Greenbackyard

The Passionate Rock Climber

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I had recently discovered a brand new, all encompassing passion: rock climbing.

Before I go into this again though, it’s also important to notice that I am going through a very intense period in my life at the moment, a massive roller coaster, with very large swings of ups and downs and mixing “dreamy/fantasy” in what would otherwise seem like a normal existence, it seems to defy magic realism. Or maybe this is also again, part of my imagination of it being a bit too far fetched and trying to find meaning in everything. Why is this important? Because through crisis is that I also reflect very seriously about what I am doing with my life and reconsider the choices I have made in the past.

So trying to gently get back into the subject of rock climbing, how often is it that you find your Element (as described in Ken Robinson’s book) or at least one part of it? I guess that occasionally you stumble upon them and sometimes you engineer them. I’ve just read a post by John Nunemaker titled “I have no talent” in which he states that most of his best work is due to his perseverance and hard work and, of course, his passion for his craft, software development. This made me think: “Is talent something that really matters to me? Do I have any talent(s)?” and before I pursue this line even further, let me clearly say that I agree with John: only hard work gives results, I think it’s really the only way. I think the same applies to passions, like rock climbing. I do have a certain affinity (physically) towards that sport, I am not sure if I’d call that talent but it’s definitely a _connection_ however without all the hard work I would not be getting any better and my frustrations would just keep on growing. I have worked pretty hard to keep this passion of climbing alive, of course when you love something and you enjoy it, working for it doesn’t seem like such an effort. my training routine has got me a few “you are crazy” comments (and trust me it’s not all that intense) It requires persistence and a lot of sheer determination to get through it. Some days it can get hard (hangovers for example, are my worst enemies ).

Working towards ones goals and passions takes many forms. For me it’s been focusing on a routine that pushes me a bit further every time. and that I can do without machines or without having to rely on specialized help. and of course that I can do on my own so that I have to rely solely on my own motivation and not on somebody else to drag me out for a climb. If I get to share those moments with others that’s awesome however since I always struggled to get my own routines underway I needed to rely on my own energy. And it’s also about reading a lot about climbing and about conditioning for climbers, mostly because I am not a trainer and I have a vague idea of where my weaknesses are in terms of strength and flexibility however I needed some advice that would guide me towards the most effective training routines. BTW the most influential book for me so far has been The Rock Warrior’s Way by Arno Ilgner.

The journey has begun.

Adventures into a brave new world

It has been way too long since I last posted here. I think I’ve been using Twitter too much as it feels so easy to just put my stream of consciousness out there without having to fear the empty blank “textarea” (or what writers experience with the blank page, however in our digital times this has long been replaced by a blank word document).

Anyway, as with the vast majority of the western world, I have decided that as part of my “new year’s resolutions” I wanted to tweet less and blog more. Why? Mostly because when I write a post here, I actually spend a vast amount of time thinking about it, preparing for it and, most of the time, it reflects my state of mind more accurately and not just a spontaneous outburst like what can happen through my tweets. And the last few months have been quite intense in my life and I need an outlet to express myself. It’s a way to communicate more detailed ideas, experiences, emotions. All bundled in these words, on these pages.

So, what’s this brave new world I am talking about? Climbing, as in rock climbing! Yes, I know … I am not 18 anymore and why taking on such a strenuous sport at this stage of my life? I owe it to Harry who took me to a climbing wall near Zürich once back in August or September, I can’t remember the exact day. I remember trying to climb the first walls and feeling transported into a state of deep focus and concentration without requiring much preparation and a great sense of camaraderie (well, the person belaying you has your life, literally, in their hands). I remember coming back to my apartment and staying awake until 4AM, unable to sleep, remembering all the moments and also “high” from the adrenaline (I also suffer -or suffered, not sure yet- from vertigo). A few days later, I started to realise how profound this experienced had been and how much it had affected me. And when I say “affected”, I really mean it, a deep transformation. Not just physical (which there was and I will cover that in future posts) but mostly mental.

Mental transformation due to the ability to get in that deep focus almost instantly and repeatedly. Like when I was developing software 24×7 and every now and then I would get into “the zone” and would code for, say, 4 or 5h non-stop and would not have any idea of how much time had passed, how I got to the results I did however those were the best classes, methods, designs and overall architectures. However these moments were seldom the norm. I couldn’t get in “the zone” on demand and I wasn’t able to create the conditions for it artificially. Coming out of “the zone” was also great because I wouldn’t feel stressed, actually all the stress would have evaporated.

