Tuesday 29 December 2009

New years resolutions




Richard McGhee swims up a gully in the Mamores

Nearly every year these days, things come to a head...cold. It’s the third year running I’ve done almost exactly the same thing. I work way too long hours, try to train on top of that, and then on my first winter climbing day of the season, make myself ill.

And so oops I did it again. Idiot. After a nice first day out in the snow with Rich I got ill and have spent the past week blowing my nose 10,000 times per day and shivering. The work has been worth it, even despite running myself down in the short term. Sometimes it is better to break yourself for a while, so long as you take the recovery afterwards just as seriously. 

After this routine of hard work, results and consequences around Christmas time, my new years resolutions always take the schizophrenic form of resolving to do more things, but work myself less hard. Will I ever solve the balance?

Patience and impatience in equal measure seems to be good for long term health and making good things happen like hard climbs done, books published and good times enjoyed. The trouble is that impatience is my default setting.

1 comment:

  1. I've had some problems with overdoing things and am now recovering from a sligth burnout. Luckily for me, I pulled the cord early enough not to get myself in too big of a trouble. Your post reminded me a little bit of myself, and that's mainly why I'm posting a response...to clarify something mostly to myself by putting it in words.

    What I've come to discover is to try and balance out things in a more healthy manner over long-term. Sort of like ying and yang. That is to say: if I spend a hard day at the office working my brain out (ying), after that I should just try to work my body and try to have fun at the same time (yang). This seems to lower the levels of stress (atleast for me) and also helps me to recover more faster. Or to say it in other words, this allows me to not accumulate so much stress in long-term by balancing things out. Easy to say, but for me, really hard in practice.

    Also, I guess, the fun part of it is really important. If you work with something very seriously, you should also be able to let loose with it sometimes and just have fun without any pressures of performing. Just like climbing: if you work hard on a route, then you should sometimes also just go and enjoy a day at the cliffs without any pressure to achieve something. That is to say: you shouldn't just jump from hard to hard continuously. Just smell the air, enjoy the company and feel alive. Ying & yang. Patience & impatience? Well, again, for me easier to say than do...that's why I'm recovering from a burnout and am only 31 years old!! :)

    Maybe in your case: put in some fun things in your goals (maybe even something not related to climbing) next to your serious ones, which will allow you to recover and balance yourself out?

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