Dagger's Progress as a Nomad

[Dagger]

On 8/1/2017 at 11:27 AM, Vibrantella said:

Congrats on the novel and I hope you're having a great time in the Norwegian wilderness!  

Thank you! I had.

 

I'll give a full report when I have time. I'm washing clothes and packing for London where I go tomorrow!

[Rebel Pilot Gar]

Sorry for the radio silence on my end! I am very glad to hear that you were able to finish the July novel on time. Oh man, sounds like a lot of work but you did it (knew ya would :P)

 

Hope the Norway wilderness trip went well and wishing you the best for your next adventure (and many many more after that). 

[Dagger]

15 hours ago, Rebel Pilot Gar said:

Sorry for the radio silence on my end! I am very glad to hear that you were able to finish the July novel on time. Oh man, sounds like a lot of work but you did it (knew ya would :P)

 

Hope the Norway wilderness trip went well and wishing you the best for your next adventure (and many many more after that). 

I love how you all have such confidence in me. I knew I could do it, I wasn't sure I would, but then I knew how much I would regret not doing it so... The rest became history. New novel to start tomorrow. Thanks!

[Severine]

Really excited to hear details!

[Dagger]

5 minutes ago, Severine said:

Really excited to hear details!

Haha, yeah, sorry. They are coming. The last couple of days have just been somewhat crazy. Still not sure how I managed to fit everything I needed into my packs, then I just stayed up most of the night to finish watching Bosch season 3 in HBO Nordic since I can't watch it in London. Lol.

[Dagger]

How to describe what my Norway adventure was like... man that isn't easy, but I feel like I really need to process what happened. So first a quick overview of what we were doing each day and where we were sleeping so it'll be easier to follow.

 

Day 1 (July 30th): Meet up, sleep in tents about 45 mins from Leknes. A normalish workout.

Day 2: Hiking/scrambling (plus rock climbing that I skipped), sleep in tents in same place as yesterday. Rains from noon until somewhere in the middle of the night. Not heavy rain but consistent so you get soaked anyway, but it takes a couple of hours.

Day 3: Goes to Unstad and paddle board because there were no waves, an arms heavy workout. Sleep in a house, yay! Thank god, because most of our stuff was wet.

Day 4: 6 hour long hike. Sleep in house again.

Day 5: Some free time where I went for a bike ride (they had large tire bikes we could borrow for free, fun!) and a walk on a beach. 20 minutes of stretchy yoga. Late afternoon paddle boarding because still no waves to learn how to surf. Sleep in house.

Day 6: Car ride, ferry ride and 2-3 hour hike later we set up camp close to another beach. A couple of the guys and I went to flip a log all the way to the water's edge (loooong beach), fun. Sleeping in tents.

Day 7: Hike back to ferry, ferry ride, car ride and goodbyes. I slept in a hotel.

 

So that's what we did each day, more or less. I might have forgotten some little activity.

 

So let's get some of the easy stuff out of the way.

 

I <3 paddle boarding 

Sleeping in a tent was alright, especially since we had three nights in the middle to dry everything plus washing machine! Otherwise I expect the week would have been wet and miserable. Especially considering it was around 10-12 C every day. That far north it just doesn't get very warm.

The workouts and such were fun and I hope to do some in London... Although I'm planing to do elements... Maybe a few pushups and rows and such can't be bad.

 

So now that we are past the easy part, what about the hard part.

 

If I could rate our hiking from easiest to hardest I'd say the first hike, aka scramble/hike, was the hardest and the last one on day 6/7 (same hike) was the easiest. The middle one might have been the longest one, although I think we hike/scrambled for about 4ish hours total for that first "hike" but it was divided in two with a four hour pause for rock climbing which I sat out.

 

Btw, I didn't do the rock climb because it looked so difficult that I wouldn't have fun trying it, I'd just be miserable. I still feel good about that decision.

 

So what is the part that makes me hesitate about this trip? Well, the fact that the first two hikes I basically spent deathly afraid through most of them. So that would be four hours of scramble/hiking and then the six hour long hike (this one was up a mountain and them along a ridge and then back down along the side of a mountain).

 

Now if you are imagining nice flat trails even if thin, you're only thinking about maybe 2% of each hike. The first one was the most scrambling needed, with a lot of hands needs to guide and help move. Even more so when the terrain had gotten wet since it was all rock or basically dirt/mud.

