Two facets of my life that keep me fully engaged are rock climbing and personal finance. I’m guessing you’ve come to this site because you are more interested in one of these seemingly unrelated subjects than the other, but I’ll slowly, hopefully, make the case that there are valuable lessons to learn from my experiences in wading deep into either respective…pool?
Anyway, there’s no shortage of blogs about either rock climbing or personal finance – thousands to be sure — so what’s the angle here? There is no expectation that this site will be a platform of nuts and bolts on how to step-by-step improve your game on either of these subjects, as we don’t pretend to be experts in either community.
We will address the foundational philosophical and structural elements to increase personal freedom, which as a rock climber and a 9-5’er, I’ve come to know is a major source of frustration for so many in this sport and life in general. We put so much time and effort into work, preparing for work, commuting to work, commuting back from work, and thinking about work that there’s volumetrically little time and energy remaining for time with loved ones or passionate pursuits. For many, there is how we spend our time and how we would rather be spending our time. Fortunately, there are very real ways to slide the scale more in your favor.
Please, Tell Me About Rock Climbing
For those of you unfamiliar with climbing, first, and let’s get this out of the way right now, it is not hiking! Damnit, doing a “fourteener”* is not rock climbing!
There’s certainly nothing against hiking – it’s surely an enjoyable pastime – but as the long-time climbers know, we’ve spent many a Monday morning helplessly trying to explain our weekends activities to coworkers who are utterly bewildered by our interests.
Rock climbing is a festering breeding ground of obsessiveness. People absolutely change their lives once the lust settles in the veins of the otherwise well-meaning and driven young man or woman on a path to a safe and comfortable career, 1.5 children, and a lovely suburban home with thoughtful Pinterest touches. Think mason jars and repurposed barn wood. I digress.
Climbing is a lifestyle sport. I’ve often speculated on what makes people completely re-tool their lives to pursue this wildly selfish sport. Climbers, more than ever these days, are moving out of apartments and homes into modified Sprinter Vans, driving endlessly across the country in pursuit of our nation’s many fantastic climbing crags.
Do basketball players do this? Are there straight-up ballers asleep in fetal position, drooling on their leather Spalding NBA official game ball in the back of a ’92 Pontiac Bonneville? Yes, there probably are, but I’d suspect that the backstory is much sadder.
Chris Kalous, the creator of the “enormously” popular Enormocast Podcast (get it?), often jokes about the thought of golfers sleeping in vans outside the country club. It simply doesn’t happen in other sports. An exception would be the sport of surfing, the lifestyle pursuit elegantly portrayed in the novel Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, by William Finnegan. It’s an inspiring novel that is certainly recommended for anyone in a lifestyle sport, or for anyone else looking for the spark of a true passion.
My point to all this is that rock climbing is an incredibly addicting endeavor, ripe with a full spectrum of physical and emotional demands. It brings joy in ways that I won’t attempt to describe here when successes are achieved against all odds, but can also drag you into depths of self-loathing and inner questioning in ways I’ve never experienced – all in a single day! Not bad for a recreational activity!
For these outdoor “lifer” sports, I believe it’s the unique combination of mental toughness, high levels of technical skill, a vast spectrum of physical demands (from pure power to long endurance), and the ability to combine all these elements in the beautiful outdoor settings where climbing is often found that make climbing so alluring. Few sports, save again for perhaps surfing, combine all these elements into a single pursuit.
The problem with these romantic tales of youth, self-exploration, and a middle finger to the working and corporate world are that you’re not 22 forever. I thank the stars that I didn’t discover climbing until after I was already pursuing a career in my mid-20’s and happily in a long-term relationship, as I would surely have been another 25-year-old splattering bacon fat on my pillow in the van, wondering what I will eventually do with my life.
As I’ve heard from so many people before, a life solely in the pursuit of climbing is certainly wonderful, but is generally not sustainable. There exists an inherent drive in all of us, admitted or not, to be relevant. Very few of us will be able to achieve that via sport performance (i.e. make it as a pro). To do something that matters to society or to someone is a foundational element to the human spirit, and perhaps climbing hard and seeing the world doesn’t quite capture that basic element of self-satisfaction.
Eventually, many of these folks find their way to some sort of career after either a short or long journey, surely with few regrets about their choices, but years behind securing their financial future with a life that will hopefully last 60+ more years. To further complicate the matter, these individuals might still harbor debt of their delayed or abandoned use of their costly university education, which as of 2018 averages $37,172 per student.
What if we were to tell you that you don’t have to choose between a 40-year career and total freedom to pursue climbing or any other passion?
Well, what if?
*Particularly the state of Colorado, a fourteener is a summit over 14,000 feet in elevation, and is hiked on any given weekend day by you and your closest 1,000 friends.
