It’s been a while, yeah almost a year since my last post. I apologize for that. A year later I’m still living in California. I´ve done a lot and when I say a lot I mean A LOT. In my last post, I wrote that I wanted to try to climb in the valley, and guess what? I did it! it was a wonderful experience which I’ll never forget. It was an early September morning and I met someone who has climbed it before, we warmed up and prepared for our hour-long climbing. The first 20 feet were a little bit of scary even though I’m used to heights. I felt this strange feeling, excitement mixed with nervosity. The weird feeling slowly faded away a couple of feet later and the whole experience was unbelievable. Words cannot describe how it felt being on a wall 2500 feet in the air, alone with my belayer and the cold September winds touching my face. Afterward, my hands were destroyed and hard skin has already started to form on my palms, my feet were aching from being in tight shoes for hours, I bet many of you don’t know how relieving it is taking the shoes off after a session and I’m not going to talk about the pump in my forearms. But this does not change my mind of trying it again. This was my first time climbing el cap and I know for sure that this is just the beginning. If you find this interesting I recommend watching the documentary Free solo or The dawn wall. Free solo is a documentary about Alex Honnold and when he climbed el cap without ropes, The dawn wall is also a documentary but it’s about two climbers who attempt to climb an almost impossible route on el cap.
So back to my life here in California. After living here for over a year now I’ve noticed a lot of differences between the Californian life and the life I had in Sweden. I did expect a difference but not this big, one thing that I noticed much more is how the people are and how the society is. Compared to swedes, Americans are happier and talkative. Swedes tend to not really speak up to a stranger at the bus stop or when you’re sitting alone at a cafe. Here in Cali, it’s way different, people talk to you. No offense against swedes, I am one myself but please speak up and don’t be that boring all the time.
Now, moving on to something else. Why have I been inactive for a year and what made me stay eleven more months than I was supposed to stay? let’s say I found a job, my best friend is living here and I like this lifestyle. I don’t feel like I wanna leave this life, to be honest. I and my best friend met at work, it started with small talk but then we went out clubbing together and got even closer than before. So back to the subject of why I stayed longer. I started taking classes in enterprise and 3 months later I and a group of girls started this clothing brand. It started slowly but eventually grew bigger. We never thought we would succeed but I guess we did? Starting this clothing brand made me think differently about the succeeding and accomplishment of your goals. As I said before, I never thought we would succeed but you just have to keep aiming and work even harder. You’ll eventually reach your goals and you will thank yourself for not quitting when it got harder and felt like the goals were ages away.
It’s getting late and I got a long workday tomorrow. Thank you for reading this blog post. I’ll try to be more active and hopefully not update next year, can’t promise anything though. No, I’m joking, I WILL be better at updating about my life and maybe one day I’ll be writing with confidence behind my back and say that I climbed el cap once again. See ya next time!!
A Month In California 