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soil_gringo
Dec 10, 2004, 5:33 PM
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Recently my family (read wife, parents, etc) have started harping on quite a bit about my
spending so much time, effort, and money to do my hobby, climbing! Now I admit that
climbing takes up quite a bit of my time, but somehow their argument that it's "just a hobby.."
leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It seems to be an attempt to devalue climbing
and I'm not sure how to respond.
There are two things of paramount importance in my life. One of them is love for my family
and those around me, and the other is actually living. Life is a verb, and right now,
climbing defines how I live it. Everything else, my day job, school, sleep... just gets in the
way.
They say I've lost sight of what's really important, I say they have. Am I sick? Anyone
care to weigh in? How does one explain something like this to those who have no passion
for it?
Peace,
-Mike
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dingus
Dec 10, 2004, 5:42 PM
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Divergence. You don't. You're doomed. They have already amassed against you. Ultimatums are sure to follow.
What will you do if she says 'me or climbing?' Know that answer and know your fate...
DMT
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superdiamonddave
Dec 10, 2004, 5:45 PM
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Climbing is a past-time, unless of course you are a sport climber...in which case it is a "Sport". :P
disclaimer:
"Sport climbing is neither!"
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sspssp
Dec 10, 2004, 5:50 PM
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In reply to: Recently my family (read wife, parents, etc) have started harping on quite a bit about my spending so much time, effort, and money to do my hobby, climbing!
When somebody takes a line like this with me, I tell them that if I didn't climb, the only thing I would do is sit on the couch, drink beer, and watch sports. It might not be totally true, but it usually shuts them up (but I'm not trying to justify climbing to a wife/gf either).
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crankcase
Dec 10, 2004, 5:53 PM
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your passions become part of who you are. if people can't respect them then they're failing to respect you.
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thinksinpictures
Dec 10, 2004, 5:54 PM
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Mike, what do your relative spend their money and time on? Computers? Musical instruments? Sports? A plasma television? Hobbies all. Just because your "hobby" is less conventional doesn't mean you have any less of a right to invest your own money and time in it.
In reply to: Climbing is a past-time, unless of course you are a sport climber...in which case it is a "Sport".
It is impressive the lengths that some people will go to in order to reduce what might otherwise be an interesting thread into a rehashing of a debate that has been held over 16 million times on this site alone.
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johnnord
Dec 10, 2004, 5:55 PM
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Balance.
Unless you are willing to give up your family and devote your self to your passion full time, you are going to have to do some serious thinking and talking. IMHO, your wife is the key person here. I am assuming you are financially independent of your parents. Spend some time just listening her. It is sometimes hard for a spouse to understand why a climber/spouse wants to spend time away from him/her. It can become a major issue. It sounds like you might be relatively young and newly married, so it is important to work through the issues now to build for a long term future. If it becomes difficult, seek a good marriage counsellor and commit yourself to working on the issues.
Some compromise will be necessary. You will have to determine what your needs are and what the trade offs might be. Regarding money: find a partner with a really good rack. Ask for climbing gear as birthday/holiday gifts. Put them into the budget and be disciplined about sticking to financial limits. Regarding time: sit down with your wife regularly and calendar time with her, then climbing dates. School is a time issue as well. Calendar your school time.
Balance
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joshj
Dec 10, 2004, 5:58 PM
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Mike,
The best advice I have ever heard actually came from my supervisor: You work to live, not live to work.
I'm lucky... my parents are both VERY into backpacking and I've gotten my Dad into climbing a little. They take 3-4 week-long trips out west every year just to hike and climb... basically follow their passion. My wife IS NOT an "outdoor girl", but she totally supports my passion for climbing. Luckily, she loves taking pictures, so I have a built-in spotter/photographer.
But I DO know how you feel. I spend every waking moment not working thinking about climbing, training for climbing, or actually climbing. My co-workers have given me the whole "It's just a hobby" line before. I've asked them "Have you ever tried it. If not, then why not come along... I guarantee you that it won't be 'just a hobby' after you've done it."
To some, it is just a hobby. To others, it's a living. For all of us in between... it's a way of life. Sure, we have jobs to pay the bills, but if someone offered us a free-ride through life just to go climbing (or heck, even for a month), we'd jump at the chance.
