Written 28th July 2017
Climbing mountains helps me focus my mind. It gives me clarity and purpose.
I climbed one the other day, and it nearly killed me.
The walk up Snowdon took me five hours. For an overweight man, that was a serious achievement. It was also the first time Rhona and Karta had climbed the biggest mountain in Wales, so all in all, it should have been a beautiful day.
And it was.
But it was also hard.
By Halfway House, Rhona was genuinely worried about me. I could see it in her eyes. She told me I had nothing to prove to her or to our son.
She was right.
But I had something to prove to myself.
I needed to climb that hill. The same hill I have climbed at least a dozen times before. Lately, I have found myself giving up too quickly. Health, diet, work, social media, all of it. Snowdon became simple in comparison. Keep putting one foot in front of the other until I reached the top.
My mind was determined. My body was not.
Shortness of breath forced me to stop every fifty paces or so. After a while, whenever I stopped, the muscles in the front of my thighs began to cramp. The only thing that helped was moving again.
Eventually, I told Rhona and Karta to go on ahead. I would catch up.
Watching them get smaller as they climbed was hard. I wanted to see Karta’s face when he reached the summit. It was one of those father-and-son moments I had wanted to be part of. Instead, I made my way up alone, red-faced, sweating, and breathing hard.
What I did have was time to think.
Mostly, I thought about how I was going to change my life. I realised I was not going to enjoy being a husband and father properly if steep ground could almost finish me off. That forced a harder look inward.
What I saw was honest and not especially comfortable.
I needed to focus on three things: myself, my wife, and my child. Everything else was secondary. Friends and family still mattered, of course, but I had to cut away the things that were draining me if I was going to heal.
Then came the bigger realisation.
I had wasted too much time.
Time is the most precious thing I have, and I have been letting it slip through my fingers almost unnoticed.
Social media. Business ideas. Chasing a writing career. Trying to become an expert photographer. Building websites for people who did not want to pay properly. None of it had really come together. I learned a lot. I enjoyed some of it. But very little of it left me feeling satisfied that I had provided for my family.
So those things need to move to the back burner.
There are commitments I will honour, but several blogs need to close. Photography and web development need to go into stasis. Social media needs to shrink. In their place, I need paid work that fits around family life, and I need to become a healthier version of myself.
I am at the bottom of another mountain now.
So I keep telling myself it is just a big hill.
Until next time,
adieu.