Categories
Philosophy

If You’re Having A Bad Day

There’s a very valid time for quitting and walking away, and there’s a very valid time for sticking to your guns and ploughing on. I think more often than not, ploughing on is probably the best approach.

The right or wrong decision is something that is obvious when you look back and connect the dots, but it never seems as clear as that at the time. So when things go wrong, when mistakes are made, when everything falls through, when you don’t get as far as you wanted to get within the time you set – all this freakin’ messy collateral of mindache can be frustrating and upsetting and annoying, and it’s easy to fall into a trap of discouragement or wallowing or defeatism.

So if or when that happens, and if you’re having a bad day, read this:

“The slaves received the whip with more certainty and regularity than they received their food. It was the incentive to work and the guardian of discipline. But there was no ingenuity that fear or a depraved imagination could devise which was not employed to break their spirit and satisfy the lusts and resentment of their owners and guardians – irons on the hands and feet, blocks of wood that the slaves had to drag behind them wherever they went, the tin-plate mask designed to prevent the slaves eating the sugar-cane, the iron collar.

Whipping was interrupted in order to pass a piece of hot wood on the buttocks of the victim; salt, pepper, citron, cinders, aloes, and hot ashes were poured on the bleeding wounds. Mutilations were common, limbs, ears and sometimes the private parts, to deprive them of the pleasures which they could indulge in without expense. Their masters poured burning wax on their arms and hands and shoulders, emptied the boiling cane sugar over their heads, burned them alive, roasted them on slow fires, filled them with gunpowder and blew them up with a match; buried them up to the neck and smeared their heads with sugar that the flies might devour them; fastened them near to nests of ants or wasps; made them eat their excrement, drink their urine, and lick the saliva of other slaves. One colonist was known in moments of anger to throw himself on his slaves and stick his teeth into their flesh.”

[An extract from The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C.L.R. James]

Suddenly the little things don’t seem that important, and it’s certainly not worth allowing them to pull us down too far for too long. The chances are slim that someone’s gonna pour burning wax on our arms, or fill us with gunpowder and blow us up with a match. It’s all a game of perspective. Everything is a game of perspective.

Things could be worse. Tomorrow is a new day. We are lucky.

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Categories
Vague Direction Book

A Letter To A Thick Chunk Of Paper

Dear Book,

Sorry for telling you to leave and never come back. But sometimes… well, sometimes I hate you.

You don’t even realise you’re doing it, but you make everything so difficult. Whenever we’re in the same room, I hollowly stare at you – for hours or days – like a boneheaded idiot gazing at your pages with nothing to say. You’re overwhelming and knowing where to start can seem impossible. So I often don’t start at all. I just ignore you and hope that you’ll be gone when I get back. 

The other day the guy behind Game Of Thrones said he likes having written but doesn’t like writing. That struck a chord and I’m pretty sure you know why. You do know why, don’t you?

It’s been a while now. We’d met briefly before but it was fleeting. How it eventually became a commitment like it is now I’ll never know. And it pains me to say it, but there’s frequently times when I wish we’d never met, because it just doesn’t come naturally to me. I often look at real writers from a distance and think you should just go and hang with them instead. They have skill and know what they’re doing. You’d be in better company with them. 

You know I said I hated you? Well that’s sometimes true, but at least the hatred goes both ways. At least we have that in common. 

You hate when I think we can’t compete and should go our separate ways.
You hate that sometimes I swear. Shit.
You hate that you frequently have to come at the end of the to-do list.
You hate when we went away and fell out and I spent time with her instead of you.
You hate that our process is so condition-dependent and full of false excuses.
Not unless I’ve had caffeine or a sandwich or am feeling “inspired”.

We’ve probably grown recently but haven’t realised it yet. It was our biggest rejection. We tried to keep it under the radar and act like we didn’t care but we did. We really did. I thought we’d cracked it. It looked so promising until, out of the blue, the publisher said sorry-but-no. I’m pretty sure that’s what getting stabbed in the eyeball with a dirty Swiss Army knife feels like. Let’s not do that again. Let’s do it on our own instead.

There’s still work to do. A few months’ worth. Neither of us realised we were signing up for something that would take this long, but unfortunately you’re still well rough around the edges and need polishing. But holy toast-crumbs, we’ve come a long way.

Sorry, I take it back. I don’t hate you at all. You’re alright when you’re not being difficult.

Yeah. You’re alright.

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Categories
Adventure Philosophy

It’s All Relative

The following is a guest post from Emma at Gotta Keep Movin’. She writes about that age old question of what an adventure is. My view on this is unreliable and changes more than a regularly rotated hourglass, so it’s nice to read that Emma has a way more solid approach.

Anyway, it can be easy to get drowned in a sea of supposed-meanings, and to fall into the trap of thinking too much about ‘what people will think’ or ‘how does this stack up to someone else?’. Those concerns in many areas of life can be toxic.

So there’s a primer. Take it away, pal!

