The wind bellows and whips the frosted snow into my face, a child with a tantrum, burrowing deep into my cheeks and releasing tidal waves of free flowing frosty tears from my eyes. My rubber Sorrell hiking boots–my truly faithful steed in my Austrian adventures found for $16 in the local Kansas second hand shop–slip on the ice encrusted rocks, and the black 1 euro gloves do nothing to dam the waves of cold that dive into my fingers as my hands plunge into the banks of thick snow in attempts to stop my fall.

The Austrian hikers that I meet are all pleasantly whistling tunes and cheerily hollaring “Gruß Gott!” against the blowing wind to me as they dance with their professional hiking poles and boots that were made for the icy conditions of the Schöckl mountain in winter.

Despite the quite obvious amount of discomfort I should be experiencing–as I am quite wholly unprepared for winter hiking and should probably be massively discouraged from embarking on such excursions–I find myself whistling an equally merry tune and bellowing “Servus!” in return as I scrub my fingers forcibly together in attempts to defrost them from their current state of abhorrent uselessness.

My own positivity surprised me.

This I say not to my own accreditation, or to glorify myself in any way. It simply astounded me that I was actually having such a grand adventure, when so many obvious less-than-grand things were wracking their way through my body.

After spending much time in Graz working on essays and being confined to wifi, I was getting antsy and jumpy, too much cage for too eager of a Josie.

Thursday came and so did regional bus number 250.

€6,40 and my heaviest coat later, I found myself bumbling across the Austrian frozen countryside, bound for the 1,445 meters of vertical earth that is the Schöckl mountain.

As I sauntered my way up this dome of blisteringly freezing majesty, I reflected upon my positivity.

Why was I enjoying myself? Why was I doing this to myself? Why was I here, carting only a half filled water bottle for the entire day of hiking, and not tucked away safely in my slippers back in the warmth of my flat, doing something actually productive like writing essays and eating peanut butter?

It is with desperate hope that you do not cast me away as arrogant. I’m not better at suffering. I have so much more to learn about discipline, and delayed gratification and minimalism and simplicity.

But I did genuinely find myself in a state of enjoyment.

While my eyes lost themselves in the beautiful contrast of the hearty brown pines against the oblivion that is the snowy mountain ground, my mind wheeled.

I do this, I do these things, I do what I do because I envision how I am going to feel about myself after I do them.

Not just physically. I’m not just talking about how I am physically going to feel after saying either yes to more suffering or no to delicious delicacies.

I’m talking about respect.

How am I going to feel about myself?

There’s something fundamentally different between being motivated and being driven.

Being motivated looks like waking up when the devil blares bloody murder from the alarm clock, strapping on your running shoes and shimmying into your winter gear. Being motivated looks like getting to the door, cranking open the handle, feeling the sharp and cutting wind jackknife itself across your face, and sauntering back to the covers, nestling back into the folds of warmth and comfort.

Being driven looks like opening that door and embracing the hurt and the pain and the instinct to run as far away from both of those feelings as possible, because you know that you are going to bloody respect yourself after you get out that door.

Peace and Blessings,

Josie