Gaffing Life's Pole

   Have you ever done a task that was so symbolic to what you are currently experiencing in your life?  I have; actually I JUST finished. I am currently in the armed forces and I want to be certified in a signal related job.  This job entails gaffing up a pole.  Gaffing is when you use climbers, which look like the leg braces that Forrest Gump had on his legs as a child, to get up a pole.  Attached to these climbers are gaffs: small, sharpened metal shanks.  The simplest way to explain it is, you stick your foot in the wooden pole with one gaff and climb up the pole.  Sounds easy enough.  But like most things that look and sound easy, it wasn't.  I needed to climb to a certain distance without any support other than my gaffs and my arms.  Then place the safety strap around me while still keeping hold of the pole.  Once my aid was in place I needed to continue up the pole until I reached the top. When I reached the top I need to install & uninstall hardware to the pole, without dropping anything.  If  I dropped any equipment I had to go back down and get it, then start over.  If while installing and uninstalling the hardware I did not make all the facing movements taught by the instructor, I still had to complete them before coming down.  If I lost my footing at anytime and then fell, I had to gather my bearings and start all over again.  All of this needed to be done with a day and half worth of training.  I know I may be loosing some of you, so here is an example of what I needed to do.

   Nice video right? Did you notice how graceful and strategic that man was? That, is not how I looked.  I think I fell at least four times.  It was not pretty.  I had splinters, I was getting hot and fatigued and my frustrations levels were increasing with every failed attempt.  Everyone else was getting up there with little to no problems.  Here I was with a dust cloud all around me because I had fallen from the halfway point.  The icing on the cake was that I was in a class of ALL males and I was on the verge of having a visit from my red headed friend. AWESOME!  So now I am extra emotional about...well... Everything. ;)

   I got home from my physically and mentally irritating work day ready to quit.  This was too hard, my body hurt, and I already felt like a failure. I just wanted to withdraw myself from the course before I injured myself or made a bigger fool of myself.  My husband listened as I went on and on about how horrible it was (never actually saying that I wanted to quit).  I was having so many problems getting to the halfway point; how could I be sure that I wasn't going to fall once I reached the top?  My instructor that was at the base of the pole was a man that I used to work with daily.  He is one of those people who believes that what you believe is wrong, unless it is conjured up by a conspiracy theorist, --that includes, but is not limited to, religion.  So there I was ¾ of the way up the pole scared because my gaff had gotten stuck and I did not want to jerk it out and my instructor tells me to “have faith”.  Well I didn't and did not appreciate hearing those words coming out of his mouth.  His annoying voice was stuck in my head all day going into the night saying, “have faith”.

      

   I laid down in my bed recapping the day as I always do, trying to visualize my mistakes or recognize anything previously overlooked.  This gaffing was so symbolic of my life.  Every goal I set, I do with intentions of getting to the top. But my tools in life always seem so... dark ages. Instead of getting it handed to me like my friends, I had to WORK. Then when having to work it always looked like everyone else was getting through their struggles with ease, almost as if it were not a struggle at all.  At times I would get a bot of momentum then... I would loose my footing and fall.  From the bottom all I could see were the people that I started the “race” with; they had already reached the top, their goals and their dreams.  The more I fell in life, the more I wanted to give up.  I would convince myself that my goal was not important to me.  I did this so I could feel like less of a failure on the inside. I see now that that was my true low.  Unable to truly self soothe myself to the point of walking away from my obstacles I would try again.

        

Me, Gaffing - 7 Jan 2011

   Today I finished gaffing.  I got to the top of the pole, completed my tasks while up there and came down.  I slipped on the way down, but I didn't fall.  My key to success in gaffing was to stayed focused on my pole. I stopped looking at it as a competition amongst others, but as an accomplishment for myself.  When I reached to top of the pole... I didn't notice.  My mind was so centralized on getting my foot in a stable position that I did not know that I had made enough stable steps to reach my destination.  I have a couple more objectives to achieve.  But with gaffing I am officially done. LOL

P.S. I swear I lost 2lbs doing that crap.  At least I feel like I did