– – –

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Let’s Stop Trying to Define Adventure: It’s All Relative Emotion

I read travel journalism on an almost daily basis, and lately I can’t help but notice the influx of snobbery. While there are a whole host of ways in which this affliction rears its ugly head, it’s rating the validity of adventure that I find the most tedious. Fueling the increasingly competitive nature of travel, words like ‘true’, ‘meaningful’, or ‘real’ are applied to adventure, often referring to more physically demanding expeditions, traversing of uncharted lands, or the never-been-done-befores. This neatly stacks travel experiences into stiff umbrella categories of ‘more’ or ‘less’ adventurous. If you’re not near the lofty heights of daring adventure, you’re swiftly discarded onto the pile of mediocre travellers, excluded from the elite super-club of nomads who are obviously doing a much better job of travelling than you are.

The word ‘adventure’ has been traditionally defined, in the literal sense of the word, as something that gives a sense of thrill, something that involves an element of risk, or an activity one feels to be exciting. With the way we’re presently talking about adventure, it’s as if these have been put on a ladder — my thrill is better than your thrill, my risk is larger (and therefore more valuable) than your risk.

Since when were these emotions measurable and ordered into better or worse, admirable or laughable?

Why have we put adventure on a scale?

My firm belief is this: adventure is a horizontal spectrum, not a vertical hierarchy. It doesn’t fall into a single category, or risk level, or thrill factor, and it certainly doesn’t have winners or losers. Adventure is an infinite variety of emotions and reactions, something that is sparked off in each of us in many different ways. Like the beauty in everything else that makes us unique as human beings, there is something to be celebrated in the fact that each of our senses of adventure is personal and individual.

For some, it’s the intrepid feeling of stepping into new places, the unknown and obscure. For others, it’s a change in routine, not necessarily related to moving far from home but more a sense of any activity out of the ordinary. It can be what makes you happy, or what terrifies you. And yes, some people find it in challenging their minds and bodies under the most testing conditions on Earth. Our stereotyped view of adventure is still valid, of course, but it stands shoulder to shoulder with so many more, blending in with some and opposing others.

For me, the important part is the emotion rather than the activity. The only length I would go to in order to define it, if I had to say it was anything, would be this; adventure is something that makes you (personally you) feel adventurous.

As travel journalists speaking about adventure, it’s our responsibility to avoid exclusivity. Adventure needs to be accessible, and if we continue to pin it to levels of more or less, better or worse, we’re in grave danger of alienating the people we’re trying to reach. Our mission is to inspire, not impose — and we’re teetering dangerously on the edge of imposing a definition of the activities that are counted as adventures, thus belittling and excluding any other way of travel that sits outside of them. With our constant need to push and push at more extreme ways to travel, traditional means seem to become less valid, a fact that saddens me and could easily dishearten many future travellers.

It’s time to encourage a new way of looking at adventure, a way where legitimacy or authenticity don’t come into it. In fact, a way that has no concrete definition at all. It’s not okay to tell someone else how to enjoy the things they love in any other aspect of life, so it’s also not okay to tell someone how to adventure. It is about feeling thrilled, excited, a little scared but nevertheless exhilarated, or whatever other emotion that leads you to one thing — it is about feeling adventurous.

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Emma Higgins is a travel writer from the UK with a penchant for people. Wandering the globe for 4 years and counting, she’s found value in travel by talking to people and seeking out individual stories, as well as venturing through our planet’s most incredible spaces. Her website, Gotta Keep Movin’, documents the tales she’s collected on the way, and her Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter offer more snippets from her life of travel. Most days, you will find her with a cup of coffee in one hand, and a pen in the other. 

Categories
Philosophy

Everybody panic! There’s nothing we can do!

At this very moment, no-one can control the weather, or the passing of time, or an asteroid that’s heading straight for us that our telescopes haven’t seen yet. No-one can control a shoe in mid-air that’s flying towards our head. Not me, you, us, them or we. No-one.

There’s a massive list of stuff that none of us can do anything about.

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Here’s a fruity metaphor. In 1915, in the jungle that was no-mans land between Honduras and Guatemala, there was a guy called “Sam the Banana Man”. What a nickname. He was there attempting to start a fruit business.

The established fruit corporations of the time didn’t like this much, especially a huge company called United Fruits. They weren’t worried though, because, after all, they were a corporation. This guy, this Banana Man, he was just a person. One person surely couldn’t threaten an entire corporation.

United sent their lawyers to the jungle but in the end, instead of some fancy legal techniques, they decided to just bribe the local government and make building bridges across the river illegal. What good are a whole bunch of bananas if you can’t get them across the river?

So that was it. No more concerns for United because they had paid enough money to make sure Banana Man couldn’t build a bridge to flog his bananas. [Yes, yes, I’m not mentioning the horrible parts of the story about local exploitation, eventual hyper-capitalism etc – we’re in metaphor mode remember?]

Bridges. No bridges.

“OK, that’s fine. Let’s figure this out”, thought Sam the Banana Man. “I can’t build a bridge but no-one said anything about building two very long piers at either side of the river.” So he did. He got a team to build two massive piers, and then whenever he wanted to take the fruit across the river, he used some fancy rope-based contraption to join the piers and provide safe passage over the water for all the bananas.

