Not Just Because It's There
If you look at my Peaks Project - Vertically Challenged, prima facie, this entire project looks like a classic high-effort ego trip. I won't lie and say ego isn't in the passenger seat.
But I barely linger at the summit.
So why subject myself to the unforgiving ascent (or the deep water)? Establishing limits? Overcoming fears? Finding a calendar date to look forward to?
The real drive is simpler and stranger. A search for authentic friction, a promise, and the liminal standstill.
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The Death of the Casual Hangout
What we're experiencing now is a creeping curation that has bled from our screens into physical reality.
Stitching elements together to evoke a genuine emotion is art. Doing it to scream “look how cool I am” is not. The former isn't dead, but the asymmetry is getting hard to look at.
We are adopting extreme, trend-based personas that evolve faster than we can process them.
The character takes over the host. The mask fuses to the face. The true identity gets buried so deep you start to feel hollow.
And stripping the mask gets harder every day you successfully hide behind it.
Someone recently bemoaned to me that "the casual hangout is dead." You can't just have people over anymore. The apartment has to be perfectly staged. No room for the unpolished and the vulnerable.
(Admittedly, this entire website is a curated garden. But it's also my active rebellion against the sterile boxes of algorithmic social media. I am trying to carve out a space to be raw and earnest here. Paradoxical in a way, I know.)
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"Go see the world!"
Next time I snap a picture of something, I’ll make sure to actually see it first.
This has completely plagued modern travel. The sense of discovery has been strip-mined. Everything trends toward a sterile global homogenization dressed up as convenience. The modern tourist pipeline is a solved algorithm.
Arrive at viral spot → consume local aesthetic → verify presence via photograph → leave.
The puzzle has been solved. No mystery.
We have all become content machines, terrified of being caught off-guard.
This is why I gravitate toward the edges.
Sprawling trek to Kebnekaise. Vaguely charted Grauspitz. A nondescript Danish farmland.
There's a sense of scale there that hasn't been dressed up for you. It isn't a curated set piece built to satisfy a viral craving. The friction is the discovery.
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Quiet and Falling
Here's the kicker. I have acrophobia. And thalassophobia. Heights unsettle me in a way that doesn't fully resolve with exposure. Deep water carries a specific, irrational dread that I can feel the moment the seabed drops out of sight beneath me.
I climb mountains anyway. I dive anyway.
They are controlled confrontations. Beckoning me to step outside the box I’ve unconsciously put myself in.
Can I do a little more?
The climb becomes as much a self discovery as discovery of the mountain.
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Suspended Inbetween
The fear and the unknown ground you. But that is secondary.
The enchanting and unadulterated beauty of the climb (or the dive) is detached from the mundane. Otherworldly.
I’m back in the ether. Floating.
Why is the in-between so safe? Because you cannot be fully held accountable in a place you haven't fully arrived. There's something incredibly protective about being in transit - you can observe the world without being pinned down by it.
On a mountain, that same feeling of liminality takes over, but purified.
The summit isn't the destination. The ascent is. The moment you're neither here nor there, neither the person you were at the trailhead nor whoever you'll eventually become - that's what I keep going back for.
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Dissolving Kronos with a Promise
I have always felt that if I can just pause time, I can finally rest.
Kronos - the devouring, chronological time-boogeyman - cripples me for missed past commitments to self.
For resting while the next one approaches.
For versions of me that were supposed to exist by now.
But what is it that I flee from? Unkept promises? There are several. And the oldest ones weigh the most.
An atlas on the floor. The soft hum of Nat Geo on television.
Slow pans over landscapes that didn’t feel real. Places weren’t content. They were distant. Untouched. Almost fictional.
I would sit there tracing routes with my small fingers. Coastlines, borders, empty stretches of land.
Narrators who spoke like they had all the time in the world.
Inviting me to get on my bicycle and ride to the edge of the country. Build a raft and sail the oceans. To the edge of the atlas.
I didn’t know it then, but I was making promises.
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Then the slow pans and grainy film got swapped for cleaner images and faster cuts.
The distance collapsed. As did the mystery.
But the promise remained.
To stand, even briefly, where the map used to end.
At the edges, Kronos loosens its grip.
For a moment, I’m no longer behind or ahead.
Just there.
I’ve kept one of many promises to myself. The peak is just proof it happened.