 

I never slipped in a place where I could have died easily. I did slip but in other places. But during most of the first two hikes there were like 60-80% of it were you'd get badly hurt if not die if you slipped. That had mostly to do with you know... hiking tends to take you higher up and along slopes and sometimes were steep slopes and I happen to be afraid of heights.

 

That last part was the reason I was so fucking afraid. Like I still enjoyed it. I still loved it because all the hiking even the scrambling parts were within my capabilities. I needed a little push up a couple of times when it was more rock climbing than scrambling, but I don't count that. I got myself through everything on my own two feet, two hands and sometimes/often my butt. I was taught different kinds of tips to feel less afraid and to be more safe (stay low to the ground, always keep a hand on the terrain makes you feel steady, etc.)

 

Like I feel like I should be ambivalent, but I had a great time. Tiring, but great time.

 

And while it isn't that enjoyable to be afraid for basically five hours in a row (the sixth hour of the hike was actually on an old overgrown road, yush!). I survived. No one got hurt, well seriously. One person probably sprained their ankle on the last hike back to the ferry in a place where it was an easy part of the hike. Stuff happens.

 

There are parts of this I don't really plan to re-do if I can help it. There were parts on those hikes that were unnecessarily dangerous to do without some kind of safety gear. I don't care if we got through it all safe. If one small slip can make you fall to your death, then I'd rather not be involved. I love hiking, but I'm pretty sure there are as pretty hikes that aren't quite so dangerous.

 

So while I don't regret it. I wouldn't do the same thing again. Although I'd say most parts of the scramble hike was actually safer than the six hour hike, so I'd do the scramble again, but not "hiking" along the edge of a steep mountain where the trail is barely more than a goat trail. Basically someone thought it completely normal for humans to cover ground that goats and other animals finds easy while humans are not quite the right size to safely traverse them (in my opinion).

 

I guess that is what it bothering me. I feel like it would have been so stupid to die there for a bit of hiking. Yes, you can die any time, and I often keep that in mind when making decisions so I'll follow my heart more. But I don't want to throw my life away for a bit of thrill or a pretty view.

 

(I wonder why I'm still definitely considering skydiving some time in my life. Haha... Maybe I won't if I keep thinking like this.)

 

Although considering how sure footed and quickly the others could move through those trails, perhaps I just need more experience so I don't feel like it is quite so much of a death wish hike.

 

The third hike was entirely fine. No area where it felt stupidly dangerous but still not being a flat and maintained human trail. That one I really wouldn't mind doing again. Neither the scramble one with the last part being an exception, especially if it isn't a clear and sunny day and the dirt is dry from multiple days of non-rainy days.

 

Wow... This is what has been wanting to be expressed. That has been lurking in my mind for the last few days and I just haven't had the energy or the time to dig down and figure out what I needed to process.

 

So there you have it: I loved the trip, but could have lived without some of the more dangerous parts of especially hike number 2.

[Owlet]

Fair enough! Everyone is into different things, so while some people would've loved that hike, you didn't and that's fine  I quite like scrambling and picking my way along a narrow path, but that's just me and I certainly don't expect everyone to enjoy it. Helps that I'm not really bothered by heights. I'm glad you had a good time regardless, and hey, you learnt something! Norway looks beautiful btw.

[Dagger]

14 minutes ago, Owlet said:

Fair enough! Everyone is into different things, so while some people would've loved that hike, you didn't and that's fine  I quite like scrambling and picking my way along a narrow path, but that's just me and I certainly don't expect everyone to enjoy it. Helps that I'm not really bothered by heights. I'm glad you had a good time regardless, and hey, you learnt something! Norway looks beautiful btw.

I think it isn't so much that I didn't enjoy it, because I did. But there were parts of the trail that was needlessly dangerous to traverse without safety gears, and in the future I want to try and avoid those. I still hope I can continue to scramble and hike along narrow trails, aka that there are ones without those extreme points even if I have to do tamer trails.

[Owlet]

5 minutes ago, Dagger said:

I think it isn't so much that I didn't enjoy it, because I did. But there were parts of the trail that was needlessly dangerous to traverse without safety gears, and in the future I want to try and avoid those. I still hope I can continue to scramble and hike along narrow trails, aka that there are ones without those extreme points even if I have to do tamer trails.

Oh right, yeah that totally makes sense. Safety gear rules. Even if it's just a hard hat.

