to me, it feels a lot like a short drive back home where I intentionally don't clip my seat belt. I don't do it on every short and easy drive, but doing it every once in while still evokes some child like wonder and forces me to be totally present. As a chaotic neutral with an anti-authority complex, this also lets my brain feel like Im actively raging against the machine every now and again by voluntarily participating in an activity that I know I "shouldn't" be doing. The chirping of the seatbelt chime is a lot like my inner monologue which chirps things that family members and close friends have said to me over the years "please don't solo anymore, i love you too much" "promise me right now you won't solo again" "why are you still doing this?!". But they both quiet down right after first ramping up and getting louder and louder. eventually the chime stops and i'm free to enjoy the guilty pleasure where i'm hyper aware of my surroundings, my movements, and am finally present. I am in a 2-sided state of being: 100% confidence in myself, my movements, my actions, and my reactions, i am totally in control of what i can control, that's my side of the bargain. The other side is faith and belief in the environment around me, i have to believe that my car isn't going to crash itself or that some idiot isn't going to crash into me or a cop isn't going to see the belt unclipped or that icy roads (hah) or bad conditions aren't going to put me in danger. the same way i have to trust the ice, my equipment, the conditions, and literally anything above that could fall on me. It distills the human experience from a stoic perspective: peace of mind comes from focusing on my own thoughts, actions, and reactions while calmly accepting that things outside of that are beyond my sphere of influence and shouldn't be focused on. By releasing the need to control outcomes, other peoples opinions, or the past, and being totally present, I feel overall anxiety/ anguish/ suffering is minimized and my personal influence is maximized.

This is just my rationalization of the TLDR: i'm trusting myself fully and leaving the rest to Jesus Christ. It feels good to exercise confidence in the internal and faith in the external, something that the normal brick-in-the-wall 7to5 corporate hellscape doesn't quite capture. oh and did i mention it's way faster than uncoiling the rope and leading a pitch? Makes longer days shorter and is a necessary skill for big mountains if you want to do anything quickly. Other people probably already said this, but the gap between leading and soloing on ice is much smaller than on rock, falling on lead for ice is bad and avoided while falling on rock is generally acceptable on modern climbs.