One day, I was stuck in the tiniest tree well of Bamboo while skiing in Japan. Now, if you know, you know. If you don’t know…read on:

If you ever make your introductions to a baby bamboo tree well, it’s the fastest way to humility by way of humiliation. They look adorable, but are deadly. Bamboo have a thin trunk with thin long leaves branching out and so in the fluffy Japanese snow create little forest trap zones, funnelling loose snow at the bottom that never settles in on itself. If you get too close and fall, you are trapped with the bottom constantly falling out under you. It’s a horrible feeling.

My particular specimen was only chest high (the bamboo, not the well, that would have been impressive) a dainty little thing, and as I wiggled and huffed beneath it trying to get a grip with my skis on it’s smooth trunk it seemed to look down at me and...mock me?

What we do when we get stuck

How we get stuck varies, sometimes it’s an abrupt awakening like skiing into a bamboo, or having an epiphany and recognising we are in the wrong job, marriage or indeed, train cart. Mostly, it will be a mix of these two particular versions of hell.

Once we notice we’re stuck we go through a set of responses. First, there’s the shock absorbance directly after impact. These reactions are visceral and an attempt at life affirmation. Deep breaths, frantic assessment of escape routes, maybe a scream or swearing, sometimes a swell of panic.

Then we do the attempted escape. A frantic wriggle and hustle. The mental acrobatics and physical work of applying to different jobs with no timely results, reworking the budget to see if you could afford to live alone again, googling “can bamboo actually laugh at me?”. This is accompanied by the steady hum of trying to analyse the error: “How did I get here? Why am I so stupid? What exactly did I misunderstand?”

Sinking deeper

If you’ve ever actually gotten stuck in snow you’ll know the more frantically you try and wriggle your way out the deeper you burry yourself.

Now, you notice you’re sinking deeper, cue the self-help books and the wellness gurus who tell you to “reframe the problem”!

Aka: “years ago you would have been happy to be stuck in this position” - “gratitude makes hope sustainable” - “you’re not stuck, you’re being planted”, and my favourite: “just manifest”. 🙄

And sure, these help alleviate the pain of stuck-ness for a minute or two, but the moment that goddamn bamboo leaf tickles your face again and you can’t brush it away BECAUSE you’re ACTUALLY stuck, the reframing efforts just expose themselves as what they are: an illusion. Albeit a comforting one, yet still, unequivocally, an illusion.

The unfairness of the systems come crashing over you, and all but reconfirm that indeed, you are not just stuck, but to an extent, helpless.

Now, the real work begins.

Realities

You can’t forgo trying to escape the sticky situation, since trying is what lets you know if you’re actually stuck. There are no shortcuts here, unless you are a professional victim and just collapse into someone else carrying your responsibility, but that’s a story for another time.

If trying to help yourself by wriggling and reframing hasn’t (yet) or cannot work because of immovable realities, like power structures, dependants, age, economic circumstance, timing, etc. you have three options:

1) Settle in for the long haul. Endurance. Remind yourself of the stamina you have, the fortitude it already to took to get to where you got stuck in the first place.

Even the bamboo tree well isn’t immune to spring. The snow will melt, your tenacity will pay off.

“I don’t have that kind of time, I’ll starve or freeze to to death” you say.

If that is correct, you now must:

2) Ask and hope for help to arrive. Don’t let pride get in the way. Because I mean actual help. Not a career coach who’ll give you supervisory recommendations, or a relationship influencer who tells you to “just love yourself”.

Ask and hope for someone with a shovel who’ll help dig you out. A ski patroller who’s a part-time arborist. A social worker who can help you work the system. A friend who will let you stay on their couch. Someone in the dirt next to you. Sweating, struggling, swearing down in the dumps with you. Wielding a threatening saw over the bamboo or whatever traps you, if he won’t release you.

If help doesn’t physically arrive after you’ve asked for it, which is also a very real possibility, all you’re left with is with option 3.

3) Make peace with the fact, that yes, you may never become unstuck. What will life look like of you never do?

Is it a life still worth living?

This will prime you for deep, honest, acceptance, and in that, maybe you’ll even look up and notice that the bamboo is kinda pretty in the dawn light. So your senses open and you look around in peace, which in turn will make you more likely to recognise help and opportunity.

In time, one of the three things will happen:

The snow will melt and you’ll naturally become unstuck.

You never become unstuck, but you’ll be at peace.

Or, maybe, in that peace, you’ll be able to see someone materialise on the horizon holding a shovel.

Godspeed my friends.

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I am not having fun anymore. Everything is wrapped in real high stakes like purpose, and money to pay the bills. From grocery prices, to the crushing weight of trying to earn a living, to the worry that both my cat and I need to lose some weight and are fast approaching middle age together. From what I hear that comes with a free side serving of existential dread. What even *is* middle age? If we are all going to live to 100, is it 50? Is it mid 40’s? Shit. Am I already in it? No one told me!

I was on the river the other day, a beautiful day, clear water, spectacular scenery, a spot I’d never seen before, my boyfriend happily commenting on all the different kinds of rocks or something about flow and water dynamics acting like electricity (tbh, I barely follow when he goes full nerd mode, but I nod along enthusiastically)...a gorgeous day lay ahead.

