climbing and hugs

[hermionesviolin]

I climbed today, for the first time since before lockdown (March 10th to now = close to 16 months, so possibly the longest break I've taken since I started climbing regularly).

I hit fully vaccinated 8 days ago, and my friend Meagan S. hit fully vaccinated 2 days ago, and Harvard extended our holiday weekend, so we went to BKBS this morning.

I started with a 5.6 and worked my way up to a 5.9 -- which made me feel better that it's not gonna take me forever to get back to climbing at the level I was before pandemic.

+

Meagan was really excited to hug me -- which was really sweet.

The other day, Thom posted:

I was just thinking how amazing it is that I've now hugged 5 people outside my immediate family in the past 3 weeks (and 1 day). And then I remembered that I used to hug more than that on a Sunday morning.

I've hugged 6 people (not counting my partner) since hitting full vaccination status and I definitely appreciate and enjoy it, but I don't feel hungry for it like it's something I've been missing -- which I find somewhat interesting. Like, I haven't felt particularly touch-starved this pandemic, even though I've only been hugging/touching my partner, and we spent a large chunk of pandemic only doing that a few days a month (after the first couple months that we weren't sharing air at all; and even now we only see each other in meatspace a couple days a week) -- which surprised me during pandemic, given how canonically pro-touch I am. So I wasn't sure how I'd experience getting to hug people again. And it's definitely something I'm glad to get to do again, but I don't seem to have unlocked a secret repressed hunger.

Comments

[lunabee34]

I'm glad you hadn't lost as much of the climbing mojo as you feared.

[meat_and_breath]

The lack of feeling touch-starved is really interesting, and now that I'm thinking about it I probabyl feel the same way. Definitely glad to hug people, again. But not hungry for it, to borrow your term. When I visited D the other day, it felt like she had that hunger — she hugged me repeatedly, and I enjoyed all of them and was glad to get hugs. But I clearly was not excited about it in the same way she was.