Just remember: You work to live, not live to work.
josh
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superdiamonddave
Dec 10, 2004, 5:58 PM
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In reply to: Mike, what do your relative spend their money and time on? Computers? Musical instruments? Sports? A plasma television? Hobbies all. Just because your "hobby" is less conventional doesn't mean you have any less of a right to invest your own money and time in it. In reply to: Climbing is a past-time, unless of course you are a sport climber...in which case it is a "Sport". It is impressive the lengths that some people will go to in order to reduce what might otherwise be an interesting thread into a rehashing of a debate that has been held over 16 million times on this site alone.
Boo hoo hoo :cry:
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chronicle
Dec 10, 2004, 6:02 PM
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I work to pay for new gear and climbing trips. I've already told my fiance that I will never stop climbing, nor will I stop investing the time, money, effort into climbing.
In response to Dingus, if she ever said "me or climbing", I would welcome the bachelor life with 2 weeks in Yosemite!!!
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bonin_in_the_boneyard
Dec 10, 2004, 6:09 PM
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I met a semi-pro soccer player last week. He practices two days a week, trains two days, and plays two games a week. That sounds awfully close to the climbing regiment of a lot of people I know (gym 2x a week, jogging/biking 2x, and weekends at the crag/boulders). Is that a hobby?
I guess techincally climbing is a hobby, but it just doesn't sound right, does it? I mean, we're not building model airplanes here. I tried to break it down:
Expense - collectors and restorers of classic cars have us beat. Forget yachters.
Adventure - sky diving/hang gliding. Haven't checked the numbers, but I'm sure there are more dangerous, adrenaline stimulating past times out there.
Practice - chess. A buddy of mine has a two-thousand page book just on chess openings; i.e., the first three or four moves. He and his old man have been working through one category of openings for the last 18 months.
Training - olympians. After all, they're amateurs, just like most of us. I watched the olympics for the first time this year. F__k hobby!
Maybe it's the combination of so many things that justifies to us the superior oppinion we hold for our 'hobby'. Training, practice, gear, planning, trips, the outdoors, the community, the excitement... But to lay-people, it's just a hobby.
I think any fanatic, whether they're a triathalete or an ornithologist, can understand how climbers feel about climbing. But you can't explain passion to those who have none.
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dingus
Dec 10, 2004, 6:10 PM
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In reply to: In reply to: Climbing is a past-time, unless of course you are a sport climber...in which case it is a "Sport". It is impressive the lengths that some people will go to in order to reduce what might otherwise be an interesting thread into a rehashing of a debate that has been held over 16 million times on this site alone.
Well... it was one sentence and shorter than yours to boot. What's so impressive about the length of one sentence?
DMT
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apolobamba
Dec 10, 2004, 6:11 PM
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Climbing is just a hobby. It is as fascinating as quilting to those that don’t participate.
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bad_lil_kitty
Dec 10, 2004, 6:12 PM
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your profile says you've been climbing for 12 years....
who cares what your parents think....
as jayz says, 'get that dirt off your shoulder"
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superdiamonddave
Dec 10, 2004, 6:13 PM
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After reading your profile, it sounds like you like the adventurous type of climbs. This is pretty much what I enjoy as well. In my opinion, you just have to weigh out what is important to you. Wives can have a hard time understanding why we climb so much, but trying to explain it to non-climbers is just too hard to do. All they know is that they want you at home with them.
Keep trying to get them involved. At least camping and hiking most anyone can do, but some don't enjoy anything outdoors.
If you are a newly wed, it is almost impossible to go on long trips, but after a few years of marriage, my (ex-wife now, heh heh) would practically pack my bags for me.
Life is short so ultimately you have to do what makes you happy, but try to find SOME time for your loved ones too.
Peace,
Dave
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joshj
Dec 10, 2004, 6:14 PM
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In reply to: I think any fanatic, whether they're a triathalete or an ornithologist, can understand how climbers feel about climbing. But you can't explain passion to those who have none.
Very well said.
josh
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soil_gringo
Dec 10, 2004, 8:12 PM
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Thanks to all for your thoughtful replies!
I wrote this after just being taken aback by my wife's repeated use this morning of the
phrase, "... just a hobby." To this I say, "phbbbt," and wanted to hear what other climbers
had to say about it too, thinking that maybe I, who am no wordsmith myself, could take
away some tid-bits of wisdom for a much more intelligent response (than "phbbt"!) :)
I guess what I have learned is that, she's right, it's a hobby, but to everyone out there that
does it, it's not just a hobby. It's much more, and the "much more" cannot be expressed
by words really at all, it must be experienced.
In reply to: They may have to find themselves in their own way too, but you can be the example. Take the freedom, fearlessness, and joy from your world of climbing and pass it on.
