The Hangboard

Staring at my fingers, yelling at them, scraping with them at the slivered rough slots in the hangboard with all my might - I peel off. I jump back up, grab hold, slip back, hit the ground. Jump up. 10 seconds. Ground. Jump. 5 seconds. Ground. Jump. 2 seconds. Ground. Jump. Ground. Hands to knees. Suck wind. It's over. But it's not. Jump. 2 seconds. Ground. Minute's up. Hopeless.

Despair hits as there is no hope of improvement. If I can't stay on for even 1 second, how can I possibly get stronger? What's the point,aside from masochistically tearing skin from my fingers? But the clock hasn't stopped, my rest is over, and it's time to jump again into the frivolous exercise of watching weak fingers peel back repeatedly. So I jump and the flailing repeats again and again. When the hour is up, I ride home and wonder why I bother.

But then a week passes and the cycle resets and I'm on the hangboard again; and through a profound paradox the act of tumbling off the grains repeatedly actually has made me stronger. 10 seconds becomes 15. 5 becomes 10. I march slowly, but I march.

So it is in my endeavors. I struggle to find traction. Ideas prove fleeting, or at the least ever-evolving. Motivation comes and goes. But somehow I do move forward slowly - so perhaps even those times laying on the floor wondering what in the hell the next step should be, and how in the hell I'm possibly going to find the motivation to take it, actually do help me grow stronger. Help the ideas grow stronger. Help the project grow stronger.

And maybe slowly I actually can put something in motion to change Stone's "Tyranny of the Now" resulting from society's collective amnesia-myopia combo. Perhaps I can contribute just a tiny bit of useful energy to solving the "Historical Illiteracy" described by McCullough. And perhaps I can realize a piece of my desire to move a corner of society forward.

And all of this by slipping off the hangboard. Repeatedly.