[Dagger]

I'm half thinking I should do a challenge while here in London since the challenge dates currently match up with the time I'll spend in London, although I am already thinking of extending, but I won't decide on that until I know how I like it here.

 

What do you guys think?

[Casbin]

I am pretty sure that we'd all love to have you.

 

It stands and falls with what you are thinking about, right?

You can leverage it to enhance your time there or diminish the experience if you end up biting off too much.

 

Either way, I'm looking forward to hear from your adventures

[Vibrantella]

Wow!  After my experience at a Grand Canyon trail, which was wide, and I still couldn't finish it - I don't think I could have done what you did.  Well done!

[Dagger]

3 hours ago, Casbin said:

I am pretty sure that we'd all love to have you.

 

It stands and falls with what you are thinking about, right?

You can leverage it to enhance your time there or diminish the experience if you end up biting off too much.

 

Either way, I'm looking forward to hear from your adventures

So true. I don't know what I wanna do.

 

I do like having everything together in the battle log, but then there is more engagement when I do challenges. Dilemmas...

[Dagger]

1 hour ago, Vibrantella said:

Wow!  After my experience at a Grand Canyon trail, which was wide, and I still couldn't finish it - I don't think I could have done what you did.  Well done!

It helps when you're all in a group and you don't want to force one or more people to go back with you. Or during the second hike where it was obvious that the way we got to the top of the mountain so we called walk the ridge line was not a safe way to get down. It was fine to climb up, but going down? Nope, so better to just push on and hope the other way down was easier. Didn't turn out that way, but still.

 

Thanks. <3

[Dagger]

So far today I have unpacked, taken a shower, gone to the groceries store (next time I'll sit down and plan what to buy more throughly so I can get a few meals with me; still have 3-4 meals one that should give a lot of leftovers) and tried to write.

 

I don't know if I feel daunted about starting another project, that is another 30k at least commitment while trying to pick a project that actually comes out about that length so I know how much I need to write. I still haven't gotten feedback from even my June novel and I guess now I'm starting to wonder "what if I'm making the same fatal mistake in first two novels and writing a third will just perpetuate it again?".

 

I also don't know what I want to dig into. More fantasy? Same world as one of the first two? A third world? Another world I've written in before? I don't know.

 

Today there are 22 days to the last of the month. If I do fixes as I go, I can write on the last day and still have time to send it in (only took about an hour on the Norwegian hotel lobby computer so should go faster on my own). If I write today that means ~1.3k words per day or say 1.5k for 33k total. Very easily managed.

 

I just have to start...

[Dagger]

I ended up watching game play of a gorgeous game on youtube. And this morning while reading the challenges I followed I realized two reasons why I had a hard time focusing yesterday.

 

1) I barely slept anything the night leading to the day before yesterday and apparently little sleep doesn't affect the next day but the day after more, so I was in the worst day due to my Bosch binging.

 

2) I haven't been reading fiction for a couple of days, neither have I watched stories instead (except Bosch...). I gain a lot of inspiration from reading/watching stories, so I'll read some fiction today.

[Dagger]

So what was potentially just tiredness I have today figured out was tiredness, no fiction reading and a cold poking at me. Today I've been sneezing a lot (might be allergies) and had a super runny nose (less likely to be allergies for me). I've also been a little low on energy when I haven't just eaten. I guess skipping a night's sleep keeps handing me fun side affects...

 

Don't get me wrong, I have very mild cold symptoms, so it isn't that bad. Mostly I'm just plowing through tissues and finally just got an extra roll of tp to use as tissues. And now I'm lazy enough I'm throwing them on the floor. I'll pick them up later or tomorrow.

[Dagger]

Update: I also finally started the writing project today. It helped that I said that any amount of words are okay, just start it. So I did.

[Casbin]

This is great! I assume you figured out what kind of thing you want to write then?

Hope you'll be feeling better soon, feeling bad while traveling sucks...

[Severine]

Interesting overview of the Norway trip! It's great that you enjoyed it but also learned some things you'd do different (or not do) next time. The photos I saw were absolutely gorgeous. And it sounds like all your work on physical fitness in Tuscany helped prepare you for the Norway experience. It must feel good to have a plan work out like that.

 

Boo for a cold coming on! Hopefully easily fought off. But it's great that you overcame the tiredness and found some inspiration to start writing.

 

I'd say if you feel like a challenge, totally give it a go! You can always stop the challenge later, or modify it, if it's not working for you. So nothing to lose except the time it takes you to write it up.

