What Happens When You Stop Climbing Peaks and Start Growing Roots?

Published: Tue, 02/03/26

Updated: Wed, 02/04/26

To plant a garden is to beleive in tomorrow.

Audrey Hepburn

I’m looking at my small garden out back, and it looks like a disaster area.

There’s a table, two chairs, a parasol, and a scatter of plants doing their best despite my neglect. Under normal circumstances, it’s lit with cute fairy lights. There are flowering plants and a few vegetables trying to make a point. It needs tidying. When will I get to it? I don’t know. It’s not a priority right now.

But standing there, coffee in hand, I realised something.

This garden isn’t failing.

It’s just untended.

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Lifes a Garden, Dig It!

And that’s how many of us are living.

Life for most is an ascent up a mountain. Upward. Linear. Competitive. Better job. Bigger house. More recognition. Climb. Rise. Ascend. We internalise this so deeply that we judge our entire existence by the measure of elevation. Are you higher than last year? Higher than your peers? Closer to some invisible summit?

But life isn’t just a vertical climb.

And you are not failing if you’re not “climbing.”

🎭 The Intergalactic Masquerade Ball: A Fashion War Between Worlds🎭

“When the Obsidian Eclipse aligns, the galaxy doesn’t just watch. It arrives — dressed in power.”

🌌 The Premise:

Every 222 years, an ancient orbital convergence reactivates a forgotten gateway above the Nile Delta. Beings from across the stars descend — not to invade — but to celebrate.

The Intergalactic Masquerade Ball is a high-stakes, off-world gala of status, memory, and power. Held in the floating ruins of Old Kemet, it's an elite invitation-only event where aliens and humans alike wear armor, attire, and masks that aren’t just decorative — they’re functional, mystical, and dangerous.

These garments may shift gravity, archive ancestors, control sound, or disguise entire species.
Every stitch matters.
Every mask hides more than a face.
And every outfit is a message — to allies, enemies, or gods.

🧥 The Challenge:

VISUAL ENTRY (Required)
Create a cinematic full-body image of your character — human or alien — dressed for the Intergalactic Masquerade Ball.

Use MidJourney, Flux, digital art, or hand-drawn illustration

Think elaborate masks, transformative textiles, levitating accessories, semi-sentient fabric, biologically responsive jewelry

Afrocentric inspiration is essential — from ancient Dogon robes to neon bead-coded data suits.

TEXT ENTRY (Required)
Submit a character profile and costume breakdown (max 300 words) that includes:

Name & species/origin world

Purpose of attending the Ball (spy, ambassador, fashion icon, weapon…)

Mask details — function, aesthetic, tradition, or tech

Key features of the outfit — fabrics, enhancements, symbolic elements, embedded functions

Optional: Reputation or rumors surrounding this character’s previous Ball appearances.

🧠 Afrofuturist Edge:

This isn't fantasy cosplay. This is African-inspired fashion-as-technology, identity-as-armor, and costume-as-currency. Every look tells a story of lineage, resistance, or cosmic ambition — wrapped in shadow and starlight.

🏆 Prizes:

🥇 First Place: $50 + full newsletter feature + possible inclusion in The Codex of Galactic Style PDF artbook

🥈 Second Place: $25 + feature

🥉 Third Place: $10 + honorable mention in “Best Dressed Across the Cosmos” visual reel

Select entries will be added to an Urban Fantastic transmedia visual anthology or adapted into future digital runway reels and interactive maps.

📬 Submit to: marksmanstudios1@gmail.com
Subject line: "Intergalactic Masquerade Ball."
Attach your image and/or paste your write-up in the email.

📅 Deadline: 1st March 2026

Attach your art + text entry. You may include your social handle if you'd like to be tagged.

Thomas Merton warned us decades ago: people can spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to discover it was leaning against the wrong wall. That line still hits because most of us secretly know it’s true.

Some people don’t want a higher rung.

They want a wider life.

I prefer to cultivate life like a garden. A garden doesn’t rush upward. It spreads outward. It holds a contradiction. Some areas bloom while others rest. Some plants die back so others can grow. There’s no single destination. There’s presence. Attention. Care.

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A garden mindset changes the questions you ask.

Not “Where am I going?”
But “What am I tending?”

Not “Am I ahead or behind?”
But “What needs care right now?”

The mountaineer mindset makes you defer your life. It doesn’t want you enjoying the moment.

It asks you to wait!

After the promotion. After the savings goal. After the chaos settles.

I spent years living like that.

Always the next thing.

One achievement away from feeling complete. One milestone away from revolutionising how I live. I was so busy climbing that I forgot to live sideways—to notice conversations, repair relationships, wander intellectually, and create without an outcome attached.

A garden doesn’t demand balance. It demands attention.

It’s all about seasons.

Some years you work hard. Others you recover. Some years are creative explosions. Others are quiet root-building periods that may look unimpressive from the outside but are essential.

The climb not just punishes this but tries to reframe it in our heads. It calls rest laziness. Exploration distraction. Horizontal movement failure.

Gardens understand cycles.

When you climb, you travel light. You leave things behind. Hobbies that don’t “scale.” Relationships that don’t “network.” Parts of yourself that don’t fit the persona you think success requires.

A garden makes room for all of it.

The practical and the pointless. The profitable and the playful. The work that pays bills and the interests that feed your soul. I now do things with no measurable return. Walks that aren’t exercise. Books I barely understand. Skills I’m bad at and enjoy anyway. None of it advances a résumé.

All of it makes me, me!

It takes courage to live this way.

Because the world doesn’t understand someone choosing depth over display, coherence over applause, or meaning over momentum.

Luckily, we don’t care what they think.

You’re not unfocused. You’re cultivating. You’re not behind. You’re rooted. You’re not wasting time. You’re creating conditions for ideas, energy, and unexpected opportunities to find you—like bees drawn to a living, breathing garden.

At the end of life, no one asks how high you climbed.

They ask what you grew.

So stop asking where you’re headed.

Ask what you’re growing.

Life isn’t just about scaling the mountain.

It’s about tending your garden.

Look down ... you’re standing right in the middle of it.

Peace, love and power.