When the bribed government saw the fruit and questioned him, he smiled and said, “Why, that’s no bridge. It’s just a couple of little old wharfs”, and carried on with his life.

We might not be able to control a government being paid-off to make bridge-building illegal, but we sure as hell can control our reaction.

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So,

  • George can’t control the weather, but he can wear a raincoat, go to the fields, and realise that all this rainfall is helping the crops grow.
  • Shannon can’t control the passing of time but she can make sure that she remembers to prioritise the things she views as the most important way to spend that time.
  • Wynona can’t even see the asteroid, let alone stop it, but she can go to the lab and keep tinkering away on her new invention, Wynona’s Anti-Asteroid Gun, because that’s what makes her excited.
  • Pete can’t stop someone throwing a shoe on stage whilst he’s doing a new standup routine, but he can duck and avoid it like a ninja, then make a joke out of it, and leave feeling the buzz of an impromptu, unscripted joke that went down well, and then do another gig tomorrow.   

There’s countless things that are uncontrollable. Thankfully, how we respond to those things and frame them internally is not on that list, and never will be. That’s something I always forget and need to remember. 

Categories
Adventure Interviews Philosophy

The Value Of Grit, Trust and Time [TED Talk: Video]

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to give this talk at TEDxStormont in Belfast. It’s supposed to be called ‘The Value of Grit’ and uses stories from last years bike trip to touch on: why we should trust ourselves, why putting things off for too long is rarely sensible, and the value of elephants / grit. Yep, really. Elephants. Strange, right?

Hope that it resonates with anyone who is burned out or considering doing something new that seems scary. And hopefully the extremely nervous sweating and fast-talking isn’t too off putting. It’s now clear that I listen to way too much freestyle hip-hop.

Categories
Philosophy

Today

I don’t know if this is a good idea to write, or whether it’s insensitive and inappropriate. It’s not meant to be, but maybe only New Yorkers or US Citizens or people who were there that day can talk about this. 

Usually the specifics of a single day become less clear as time goes on, but this one is still crystal. I’d walked home from school, using a slightly different route than the regular one. At home, breaking news had taken over the channels. The first one had hit the tower a short time ago. And then the second one. That was thirteen years ago, but it doesn’t seem that long.

Just over one year ago, in July last year, as those childhood television memories had long since faded, there was a bus that pulled up into the gravelly and dusty Fairbanks parking lot. Step by step, forty or so tourists stepped off. I think they all lived in Florida now and were touring the North West. They were retired couples mostly. Despite being bleary eyed after a long journey of sitting up and trying to sleep in cramped seats, and despite the yawns and the stretches, everyone was happy, and they seemed to be enjoying the start of a long summer on their bus tour vacation. Their smiles were contagious.

As everyone got their suitcases from the metal pop-out underbelly of the bus, a man from the group came over and he looked at the bike, and then the lack of sleep on my face, and he laughed as he was feeling that tiredness too. Obvious fatigue and the bike was always a solid and reliable conversation starter, and it was always surprising how such moments, no matter how brief or fleeting, often lead to extreme openness and ultimately, feeling like a new bond had been formed. Maybe that’s weird but it’s true. 

We talked about Alaska. He was excited about being here. Excited about seeing the wildlife and the bears and the hills and getting away from it all for a bit. Just regular Alaska small talk. As small talk turned to specifics, that age old question of what we do came up and the man told me that he used to be a firefighter but had retired. He said that his entire family had been firefighters. It was in their blood. Generations upon generations. It was what they were all born to do, it was what they lived for. 

He told me that his dad had died firefighting. He said that it’s one of the saddest things to have happened to him but it’s something that any firefighter knows is a possibility when they start. During this, the man’s voice started to quiver, and his eyes began to well up. His whole family had been firefighters – he was a firefighter, his dad was, and his son had been too. The man had a thick New York accent. It’s one I love. One that can be intimidating. One that makes me laugh as it can be so blunt and unintentionally witty. Except this wasn’t funny, it was heartbreaking, and just like the laughter moments earlier was contagious, so now was the sadness.

Thirteen years ago, his son went to work in New York. He had gone into one of the towers shortly after it was hit, to try and help and do his duty. He didn’t come out again. 

We never know what’s going to happen in a minute, or an hour, or tomorrow, or next week. Sometimes we all need reminding about today.

Today is a good day to remember that people who are smiling may be in pain.

Today is a good day to remember that none of us can ever truly know what’s around the corner. 

Today is a good day to be happy and hopeful and to smile contagiously. 

Categories
Philosophy

Burnout: How To Cure It (With Lessons From Pjorn)

In my experience the stages of burnout go like this:

  1. Oh yes! I’m so excited to be starting this. Think of the possibilities!
  2. Hmmm. It’s not gaining as much traction as first hoped. But hey, life’s alright.
  3. Are these doubts going to subside? Ah forget that, let’s keep cracking on.
  4. We’re struggling, something just fell through, and I just spent all day mentally elsewhere (trying to think of every character from Sesame Street). 
  5. Shall we go to the pub for a beer and talk turnaround strategy?
  6. These blankets are so warm. I’m not getting out of bed. No. Stop it. Get up!
  7. Sorry guys I’m done. Too much stress. Can’t do this anymore.

