December 2015
I keep a journal.
I've kept one for years now.
Every year a new journal and every day a new entry. Some years I just write a few words for each entry. Other years I'll write whole paragraphs every day.
Maybe this is why I seem to have endless words for these posts.
A common theme of these goals is brightness.
I have an obsession with the word bright.
I love bright colors that clash and compliment.
I want to burn bright, smile brightly, and help others shine brighter.
As a result, a lot of my edits up to now have been really vibrant.
I up the saturation and contrast and vibrancy. I love the pop in color and the life that overflows.
But lately I've been thinking maybe there are other things too that aren't so bright but still wonderful in a way.
Nostalgia, gentle warmth, tenderness.
Is there a word for it, that feeling of tranquility, contentment, safety and harmony that slowly envelopes you when you close your eyes in the company of those you love?
This is what I've been thinking recently.
In my journal, I write goals for myself.
A lot of the goals go unfulfilled. A lot of them are impossible aspirations.
Either way, I try my best to make them real. Even if I fail, I figure I'll get closer over time.
I fail a lot.
But somehow, without even thinking about it, I found myself editing this photo to keep only the reds and oranges.
Even in the midst of the melancholy and calm, all I can do is burn, burn, burn.
I really miss the seasons of Korea.
I miss the way the flowers would bloom so aggressively in the spring, bursting with color and life.
I miss the way the petals would rain from the heavens and make way for the hot monsoon summers.
Most of all, I miss the way the emerald leaves would burn up so passionately before they finally burned out.
The seasons remind me that the world is alive and that time moves along whether I'm ready for it to or not. It reminds me that there is so much more beyond the confines of the office window.
Outside, the leaves are burning up and burning out so I too want to burn up before I burn out.
We made a pretty amazing chili with four different types of canned beans.
Great times with a great crew in Pinnacles.
We didn't have bowls, so we re-used the cans just the way nature intended them to be used.
I wonder sometimes, if the people who actually know me read these words and think to themselves, "God, she is so full of shit"?
Are they disappointed when they interact with me?
Do they look at the pictures and words and think, the real her isn't anything like this at all?
---
If there's a single feeling I fear the most, it would have to be "disappointment".
I hate the feeling of not being "enough", either for you or for myself.
It's the only way I can explain myself-- the intense phobia I have of relationships and the intensity with which I throw myself into situations.
They're vain attempts to avoid disappointing others or to build myself up so I can avoid disappointing me.
I'm only fluent in English, but I love studying foreign languages.
Over the years, I've learned a lot. Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese, Spanish, Russian. Bits and pieces of other languages I ran across in my travels, like Japanese and Thai.
I'm not necessarily good at these languages, but oftentimes, I find that words from another language can better express my feelings.
This occurs most often with Vietnamese and Korean, where I associate a feeling with a word but I don't know if I have the "correct" association or if I just created it artificially.
In Korean, the word 부족하다 means to be lacking or to fall short. This feeling I have of disappointing and not being "enough" aligns more to the Korean 부족하다 than to any other word I can think of.
I find myself muttering under my breath. 부족해. 아직 부족해.
I don't know if this is correct usage, but it's how I want to use it and isn't that really the most wonderful part of language-- that I give it meaning even as it gives meaning to me?
I'm learning to boulder.
For the first 3 and a half years of my climbing life, I was convinced bouldering was a stupid activity.
After bouldering in Bishop for a week and in Joshua Tree for another week, I can say that I no longer think its the dumbest activity in the world.
It's maybe kinda sorta fun and satisfying in a "I guess I don't have a trad/sport partner so I suppose I'll just boulder" kind of way.
Just a little though.
Also I fucking love cheese.
Based on what I know about Korea ex-ex pats, aka foreigners who used to work in Korea and have since left, the only thing working in Korea prepares you to do is become a dirtbag climber living out of your car.
You homeless hippies know which ones of you I'm talking about! To think that Sarah and I are the ones who ended up with a job... hah!
I often think about what Other Me would have been like.
The Me who didn't buy a one way ticket to Korea without a job lined up after college.
The Me who got a fancy tech job in San Francisco and never learned to climb.
Hell, the Me who never learned how to ride a bike, start a fire, pitch a tent, cook in a cask iron pot, speak Korean, spin fire or scuba dive.
This would've been her 5th year at her job at this point-- she'd probably be some kind of manager or something by now. I like to think she's happy too, Other Me. I like to think that all versions of Me are meant to be happy regardless of the choices they make because most importantly of all they choose to be happy and make silly cat jokes.
Cheers to you, Other Me
Gunsmoke, a 75 foot V3 traverse.
The crux for me is a huge move in the first 1/3 of the problem. It involves a full extension of my meager 5'1 wingspan.
I catch the next hold (it's bomber), but at that point, I'm so far extended that I can't even turn my head to see where I'm putting my foot.