Yet, I felt as flat and drowning in (self-appointed) demands crushing over me, as the water on the worn river rocks. All I could think was: “Been here, done that. I can’t breathe. What if it never works out?”.

The demands

Recently, I had been to Vienna where my sister and I went to a women’s business event (my sister is as smart as she is gorgeous and successful) where we met remarkably impactful and accomplished people. There was a panel discussion, during which the lack of self promotion of women in the STEM industries was discussed and the consensus had been something along the lines “they/we have to be more self confident”. The discussion moved on, but I never did.

The people on the panel had straightlined to a specific outcome of how that confidence would show. Being more show-y being one of them. So I kept wondering of which image everyone was modelling this “self confidence” by?

Words are loaded. They are fuzzy and muddled by layers of overuse in one prominent context over another and often revert to meaning only this one thing in this one context. An obvious example being the word “gay”, which used to just mean jolly and happy and now only means homosexual.

…Like to me, self confidence looks like the character “Rip” from “Yellowstone”. Strong, quiet, action before words, get-what-you-want-with-just-the-tip-of-a-hat-and-a-glare energy.

Unfortunately, by nature, when I want something, I am more like a golden retriever who couldn’t pass K-9 training. All bright eyed and bushy tailed.

And this is why I am not having fun.
I am trying really, really hard to be Rip, when I’m actually - just me.

You can’t compete with someone who’s having fun.

So whilst we are trying to reach a goal, we are also conjuring up an image of what the actual process of trying must look like, priming ourselves for double worry, double failure, double misery, double performance anxiety.

But I know one thing for sure: perseverance is only sustainable if we are IN LOVE with our process. Otherwise we burn out.

In my last letter I mentioned the issue I have with the rather flat credo of “just believe in yourself”. What if you can’t, because you believe you don’t have an image of yourself believing in yourself, in your mind?

I don’t think you have to believe in yourself. I think you have to know yourself.

If the indoctrination of the image of what you think other people who “believe in themselves” actually look like or feel like while they are doing “it”, doesn’t match your own behaviour and feelings, you’ll never trust your instincts, which is a prerequisite for that elusive self belief.

If you stay curious, and just keep going, you’ll get stronger in trusting your instincts, and whatever behaviour and feelings transpire from that -> that’s what you actually look like when you believe in yourself. In turn, you will enjoy the process rather than the goal, and thus, have fun. And if you’re having fun, you are unbeatable.

What does fun actually look like?

I had a friend who is long lost to Scientology, but she did teach me one useful thing: Always check the true meaning of words. So, instead of trying to copy the picture you have pre-installed as a reference, look up the etymology of a word, and then consider what you actually look like doing something in that vein.

• “Confidence” comes from the Latin con “with” and fidere “to trust”. So it literally just means doing something “with trust”.
  If the goal is to be more confident, then maybe it’s enough to just picture what you actually look like when you’re doing something with trust. (hint: for me, it’s not cool, calm and collected).

• “Courage” comes from Latin cor, or the French “coeur” meaning “heart.” Being courageous just means doing something “with heart”. So what do you actually look like when you do it with heart? (hint: when I do something “with heart” there’s a lot of fear and bursts of anger. Whilst I am doing the thing, I do NOT look courageous.)

• “Amateur” just means someone who is doing something for the love of it. If someone calls you a amateurish or you feel like you’re a total beginner, congratulations! You are acting your interest.

• “Enthusiasm” comes from Greek entheos “possessed by a god,” literally “the god within”. Enthusiasm just means being divinely inspired. So, you don’t have to look like a Disney princess in the middle of the best friend montage when you’re enthusiastic about something. You can be enthusiastic, yet, still.

• “Peace” comes from Latin ‘pax’ related to agreements or pacts. Peace just implies a state created through agreement. It does not mean you must fly to Bali on a yoga retreat meditating on a beach at sunrise.
  Being at peace simply means you’re in agreement with yourself, your values, and your circumstances. Which also means that peace, must be infinitely re-negotiated. It is the friction between your actualities of life, your values and your instincts which propels you forward, so be under no illusion that peace is permanent. However, if you manage to enjoy the negotiation itself, aka, the process rather than the outcome, then life truly IS all fun and games.

My point is this: I would like to say to the people on that panel, who tell the women in STEM (or in my case, blue collar work) to be more confident, that I absolutely agree. We should have the confidence not to play by the rules (and images) that others made up for us, but instead by the essence of the word, so we can act in honest confidence, not performative confidence.

Because:

I don’t want my gravestone to say “She gave a good Rip from Yellowstone impression”.

I want it to say “She was always Hanni.”

Godspeed my friends.

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To kick off the summer in style, I figured I’ll let you know a few ski patrol related highlights of fuck uppery over the years, and some respective learnings (if any). Maybe this will break the conversational ice, and be a reminder to only compare yourself to who you were yesterday. I know I have to, for comparison really is the thief of joy.

The highlight reel

These are in no particular order or timeline:

• I dropped a primed, albeit not lit, explosives charge right below myself and my colleague on the blasting ropeway stand, because I forgot to hold onto the spring loaded lever that secures it for travel. Luckily the loads are impact proof, but for a second there, I thought: “This is it.”