As I write this I am thinking over and over again what is that fascinates me so much about climbing. I figured that stress relief is an important factor however that’s not the only one, there are more. The physical challenge is definitely up there, for a computer nerd like myself who has lived a mostly sedentary life, suddenly being able to climb and pull his own weight without the aid of machines or weird contraptions (bouldering) is a major accomplishment. And finally, something that I am very keen on learning about is climbing outdoors. Yes, I have to admit I’ve only been doing indoor climbing so far (give me a break, I’ve only been doing this since September last year) !!! There are so many climbing spots around the world, beautiful, photogenic and wild places that are just waiting to be climbed! So much more interesting than the climbing walls at the gym. Of course, don’t take me wrong, I love to train in a climbing wall, the safety and comfort of just a short stroll to it, any day of the week is unbeatable however “the real thing” is impossible to match (at least it’s still a fantasy for me).

I want to share my experiences of going through yet another life transformation, partly because I think it’s now part of who I am and also because there isn’t that much of it out there about climbing nerds and I thought that it could be interesting to document this journey to keep me motivated and focused and, hopefully, to motivate others. Stay tuned.

Twitter Entropy

Our good friend Andrew sent me the following email yesterday, following a short but entertaining exchange we had on Twitter. I thought I would reproduce it here as I like it too!

Hi Bruno, Just for fun… I thought our Twitter banter over entropy was entertaining. [...] What was rather poetic and circular in this entropy thread was how you returned to a state of control “Planning”… neat!

twitter entropy exchange

Two “must-read” books

I started this post a while back and then it sat there, unloved and gathering dust so I started over again. This is not exactly a follow-up from the previous series and it is at the same time.

I started reading two very very interesting books: Slow is Beautiful: New Visions of Community, Leisure and Joie de Vivre and Life Inc. recently. Danielle (my soulmate) gave me “Slow is Beautiful” and I had reserved a copy “Life Inc” before it was released because I’ve always liked Douglas Rushkoff’s writing (ever since John, a friend from Amsterdam, introduced me to his blog back in 2001 or so).

When I first picked “Slow is Beautiful and started reading it, I noticed that we had started going in the direction that Cecile Andrews talks about, towards reclaiming our own life from the hectic environments of our busy cities and its demands. For a while though, I have been still living with a very “city” mind in the country and the good thing is that you are surrounded by “country time” and it reminds you on a daily basis that you need to take it easy or at least, a life can be lived without the constant stress created by the super fast living demands and we need to reorient our individual-centric view of the world to a more community oriented one.

I didn’t realised this until very recently, in particular by talking to our neighbours and realising how much of a community sense there is in our valley. Everyone knows and helps each other. For example, the other day, the guy that delivers the gas bottles got bogged on our property … without even resorting to calling them, our neighbour and a friend that was at his place appeared with their 4WD to help. They had heard the sounds of the van trying to get out of the mud.

I am not even halfway through “Life Inc” and it has already given me a new perspective on the global financial crisis. Somehow I found so many parallels between these two books and our move to the country, it’s a bit scary Once I had the time to finish them and digest them a bit more, I will write a bit more. They relate very closely to where we are at in our life (Danielle, Zeek and I) and seem to be recommending a path forward that’s aligned with our way of thinking and our values. Highly recommended!

New technologies at the service of civil society

For those who don’t follow me on Twitter, I recently was invited to participate in a panel during the launch of a series of workshops organised by Idealistas.org and I talked about it on my work blog. Head there to find out more

Old and new passions

When we were planning on coming over to Argentina, Danielle told me that she wanted to go to a football match and so we got in touch with Alejandro, a good friend of mine, that’s also a supporter of River Plate. The team hasn’t been doing great lately, last year, for the first time in its history, it finished the tournament last (how sad). Alejandro told us not get our hopes too high. My youngest sister, who had never been to a match, decided she wanted to join us (even though she is not a River Plate supporter).

We were very lucky to get free tickets through Alejandro and a friend of his. The tickets were for the “Platea Sivori“, which was behind the goal that River would be defending in the first half of the match. Most of the first half was OK until just as we were reaching half-time, a player from River plate barely touched (disclosure: I support River Plate) an Arsenal player and the referee didn’t even blink, declared a penalty and expulsed our player! What a start! This was the first match that both Danielle and my sister would be witnesses to? Seeing my team loose?

Fortunately, less than 5 min in the second half, my team equalised and after an excellent swap of players, Gallardo (aka El “Muñeco” Gallardo) scored a great goal in the first few minutes of the field and not much later a second, epic goal! Ok, I was happier now. This was a match worth watching. I even shot a very short and dodgy video with my phone.

