New beginning - once again

I have written hardly anything during the past few years. The main reason is that nothing very exciting has happened in my settled everyday life. Besides, I have not felt inspired to get started on the topics I have in my mind. I will get to those ones later on. But I also feel like whatever I would write about my attitude towards life would be repetition to my previous posts. Let's take this one as an example...

This is my last night in the Netherlands. After living here for two years it is time to move on. Professionally, after some genuinely interesting times, I got quite bored sitting quietly in the office, far away from the action taking place in Africa and Asia. The projects I worked for became just excels and emails to me, rather than real people benefiting from them. I realized if I want to continue my career in the development sector I want to be placed near the projects; where problems and solutions reside, where I get exposed to different cultures, where unexpected things happen. I sense the sector is full of adventure but I was missing out on it. Another major reason for leaving this flatland is of course the lack of outdoor climbing. I got tired of indoor top roping (yes, Dutch gyms only have top rope and no lead) while it was pouring raining outside. Outdoors life and especially climbing is my lifestyle, which brings me so much happiness I cannot imagine living without it any longer.

The above reasons are definitely valid. However, if you read my previous posts you see me repeating words such as adventure, unknown future and new challenges. Apparently I get some sort of thrill out of leaving behind what I have built and starting over with something new. That is why I am not going to write again about the excitement of packing up and stepping on a plane to head towards things I yet have no idea about. This time my plan is to travel for around half a year. I do not know yet where I am heading to, but in addition to climbing (and I really wanna get good at it!) I want to explore opportunities to combine my professional ambitions with a traveling outdoors lifestyle. My ideas are still vague and versatile, and I do not know which attribute weighs more in importance, but I believe I will find a way to get what I want. Compared to the similar situation three years ago, I feel now more confident with my skills, more trusting at my persistence and intuition, and more accepted by people around me.

So let's cut the crap: I am damn psyched to go traveling!

And a few photos to summarize the silent year...

For winter break I went to Laos and climbed like shit but promised to improve my climbing attitude...

...while hanging out with this group of most amazing people!

In the Netherlands I explored many different cities and learned to appreciate art museums...

...and trained climbing indoors. 

At Easter I went to Turkey that was amazing in such many ways...

...so I returned there immediately and finally sent my first 7A (woohoo!)

In the summer I had many nice visitors with whom I visited more cities...

...and ate and drank well.

I made weekend trips to the UK to see the idyllic countryside...

...and sleep on beautiful spots that got me thinking about getting my own van and being completely free!