• I believed an overly dramatic teenager when he claimed both his wrists were “broken”, despite my better knowledge. Got him transported by helicopter unnecessarily. Nobody was amused. I just didn’t have it in me to argue with a teenager.

• I flipped a skidoo on a run, splattering it’s contents everywhere, breaking the windshield and bending the frame out of shape, gas spreading everywhere.

• I never told a chauvinistic, short tempered colleague to just lay off, when he blindsided me with an outburst of anger about something he believed I had supposedly said. Instead, I literally cowered and went out of my way to avoid him the rest of the season.

• I told people more than once that “Ah - I’m sure it ain’t broken” when it was, indeed, broken, even though I have been trained extensively on why we never diagnose a patient.

• I had to leave someone in a panic in a foggy white-out, because I couldn’t get the skidoo to grip to a complete stop. (I came back for them.)

• I forgot to hook myself into the safety line whilst descending a 45m tall lift pylon.

• I have put slope signs up facing the wrong way and spread to the wrong distances, so I had to reset the entire marking system, by myself.

• I overestimated a kids strength and encouraged them to carry on skiing in a snowplough (pizza), when they lost it and straight-lined into a tree. (They’re fine, but my heart stopped for a minute).

• I rushed to a scene, overtook someone on the edge of the piste and got the Akja (sled) stuck in a ditch, which turned out to be a little creek. It flooded the sled and I had to get someone else to do the call, whilst sorting out the little Aquarium I had just created.

• I forgot to take pictures of the scene of a hit and run collision to give to police, making the insurance process even more difficult for the patient.

• I never know the opening times of town services and just make them up, to get people off my back. The same goes for weather forecasts. Even though I watch the weather religiously and know it intimately, I pretend and say “I haven’t checked yet” just because I don’t want to get roped into the conversation.

(Incomplete) learnings

• If you have to do something sketchy, do it fast.

• Don’t be afraid to ask for help or tell your bosses/company their training culture is lacking or even - *gasp* - appalling. No-one will thank you for staying quiet after you’ve hurt yourself or others.

• HALT before making life changing decisions. If you’re hungry, angry, lonely, tired - try and fix that first if you can.
  If you’re forced to make a decision anyway, act as educated as you are intelligent. Don’t pretend to know something you don’t, and don’t pretend to not know something you do.

• Do not let others stress you out on their timeline. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

• Never, ever, tell a German with a plan that the weather may not allow for it. Just...duck and pray.

Know thyself

I’ve had imposter syndrome and too-cool-for-school syndrome, been late, hungover, hostile, a push-over, ill prepared, overly anxious, reckless, and everything in between.

When it comes to inspirational reverse engineering of why our imperfections are beautiful I like to use the imagery of rope or cable splicing as a metaphor:

You see, when a cable needs to be connected to form a full loop, or when there’s a broken section, it is done by “splicing” the two loose ends. The strands of a rope are woven back into themselves to create a strong, secure, seamless connection without using knots, to make a full loop. The two loose ends become fully integrated.

To do this you need to know how the cable is actually constructed and take apart its individual strands in order to put it back together. Mistakes and broken bits of yourself won’t haunt you, if you integrate them into the fabric of yourself. In order to learn from them, you must stay curious and generous towards these parts instead of exiling them into oblivion, only for them to rage against your ignorance.

This is what it means to know thyself. This is what Carl Jung called “shadow work”, Tsultrim Allione calls “befriending the monster”, and Britney Spears breath-sings about in “Oops - I did it again.”

If you deeply know yourself, and how to talk to all your parts, believing in yourself becomes a secondary effect, not a prerequisiste to success.

And if you fuck up as much as I do, the “just believe in yourself” credo simply won’t suffice. But more on that next time.

Godspeed my friends.

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Ski patrolling, like so many other blue collar jobs, is a true meritocracy, if the merit of measure is a physical necessity and if you are at the bottom rank. It is not a meritocracy of advancement. It is a meritocracy of accountability. When the stakes are tangible and real, such as providing first aid in an inhospitable environment, or clearing a clogged shitter if you’re a plumber, you either can and want to do the job, or you can not, or do not want to.

There’s a natural entry and exit threshold to the job. Before anything else, comes the question: do you really WANT to do this, because you better get comfortable being uncomfortable. How well you can do it is a matter of experience, the system you are embedded in, the opportunities you are given, interests and talents.

Some may ride skidoos better than others, but get squeamish and puke right next to the heavily bleeding injury they’re treating, some hold a steady hand when handling explosives, but have questionable customer service skills. Some jobs are strength-gated, like rebar work, with men clearing that gate more easily. Others, like forestry work or truck driving, reward organization, vigilance, and an eye for the bigger picture, skills I’ve seen women bring in spades. (The fact that the trades are still predominantly male isn’t a skills issue, it’s systemic.) Either way, if these jobs didn’t get done, you’d light a fire under their asses, and suddenly nobody cares if it’s Mary’s or Joseph’s ass.

I find this quite satisfying and, more importantly: less political than work environments littered with abstract KPIs, ROIs and people “circling back” on things in general wanker-nomics talk. I can honestly say, as a ski patroller, avalanche blaster and ropeway technician on the lowest ranks, sexism was always really far down on my list of problems.