This match had everything. 4 players saw the red card, we had a penalty, 4 goals, a roaring crowd … all of this in a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Buenos Aires. What started with some doubts ended up being a memorable afternoon.

Alejandro said that Ana (my sister) and Danielle had to witness all the matches from River Plate from now on since it was such a great game!

The Crowds as viewed from our seats

What really stood up for me was that after nearly 9 years overseas, I was really missing coming to a game here, where everyone is so passionate. It’s difficult to explain, as there’s a lot of violence during, before and after games and football has become such a money-driven show that conveying how a match like this one can make you feel seems impossible. However against all my preconcepts and all I remembered, I saw many families at the stadium. Fathers with their sons and daughters! Some of them little, younger than Zeek …

I really loved it! So did Danielle and I think Ana as well.

So, how does it all start (part 4)

I have neglected my story over the past 3 weeks, I have all sort of excuses though: trip to Argentina, trip to Barcelona, work, life … all very demanding circumstances that distracted me for a bit. Some of these distractions are actually a product of what I was going to talk about in this post and life has provided me with real experiences that I can now share

As I was mentioning previously, we had just purchased, almost impulsively, this beautiful 10 acres farm in Northern NSW and we were now facing the most challenging times of our lives in recent times: we were new parents, we now had a mortgage and a house around 7h drive North of Sydney and my job was in Sydney or in Adelaide. Danielle was already working in a mostly remote situation, so for her the prospects of moving to the country were not as daunting as they were for me. Living in the country meant big changes without any doubt.

Let me quickly digress to a topic that’s not entirely related to the tree-change but will reveal a deep, troubling change that I went through and I think it’s one of the fundamental issues with moving away from the city, at least from my point of view, due to the way we are perceived in today’s society. I realised that I was building my own personality based on my profession or job title. I started to see myself through my work. I had been very lucky to have worked most of my life with extremely bright people, that were as eager as I was to continuously improve and learn, people that believed, like I did, in some basic values: collaboration, transparency, honesty. And when you get to spend your career working mostly in environments that are full of passionate, creative people, it’s hard not to get this type of “association” with work. I worked with GaiaSur in Buenos Aires, Argentina, then Greenpeace International in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and finally Rising Sun Pictures in Sydney and Adelaide, Australia. This is not my full work experience however it’s the last 11 years and in all those years, I had that privilege. I worked with some amazing, passionate, honest and creative people and I believe that it’s thanks to them that I became the person I am today (from a professional point of view). Of course, I have to claim some of that credit however the environment, the people that surrounded me, the people I worked with, showed me, in practical terms, what those values looked like in a commercial and non-profit world. It didn’t matter so much what type of work we did, from creating the infrastructure for a major ISP from the ground-up with mostly open source software, to figuring out how to engage world-wide audiences to solve the world’s environmental problems, I always got deeply involved as did all the people I worked with. And when you put so much energy into work, you start living your life through it. Or at least, that’s what happened to me. My own perception of myself was that I was that guy that worked with technology and people.

This perception of myself changed dramatically when Zeek was born. I think the specifics of the change are a topic for another post as it’s quite a deep change, which I saw in some good friends as well. Don’t take me wrong, it was a great change! I am extremely happy about it however it’s not an easy transition.

So, getting back to the tree-change. I was this persona, a CTO of a great company -this opens many doors in today’s society- and I only realised this after a few months of living up North and having a bit of time to reflect, if I moved up I would have to give that up, return to be Bruno. Could I actually be happy without a buzzing environment around me? Would this affect my career? Do I care about a career? I didn’t even know I would be asking those questions when we bought our house. And I am glad I didn’t otherwise I would have been paralised by fear at the time of making that decision.

When I turned 30 (almost 7 years ago), I swore to myself that I would not be paralysed by my fears, that I would face them and conquer them. Step by step I’ve been conquering some of them. For example, I really couldn’t stand spiders, I would freak out at the sight of even a tiny little one. Now, I can take a big hunstman (ok, it’s not a red-back or funnel-web) with a glass and take it outside without killing it and without sweating too much. I’ve started working towards my Private Pilot License and I am afraid of heights. So, when I was confronted with this fundamental fear of loosing that job title, I thought to myself “is that fear based on something real or fake?” and I believe it is fake. I decided I wasn’t my job title, I was myself, with all my flaws and also with all my experiences. And, what was the worst that could happen? The worst would have been to have to come back to our parents place without a house. Well, that’s not worst not taking the risk. It’s not a permanent loss. I never thought of material possessions as a fundamental definition of who I am even though I lost sight of that for a bit.

