Day 212: Challanges of the arborist profession

It has been more than one year since I started developing myself as a climbing arborist. Tree care is mentally and physically one one of the most demanding rope access variants and my body had to go through a lot of adjustments. Muscle pains were a constant and the most persistant pain is in the small joints of my palms. Several months ago I experienced also a major back pain after s long period that took quite a while to diminish. And recently it came back aga recently due to additional stress factors. The first occurance was related to exhausting job of high cherry tree reduction and underestimating the charge for it. Also I was at that time not aware that the tree saddle can be adjusted much more ergonomically in order to eleviate the pressure at my lower back.

A week ago I got a new saddle that was suppose to be much better however it did not feel that way where wearing it. Sure it offered a lot of options for custimization in order to attach different tool holders however the texture of the inner padding was much more smoother and slippery. Thus there was less friction between the saddle and my back, causing the weight of the saddle to press on my hips instead of being distributer equally around my belt region. I did some additional adjustments recently that should correct the issue so I will see how it feels in the future climbings. That was the first contributory factor for reacurrance of the lowe back pain.

The second factor however was of a mental origin due to my decisions in terms of future development of my arborist career. One point is the cost of arborist equipment and my constant increasing investments. One can start climbing trees with basic tools that cost just several hundred euros. However considering the veriety of jobs that and arborist can face, it requires one to have larger arsenal of equipment that is aligned with professional standards that costs tens of thousands of euros. And most of it needs to be replaced every several years if not sooner due to war and tear, legislation of due to manufacturer instructions. It is equally with the knowledge and training. One can get some information from free or low-cost sources however the professional body of knowledge of arborists is vast and constantly expanding. Professional courses, trainings and certificates alse cost a lot of money.

Currently I am attending a 5-days aborist course at a middle school that is 2 hours of driving away. Since the classes start at 07:30 every monrning I decided to reserve a room at their hostel which was the cheapest way of lodging available. We are done with 2 days of lessons and there was a day off between the day 1 and 2. Instead of returning home I decided to stay for the intemediant day. Now I am back home since there was a 3 days of pause before we are to continue. So if I calculate the cost of the course alone and add the costs of lodging, food and travel it sums to a significant monetalty investment. Not only that but while I am attending the course I also am not able to work for profit and thus there is also the cost of loss of potential income. And the practical part of the course includes physically exhausting exercises of climbing and pruning trees that also take tall on my body, requiring me to rest for at least day or two after the course. Consequently my mind in producing a lot of thoughs of concers and worries that contributed to my current experience of the back pain.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing for my mind to produce thought like: “The arborist course is a waste of time, energy and money since you already have all the knowledge thay you require to exectute jobs that the clients ordered.” instead of realising that I do not know what I do not know and I definitely already gaind very useful knowledge after attending just first 2 days of the course. I commit myself to when and as my mind is creating doubts about investments in professional training to constantly gradually invest in becoming a better professional considering the available savings.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing for my mind to produce thought like: “You are already a middle-aged man and it does not make sense to star with arboriculture due to your body slowly becoming weaker and weaker.” insetad of realising that I am in relatively good shape and am getting old very slowly. I commit myself to take on loads aligned with the capacity of my physical body and to have enough rest while stopping and b reathing every time my mind starts worring due to loss of income in time of rest.

Day 211: Finally got a laptop replacement

It has been one month since I visited the Planet of Health and got diagnosed with energy blockage in the bottom part of my human physical body. I was prescribed certain essential and cold pressed oils to take couple of times per day and a specific vegan diet. Two weeks later my back pain significantly diminished however it still did not go away completely. A day before yesterday while I went around the Maribor city suburbs on foot it looked liked the back pain was completely gone however the next day the pain was back in the morning while I was still in bed. Yesterday I decided to finally invest in a used laptop computer in order to have a comfortable enough tool to restart writing in this blog. Now I plan to write more regularly so that my unconscious mind patterns are processed effectively.

If I go back in time and look at the the events before my back pain occured I can see that it was related to several incidents. One was my general decision to start working as a climbing arborist that involved hard physical work in tall trees doing pruning or complete removal of a tree. In relation to that point I have been experiencing muscle pains due to new body movements however they were soon gone as the muscles adapted to such forces. More concerning thing was the chronic pain in my finger joints that started last year after doing very demanding hedge trimming for several weeks. At the end of November 2022 the joints on my fingers became so swollen and painful that I had to rest for the whole of December in order to regain normal movement. Thus in the beginning of 2023 I was very careful to slowly introduce strain to my fingers in order not to cause any permanent damage. However after doing heavy physical work with my hands the pain reoccurs and persists up to 2 weeks or more after I stop with such work.

