Alex, question. Do you ever feel anxious or nervous about climbing before you do it, like the night before or something like that?

No, I guess, I mean, I definitely have had a hard time sleeping before some climbs, but for me, that's

generally before big alpine outings. So when your alarm is set for midnight and you're about

to do some huge thing in the mountains. And I think for me, that that maybe triggers a little

more anxiety because it's so far outside of my comfort zone and then I guess you know

occasion I get a little anxiety trying to red point a sport route or things like that and then I guess

I've done you know a handful of competitions over the years and and experienced the same kind of nerves

before those a little bit because you know I hate I hate performing in front of people. But I don't know. I mean, it all seems relatively normal.

Do you think that other climbers in your peer group, you know, in the sort of professional

realm of the sport, do you think that they feel stress or pressure in their job? Because like I think someone

like me or to a lot of listeners out there on paper being a professional climber, I think most

passionate climbers would be like, hell yeah, sign me out. See, there are definitely a lot of

professional climbers that struggle with not just the pressure of climbing, like trying

to perform at the level that they want for climbing, but then also wanting to live up to

whatever it means to be a professional climber, you know, thinking they should be climbing more

or harder or doing cooler things or making better videos or whatever. I mean, I think that there are a lot of high-end climbers

that put a lot of pressure on themselves, which is probably how, you know, that's probably

partially how they've become professional climbers because they push themselves to climb really

hard. Yeah, I think it's not that uncommon to see people putting a lot of pressure on themselves

to perform in various ways. I often think of this quote from Julius Irving, NBA player,

who said something to the effect that being a professional means doing the thing you love

even on the days you don't love it. I mean, I think it applies to climbing quite a bit because

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