Midlife crisis, meltdown or exciting holiday?

I have a good job, which I enjoy [most of the time]; although I am reasonably certain I have already had and moved on from the best position that I will ever hold. That’s probably the last thing I am going to say about work, because one thing this certainly isn’t is a blog about work. I have a nice house, a wife that loves me [most of the time] a daughter that adores me.....

And good friends and family, so disrupting all of that must be a little mad, maybe a bit of a melt down and probably is best described as a midlife crisis.  But let me explain a little and maybe you’ll understand where I am coming from:

Firstly for one reason or another 2014 felt like one of the hardest years of my life; to escape from reality a day dream turned in to an acorn of an idea which began to grow in my mind – “you love mountains, why not go and live in them”.  The growth of the acorn was fed by many events: A rediscovery of my love of rock climbing; like many good ideas a ‘pub’ conversation, this one with my friend Steve about his first skiing holiday, and the surprised look on his face when I said I had never skied, he said you should learn, you’d love it; Charlie, another good friend, lent me a book The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin, this started me to think about why I was unhappy and what could I change to make me happy [for anyone who knows the book, I’m now writing a blog, I have an empty drawer in my house, I threw out lots of my clothes and I am making change happen].  

Secondly I have always flirted with the outdoors, hills and mountains hoping that my advances would one day turn into a fully fledged love affair. This began as a kid with scouts, Duke of Edinburgh’s award and friends with a similar interest. Significantly when I was 16, I broke my hand quite badly, following surgery I wanted a sport that would force me to use it in order rehabilitate and to prove the doctors wrong. I chose rock climbing, which lead to mountaineering. After a year or so my hand was more or less as good as ever; however climbing kinda took a back seat when I went to Uni. Mostly so I could concentrate on playing American Football [the reason for the broken had, and my first true love in life] and partly because something had to give way to make space for all that drinking. 

However my love affair with mountains persisted in the background during my time at uni; I chose as many ‘mountain’ related modules as a I could – Avalanche process’, Glaciology, Alpine environments, Wilderness studies, to name a few, as well as spending six weeks living on a glacier in Austria to conduct research for my dissertation. After Uni life got in the way derailing my boyhood dreams of living in the mountains for the next twelve years or so; things are now starting to get back on track.

Thirdly, for my birthday the year before my daughter was born [2012], my wife kindly brought me some vouchers for the local climbing centre; suggesting that I would need an escape once we had a child. I took her at her word and threw myself headlong back in to climbing; heading to the wall as often as I could spare, but that wasn’t quite enough. The escape needed to be closer to home; ever one for solving problems I decide to convert my garage in to a bouldering cave [Thanks Ben].   

Then I realised I didn’t need to escape my daughter, and my at times grumpy wife, by disappearing in to my cave. I actually needed to escape my life as it had become. 

So what am I actually doing, I’m escaping from my old “normal” life, I’m making change happen and I’m spending some time with my family rather than escaping from them, all whilst having the holiday of a life time. Does that sound like a meltdown, a midlife crisis?

Who knows where my mountain adventure will end, but hopefully I’ll find a little happiness along the way.  And you will enjoy accompanying me.