Lately, whenever I sit down to write, it’s usually to unpack something negative that happened to me during the week. Don’t get me wrong, I love to write when I feel electrified by inspiration. But failure has a perverse way of sticking to you like rotten caramel. It can hijack your mood – extinguish your spirit, and ruin your entire day. Even a single failure, when given the chance to bounce around your brain long enough, develops its own kind of… momentum. I find myself at times not “feeling” it, but rather falling INTO it.

I find comfort when I feel invisible

I feel sadness when I feel unseen

I find confusion if I think about that for too long

Can you hear the chirping? I think it’s working

Look behind you because I’m lurking

In your shadow, green like aloe

I’m going commando if you’re stepping in my meadow

I’ve been watching a lot of climbing features again — mostly documentaries highlighting the harrowing stories of climbers from all over the world and the timeless metaphor for life that rock climbing continues to be. After a viscerally painful and disorienting year, I find myself coming out the other end with just as much relief as I have reluctance and fragility. As if I had recently taken a header off a high cliff, got my heart tangled in my ropes on the way down, and slammed into the dirt.

Then silence.

I grew up relatively shy. I was the type of kid who felt right at home playing roller hockey with the kids on my block, yet extremely uncomfortable in organized sports like basketball or soccer. Reluctantly, I joined my high school football team. I loved the sport but there was an obvious disconnect between myself and the team. Perhaps it was the jock culture or merely spending time with the “popular” kids, but I knew I didn’t fit in. Not to mention I was not built like a 35-year-old man at 15, like many of my peers.