A study in tenacity; too many zeros.

I saw the PhD as a measure of one’s intellectual pain threshold.  And, as I sat with my pal (Dr.) Ruthie in Zizzi recently, we both agreed it was a study in tenacity.  It takes bloody-minded stubbornness and strength of character to sit at one’s desk day after day, hour after hour, writing and rewriting.  I see Everest as a similar test of endurance. Except with Everest it is a measure of one’s physical pain threshold.  Both of them, though, are a test of one’s psychological determination and individuality.

People ask me why I am bothered about climbing Everest and I can give them any number of answers.  It provides a focus for life so that the months and years do not drift by without any tangible evidence of achievement or success.  A great plan like Everest or a PhD has to be carefully thought through and so creates purpose and structure and meaning to one’s existence.  The challenge and excitement and the personal satisfaction that comes from succeeding in something that, relatively, so few other people have done builds personal confidence and pushes one on to even better and greater things.

In some ways Everest already seems harder.  With the PhD my MBA research was noticed and the funding for three more years study established in a reasonably straight forward manner.  As such, there was no need for me to raise study funds of my own and I thank Warwick Business School, Aston Business School and NESTA for all their contributions.  But for Everest the fund-raising needs to be done from scratch.  £70,000 has more zeros than I would like.

A bear of little brain, throwing in the towel, making a plan

Being a bear of little brain, I had this naïve sense that I would be able to do a PhD, run a business, swim competitively, have some semblance of life AND plan and train for an Everest attempt in 2014. I realise now how pathetically ambitious that was.  Especially as all the other things, even without the Everest plan, almost conspired to send me quite around the bend.  In the last twelve months of my PhD I did little else than write, work, consume junk food, drink too much wine and cry.  There were more than a few moments where, late at night, my hand hovered over the keyboard ready to write one mere line of narrative to my PhD supervisor….” I’ve had enough”.  Now, the other side of thesis submission, waiting for my viva, surprised and pleased with the interest in my research and experience, I look back on that time as a place that existed somewhere between a nightmare and a reality. 

The month in the US post thesis submission was supposed to be a time of rest and calm in which to consider and establish the plan for the next decade of my life.  Fifty, on paper seems impossibly old but here I was, essentially at the beginning of something, rather than the end.  Between flights and car journeys and one new hotel after another, between new places to see and new experiences to have, I’d felt that there was not much time to sit and consider both practically or philosophically the years ahead.  But on the final flight, with home in sight, surprised by how much I was looking forward to being back, things began to take form in my mind.  Opting out of the in-flight entertainment and laying aside the novel I was reading, I set about making a plan.