Hi fellow Hiveians,
Today I wanted to share some pictures and thoughts from a recent indoor rock climbing excursion!
As I've gotten older, I've in some ways felt a little lost.
We all have identities in which we hold onto and helps define us in a lot of ways. When I was younger, one of the cores of my identity was skateboarding and all of the things that went along with that. Not necessarily bad things but just themes overall. One of the big things with it was the sense of community and comradery that you get when you have people in a particular spot that are doing the same thing as you. You often are friends with the people around you, or at least know them. Often times though they are complete strangers and you can form friendships easily because of the common ground you share which is the hobby of skateboarding.
Since I gave up skateboarding for various reasons though, I've lost touch with that type of feeling for a while.
Indoor rock climbing though, seems to have been able to come and fill that void for me, at least partially!
I will always be a skater at heart, but when my body doesn't agree with me and the negative health consequences that come along with it, I was looking for alternatives and briefly experienced one but put it on the back burner for a long time.
We went indoor rock climbing many years ago, my wife and I, but we went a couple times and then left it aside for other things that we were doing as young adults. Fast forward to years after our son was born, we happened to think that it might be a good thing for me to do with my son and it rekindled something in me that I didn't realize was a void.
Granted, when you are a parent, the family and children become your sole focus and the other things around you are accessories. That's how a family should be operating but it doesn't always work that way of course. I was mostly of that mindset, where I was working and trying to do what I could to provide for my family and this put me into a bit of a drive forward but not with the important and necessary hobbies. I started fishing again with my son and that is definitely one of our favorite shared hobbies but fishing is not really a physical activity as much as it is standing, getting things set up and casting or reeling it in. It's technically physical, because you are moving your body around a little bit but you're only burning a hundred calories or less in an hour of being out there. Not exactly a marathon haha.
With rock climbing though, you get to do all of these types of things. There is a wonderful community around it, lots of friendly people in the rock climbing gyms and it's an incredible physical exercise for my son but most importantly, me! That's where I've really grown fond of and enjoy rock climbing the most.
If I could do it multiple days a week, I most certainly would! I don't have the time for that most of the time but that's okay, we do it when we can. What I am enjoying though, is the attachment I am getting to it because it is reminding me of the things that I enjoyed about skateboarding when I was younger. There are lots of people around, the people are friendly, there are both kids, teenagers and adults all doing and enjoying it and it gives you some really great physical and mental exercise.
There are elements to it that I want to improve upon for sure, but one of the things that is great is that it is one of those things where you develop a baseline. I know that I will be able to do a specific subset of the climbs because I've been doing it for almost a year now, and my body and mind is a lot more accustomed to it and attuned to the needs of the sport. This helps because not everything in the gym is challenging for me. When you go into something and everything is incredibly hard, that is a difficult thing to deal with in some ways. As you keep doing it though and get better, the improvements come with other things like confidence which is great!
I know that the combination of things we've got here, the beautiful nature, hiking trails and all that but combined with a bitter cold weather activity or rain/snow day activity in rock climbing, I feel a lot more mentally able to handle some of the challenges that arise on a daily and weekly basis!
-CmplXty. Real human written content, never AI.
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