Derogatory comments for not being, or indeed being, from a certain place? Sure.

Obnoxious, entitled customers? Absolutely.

Complacency? More than I care to admit.

Unqualified bosses with little to no leadership skills? Hell, yes.

Not making enough money? You can’t spell ski professional without ‘broke’.

Gatekeeping? A phenomenon ubiquitous in the outdoor industry.

But somehow, sexism never seemed pertinent to the more miserable, and thus most revealing days on the job. It seems to me that blue-collar, aka: dirty, co-workers, understand what it takes to do the job, are not as prone to sexism because we simply don’t have the time for it. Some jobs are so tough (and sometimes gross), nobody contemplates identities, since everyone’s busy DOING THE ACTUAL JOB and simply expects others to do the same.

A meritocracy of character

To be clear. I am not saying sexism doesn’t exist.

The systematic rolling back of women’s rights in increasingly autocratic states, the anti female rhetoric that floats into mainstream in the wake of far right political movements, the overwhelming and continuous violence against women and the shameful lack of men standing up for women or even just treating them as absolutely and completely equal on a daily basis are undeniable, heartbreaking even.

I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t mention the harassment I’ve experienced by a man who was a fellow ski patroller. However, I am sure he would have (and has) done so no matter what environment he was in. When I called it in, my (male) co-workers and boss protected me, and sadly he wasn’t the first or the last man who ever treated me poorly. Notably, the ski patroller has since been shunned by society (unemployed, divorced, lost social standing in town), because his anti-social behavior was just too far outside the fringes on what a community will accept.

In other words...I’ve never seen someone who was being sexist not also be a dick to other people, animals and nature in general. I’ve never met or worked with anyone who I experienced sexism from, or heard that they were a covert racist, who would have simultaneously been considered a great leader or an admired mentor. For example, a key executive at a company I used to work for is widely considered a choleric narcissist, as well as a sexist. When workers (both male and female) talk about her, her greed and incompetence are mentioned long before her apparent need to diminish other women, whilst publicly broadcasting her love of the sisterhood.

Or take my aforementioned personal case of male harassment. When I told people what was up, nobody was surprised. Not because they’d seen his behavior towards women in the workplace before (I was the first female ski patroller this place had ever had), but because he had belittled our colleague M. because he suffers from tremors, got into a seemingly unprovoked fist fight with colleague T. (though we all know he was just jealous of T’s superior mustache and skiing skills), and so on and so so forth.

No one is ever only a sexist.

If you behave like a dick towards the opposite gender, you probably behave like a dick everywhere else in life. It is not gender that divides us. It is quality of character. And lack of self imposed accountability. It is whether or not individuals choose abuse, physical or emotional, as their weapon of choice over the hard work of honest introspection and personal growth. When you leave the dirt behind and climb up the white collar ladder, much of that quality of character is quickly and easily diluted by money and power. “But it is men that hold most of the money and power!” I hear you say. And that is true. But that is correlation placating as causality.

Who’s merit is it anyway?

What I see everyday is not so much a gender war, but a class war. Sexism, like ageism or racism, is a convenient distraction from greed to retain its stronghold over the world. It is no accident that greed and pride are named the foremost destructive of the seven sins.

As the ingenious late comedian Ralphie May said on racism:

“Where I grew up in Arkansas there was no black and white. We were all just broke. What’s your color? Poor.”

The (deteriorating) meritocracy we live in was built by men for men. The standards of success were set when humans settled into an agricultural, non-nomadic lifestyle and by many measures are a victim of their own success. In the richer corners of the world, as we reach the age of what I call the neo-humanities, powered by AI and a mostly self-actualized work force, those merits will adapt. With AI taking over much of the processes that give value reward in the interest of things rather than people, the humanities are propelled into a renaissance of power.

I’m predicting that with that, predominantly female traits like emotional finesse, or a more peripheral view on problem solving are working their way into what is considered a measure of success. This process can’t happen fast enough, as we should all aim for a gender union, rather than a distracting gender war.

What will remain are the dirty jobs.

Until humanoids can do the grunt work we have to do it ourselves and I hope we never stop, because there is much joy and fulfillment in manual labor.
There is no place like the bottom of the ranks that reflects what is going well and what is going badly within a society. As long as we need and/or choose to get down and dirty with each other, and become farmers, cleaners, nurses, plumbers, electricians, and sometimes even ski patrollers, we should ask ourselves one question above all else:

Is it moral integrity that props us upright, or the illusion of importance on the carpet of glittery quicksand that is pride and greed? It is only if we succumb to the seventh of the seven sins, sloth, and become indifferent, we become truly de-humanized and the earth will get rid of us quicker than a golden retriever shakes off a watery coat. So whichever way you’ve indexed the personal inequalities and unfairnesses you’ve experienced lately, you have a choice to make. Will you get bogged down in an ideological war zone, where you see the sexism - racism - whatever-ism and stop there, or will you aim for what we all want more than anything else?

To be judged by our quality of character.

To live in a union of abilities not a war of weaknesses.

If the latter overpowers the former, face it, name it, step over it, thus both living and demanding accountability, and move towards a world that rewards the merits you deem worthy. To know what those are, you too, must improve your quality of character.

