#12 Fixation is not persistence

"How could we be getting worse!" I was perplexed and frustrated. My climbing partner Yordan and I have been trying to climb the same route for the entire summer. Not only that we were not making any progress, but we were notably getting worse.

How could that be? Isn't persistence the best way to advance on any goal?

After the 5th attempt on the 160m, the route had become our nemesis. We nicknamed the bastard The Third Bat (Третата Тупалка). Every time we would start on the Bat a sense of dread would fall upon us. Section of the route I had climbed the previous time was now terrifying. But I wasn't gonna give up.

"We just need more attempts".

This was not about climbing anymore, but climbing this ONE particular route. It became a fixation.

But with every next attempt, I was feeling softer, weaker, and more scared. I could list 20 reasons why the conditions weren't perfect, but I would only be fooling myself. My mind was not in the right place.

One evening taking a shower something obvious hit me. "Jesus, why are we doing this? Why am I fixated on climbing THIS route? What's the goal here?"

Was climbing The Third Bat the utmost important dream in our life? Hardly. We were climbing to have fun and become better at it. And shitting our pants weekend after weekend on this lousy route wasn't getting us closer to either.

This wasn't persistence, it was a fixation. And it wasn't healthy, or productive. Sometimes the best thing to do is to stop and look around and change course. So we did.

Next weekend we went to The Chimneys (Комините) in the Vitosha mountain with no expectations. We were there to climb and enjoy. And we did.

Thank you for reading this far. This article is part of the series "33 things I learned turning 33".