True burnout has happened to me once. There were three of us building a company. Looking back now, it’s easy to see that by the end of it, none of us were content with what we were doing and were all on a track for the dreaded B. It was just a matter of who reached stage 7 first. 

This is not about doom and gloom though, quite the opposite. Occasionally burnout is well-needed, as there’s a few positives that happen as a result which are hard to see at the time. One positive is that taking action after becoming burnt out might lead us to seek experiences that are truly exciting and personally profound, and those experiences might lead to new things. For example, a good pal has been slowly making his way around the Pacific for over a year, working on farms, and teaching and volunteering on boats, and as a side-effect of that experience he’s now found permaculture as something that fires him up. It takes getting drained to learn about ourselves and our values sometimes.

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Another benefit of burnout is, as we now know what the signals are, they should be easier to spot and resolve in the future. Because whilst there’s a time for embracing it, there’s also a time for trying to stop it happening. 

These are the signals (IMO) that show we’re at risk of burning out:

  • If we only spend time working or sleeping, it’s bad news.
  • If we wake up and aren’t stoked more than three days in a row, it’s bad news.
  • If we convince ourselves that what we do is the be-all and end-all, it’s bad news.
  • If we struggle to generate new ideas, it’s bad news.
  • If we need a break two days after getting back from a break, it’s bad news. 
  • If we agree with stuff that we shouldn’t agree with just because we’re too drained, it’s bad news. 
  • If we start to become jaded, cynical and pessimistic, it’s bad news.

Hopefully you don’t have too many of those symptoms, but if you do, spotting them early offers the best chance of exterminating them. But how? What is the metaphorical burnout fire extinguisher? HERE is the (non-medical, ahem) CURE to burnout in one word: Fun. Play. Enjoyment. Oops that was three words.

The best thing to do to stop burnout is to take time to have fun and come back with a fresh mind and a new outlook. “Adults are just obsolete children”, said Dr. Seuss. Good one doc. See, now this post is medically proven. We can’t gain perspective when we’re ‘in it’ so the best way is to step back and play and enjoy doing something that’s completely unrelated to whatever is causing anxiety. Take a train to Hypothetiville without a phone. Strum on your ukulele. Do something that makes you laugh. Do one of those things where when you’re doing it you aren’t thinking about anything else and reach a flow-state. For Obama, putting balls on the golf course is a way of relaxing and gaining perspective. 

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Without realising it, sometimes everything can become very “serious”. A bubble of importance is created around what we do. That seems silly if we consider the benefits of “the non-serious”. Light-heartedness and fun don’t need to be justified, but we can justify them if we want as they have these side-effects: increased creativity, optimism, happiness, fascination, contentment. And those things lead to more focus and better work. So all in all smiles and fun and laughing are pretty vital. 

There’s a guy called Bjorn from Sweden, he was in a documentary that was on the other day. You probably know him but I’ll leave it as a riddle to see if you can work it out. When he was starting out, he’d go off to a cabin in the woods and write songs with the goal of becoming a pro musician. His songs became hits quickly and because of that he was able to keep going to the cabin in the woods and keep writing cheesy love songs and keep having fun doing it. Bjorn’s initial efforts paid off rapidly, which isn’t the case for most people. He was obviously skilled and had dedication, but that’s the case for lots of people. Luck played a part. 

The thing about luck is that most of the time people don’t get lucky the first time around. That’s just how probability works. Other than rare exceptions, the only way to get lucky is to stay in the game long enough so the odds of probability increase. (n.b. this is not a good approach for gambling addicts).

So because first-time luck is rare, there’s probably a single Bjorn to a thousand Pjorn’s. Who’s Pjorn? I’ve got no idea. Pjorn is just a guy chasing a dream of a creative career, building something from scratch and trying to carve a path in the world. Only at some point he will probably come face-to-face with the dreaded burnout, and he might quit and stop having fun. There’s a lot of BS out there that would now say that perhaps if Pjorn had just kept going just a little bit, he would’ve made it happen. But that might not be true. No-one other than Pjorn has a valid opinion. Pjorn is the best judge of when to give up and move on. Quitting when you become burned out is totally fine if it’s the right thing to do. Pjorn knows more than anyone when enough is enough.

The thing that Pjorn should remember – regardless of whether he’s burnt out and quits, or tries to extinguish his burnout before it becomes an issue by having fun every day – is that stuff takes time. That doesn’t mean he has to stick to doing the exact same thing for years and years if it becomes a drag. It just means he needs be flexible and willingly sign up to the long haul and trust that things take time. For people like Pjorn, the long haul is the only approach that comes with decent odds. It takes time to increase experience and skill, but probably more importantly it takes time to increase the odds. Whether those are correlated is another matter.