And that’s for sure, the hardest part.

The kid suddenly appears out of nowhere in the dense fog, exactly on the approximately 1x1 meter spot where the angle is just right to turn the skidoo off the steep pitch into the cat-track. If I go too high, it becomes too steep to turn and I’m stuck uphill, if I turn too early I’m in such a weird angle on the mini ridge below the flat cat-track, the skidoo will tilt over it’s side, if I keep going I’ll plow over the kid with a 220kg 90hp machine with no impact crumple zone.

There’s a split second of panic, in which I come to an almost stop, the kid does a sudden tight turn ending up below me, and as I pull the gas lever again, I have made the wrong decision, gotten too low for the turn, and too slow to white knuckle over the ridge, and I can feel the skidoo tilt and gain air on it’s left, so I jump off sideways as it starts to roll in on itself down the hill. I whip around to see if the kid is in its path, but it’s so foggy I can’t see anything. All I hear is the piercing sound of clunking metal, the stalling engine and what I assume are parts flying off it.

I slide downhill and somewhat poetically, see black smoke mixing with the white fog. It’s quiet now, and I hear no screaming, which is either really good, or really really bad. I make my way even further down, clear the fog line and see - no kid. I breathe for the first time in what feels like hours.

Now, the absolute yard-sale I’ve produced becomes apparent. All the tools from under the seats’ storage are splattered across the slope, the machine is upside down, black smoke coming from the engine, the back metal cage is bent, the front left plexiglass windshield is broken and it’s dug itself a little snow hole, with a black line of gas in the snow behind it. It’s as if the skidoo has sacrificed itself before it could roll any further, because somehow it managed to stop on the steepest section of the run. I’m shaking as I start to gather some of the tools and bits and pieces that are thrown across the slope, and make the call.

“Stefan, I’ve flipped the skidoo. No one’s hurt, but I need help.”

As I wait for my colleague I am mortified. This is my first season in this resort, a town I have just moved to, laying all my eggs in one basket. I was tired of moving around every season. Even though it’s already April, I’ve only been here for two weeks, because earlier that season, on my very first day at work on ski patrol, I had torn my ACL, had to get surgery and rehab my knee. Which I now feel thumping furiously in pain. Unsurprisingly, my doctor and physical therapists had strongly advised against working ski patrol already but I was miles away from actually getting on skis anyway. I figured I can still do patrol, because at this particular resort we do most rescues on skidoos anyway. We’re basically a glorified taxi. This is not a great start. First, I tear my ACL and go MIA for the season, then I flip a skidoo and can’t even fix it myself.

I am definitely getting fired.

When Stefan shows up, I stumble over a confused apology, and he surprises me by saying: “It’s only a machine. Main thing is nobody’s hurt”. He then proceeds to dig out the left front ski and single handedly pushes the skidoo upright, instructing me to get ready to jump on it and pull the brakes in case it starts to slide. Once flipped, he checked the engine and concluded the gas pouring over the hot engine is creating the black smoke but it should be fine to ride to the garage. He was adamant I should ride it there myself, since if I don’t get on again right away, I will never get on it again.

I had fallen off and gotten back on plenty of horses in my day (both literal and metaphorical), so that wasn’t an issue, but as we were convoying down to the garage, all determination to do this job slowly left my body, as I silently cursed and cried on the inside, because it has never been more obvious that physically, I could never do what Stefan just did. I simply am not strong enough and never will be.

Only in my head

“Maybe some jobs really aren’t for women...”, “What the feck is a Frenchie? Is it a tool? Is it a sandwich? What is he asking me for? Why do all men seem to know the names of all tools?” ...were just some of the thoughts that went through my head as he fixed the skidoo in the garage (Stefan is also a mechanic). I was embarrassed. I was watching my colleague fix a problem I had created. The next day I braced myself for the conversation with my boss. I assumed they would let me finish the season, but not ask me back next winter. When I saw him, he laughed and said “It happens to everybody.” I was both surprised and relieved.

He informed me of the spare windshield he’d already ordered and reminded me that speed was my friend: “Never go too slow uphill, you can’t steer anymore”. And that was it. No fuss, no drama. Certainly no mention of my inability to lift the skidoo by myself... Off to morning checks I was sent.

For the rest of the season, sure, there were some jokes about me breaking the skidoo but all in good humor, and when the spring snow got even mushier and tougher to break on, my colleagues would periodically ask me if I was still OK riding all the steep and tricky sections. I would say yes, it’s fine, even though I was absolutely shitting myself on the black runs with the skidoo. It is now two winters later and I still get a bit scared sometimes, but my biggest worry these days is that the control levers are too far from the handle bar for smaller hands. All my colleagues are big strong burly mountain men with bear claws as hands so they can reach easily, whereas I have to stretch and reach, which sometimes makes me feel like a little kid playing with grown-up toys. Those smaller hands come in handy though when having to reach into a snow machine hydrant gully to fiddle with a lodged rope knot.

It seems to me that it never even crosses my male colleagues’ minds that I happen to be a woman. And if it is, they hide it well. Now…higher up the ranks, it’s another story. And I’m not talking about my boss, who is more like a team leader in the hierarchy of the company I work for.

The trouble starts, where the low paying jobs end.