I spent all of New Year's Eve, also known as my 27th birthday, figuring out this single move.
The same damned throw all day, 40+ times, mostly alone for the greater part of the afternoon.
I never made it beyond that jug.
I never was able to figure out my feet.
There's some crimpy intermediaries that some short people can use instead, but I never tried them. If there's one thing I'm good at in climbing, it's using shitty intermediaries.
But I want to push myself further.
Whenever I climb, I only really ever use 80% of my strength. It's why I'm terrible at bouldering-- I can feel it in my muscles that I'm not tensing up enough, and I'm not accessing that last 20% of my Try Hard strength.
This year, I want to focus more on unlocking that 20%. Rather than just pushing my endurance baseline as I've been doing for the past 4 years, I want to focus more on being 100% all the time.
I have to commit more.
Flashbacks to that winter 3 years ago.
That time when I worked with more dedication and desperation than I knew I was capable of.
3 months I spent training for ice climbing.
It wasn't even fun. It was pathetic, how desperate I was. I only worked part time, which was perfect, because I spent the rest of my time training.
Every morning, 4 to 10 mile run. One hour of stretching. 3 hours of ice training. Cycling from home to the gym to work, probably clocking in some 10 miles of biking a day.
Every weekend was competitions or more training.
I hardly saw anyone during that time.
I talk about how much I want to get back into ice climbing a lot, and people ask me why.
Honestly, a lot of it is just unfinished business.
Ice climbing is that boyfriend who dumped me out of the blue and told me he didn't love me anymore even though I had no idea there had been a problem in our relationship at all, leaving me alone and confused so now all I want more than anything else is to get back together with him not to get back together with him but just so that I can end it properly in my time on my terms.
These are the things I think.
This birthday reminded me a lot of my 24th.
Spending the day climbing in almost solitude.
Working something that was almost not fun because I'm honestly somewhat desperate trying to make it work.
Was it even fun?
I don't know. I just kept going.
Even on my birthday, I went to Goyang with Eimir, a 2 hour bus ride each way, just to train more.
It was so cold and miserable.
I was really good at using the tools but couldn't kick my crampons hard enough into the plaster walls to get good feet.
And then in February just as I was getting good at dry tooling--
"그만해. "
What?
"Tammy, stop."
What do you, mean, stop?
"Ice, no."
No? No. Is that it? One day, somebody decides this is the day it's too warm and the season is over so there's just no more dry tooling? So all that training and loneliness was meaningless? It just... ended?
How could the season end when I wasn't ready for it to end?
When I first started climbing, I loved it immediately.
I'd never done any sports in my life before. In fact, I hated sports so much that instead of taking 4 semesters of PE in high school like I was supposed to, I only took 2 semester of PE, and then took a semester of Yoga and a semester of Tennis at a community college on my own time.
I didn't know how to ride a bike. Didn't know how to swim.
A memory: I'm in college and a friend of mine pinches my bicep. "Tammy, flex!"
"... I am flexing..."
"..."
So when I started climbing, I really fell head over heels for it.
It was the first time I felt any resemblance of strong. Without realizing it, one day I could do a pull-up. Then one became two. And two became three.
In those earlier years, I was really in love with the physicality of the sport.
But these days, I just love the lifestyle.
I love waking up with the sunrise and sleeping with the sunset.
I know I've said that same exact sentence before, but it's still true.
I love waking up and cooking breakfast as the heat from the sun warms me up.
The four jackets I started off with peel off one by one as I'm left with just my t-shirt by mid-day.
Then the sun sets and the temperature drops. We make dinner, and eat and drink by the fire.
By 9pm, we're tuckered out and ready to sleep for 10 hours to rest our weary bodies and begin the cycle again.
In the city, I can't imagine sleeping 10 hours a night. It seems like such a waste! There's so much to do, my god.
How can I possibly let so many opportunities pass by while I sleep?
But this dirtbag lifestyle, there's no such rush or worry.
Every day I try hard climbing and being good to my friends and that's all. I don't worry about the missed opportunities because the opportunities I have every day are enough to fill me.
One night, the gallon jug froze.
In my car.
It was pretty fucking cold in Jtree around Christmas, I have to say.
Luckily it warmed up as New Year's came around.
Typical climber dirtbag.
Sun's out, guns out but keep the beanie on.
Stretchy pants?
Nah man.
Jeans.
It's how we crush.
I was gifted a cutting board, a spoon, a cake, and an electric blanket for my birthday.
Are people trying to tell me something?
The last sunset of the year.
Hanging out under a sleeping bag on a crashpad with a hot tottie in hand.
When Van and I camped in Bishop, we ate well.
But throw Sam and T into the mix, and we were feasting like kings every single night! Taco night, chili night, pasta night, soup and brai broikies (grilled cheese; spelling?).
It was really just amazing.
I'd gladly fifth wheel with these guys any day of the week.
It's been a good year.