With the many people that I’ve talked about a tree-change, many mentioned keeping a certain level of income as one of the biggest challenges. Some mentioned keeping their career. The vast majority look at it as a way to get away from the vortex of our current consumerist society, reducing the stress, living a more balanced life. And finally, almost everyone thinks it’s a dream, something impossible to do. Danielle and I never really deeply thought about it until after we did and, despite the fears, the obstacles, we always thought that the changes it might bring would make us (her, Zeek and myself) much better for it, and if we gave up now, without trying, we would regret it all our life.

In the end, this post ended up being more about the fears that I had to face rather than obstacles. I think I will leave that to a follow-up post as I want to go and enjoy being with my son and my beautiful partner now and not be in front of the computer in a beautiful, sunny day, in Buenos Aires.

[To be continued...]

Balance of first week in Barcelona

I have been in Barcelona for one week now. It has been a hectic week, with very long hours at work, a bit of walking through a cold city (well, cold when you come from the southern summers of Australia and Argentina) and a wealth of new “things” (smells, sounds, lights, etc).

What to make of this city? It’s ecclectic, busy, very busy and quite alive. It’s hard to put Barcelona in a catalogue of some sort. I think that there are many Barcelonas in one. A bit like Bellingen but just in a completely different scale (remember: Bellingen’s population: 2,600) I dare to make this comparison mostly because of the its ecclectic nature too. Ok, it might be pushing it a bit, I admit it (or maybe a lot).

On Sunday (the first day I was here) I wondered around the city, walked for around 5h (oh! now that I think about it, the same amount of time I spent walking today) mostly because the internet connection at the apartment wasn’t working, so instead of working I decided that I should spend some time wondering around because I might not get much opportunity to do this after Monday. I was right.

What I discovered from Barcelona that day is that there’s a lot of people here. It’s really, really busy. Maybe it’s because we’ve been living in the country and we are no longer used to seeing so many people but I was really surprised by the never ending flow of people, especially throughout the “old city” which is where I am staying.

The languages I heard spoken most were Spanish and Català of course but I was surprised to hear a lot more French (why should I though, it’s so close to France) and then English.

The light is also very different here than in Australia. It’s so much softer (funny note: I typed “software” instead of “softer” and I had to correct it twice. I really need to spend more time away from my computer! ). I left my sunnies back in Argentina as I thought I wouldn’t need them but if this had been Australia, I would be complaining. The combination of winter and probably the layers of smog, help keep the light very pleasant and endurable for a whole day without getting any signs of sunburn or discomfort.

In order to feed the millions of people (locals and visitors like myself), there’s tons and tons of places to eat. From small joints (“a hole in the wall” type place), to luxurius tapas restaurants, all the way to McDonalds and other food-contraptions. What I haven’t seen is the same level of clustering that you find in Sydney, with large neighbourhoods with specific types of cuisine, for example Leichhardt for Italian, etc. I guess I haven’t been much outside of the touristic areas of Barcelona.

I was saying at the beginning, it’s a very lively city. There’s always something happening it would seem. The cold doesn’t seem to deter street performers, musicians, etc. I am not sure if it’s due to the start of the “carnaval” season (which started yesterday, as far as I could understand) or if it’s just like that. Whatever the reason for it is, it’s nice to be walking around the city and always find something to stop for and watch or listen to for a while.

In contrast with the buzzing Rambla and Passeig de Gràcia, you can find completely desolated and empty streets in El Born, which is the neighbourhood where I am staying, which late at night, are a bit scary to be honest. I can barely imagine how it would have been before public lighting.

All and all, I am loving Barcelona. Unfortunately I am spending way too much time working and not enough wondering around however in just over a month I will be back with Danielle and Zeek, still for work, but with them I will be able to balance work and life better and spend a bit more time, in a warmer Barcelona too, wondering around, discovering museums and other fantastic amenities that Barcelona has to offer.

Tragedies from the distance

I have been in Barcelona for a couple of days now and from the distance I have been following the tragic news about bushfires back home, in Australia. It’s hard to believe that some of those fires could have been started by arsonists … what sort of sick mind could devise something like that? Like probably most people in Australia, it makes me very angry to think about that possibility.

It’s difficult to understand bushfires of that magnitude from a European winter though, with temperatures of 11ºC and gentle winds.

I actually started this post with more ideas in mind and I really don’t want to just write about the sadness and anger caused by the possibility that some sicko started fires that destroyed lives, houses, ecosystems.

Are we trendy?

The Sydney Morning Herald has an article today about a couple getting tired of Sydney’s hectic rhythm and the impact it has on you, and deciding to change their life and, as we did, move out of the big smoke, to leave a more sustainable life.

Could it be that without even knowing it, we are part of a trend?