[Dagger]

1 hour ago, Casbin said:

This is great! I assume you figured out what kind of thing you want to write then?

Hope you'll be feeling better soon, feeling bad while traveling sucks...

Well... I got a start on something anyway.

 

Being sick always sucks, and at least I'm not staying in a hotel or anything.

[Dagger]

1 hour ago, Severine said:

Interesting overview of the Norway trip! It's great that you enjoyed it but also learned some things you'd do different (or not do) next time. The photos I saw were absolutely gorgeous. And it sounds like all your work on physical fitness in Tuscany helped prepare you for the Norway experience. It must feel good to have a plan work out like that.

 

Boo for a cold coming on! Hopefully easily fought off. But it's great that you overcame the tiredness and found some inspiration to start writing.

 

I'd say if you feel like a challenge, totally give it a go! You can always stop the challenge later, or modify it, if it's not working for you. So nothing to lose except the time it takes you to write it up.

Tuscany totally prepared me for Norway, without that... No idea if I could have enjoyed it at all and I would have slowed everyone down even more, lol.

 

I would love to do a challenge for the extra engagement from other forum peeps, but I kinda like my battle log for the moment I think. *just decided*

 

However, I will write up a London goal post sometime this weekend.

[Dagger]

Ooooh, I checked out a kinda fast food Japanese restaurant today. When I say checked out, I didn't actually eat, but I went inside and looked at the menu and stuff and it all looked so yummy! It is called Itsu, which if I don't remember wrong kinda means "how much", but don't quite me. *goes off to the googles to check* Nope I was wrong... It means "when", ikura (いくら) means how much. Ah well, I do need to get back to the daily duolingo habit apparently!

 

I plan to try the food there soon. The best part was that they had kinda finished meals in containers, so you could buy it and heat it up at home (if it was meant to be heated). Those looked good. The only sad thing is that is said "consume today" which is why I didn't buy any because I didn't plan to eat Japanese food for dinner. Guess what I wanted to eat for dinner?

[Dagger]

I just read this article from Zen Habits: How I Changed My Life, in Four Lines.

 

I keep seeing these articles about doing one change at the time, and I just realized that every time I see them I am saying: I don't have time for that right now. I need to do X, Y and Z. And I need them to be habits already. >_>

 

I realize that part of that is life. Obviously I'm doing my August novel right now, so I need to be writing. I guess actually for the next three-ish weeks there really aren't anything else I need to do. Sure, I want to explore London, but I don't need to. I want to eat more veggies, but I don't need to (not that I mean to ignore it, but you get what I mean). I want to move more, but I don't need to (except for some movement so my legs doesn't hate me).

 

But really, among all the things I want to change and do and stuff. There really only is one change I want to get back to which I did in June: write regularly. And as I showed then, I don't need to write a lot every day. Heck, I proved that even more in July when I showed I could write 15'000+ words in three days if I really want to.

 

So I have the time to start slow. I can say "I only need to write for ten minutes, then I can do nothing."

 

My plan for August was to learn a habit of starting on a specific time (not necessarily the same time). So I wanted to do alarms for 8:55, 9:55 and 10:55 and start writing on the top of the hour. Perhaps I should just do that, even if I write only one sentence at 9:00 and then two sentences on 10:00 and one word on 11:00. It doesn't matter. Just one. And if I want to do something before noon, pick three hours in the afternoon or evening where I do the same thing (and try not to let meals interfere with the time).

 

So I could either say: I'll only write for X minutes a day or perhaps write X amount of words; or I'll go with the write at the start of three separate hours. When I start, I tend to go on.

 

And if I do it before noon, then I have all the time in the afternoon to explore, workout, cook, and all the other odds and ends of living life.

 

PS. I thought I'd rant about how I always dismiss these because I don't have time right now and didn't even realize that I do have time right now to go at this approach.

 

I thought I'd be thinking about how I can make it possible to do right now. I guess I'll do that later. lol

[Dagger]

Okay, already realized I have to revise a little:

 

Writing once at the top of the hour (or top of the half hour) is the daily goal.

If I do more, fine.

If I don't, fine.

If I end up needing a lot of words towards the end of the month, fine. I can handle that.

 

If I happen to write at the top of the hour/half-hour three times a day that would be lovely, but nothing I need to repeat. Perhaps in a week so next Saturday, I can increase the minimum.