If you care to read on, read: “No sexism in dirty jobs”

“Ski patrol to station F please, there’s someone here with a dislocated thumb”

“On my way”

A pause

“Ski patrol to K., helicopter coming in soon, make sure to shut down the lift.”

A dislocated thumb is not something that warrants a helicopter. But a suspected pneumothorax is. This is when due to an injury or crash to your chest, air leaks into the space between the lung and the chest wall. Since ski resorts still don’t supply us with mobile xray machines, ultrasounds and MRI’s, unfortunately we still have to perform good old fashioned patient assessments with no fancy technical medical equipment. By the time I got to my man with the (twice!) dislocated thumb, the thumb itself had started to turn white, which is not a great sign and after a few rounds of circular DC-ABCDE patient assessment, I had determined the thumb wasn’t his biggest problem.

It was his chest, his breathing and thus his circulatory system. When he crashed he had landed on a tree stump with his chest and as he answered my questions and endured my physical examination his breathing apparatus showed all the signs of a respiratory problem. There’s a rule in first aid treatment that comes in real handy in the decision making process.

The rule is: “Treat first what kills first.” And since an inability to breathe would kill him before a dislocated thumb would, I made the call.

Now mind you, “determined” is a strong word here. I was as unsure of myself as I imagine a deer in the headlights is when it chooses, against its own instincts, to hop away from the light, not towards it.

Patients are often puzzles that are hard to figure out. It’s a perfect storm of a difficult environment and symptoms which need hospital environments to diagnose. All we can do is try and get people to that hospital environment as safely and as quickly as possible, all whilst:

- not creating further harm to the patient

- not creating further incidents / injuries to ourselves or others

- being mindful of resources.

Sometimes I get briefly overwhelmed with the guess work, and the choices I have to make on the spot, which in any given situation could have all kinds of chaotic consequences.

If I were to pick a singular goal and make that my measurement of success, I would be pretty lost.

For example:

If my chosen performance goal was: “Get all patients to hospital as quickly as possible” -> I would call helicopters for non-serious injuries, taking up resources needed elsewhere and racking up insurance costs for patients.

If my chosen performance goal was: “Always adhere to the patient’s wishes” ...let’s not go there, but let’s just say I’d be in jail by now. So I go back to what I call:

Ben’s Circle of Winning.

(Ben is one of my favorite ever EMT instructors).

When working on a problem you ask yourself:

What do I see? What does it mean? What can I do?

Then you see, listen and think -> then you do something (or don’t), and as you go on, patterns will emerge. You are now recalibrating your process to the only metric necessary: Will this improve things?

This ensures you can go to bed at night knowing you have done the best you can, and it loosens the mental grip on obsessing over a specific outcome whilst carrying you over in the general direction of your goal. Specific outcomes are a false friend, because in almost all situations in life, much of their achievement is out of our hands anyway. However, if we focus on a winning performance, we become less tense, which makes us able to come up with more playful and joyful solutions, and paradoxically, makes us more likely to reach that imagined specific outcome.

So don’t worry so much if you’ve made the right decision in the pursuit of your goal.

Worry if you’re delivering a winning performance on the way there.

After his ABC’s (Airways, Breathing and Circulation, etc.) and a swift splinting of the arm, he swoops under him, propping him up on his shoulder and tells him: “Now, Stuart, I know ‘ya may have a broken arm, but I need y’er help walking to ‘yer man over there by the 4x4 to get y’a back to your ma’”. (Sorry Ben, that’s what the Irish sound like in my head.)

So, off they stumble towards the imaginary rescue vehicle.

Ben’s entire patient assessment, including getting him into the safety of a vehicle, took him all but 7 minutes, whereas us trainees all faffed about for easily double the time. You see, by making Stuart walk, he could check for secondary injuries, possible circulation issues, neurological issues all in one go. Most importantly, he gave the patient a sense of agency and something to focus on, other than his excruciating pain.

Counterintuitively, it is often very useful to tell an injured person (only if they are conscious - dhu...) that you, their rescuer, needs their help.

In less extreme situations, the same principle applies:

If you want to help someone, don’t try and prop up their ego. Give them the opportunity to operate within their applicable competence. Ask them for advice, a helping hand, an opinion. Coddling someone, or feeling sorry for them ultimately helps no one. Empathy - yes, pity - no. If you’re helping someone, remember that they do need help, but they are not helpless.

Vice versa, a good way to make yourself feel better, is to do something that makes you feel useful, either helping someone else, or yourself.

Now, some people, in some situations can not hold any level of self responsibility (very young children; impaired people) and some do not want it (very young children; social martyrs) but the mere act of assuming someone has self agency and at least basic life competency, is the foundation of being treated with dignity.

When confidence meets competence

I was on duty to guard the roped off area behind which my colleagues were running avalanche explosions. Sometimes this feels like the most redundant place in the world to be, because snow mitigation works are done in the wee hours of the morning, well before any tourists are on the slopes. You are more likely to be run over by a stray mountain goat merrily fart-hopping along its morning route (yes, they fart a lot. Must be all that fibre) than a skier. But there’s always a slight chance of a lone ski tourer trudging towards early morning peak glory, which is who we stand on guard for.

