Perseverance

July 2nd, 2025

I botched my coffee this morning. I used too much water and not enough coffee grounds and it came out looking like tea, and tasting like tea. It was weak as hell. And it was almost worse than just drinking water, because with every sip I was reminded that I had botched my morning coffee, and I wasn’t getting what I should have gotten. Of course you are thinking, “Why not just brew another pot?” But I couldn’t do that. I had brewed this botched pot of coffee and I was going to drink it. It was my punishment.

It’s better to be undercaffeinated than overcaffeinated anyways. For me it is. I’ve kept that in my mind in recent days, where I have had unlimited access to coffee and plenty of freedom to sit and drink copious amounts of it. And you can reach a point where you start getting really squirrely, and then you just throw caution to the wind and go crazy, and it takes four hours before you come down from that caffeine high.

I just got back from the climbing gym, and after spending nearly the entire time battling the route that has officially become my nemesis, what I find myself thinking about is perseverance.

I am not the most perseverant person out there. I do give up easily on things sometimes, or I get bored and find something else to play with. I’m working on that. It’s an important skill to have and develop.

Editing my current work (the Japan memoir) has probably been the longest term project that I have ever worked on, to date. And I’m still in it. Who knows how much more there is to go? It has taken a lot of tenacity, there have been many cycles, of working on it, or not working on it, then picking it up again, going hard, something pulls me away, repeat. But I’m commited to the goal, so I’m simply not giving up. At a certain point, you just have to say, however long it takes, however you have to do it, it’s going to be done. And commit yourself to the task.

I have been working on one particular climbing route for about two weeks now. I have been to the gym four times, and I still can’t conquer this route. No route has defied me in this way before. Most of them are too hard, and I know that there’s no way I can do them at my level, and so I don’t have to even try to take them on. But this one, this little V1-3 (climbing lingo for the difficulty levels, V1-3 is the second easiest rating), I should be able to do this. This is standing in my way, from being a V2-4 man. This is my final challenge, before I have conquered every V1-3 in the building, and will move up from novice to intermediate novice. It’s a big deal.

I can already do many V2-4s, like they’re nothing. But this lowly V1-3, it’s defying me.

I spent most of my time at the gym today trying again, this time with my whole focus and being, on climbing this V1-3 route. My nemesis. It’s green, and starts off as easy as pie. Basically, the only thing about it is you have to be able to hold on for dear life, and pull yourself up, on a series of “slopers”. There’s no real trick to it other than that. That might even be what’s so infuriating about it, because no amount of coaching can help you with that. That’s just grip strength, baby. That’s it. And I don’t have it yet.

On a sloper, you can’t dig your fingers into anything. You can only grip it with the flat of your hand, and there is something of a curved indent in it, but you can’t hook your fingers into it, only apply pressure. That makes it much harder to hold onto. Many people showed me how to do this route, where they just climbed it and tried to offer advice, but after seeing enough of them climb it, and it’s not complicated, I knew. There was no real trick. You just have to grab these babies for dear life and pull yourself up.

Today I got up to the final sloper. It’s first time I’ve made it there on this route. There are three slopers in a row, leading up to the top, and I got to that final one. But god bless America, I couldn’t keep going. I got to it a few times, and I just didn’t have enough strength. There was one time where I made it that far, and I thought that I was absolutely going to get it this time, and then right at that moment, my feet slipped. I was enraged.

After making it my entire goal at the gym today to crush my nemesis, still I have to walk away defeated. Still, I couldn’t conquer it. I have to come back and try again. But I will. That wall is getting climbed. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not giving up. I’m taking it DOWN.

I climbed another route that was a struggle for me, that I had spent a lot of time working on, still not as hard for me to get as this green V1-3, my enemy, but it took at least another day for me to figure it out. And I finally climbed that one, and felt like the man. And then, for some reason, I thought that since I had gotten it once, I have now unlocked it, and I can get it every time again, easily. But guess what? Nope. I’ve only been able to do that route one more time, since then. Now, that’s frustrating too. I already did it! I worked so hard to conquer it! And now, I have to conquer it again?? It still defies me?? It doesn’t feel right.

Well, it’s good to fail. It’s good to have to try so hard to be able to do something. It’s more fun that way. It’s more satisfying.

Sometimes things come easily. You can climb the route on your very first try. Piece of cake. That route isn’t going to mean much to you. You’ll forget a route like that. But this green V1-3, standing in the way of me and being a V2-4 man. This route really means something to me. This route is challenging me and teaching me a lesson.

I didn’t get it today, but I know I’m close. I’m going to brew a decent pot of coffee, and that wall is going down.