Hint: I'm typing with fingers numbed by grasping for - well-nigh two hours - artifical climbing holds bolted to a wall in Kokubunji...
I have a pet theory about my personal learning style, and it goes something like this: throw yourself into something new. don't read the manual. don't watch the instruction video. "just do it,"as Phil Knight would have us believe.
But then, step back a moment. take a break. let all that work your forebrain has been doing, all that exertion your body has been making, let it all naturalize in your system as you go about other business, like ruining peoples' lives with report cards. Your subconscious will do the work for you.
And when you come back to whatver it is that you're trying to do, you will have figured out what works and what doesn't "naturally" - though a part of you has, in fact, been working around the clock to help you make it - whatever "it" is, whether it's speaking a new language or cimb a new route or break the ice with the cute girl who always sits two tables over at Starbucks - look easy.
Case in point: every Monday and Friday for about six months now I've gone climbing at the B-Pump climbing gym in Kokubunji. In that time I have (thankfully) moved from the "pink" routes to the orange, and have been struggling with the light greens for about a month. Each new colour feels like the end of a career, a plateau of endless vistas with no way off but down. In a month I nailed only two light green routes. Until tonight.
Last Friday, when I should have been climbing or writing or taking pictures of otherwise engaged in wholesome activity, I attended a teacher drinking party "up the road" at the local izakaya. The break in routine was such a shock to the system that I had insomnia all sunday night: not a wink. Being exhaused left me susceptible to the seasonal affected disorder that strikes many this time of year, as the rainy season comes on and the nights are as sticky as the inside of a rice cooker. Being SAD left me too weak to get my marks in on time, which meant I was under pressure all dya today to finish the report cards on which my studewnts' promising futures so much depend.
So, exhausted, sick, stressed, and out of practice I hit the wall tonight - and nailed three new green routes and made progress on my nemesis, a little striped number on a far wall which requires the body control of a jedi.
Oh yeah, and Jake finally broke thr ice with the hottest female climber in the place.
Lesson learned: act first, think later.