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Burnout doesn’t mean we need to run away entirely, although there can be benefits in doing that. It can be less dramatic, and simply a time to re-assess whether what we’re doing each day is what we really should be doing each day. No-one other than the burnt truly knows what to do.

It took a long time to move on from my burnout. There’s a horrible dark period that happens during and after it which isn’t enjoyable at all unless you actively remember to step back and have fun. But I’m grateful it happened, as whilst we can learn from stuff that’s comfortable, it’s really the uncomfortable that teaches us the lessons we won’t forget. 

I don’t want burnout to happen again any time soon, but sometimes wonder what would happen if it did. What would be the actionable result of going back to that place? Would it be an escape? Perhaps it would be a big walk with a rucksack full of ramen. It’s impossible to say. But for now, being settled, having fun, looking out for symptoms of burnout and trying to kill them, and being content in the knowledge that things take time is quite OK.

Maybe that’s growth. Maybe that’s the conclusion Pjorn reached too.

Categories
Adventure Interviews

An Interview with Andy Kirkpatrick: The Dark Side To A Life Of Climbing

Andy Kirkpatrick is a climber, an author and a comedian. His draw to suffering in hardcore, vertical and freezing locations, combined with the technical and mental skills to get by in such places, and an ability to tell the story of those experiences in a relatable and funny way, is unique. 

There’s a dark side to big trips that doesn’t seem to get talked about much. Whether that’s climbing, cycling, rowing, walking, pulling a sledge or whatever else. Maybe it’s not even exclusive to outdoor-type things, and is present in anything in which someone spends a long spell doing the same thing. Perhaps the reason for it not getting talked about much is because it’s scary to put too much of our true selves out there for anybody other than ourselves to see. But I guarantee, that if someone is on a solo trip their mind is not always full of metaphorical butterflies and rainbows.

Of course those moments are real too. There’s happy times when rainbows shine and a butterfly lands on your shoulder. However, sustained periods of time spent in your own head can make dark thoughts seep in through the cracks, and the negative mental side can drip and drip like a leaky tap. Self-doubt, selfishness, lack of confidence, uncertainty about why you’re there and whether you’ve made the right life choices up to this point, can become a huge weight – like a bucket that’s been out in the rain overnight. Maybe that’s type 2 fun and is part of the appeal, but it doesn’t make it any less of an issue in the moment.

Andy has a way of talking honestly about the dark side. His books, Psychovertical and Cold Wars, are amazing insights into much more than climbing. They do have vivid descriptions of things like rockfalls and sketchy gear placements being the difference between staying alive or falling to a horrible and gruesome death, but they’re way more than that and talk about (with often brutal truthfulness) life outside climbing – stuff like going through a divorce, cash troubles, being a parent who’s a climber and dealing with the risk vs reward dilemma, etc.

Recently he joined a team last-minute to climb a first ascent in Antarctica, and without much of a break went off to climb Moonlight Buttress in Zion with Alex Jones for BBC Comic Relief. Sounds awesome, right?  We spoke about both sides – positive and negative – to the life of a climber. Hope you dig it.

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What draws you to a life of climbing / trips?

I’m actually more of an indoor person, and probably spend more time not doing stuff than most people. What I like is saving up all my time then having a big blow out of an adventure, and really stretching myself. 

Do you ever struggle with contentment – the grass is always greener dilemma?

I’m never content, and always feel I should be doing something differently to have that ideal life, and that nothing is ever good enough. But then I think that the truly happy people are either too stupid to realise, they aren’t happy, they have low standards of happiness, or their happy life is a sham! 

Can you describe your happiest memory on a trip?

I’ve had so many it would be impossible to pick a single one, but the evening on top of El Cap with Ella [Andy’s daughter] after we topped out was very special, and I did a trip with Karen Darke – kayaking in the Patagonian archipelago – that was very tough, and I remember the last few minutes of the trip trying to make it to a remote beach in a gathering storm. That was one of my happiest memories. The end was in sight and I just felt so in control of the kayak.

And the time you were most scared? 

Again almost too many to mention. I don’t get scared too much in the mountains (I got scared jumping into the sea yesterday though). People often ask me how many times I thought I was going to die, and I replied it’s not when you think you’ll die, but when you know you’re going to die that means something. Trying to solo the Troll Wall a few years ago, I had a car sized flake I was on move a few centimetres before stopping, leaving me just hanging there waiting to die. That was scary.

What’s going on in your head during a ballsy solo?

The level of attention, focus and awareness of everything around you is incredible, very much like a bomb disposal man must feel. When you’re climbing, there is only that. 

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Your post about The Real World – seems like you’ve had a tough time recently. People might look at your trips, Antarctica and Moonlight Buttress a little while back, and think of them as being the stuff of dreams, glossing over the other impacts big trips can have. How do you view the less glamorous side?

