"Grown-ups Don't Sleep in Their Cars!"

Photograph courtesy of Nick Lanphier

When my car broke down last spring in the Gunks, I was content to sleep in the parking lot of a tire shop in New Paltz until morning. A friend saw I was in town and jokingly said, "Grown-ups don't sleep in their cars!" and thus, I was convinced to come and enjoy a glass of wine and crash in a bed, instead. The house that I stayed in was nestled away in a quiet wooded area, a short jaunt to the Gunks cliffs. Being a twenty-something person largely accustomed to my dirty shoebox-sized apartment or the back of my Honda, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I felt the smallest morsel of shame. Was I a dirtbag—or was I just bad at being an adult?

Sometimes, living in NY becomes frustrating when I am meeting professionals my age and constantly comparing myself to their status. Status, 401k, health insurance, PTO…health insurance. And it only emphasizes how far away I am from “figuring it all out”. Following a semi-mutual split with my ex-boyfriend, I moved to Brooklyn and managed to hoodwink a gear shop in SoHo into giving me a job even though I knew literally nothing about rock climbing. I filled in the other hours of my days working nights slinging bad lattes at a Starbucks and nannying part-time in the mornings. But armed with only an Associates Degree, what kind of life program would really be awaiting me? Eventually, I would have to go back to college, I told myself.

But then I started climbing and you know when something just takes over your entire life? Like, it just fills in all of the nooks and crannies and leaves little-to-no space for anything else. Things that fall under that category: socializing outside of climbing or after-work gym sessions, dating outside of climbing or after-work gym sessions…you get the picture. And so, I wind up playing the "what if" game a lot: "What if I’d finished college? What if I stopped dicking around and chose a career path? What if?”

Unfortunately, you can't live in parallel dimensions—that's when you'll get stuck. There are certainly those who get to high places fast, but for others—well, it can be more of an experiential thing. And at the end of the day, at the end of this life, we're all going to measure our successes differently—that's for sure. There are lots of people who get their lives on track faster than others, and while I've always been a little envious, if at any point in my life I had known exactly what I wanted to get out of it—I don't know that I would have ever found climbing. These days, that kind of feels like a dealbreaker.

Sam catches me in a “down” moment while we’re climbing up in Farley a few weeks later. Mind you, Sam is CEO of his own company and he’s fucking brilliant and (I think?) a millionaire? But, he senses I’m feeling kind of down and more lovingly than jokingly, taps my chin with his knuckles.

“You know, not everybody can be everything.” he says. “The world needs doctors. It needs mothers. It needs Kathys—and wouldn’t it be a damn shame if we were all the same, anyway?” I smile and agree.

I’m no closer to a life plan than I was the day or week before, but I'm finding that I don't really need much beyond whimsy and peace, laughter and love, friends and family. In some ways, I am convinced that mudding through my life the same way I have always gone through it will lead me to wherever it is that I’m going or supposed to be, and I don’t need a specific trajectory or plan or degree (although, probably, those things are helpful to an extent). Even though I don’t know how any of this concludes (if it ever does—I mean, can you just wrap that sort of stuff up in gently recycled packaging and a ribbon and call it a day?), but at least I know the direction to keep moving in. That general direction, these days, is up. And in the meantime, I hold onto the steady belief that if I keep following things like my passions and simple joys, I probably won’t wind up homeless.

Since I was a kid, I always thought that I had to be in a huge rush to grow up and hurry past all of my mistakes and growing pains, but instead, I’m pumping the breaks to slow down and embracing the lessons if and where I can find them. Success and joy in life aren’t listed on a BA or MA or resume or 401k. My joys in life are measured by things like campfire dinners, swims in rivers, pitches climbed, miles driven—in takes and falls and sends.

Who knows, maybe this is me “growing up”.

But please don't tell anybody.