Finding Home in a Chosen Family: The Upside of a Niche Industry

Friends.

This is a really hard story to tell.

It’s about how small the industry is, how everywhere we go we have connections, either people we know or friends of people we know. I want to tell you the best moments in my career where a friendship crystalized through an insane series of happenstance and shared community.  But because everyone is only one person removed from anyone else in the industry, I can’t effectively anonymize anything. If you know me, you know where I’ve worked, you know who I’ve worked with, you know who my friends are, and so there’s no hiding anyone’s identity.

Let’s test it out. 

(I’ve asked permission, don’t worry) 

____ predated me at a gym I worked at out east. He’d left before I was hired, but I’d heard his name spoken with admiration and affection more than once. 

A few years later, I accepted a position in the same region as _____. The first event we worked together, we traded stories from our shared work history. Who still works at that gym? Do you know So-and-So? How’s What’s-His-Face doing? Over the next few years we developed our own relationship outside of our mutual friends, and I now visit regularly, sometimes to guest set, but often just to spend time with friends.

The last time I drove down, I phoned an old east coast friend to catch up. Upon hearing who I was visiting, he immediately exclaimed, “_____? I think I met him once at a party with So-and-So and What’s-His-Face!” As I walked into _____’s house, I put my phone on speaker, and they traded stories, establishing that shared history. 

The world is so small.

I could tell dozens of stories of similar relationships, and if you’re a routesetter in the US, you’d probably know the identities of at least half the characters. It’s not always a good thing. If you rub someone the wrong way at a comp, half the routesetters in the country are likely to hear about it. If you make a mistake, it can haunt you for years, if not your entire career. But there’s a significant silver lining.

At every event, there’s a mix of old and new faces. With the old, we take selfies to send to mutual friends, usually with a raised middle finger. With the new, we trade informal cv’s, finding the connective tissue between our careers. Who have you worked with? Do you know So-and-So? What about What’s-His-Face? It doesn’t take long to populate that shared history, and our routesetting family grows. 

Wherever I go, I have friends. 

Sometimes these friendships are superficial, active only for the duration of the event we’re currently working, but many are deeply meaningful and long lasting. Sometimes they take a few years to build, which makes perfect sense when we might only see each other for a week or two a year.

When I had the good fortune of losing a toxic job, I had friends around the country who lifted me up, validating that better things were to come. One was a colleague I’d first met nearly 7 years earlier at a Support Your Local Routesetter clinic (are those ever coming back @rockcandyholds?) and even though we’d only worked a single event together since, the welcome hug they gave me was that of someone who’s been with me for years. Another was a routesetter I first met when I cold-called his gym to guest-set in the olden days when that was still common, and we’ve seen each other at every trade show, every year. We text regularly to shoot the shit, and when I visited he spoke about how the positive impact we leave often outlives our tenure in any facility. 

We are our chosen family.

This industry is hard. It’s full of uncertainty and politics, and it can feel like the hustle never ends, but that family that we build is unlike anything I've experienced in any other industry. We share a common language, a common passion. When I travel to climb, I have a wide network of friends who will show me their favorite local spots. We eat, we drink, we share our hopes and worries about the direction the industry (and the world) is heading, and we look forward to the next event or trade show or climbing trip that brings us back together. In an industry this small, friends are never far away.