"We are always living inside our heads, and there is nothing you can do about it"

The amount of times I find myself in a bind, wondering what to do next, having to decide what pursuit am I going to pursue, always being meta, it is quite annoying. Yet, that's exactly what I do! 

I feel grateful when a friend gets in the way of my own mind wandering and forces a plan on me. Thank you dear friend for breaking my train of thought - I assure you it was going nowhere. It is little wonder I like to cook or bake or climb or exercise. It takes my mind off these random thoughts, and I can be outside of my own head and focus on getting one thing done - reach the top, do a footwork drill, bake a cake or get lunch sorted. 

Here I am, on a Saturday afternoon, wondering what I should do next. Instead of giving in to some daydream involving a very erotic but nourishing friendship (I adore you my friend, wherever you are, and am always missing you), I chose to write in my blog. 

I did have a good, pure thought, though. It was in the pursuit of this thought that I decided to switch off my phone for a couple of hours, and get to work. The idea came from a conversation with another friend this afternoon. 

Oh, I adore all my friends. They are all so very loving and kind and funny and I miss them occasionally. 

Apologies for the sentimental diversion. 

The thought!

I feel the need to add a little back story here, more for the benefit of my own self than any other. One of the exciting events I was looking forward to when my family decided to move to Kathmandu was the prospect of joining the climbing gym near my house. Oh man, I was so stoked about this, I couldn't wait! Climbing for me is just pure joy. The act of climbing, and how natural it feels in my body, albeit not on all days, takes me back to my childhood when all I ever did was race up the jungle gyms. 

Climbing takes me way back, when I was carefree and always looking for an adventure I could take my body on! I remember getting excited to climb things, and was never scared of falling off. I was sure of my movement, my grip, and swung from one bar to the next like a happy little monkey on the trail for bananas. Oh, those were such exciting times. I could play by myself all day long, going across the jungle gym. 

No other hobby or pursuit has had me so excited than climbing. And the joy still remains. I love climbing and I know I always will. It's just that my body is not always with me on this. Or at least I feel that way.

And yet, that conversation with my friend helped me think of my body and its capability in a broader, more expansive sense. 

I was telling him about how giddy with happiness I am these days that I get to climb as often as I can, and how I wish to get strong like the Sherpas. My friend believes I already have a good level of strength and stamina - and this is not how I see myself. 

This is exactly the thought that was pure and lovely. 

Maybe I do ought to be proud of what my body can achieve today, at this moment. I definitely ought to not get carried away by the dream of forever better and just be super grateful and joyful of the current form of my body. Maybe I don't have to push my body so hard and so fast. Maybe there is time to cover all my climbing goals (whatever they may be) in my lifetime. 

The thought gives me a small level of comfort. I wish I could extract some more. These days I experience a solid range of positive emotions - from sheer gratitude to bouts of pure ecstacy, to random episodes of boredom, to a feeling of happiness and contentment that lasts a good 30 minutes, and then just pure anticipation when I look into my phone. 

It feels like a dream, my current life, and I am grateful. Always. 

Maybe I will go climbing in the evening despite wanting to pickle today. Oh, well.