I think the more someone seems to be doing the most amazing things, the more their real life is taking the strain. When you are in a normal relationship with someone who has plenty of stability, then going away adds a lot of strain. As long as you don’t take the piss, and you have a solid relationship, then it can work for a while at least. I think there is some kind of understanding, that you can follow your dreams as long as your dreams allow your partner some level of normal security over time. It’s fine if your dream is being a heroin addict but just don’t expect your partner to support you in it. In my last relationship I thought I’d found the perfect match, in that we both liked doing crazy trips, and joked we were like heroin addicts, so it was all fine. The problem is, a heroin addict, no how much they love you, will always put their fix first, so once we began doing our own thing we just applied too much strain on the relationship (if either of us had been ‘normal’ then it would have worked I think).

Which do you get the most from; solo trips or group trips?

I guess I had a long period of soloing, and I suspect that, partly, it was because it was both easier to do things without people, and that I didn’t feel up to climbing with others (I have very low self-esteem but incredibly high self-actuation – a perfect mix for a soloist!).  But in the last two years I’ve climbed with a lot more people, and have found it incredibly rewarding, even if it sometimes means we’ve failed when I think I’d have done it if I was soloing. Stalin used to say ‘No people no problem’, but I’ve come to the conclusion that, although true, it’s the difficulties and differences that give the experience it’s colour and texture. 

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It seems like a majority of people living big-trip careers portray their expeditions with ever-present positivity but gloss over any negative stuff  – whereas in reality there’s probably a lot at play – loneliness, head-games etc. You have a way of putting it all out there – everything from your innermost personal life to the honest mental side of expeditions. 

I have a real problem with being way too honest, which is fine when it comes to me, but not when it comes to others (this has put a lot of strain on relationships with those I’ve mentioned). Most people are very private, and the ones who are public either only want to show their filtered selves (sort of an Instagram version of themselves), or are just too self obsessed and don’t filter anything at all – but can’t express it in a creative way.              

What’s it like writing in such an intimate way? (Speaking of that strain you mention, your posts sometimes reminds me of a climber-version of James Altucher, who admits his pieces can be so personal that he’s lost friends and family over them and people worry he’s going to kill himself)

I think that’s very true, and often what you write is what’s really going on inside you, and what people see at other times is just a mask. There is much I don’t write, and blogging takes a while as well, so many good ideas/experiences just get forgotten. But having the balls to write a tweet about the sadness of removing your partner from your favourites on your phone, is as raw, honest and insightful as anything a hundred times longer.

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Do you think the raw honesty has been a positive or negative, overall? 

It can come across as being ungrateful or winging, when you tweet something like “Las Vegas is a depressing dump” – and people say “I’ll swap and you can go to my 9/5 job”. But then I don’t ask people to visit my site, or pay for what I write – it’s there, take it or leave it. I know that some people do find it uncomfortable to read (one guy said it was like an episode of Grey’s Anatomy), but that’s the beauty of the web, you can just hit the back button.

“Sure there are many things that are right, stuff that people always point out, like lots of amazing climbs and trips, books and shows that mean something to people, but sometimes I feel like the king of experiences sat on a throne of ashes”, does the self-doubt that you talk about stick around for long?

The self-doubt is always there, and I do feel like I wasted much of my life not just getting on with things, neither being present in this world or the other. The bottom line for me remains what I achieve as a father – that’s how I should be judged, and I think I came to understand this just in time.

What’s going on during the hard times of a trip vs that same moment in retrospect?

I’m always aware how lucky I am to be having hard times – in fact maybe that’s why I seem to be able to cope, as I want these tough times on a trip. It’s like when I skied across Greenland in 2006, it was bloody boring for 24 days, and it was only on the last three days, when things got almost impossibly hard (due to the broken ice and rivers) that things got fun. When you are being squeezed the hardest it’s like one of those bath toys you had as a kid – as soon as you let go it sucks everything in – and on a trip this rush of life/peace/chocolate hobnobs is transformational.

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The mental vs physical challenge – which is most appealing?

Mountaineering is 80% mental, 20% physical – and fitness means nothing when you’re playing the long game on a trip.

Any type 2 fun going forward?

I’m hoping to squeeze in another crack at El Cap solo in a day, Denali in Winter and the Eiger Direct in the next six months, so same as usual. I’ve been signed up by Montane who have kindly agreed to support me financially (I’ve had plenty of kit from companies but no cash for many years), which I hope will help give me a bit more balance in my life (I’m 43 now – so need to get a move on stupid-trips-wise!).

Thanks Andy. [If you enjoyed reading this, hopefully you’ll enjoy this film we collaborated on a couple of years ago at Visual Collective.]

Categories
Adventure Interviews Philosophy

Nights and Mornings (AKA. Creative Rejuvenation, Insights & Spontaneity)

During that time a while back of living on a bicycle, one of the best parts was talking to people about things like finding a path in life, being content, ambitious, happy, making big decisions and all that good stuff. Those conversations were a consistent positive in a state of heavily fluctuating moods, mentalities and motivations. There’s a few reasons why those moments stick out. One is that it’s cool to relate to people and realise that everyone, no matter who they are, deal with similar thoughts. Another is that sometimes other peoples views can affect our own, and offer insights that have perhaps been overlooked and may be useful/actionable depending on our current circumstances.

