers me.  It’s the only thing that can, and I haven’t been doing near enough of it for months, now!  A new MyClimb Challenge is starting May 1st and I suggested a name for it which a couple of the members like.  I just put up a Facebook post for our team to see so they can all mull it over and suggest other ideas if they have them.  I don’t want to overstep my bounds, but it’s getting close to May 1st and I just want to know what the team thinks of the name and what I can do to help Lou, our fearless leader, out because he’s had a rough few months.  We have some incredible people on our team and I’m honored to be a part of it!!!  So, I’m stoked today!  It’s not even 0600 hrs and I’m ready to climb!!!  I woke up ready to climb!!!  Only a few more days, and I will have been climbing for two years!  TWO YEARS!!!  That’s an anniversary I’m looking forward to as well!  I know it might sound like a lame thing to celebrate to some, especially if you’ve been climbing for 40 years, but I’m excited about it!  Climbing has kept me out of the inpatient psych ward for two and a half years, now!!!  That is SO fantastic!!!  Climbing just makes life better.  That’s all there is to it!

I have to lose a bit of weight (okay, a lot) so that my harness fits well again, and then I can take to the crags outdoors and really have some fun on the ropes!  Until then, I can boulder indoors and out – I haven’t bouldered much outdoors and it seems to me that it would be a fun sub-discipline of climbing to explore, and long overdue.  I have the guidebooks for it!  I just need to free up my time and my life enough to go on some bouldering expeditions!  I’m working on that, trust me!  Locally, here around Billings, we have sandstone.  I haven’t explored that much, so I’ll start there.  There’s some granite up around Bozeman and some more granite around Butte to explore, too, now that it’s getting nice enough outside that the temperatures are warming up and the snow should be melted off or in the process of doing so.  There’s still the chance for snow and cold weather, especially in those higher elevations, but I’m hoping that Spring-Summer (I’ll just lump them together Montana-style for seasons) has taken hold and is here to stay for a good, long while.  Now that I know where some of these bouldering areas are, I can go and enjoy the bouldering there!  That area up near Butte is one I’d like to explore!  I’d like to explore the one near Bozeman, too!  All in good time, I imagine.  Imagination is a wonderful thing!  It helps one cope with everyday life, and imagining – visualizing – climbing is so powerful!  Then you get to actually climb!!!

I have a passion in life – climbing.  It’s so great to have a passion in life.  If you don’t have a passion in life, find one.  Try some new things out.  Find some friends who are willing to introduce you to some hobbies and activities you have never tried before, just to see if you like them.  You may stumble upon your passion, like I did, after taking someone who cares’ advice to go try it out.  You may have some ideas about what you want to try out – find someone who knows what they’re doing with it and try it out!  Go do it!  If you don’t like it, then you’ve gained the invaluable knowledge that you don’t like it.  On to the next thing, then!  There are so many spectacular things to do and to try in this world and only one lifetime to do them in!  Find a passion!  I mean it!  Find who you are and get in touch with yourself through your passion(s).  You’ll be so much happier!!!