Right on.
Cheers all,
-Mike
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curt
Dec 10, 2004, 8:38 PM
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In reply to: Climbing is just a hobby. It is as fascinating as quilting to those that don’t participate.
Have you no respect for all the quilters you just insulted?
Curt
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mtman
Dec 10, 2004, 9:03 PM
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In reply to: Mike, The best advice I have ever heard actually came from my supervisor: You work to live, not live to work. I'm lucky... my parents are both VERY into backpacking and I've gotten my Dad into climbing a little. They take 3-4 week-long trips out west every year just to hike and climb... basically follow their passion. My wife IS NOT an "outdoor girl", but she totally supports my passion for climbing. Luckily, she loves taking pictures, so I have a built-in spotter/photographer. But I DO know how you feel. I spend every waking moment not working thinking about climbing, training for climbing, or actually climbing. My co-workers have given me the whole "It's just a hobby" line before. I've asked them "Have you ever tried it. If not, then why not come along... I guarantee you that it won't be 'just a hobby' after you've done it." To some, it is just a hobby. To others, it's a living. For all of us in between... it's a way of life. Sure, we have jobs to pay the bills, but if someone offered us a free-ride through life just to go climbing (or heck, even for a month), we'd jump at the chance. Just remember: You work to live, not live to work. josh
i could have not said it better
just don't forget your family try to get them to participate as much as possible
good luck
mtman
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dynosore
Dec 10, 2004, 9:20 PM
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My wife and I had this "discussion" last night. Takeaways:
I get more excited about climbing than , for instance, going out with her (her perception)
She doesn't like climbing, and doesn't understand how someone could
She will try to understand that I really like it and be more supportive
She needs to feel more important than climbing
I need to talk about it less around her
I think we have an understanding g now :D
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brutusofwyde
Dec 10, 2004, 9:21 PM
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Posted this a few places over the years, this seemed a good place to trot it out yet again. I've added "just a hobby" into the stew.
What is Mountain Climbing?
***********************************************
He is your neighbor. She is the smiling
woman behind the receptionist's desk at
your dentist office. He's the man who
built your house. Who are these people?
On weekends they vanish down the
highway, watching the cluttered cities
grow small in rearview mirrors. Phone
calls are answered by machines and voice
mail. Several times a year, they disappear
for weeks at a time.
What are they doing?
Midweek finds them sorting through an amazing
collection of gadgets, checking guide books,
calculating mileage, travel time, and trail
head elevations. By Friday afternoon, (sometimes
Thursday when they can sneak an extra day
off from work) they are headed out of town. If
someone is waving goodbye, the parting remark
is usually "See you later -- Got a mountain to
climb."
What is mountain climbing?
To people who are peripheral to the sport, it
is many things -- It is the intense eyes of the
man with the ice-encrusted beard and lethal-
looking ice axes in his hands; it
is "just a hobby;" it is reckless
risk-taking; bold adventure; suffering;
it is an industry that shouts in
bright colors from outdoor
magazines that if you buy THIS
product or eat THIS energy bar you will be in
the center, looking out at the world through
those intense eyes, that you will know what
it all means to go to the remote and desperate
heights of the earth where humans were not meant
to survive.
But those that are packing their gear on
Wednesday nights are not packing the latest
ice axes on the market. They are not wearing
the brightest, newest high altitude nylon wind
suits. Their waterproof or Goretex may have
many patches. Their packs are battered, their
boots worn and scuffed. Most have been quietly
pursuing their passion for high places for
many years, since long before media attention,
superb high-tech gear, and the need for adventure
in an increasingly pre-packaged society brought
mountain climbing into the mainstream.
Real climbers have day jobs.
To them the activity is all-absorbing; a passion,
a way of life from which they look at the world.
Their method is simple: they seek the remote,
the unattainable. They are enchanted with the
improbable.
To just set down on a summit via helicopter or 4wd
SUV misses the point. Theirs is the journey,
and the journey owns them.
What calls them? A land as alien as the surface of
the moon. Look close. Closer still... There! do
you see it? In the crevice, amidst a pull of
gravity as lethal as a gunshot, grows a flower. Across
the jumbled, creaking freight-train blocks of a
tumultuous glacier's icefall, bubbles a streamlet as
pure as the first day of the world. Their boot
prints, sometimes the first these places have seen
since the dawn of time, vanish like the whisper of a
thought forgotten, in those far places where
time is measured only by the pulse of the seasons,
the shifting of the constellations through the
millenia.