To be honest, it seems like an age ago now where talking about these topics was a regular thing, and I’ve been missing those conversations, as well as missing making images just for enjoyment. So I’ve been wondering about simple ways to rejuvenate that. That’s where a new blog project – Nights and Mornings – comes in. It’s pretty simple really, and involves teaming up with an individual or small group, or solo, going somewhere with fresh air, chatting about the stuff mentioned above and someone’s story / taking an unconnected time out, sleeping in a sleeping bag on some grass, waking up somewhere epic, taking a bunch of photos and posting it all here as and when. Hopefully it’ll be fun, a kick up the ass to get away from the computer and stop letting everything else get in the way, and maybe insightful to read. I’ve done it a couple of times recently and it’s been really helpful, so if you’re in a rut I would highly recommend grabbing a sleeping bag and getting outside. Doesn’t need to be anything fancy. (I’m a big fan of Alastair Humphreys’ #microadventure movement)

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For the first one, I teamed up with Ben Robinson who’s been a good pal for years. We grew up in the same village in England, got into lots of mischief, rock climbed (he’s also a lightning fast belayer), bunked off school to rock climb, rode bikes, travelled to cliffs in the US and Europe, and generally spent a bunch of time in the mountains or on pedals. For a couple of years he’s been working in Thailand, as operations manager at an outdoor centre in the jungle, and before that he was living and working in New Zealand in a variety of roles. He is really good at going somewhere for a long-ish period of time and becoming fully immersed in that place and community. A couple of weeks ago he returned to the UK and for the first time in a while, we were in the same place at the same time, so on a whim threw some stuff into his van and headed to an old stomping ground in the fells. (ps. first person to identify the location gets a mars bar in the post.)

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On the draw of going somewhere to start from scratch, and the challenges of returning.

“You can go away and be who you want to be. You can make your life what you want it to be without any external factors. And that’s really refreshing, but then when you come back, and you’re now set a lot lower than what you may have been in another country, and your job might not be as good, or you might feel more pressure, it’s difficult to come to terms with. Everyone gets on with their life, and if you go away for a year or more, everyone’s moved on. No-one stops because you’re not there, and coming to grips with that, at first, was a bit weird.”

On being shy and solving that.

“When I first left to travel on my own, I found it really difficult to go and talk to people. I was really shy at that time which I’d never really felt before, because I’d always been somewhere I knew or with people I knew. Now after a few years of being used to those situations, I enjoy talking to new people, anywhere, but it wasn’t easy. I’d never thought of myself as a shy person before. I lived in Bangkok for a few months, and a lot of that time was by myself, and I didn’t have a big friend base at that time. I felt like an alien. But all it took was time and confidence, even before learning to speak Thai, and now it’s really no problem.”

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On escapism, progress, and perceived reality.

“At the moment I’m just really enjoying being back. Part of me feels like I should be developing here as well, so I’m not just always going away, then coming back to the same situation. Now it’s easy, in the grand scheme of things and logistically, to leave tomorrow and go almost anywhere with just a bit of cash. But maybe it is a way of escaping your situation, and maybe it’s an easy fix to go somewhere new. One time when I came home from Asia was because of the feeling that everyone else was progressing, and feeling pressure that I wasn’t living in reality, where in fact, in retrospect I was making my own reality, just in a completely different way to a lot of other people I know. And I’m not saying that what I do is a really good way to live. For most people it’d be shit never having anything set. But ‘don’t worry so much’ is what I need to tell myself. And I do get worked up about it still, having to have a plan and knowing the next step, but sometimes if you’re always worrying about the next step, then you’re going to worry yourself to death. Obviously you have to be driven and not get stagnant, but you don’t have to get stressed out.”

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On ambition and contentment.

“I’ve always known people who have been very ambitious, about career or education or outdoors. I struggle with not knowing which direction to put my energy. I don’t have an ambition to be a doctor, or climb the highest mountain in the world. I think it’s important that you have things you want to do though.”

“If I think about what I’m ambitious for in life, it’s maybe a bit stereotypical, but I want to have a job that I like a lot, that isn’t like working but is something I’m happy to put energy into. It’s not like ‘oh man I’ve gotta go to work’. If you’re happy to do that everyday, that’s gotta be good. And good people to share my life with as well, and I’m not just talking about a girlfriend or wife, I mean everyone. I’ve learnt now, and it’s obvious looking back, but I’ve realised I thrive by being around other people. I’m not good on my own. So having good people around, sustaining a nice lifestyle, that’d be a happy life. And obviously learning to say the alphabet backwards.”

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On giving advice to a younger self.

“Be happy with who you are. Don’t worry about what people think of you. Have the confidence in yourself to talk to people. It’s not a big deal, it doesn’t matter where you are. You have the power to spark conversations. You can’t wait for other people to do that for you. You’ll probably meet a few assholes, but you’ll meet a lot of wicked people too. There’s so much pressure now, but don’t worry if what you’re doing now isn’t what you want to do forever.”

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On a quote that has been influential.

To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea… “cruising” it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.