The second incident was a specific job where I had to remove one cherry tree that was 10 meters tall, make another similar cherry tree half of its original size, and reduce several other beech trees. The weather in time of project execution was very unstable and it offered only small windows of time when the rain was not falling. So I did the removal of first cherry tree one afternoon and reduced the other cherry tree the following week. Just after I completed the reduction that was the time when I started to experience current lower back pain for the first time. I hoped that the pain will be gone after a night of rest and that next day I would be able to continue with finshing the project. However the next morning the back pain persisted so I decided to have a talk with the client. I wanted to renegotiate the fee since I realised that my quote was several times lower regarding the quantity of time or work needed to complete the project. The meetring resulted in client's decision to stop the project and I was payed for the so far completed part much less than I wished for. If I look at the thoughs that was going on in my mind during that time that eventually resulted in my back pain I can describe them like this:

1. I see that a climbing arborist work is very physically demanding. In recent years I have been working much less physically exhausting tasks since I mostly worked with computers. I will be 50 years old this year and I wonder if my body will be able in time to adapt to much more phsycally havy tasks.

2. I see that my fingers get painful already after couple of days of hard work and they take weeks to heal. Will this situation in time improve and my fingers will get more resilient? Will change in my diet contribute to decrease or complete removal of pain in small joints?

3. I see that investment in arborist knowledge and equipement demands time and money. Will it be worth it, and is working with trees something that I am pasionate enough to do it for many years to come? Or will I loose the interest if some better opportunity comes along?

4. I see that quoting tree jobs is quite tricky since one similar tree can take several times more work to trim or remove that the other due to situation that can not be identified by just observing it from the ground. What to do when the actuall work necessary is far greated that originally predicted?

5. I see that in tree work weather is a significant factor that limits the time available to work on trees. Will I be able to earn enough in days of good weather? Will I get enough jobs in winter? Should I also work on trees while raining like they do in some other, especially northern countries?

Day 210: Restarted writing

It has been almost 2 years since I last supported myself with writing and I see that things accumulated to the point where I need to look at my situation and make some resolutions. I did start with a blog post last year during the plandemic, however, I did not have enough motivation to finish it. One of the contributing factors for not writing sooner is that several months ago my laptop computer got damaged beyond repair so only my desktop computer is available now. I tried to write on it however being in a sitting or standing position is so unpleasant for me that I can not do proper self-reflection. I also tried writing using pen and paper however I found it similarly odd and ineffective. I now finally created a solution where I am in a similar relaxed position as using a laptop computer while using a desktop computer. So the things that I need to address are related to a drastic change in my professional career where I switched from working behind computers to doing manual jobs in people's gardens. In the summer of 2022, I started trimming hedges and I slowly transitioned to bigger trees. The new type of job came with many uncertainties and concerns. One of them was observing the capacity of my physical body to do manual work. While I considered that I gave myself enough rest between jobs I started to experience massive pain in my palm joints on both hands at the end of November.

Since besides the pain my joints also were not closing smoothly it was a very unpleasant feeling grabbing thing and I became worried that I permanently damage my fingers. Luckily after resting for the whole of December the pain slowly diminished and the functioning of the joints became normal again. Thus in January 2023 I slowly started to increase loads to my fingers and observed how they would respond. Sadly the pain came back after doing manual work only for a couple of days and persisted for up to two weeks. Such is the situation until now despite already making some dietary changes that should result in betterment. In February I did research about the causes of pain in small joints. What I found was the information explaining that humans after certain age produce 1% less collagen every year which is necessary for the regeneration of cartilage. So I started to take liquid collagen supplements in the form of ampoules every day that I purchased in a local cosmetics shop. Until now did not experience any noticeable improvement in my joints becoming more resilient so I searched for different options. A clerk at the city pharmacy recommended me some pills with glucosamine that should be more effective and I am looking forward to the effects.

Yesterday I also went to a holistic center called Planet of Health for overall body situation analysis. They are using a special method where at the same time a temperature is measured on the left and right side of your neck, from the left and right armpit and the belly button. After 3 minutes of measurement computer prints 4 pages of data where around 150 parameters are being evaluated. If levels are normal they are colored green, if they are too low, they are blue, and if levels are too high, they are colored red. Then the therapist explains the results in simple terms and makes some questions. The results showed that my blood is pretty good, and that division of my cells is very fact however that I am not digesting and eliminating very well. Also that the temperature in the lower part of my body is too high which also explains the manifestation of lower back pain a couple of weeks ago which is also the reason why I came for a diagnosis. After receiving also some other helpful feedback the therapist recommended starting using some of their products which were cold-pressed oils and high-quality essential oils. I got detailed instructions on how to apply those oils whether by ingesting them pure or mixed with water or rubbing them onto my skin on certain areas. Besides that, I also got extensive nutritional instructions that included a specific vegan diet. Starting today, I am now changing my eating habits to even healthier with the expectation that it will result in me being able to handle physical body strains much better.

However since I realized how the biggest contributing factor to inner imbalance and consequent pain is mind patterns, I am now going to look also into this dimension of my existence. So the general result of the plandemic for me was losing trust in the government even more and thus my willingness to obey laws diminished even further. It is not that I am breaking laws that I see beneficial for public order and safety however I do not have the will to study every single new law and follow it since I even do not possess the capacity to remember them all. Thus I find myself in a position of constant danger that someone would at any time charge me with breaking some law and they would take my money or possessions or put me in jail. As a result, the only effective defense I see is to have as little in my bank account and own as few things as possible. Thus I am here also limiting myself in terms of being able to work commercially so I have to find other ways of covering my needs.