They range from sandwich-in-a-paper-bag-toting
peak baggers to hard-core wall rats festooned
with ironmongery, to parka-shrouded cloudwalkers
of the 8,000-meter peaks. They are the
grandmothers, students, school teachers, doctors
and engineers, who have discovered a reality
outside of the clocks, ceilings, schedules and
planning of this world.
Summit day usually begins some time on the late
night side of morning, shouldering a battered
pack, crunching crampons across snow or balancing
catfooted across teetering granite blocks by
headlamp in the darkness. For others it begins
in a sleeping bag cocoon suspended above a gulf of
emptiness on a nylon-and-aluminum-framed portaledge,
lighting a tiny bedside hanging stove for coffee,
dangling above two thousand feet of air amid an
incredible tangle of ropes, gear, and supplies,
before the first light of day begins to rinse the
sky of stars. The same sunrise finds them
all.
They seek those moments when time stands still.
The catalysts are as varied as the individuals who
pursue this path: a meteor shower; a night sky
so star-filled that it snatches your breath; another
rise of the sun over distant mountains vast and
untouchable; dodging a rock careening crazily
down a gully; a desperate icy struggle through
whiteout and ground blizzard down to the safety of
camp after an unsuccessful summit attempt; standing
atop a mountain with a friend, the whole
world at your feet, a blinding sun blazing out of
a flawless sky, taking the time to watch that sun
dip below the horizon even though camp is still
many miles and many thousands of feet distant;
Stumbling over boulders and through brush in
the darkness; watching the starlight and the storm
wrest for posession of the night sky, seated on
a narrow ledge beside your rope-mate with only
the clothes on your back for shelter, shivering
the night away, knowing that, sometime in a distant
place you cannot now touch, the world will once
again grow bright, the sun will rise, and you will
look out on the infant day with new eyes.
The twinkling lights of the city grow closer as your
car speeds away from the mountain. Soon, you
will drop off your ropemate, the two of you will
shake hands or hug, and the trip will be over. But
not the journey.
Some at work may notice it, think the intense
look a scar from desperate struggles in the sky. But
your partner knows. It is the look of someone
looking inward, remembering, savoring. And when
you get home from work that first evening back
on the flatlands, you will not so much unpack, as
re-arrange, evaluate, inspect, and start re-packing
your gear for the next trip, the next exploration
of a region as vast and unknown as the star-filled sky.
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drector
Dec 10, 2004, 9:35 PM
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Sorry to say this but climbing is just a hobby. The thing is, there's nothing wrong with that. I think people have a strange view about the word hobby and what a hobby can mean to a person. I have other hobbies beyond climbing and they are all equally important and also equally define me as a person.
When the wife says that your climbing is just a hobby, she is not condemning hobbies and not insulting climbing, she is insulting you by suggesting that the things that are important to you are not important to her. Her problem is with you and your having interests outside of your home. You could be working on a cure for cancer and she would probably still suggest you spent too much time on it.
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annak
Dec 10, 2004, 10:12 PM
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Climbing can be 'just a hobby', or it can be a lifestile -- everyone decides for themselfs. So you should decide what is it for you, and then act accordingly -- that is, live your life as you want, not as others tell you to. Just remember you have only one to live, there will be no second chance. If climbing is a lifestyle, as your post/profile suggest, then tell you parents that this is what you are, and they can either accept it, or not, but you're not going to change to fit their model of perfect a son. As for your wife -- sorry, dude, but that's all your fault -- we do not choose parents, but we're fully responsible for whom we're marrying -- so we always deserve what we have. Why did you marry her in the first place? Should not go for some one who does not share your passion and does not accept you as a whole... Someone suggested to talk to her and to develop a compromise -- I do not think that's a way to go -- I do not believe in compromises. You should decide for yourself, where you priorities are, and then either change your lifestile to become what your wife wants you to be, or tell her that you are what you are, and let her make her choice. Naturally, you should be ready to accept full responsibility for *your* choice -- i.e., accept the possibility that she will leave you, etc.
Good luck!
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unabonger
Dec 10, 2004, 10:32 PM
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In reply to: climbing defines how I live it. Everything else, my day job, school, sleep... just gets in the way.
Perhaps what they are referring to is the above. Climbing IS merely an activity. That it alone might define you may be as limiting as not doing it.
That "it" that you get by climbing, if you can find a way to let it bleed into your life in such that you find the same beauty and enjoyment in all your activities, then you will "be" a climber; as opposed to merely "doing" climbing.
Be cool, dirt man.
UB
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