We had already done 2 blasts, when my colleague Franz was prepping the third, when sure enough, there he was.

Now, for a bit of context: there are generally three types of ski tourers: the naturalist connoisseur who likes the solitude of the mountains, the athlete who’s a semi professional on some local “Berglauf” league, and the third, and most dangerous:

The “I-need-to-escape-the-daily-power-point-hell-I’ve-maneuvered-myself-into” manager type. They usually do triathlons in summer, drive an SUV that’s all tires and no trunk space, and did one avalanche course, 6 years ago, making them the most dangerous kind of expert of them all: the armchair expert.

Now, this particular specimen heading towards me and my security rope, was definitely the third type. Head down, sweating profusely and decked out in gear looking like he either was a pro, or training to become one. He did not appreciate me stopping him. When he didn’t believe me that I wasn’t just roping off the way to the peak at seven in the morning as a personal hobby of mine and that he would be walking straight into the blast zone, I pointed towards the ‘Warning! Explosives!’ sign with the big scary death’s head insignia, which also failed to impress him. After his mini tirade assuring me that he knew what he was doing, because he had gone up here a thousand times, he lifted his chin, took a determined breath, pushed past me, ducked under the rope and continued on his way.

I took a photo of him so we knew who the rescue dogs and us may be looking for and radioed Franz, told him to hold the shot.

Franz said no-can-do, the fuse was already lit (it takes two minutes for the fuse to burn down to and detonate the load.)

At this point all I can do is huck and pray. Literally.

The blast went off, moving barely any snow because the snow pack was stable and I could see our friend in the distance had cleared the section, barely even flinching at the detonation. Now this particular fella didn’t seem to have any issues with confidence and assumed he was bullet proof (well in this case, 2.5 kilos of explosives proof) to personal disaster. It made me wonder...

When proceeding with that level of confidence, you better make sure you control most of the variables. Additionally, even if you think you do, control is an illusion. It is always temporary and extremely fragile. Anyone who’s ever dated a snowboard instructor knows this.

Competence however...competence is the solid base made up by failure, knowledge and experience we can always fall back on, no matter our current emotional state. If Speedy McSpeederson had had competence, he would have stopped and waited to see if the snowpack moves, maybe even an extra five minutes or so after the initial detonation. Furious as he may be, he would have known that the mountain won’t match your imaginary timeline, no matter how hard you will it to.

Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence.

That’s a fancy way of saying: “They didn’t mean bad, they just stupid.” Now, let’s give Mr. Manager the benefit of the doubt and assume that he wasn’t proactively suicidal, but attempting to outrun his problems. We have all been there. What could Inspector Gadget have done to hone his competence instead of attempting to bolster his, most likely short lived, confidence?

He could have simply stopped and talked to me. We would have had a chat about what actually happens to the snowpack when you drop explosives on it, and why even crossing in a perceived safe distance isn’t necessarily safe. He was so sure of himself that instead of taking this opportunity to gain some competence, he saw me as an obstacle, not as an opportunity. As a badly fitted uniformed, under-caffeinated (yes), overpaid (absolutely not) ski bum who stood in the way of his early morning peak glory.

Conversely, I was forced to acknowledge his agency when he refused to let me stop him, even for his own safety. When he ignored me and blasted past (pun intended), it was an awful feeling in the no-failures-allowed world of snow mitigation.

We both lost that morning.

He lost an opportunity to gain competence and ego-check his confidence, and I lost faith in my ability to make people see me.

But that story is for another time.

There’s an oversized design book on my non-existent coffee table called “Outsiders”. It’s gorgeously inspirational with it’s hyper edite

d calligraphed text, double-spread nature scenery imagery and tactucally addictive thick recycled paper. Not to become too ‘meta’ but the book exists in a paradoxically dualist state. The justification for its existence, a decorative domestic item, is, by definition, the opposite of what its content advocates.

I feel like that book. Often.
Not, thick and recycled, but in opposition to myself.

A different kind of seasonal depression - Momentum lost

I have lived a season to season, exploratory road trip to adventure, remote project to project - life for almost 20 years now. Much of my physical setting, social system, professional demands, where my cat lives changes every 3 to 5 months or so. (Obviously featuring some returning scenery and starring cast members.)

Not to worry, this is not a “the grass is always greener” sermon. The benefits and pitfalls of a life defined by stability and consistency vs one tending heavier on the side of creative reinvention and exploration are well discussed. Some form of balance between order and chaos is obviously key, albeit, exactly where on the scale we live comfortably, is not only forever a moving target but a matter of highly individual predisposition, personal history and circumstance. At any given point I can only wish for anyone to bravely stumble towards just the right, momentary balancing point of their lives with the confidence of a four year old in a batman costume.

Personally, I relish the fact that my friends often euphorically greet me on the phone with the words: “daaaaarling, where in the world are you right now?” ...proceeded by general life updates and reassurances of wanting to see each other again soon. I marvel at the progress they make within their relatively steady lives and careers and couldn’t be more invested in my friends ingenious ways to find adventure within that very life. I particularly enjoy re-appearing in places and gently being lowered into the latest pool of local gossip. It makes me feel included and the time I’ve spent investing into places and people well reciprocated.

