text browsers and other calamities

I am currently typing into a grey window with blue text and totally winging it. I'm not even sure if this will post but it saved as draft okay so I'm feeling good. I'm actually really impressed with the Blogger nerds because lynx is this really old text browser and this interface is fully functional. I can edit my posts and comment on blogs and everything and all with no graphical user interface.

That's most excellent stuff.

Why am I using a text browser you ask? Well I decided that it was high time I have a functional desktop computer instead of a giant machine that maybe runs a web browser and that's it. It was when I needed dzer to resize pictures for me that it got out of hand. So I copied my data onto my server and started upgrading from Freebsd 4-stable to 5-stable. Non nerds I apologise... pretend I'm talking about climbing. Look pretty muscles!

I wrote a nice little post here and then made the calamitous error of hitting the back arrow to navigate and going back a page. In lynx this means you've lost your post.

fuck
.

okay so you don't get the big long explanation about upgrading my operating system and the explanation of why it's building a gui and why that takes so long. Nope, I'm skipping that and going straight to what turned out to be the meat of the post. It actually starts at the climbing gym though.

I was at the gym yesterday and my arms were probably too tired from chopping wood but I didn't care, I just wanted to climb. Really I wanted to do routes but g wasn't there and hubris can't buy a harness. I have a lack of endurance from this that I really need to work on. So I was working a problem that I've been working on for a while and finally I actually started to make some progress. In fact I'm hitting the next hold but not quite getting a grip on it. This is huge, I was stuck on this problem for like a month at least and I hadn't made a lick of progress. [as in I was hanging off a hold and could NOT get myself going up no matter what i tried]

So there's this 18 year old girl who started climbing like a month ago and she's throwing herself around the walls and working all these crazy problems that I can't even look at yet. And I know that I should really remember that spider woman is a teenager and she hasn't been broken repeatedly and her shoulders aren't compromised and we all learn at different paces and and and. It's like with hubris, we started up again together and I spend at least as much if not more time at the gym than he does and i teach pilates and do other stuff and yet he's outdistancing me by miles and miles. And the distance is increasing. I know I shouldn't let this get to me but it does. When they start working some problem I can get halfway up and start dropping holds and jumping around the wall I get a little unhappy and impatient with myself.

I know that I should just be delighted that I'm allowed in a climbing gym again. I know that I have to pay close attention to the twinges in my shoulders. I know that patience is my lesson but dammit.

It's hard to have patience and to remember that we're all different and that comparing yourself to others is a fool's exercise. But still, I'm impatient and frustrated. In fact that seems to be the theme for my life these days. I don't think that it's just the dating thing either although that's enough to depress anyone. It's certainly not like teaching pilates, climbing and hanging out with my friends is a bad life. In fact it's a damn good one.

It's just that there's something missing. If I were a writer I would write, if I were a painter I would paint but I am neither of these things. And yet I feel some sort of desperate need for an outlet other than this blog. I love my blog but if I keep sitting here being maudlin everyone else will be like 'yeah this blog sucks let's go' and although it is my personal outlet for whatever I'm thinking I do rather like getting comments and visitors. Also, I would bore myself to death.

So, I love photography but I only have an instant camera and I can't stand those things for taking photographs. It's a very nice instant camera but nothing in the world will turn it into a digital SLR capable of changing lenses on a whim. Well except a pile of cash which y'all may have noticed I don't have. And other than photography nothing except maybe a pottery class really appeals to me. Tragically I can't afford that either.

I just don't know what to do with myself, I'm all full of nervous/antsy energy and I have no outlet for it. Can't even ride bicycles yet cause of the shoulders and that was always good for a couple of hours of exhausting yourself.

The problem with this kind of energy is that you have to harness it or it does whatever it likes and if you're me that means it sticks itself in your brain and starts to make really negative and shitty thought patterns and then I sort of spiral into maudlin depression. And I don't mean melancholy like my post the other day I mean full on depression. The thing with that is the cure for depression for me involves sun and exercise. However I'm doing as much exercise as I can bear right now (well my forearms anyway) and the other things I like are still out of my reach so I just can't figure out what to do with myself. Whatever it is it better distract my brain and fast.

It's fun having a great big brain except when you have nothing to feed it with... it's like hunger... when you're hungry your body starts to eat itself and hungry brains are a lot like that. They'll find some hanging flap and start tugging and tearing and just generally causing mayhem until you can't turn it off. The nice thing about being in my thirties is that I can see the signs and I know a lot of the ways around the mental quagmire but that doesn't make it easy and currently my methods aren't working.

Need some brain food, just can't think of what the brain is hungry for.

suggestions are, of course, welcome.