“I’ve always wanted to sail to the south seas, but I can’t afford it.” What these men can’t afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of “security.” And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine – and before we know it our lives are gone.

What does a man need – really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in – and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all – in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention for the sheer idiocy of the charade.

The years thunder by, The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.

Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life? 

– Sterling Hayden

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Categories
Radicles

Good Reads aka Radicles #1

Radicles; rad articles

Here’s a curated list, split into Outdoors, and Career, Creativity & Lifestyle of some Radicles I’ve enjoyed recently. Hopefully one or more of them will fire you up and provide some value in terms of confidence / inspiration / entertainment.

“Stay rad – read a radicle.”

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Outdoory Goodness

Three friends from France team up and cycle around the world for three years, touching every continent. Amazing photos.

“I am a relatively introverted type of person, and I like my share of solitude in civilised life. With the team I sometimes felt suffocated. We had no private space, it was the team first, always. For instance, one issue was that the guys didn’t mind riding long hours in the dark when I would often feel tired and would have enjoyed our comfy tent earlier. But we listened to one another and soon learned to become flexible.”

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Phil Jones is an inspiring dude. Here’s a video by Team Sky about how Phil’s life was transformed by cycling.

“In 2012, Phil Jones sat down to watch the London 2012 opening ceremony. He was morbidly obese (at his peak he had been 27 stone) and had been told by his doctor that he was unlikely to live to his 50th birthday. But when he saw Sir Chris Hoy carrying the British flag around the stadium, everything changed.”

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  • [By Fair Means – by Philip Baues, Olaf Obsommer & Jens Klatt, on Sidetracked]

Three pals team up (is there a theme emerging?) to cycle around the Alps, pulling kayaks behind them, and then paddling down epic rivers. The photos are incredible.

“The first time I think about giving up is at the Col de la Cayolle, in the French Maritime Alps. I am stuck in the snow, hip-deep – one hand trying to push myself out, the other clutching the rope with which I drag my kayak behind me like a pulka. My bike is strapped on top, and every few meters the whole setup begins to totter. But for now nothing is moving – largely because I’m immobile. As I sink again into the powder, I’ve just about had enough. I scream every four-letter word I know, and even create a few new ones.”

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Tom recently put together a bike for a tenner from parts he found at scrapyards and on recycling websites, and cycled from Lands End to Edinburgh for £0.25 / $0.42. No typo.

“You don’t have to ‘be a cyclist’, or model your trip on anyone else’s experience. And anyone who tries to tell you that there’s a blueprint or some kind of standard formula for wandering the world on a bicycle is a liar and a fraud.”

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Career, Creativity & Lifestyle

Elle experiences anxiety, resentment, and doubt so decides to trade in pride and security for authenticity.

“About 6 months ago, I decided to quit my very good job at Google to explore a different way to live life. I had a loose plan of how I wanted to spend my time, but the main reason I left was that I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t put it into words at the time, but something inside of me was telling me I shouldn’t continue down the career path I was on. I felt strongly that it wasn’t getting me closer to where I wanted to be, though that destination was largely unknown, and I had to get off that road. Each month I stayed, I grew more anxious and, in turn, resentful.”

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There are few bloggers who are as honest as James, or as willing to regularly spill their guts in a post. This one riffs about how and why we’ve stopped laughing, and why we should start again.

“A kid laughs on average 300 times a day. An adult laughs on average….five times a day. What the…!? How did we go from 300 to 5? What the hell happened to us? That’s why we start to panic during the day! Did we cross some bridge of crap and tears and now here we are: drones that wake up, go to work, backstab each other in office politics, watch Breaking Bad, and then go to sleep and Die? Every single day? Did someone slip a pill into the Starbucks coffee we drink every day? A no-laughing pill? Laughter is really hard as an adult. It has to be. Else, how did we go from 300 to 5! That’s a HUGE gap. There is no arguing that something really bad and scary and sad happened to us between childhood and adulthood. And laughing is so critical.”

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Sara has been working for Automattic for 4 years and has learnt a lot about how to make remote work, erm, work. (Here’s a Vague Direction video with Automattic’s founder). In the next few years we’re going to see a lot more companies start to accept remote working as a viable (and sensible) option. Here, Sara explains about how important routine and prioritising health is.

“Meetings in the business world are often mistaken for “getting work done.” I know people who have had full-days of meetings to provide status updates a simple email would have sufficed for, and tales even of a team sitting on the phone together watching a single person work so they would be assured the project would be done on time. I had a phone call meeting recently that took a combined half hour of the participants’ time to find a good time for the meeting, and then the call lasted less than 5 minutes. And yes, we could have done it by email.”

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Tony is a busy dude, and finds out what happens when he increases the amount of sleep he gets.

“Too many of us continue to live by the durable myth that one less hour of sleep gives us one more hour of productivity. In reality, each hour less of sleep not only leaves us feeling more fatigued, but also takes a pernicious toll on our cognitive capacity. The more consecutive hours we are awake and the fewer we sleep at night, the less alert, focused and efficient we become…”

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