However, with this high volume of circumstantial change I find myself, once again, in the grips of a different kind of seasonal depression. The constant loss of momentum. Imagine working on a highly complex and notoriously difficult project on your computer, but you find no flow, because you’re interrupted by updating software or an overheating hard-drive. Or you’re working from home and your toddler keeps waltzing in demanding tacos. Now extend that timeframe to trying to focus over the course of a year, and you get the idea.

Unless you’re some kind of tunnel vision savant who’s immune to external matter, you can’t, I certainly can’t, build incrementally progressive, sustainable momentum. The bedrock to a lot of big life projects. Instead, it’s stop-and-go, hurry-up-and-wait, same- sh**-different-...everything:

All seasonaires, remote project workers, cruise ship employees, military, film crew members, oil rig engineers, hell, even college students, know the feeling:

The post season crash

The big re-set.
The absolute mess that is the time “in-between”.
The doing of the very opposite of what should be rest and recovery.

Whilst in the throws of a season, a project, or a journey I imagine the time off ahead like the messiah is coming, picturing myself peacefully and joyfully hacking away at all the things I had to put on the back burner. From getting my financial affairs in order, to cooking healthy meals, to starting a stretchy yoga routine on dewy early mornings...

Miserably though, after the “end-of- season party” hangover subsides and the promised land of extended free time lays before me, depression, and a vicious come-down from a permanent adrenaline high that’s akin to rehab detox, awaits.

Here are (some of) the things to be dealt with when no-one’s looking:

• unpacking and packing, settling into a new/old/yet another apartment or accommodation. Not one bag or two, but instead a full mini household move every time.

• cleaning and putting away last seasons gear • cleaning and setting up the new seasons gear • cleaning things in general, if unlucky, previous tenants dirt, which is the grossest of all dirts. other people’s.

• relentless laundry cycles and more (un)packing and (re)setting everyday essentials.

• if home, talking extensively to the cacti, thanking them for not dying and over- fertilising them in a frenzy.

• removing actual, literal cobwebs from corners and telling Steve the spider to go make himself comfortable elsewhere.

• domestic decorations whether it be Christmas lights, easter dried flowers, or autumn harvest leafs notoriously being out of season (at home), or non-existent (dorm rooms, shared houses, rental vans). No nest building here.

• staring down the business end of a persistently overstretched budget due to delayed payments, unforeseen travel costs, bureaucracy not being fully digitised and worst of all: the limited availability before getting back on the road, expedites repair/maintenance deadlines, making everything reliably more expensive. (It’s a running joke in my family that my existence is held together by duct tape and good graces..from ripped down jackets, to ceiling lights.)

Once the initial dust has settled of departure and/or arrival, phase 2, hits...badly:

• abrupt loss of social environment and acute loneliness.

• all consuming restlessness, thanks to the addictive qualities of heightened adrenaline, seratonine, dopamine, all the -ine’s. Physically, mentally, emotionally I feel equally exhausted and unable to rest.

• for women: hormonal cycle mayhem

• pimples and digestive issues from the sudden change of diet

• the difficulty of settling into a new, or any daily rhythm whatsoever.

• simmering self hatred over the fact that I should know better by now.

• an existential questioning of life choices

• wanting to be left alone and around people at the same time.

• feeling equally uninspired and overwhelmed by opportunity

• a constant nagging inner voice that whatever I am currently doing is wrong, and I should be doing something else

• deep sadness on all that I miss out on, such as friends, siblings, or even a steady working relationship with the local gym.

Sidebar: The singular thing I seem to be able to adjust seamlessly to is hanging out with my cat (if she was staying with someone else), which once more speaks to the truly magical powers of animals, but that’s for another piece.

The joy

The post season paradox of needing to recharge but also reorganise is genuinely one of the shittiest phases of non-permanent employment/location life. It’s part of the dirty work keeping the dream propped up on legs about as steady as that of a new born foal. It’s the time I set aside to “sort myself out”, to “really focus this time”, to “get it together already”...Yet somehow I end up in a mud puddle by the river, digging a damn like I used to when I was a kid. There is also the sheer joy of making this the time to write down all the craziest dreams and goals, to over-plan and overthink, to daydream of far-flung places and wild work options, and often setting those ideas in motion.

Whilst play time is vital, especially for a relentless thinker and feeler like myself, it is soundtracked by a highly negative, judgemental, nagging inner voice for every minute not spent in deep, focused work. In “What I talk about when I talk about running” Haruki Murakami writes about the grindstone like character of living a life in creation. How the dedication to being a creative, whilst often not being a choice, but an innate necessity in the creative herself, should be taxing physically as well as mentally, because a steady rhythm of hard work is the only way to create more than we consume, which in turn, is the key to a good life.

The post season paradox of not being able to use time efficiently when you have the most of it, is the same as the paradox of discipline being the key to mental liberation, hard work the key to freedom of choice or, having to let yourself sink first, before softly floating to the surface during the drown-proofing drill of the Marines.

Sometimes I make it work, sometimes I don’t. Each time, without fail, even though I know it’s coming, even though I have scheduled down time, work time and play time... I never seem to be able to rest&recover when I need it the most.

It continues to take me by surprise.
Maybe because that, in essence, is the joy of adventure life.

You never see it coming.