More on Movement…

Posted on | February 12, 2011 | No Comments

Self reflection seems to be running rampant in me lately.

This frame of mind typically is associated with mad bouts of self-doubt, but I’ve been grateful for the lack of that aspect so far. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been so sure of my current trajectory in life as I am right now.

It’s a good feeling. :)

That’s not to say that everything is falling into place and that everything is perfect. But I can’t honestly say that it’s “far from it” anymore. For the first time (maybe ever) I definitely feel like I’m heading in the right direction now. That I’m on a path that is completely and emphatically “me”.

But why now? I’m not really sure. Mel and I have been talking about this a lot this lately and we lamented how this change in both of our lives is simply an act of finally listening to what our hearts have been saying for a long, long time.

It was only a matter of stopping and listening. Truly listening. Letting it all sink in. I guess I’m either gaining some kind of wisdom in my old age or I’m just too damn punch drunk to ignore it anymore.

My guess is that it’s a nice combo of both.

All I know is that I’m seeing things a lot clearer now. I’m learning to let go. I’m learning that floating amongst everything is so much more worthwhile than anchoring myself against a current that could honestly care less about me and my supposed need to “keep it real”.

I still have my hang ups and I still get bothered by really stupid things. But, those speed bumps are getting more and more infrequent. I’m tired of keeping my head down and resisting so much. Exhausted really. It’s not that what I was resisting has won, it’s just that the fight is no longer important. I doubt it ever was. Life is meant to be experienced and that act can’t involve standing still.

So, I’m not folding, I’m evolving.

I’m embracing movement, and I gotta be honest, I’m enjoying putting some miles between the present and what was the past.

Category: pipe dreams, ruminations
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Resolutions…

Posted on | January 11, 2011 | 2 Comments

I can’t say that New Years resolutions have ever been “my thing” really but this year I made an active effort to make some, hrmmm…, I guess I’ll call them promises and hopes for myself this year.

Last year I spent an unhealthy amount of time serving other folks wants and needs and, while helping people out is incredibly fulfilling to me, I kinda lost sight of what makes me happy in this life.  So this year I’m hoping to turn that back around.

The big one I’m hoping to do more than anything else is number one on the list (with a bullet): do something creative for at least an hour a day.

This may seem like a pretty big challenge and that’s mostly because it is, but the very nature of my being has always been geared towards creation of some kind and outside of a HUGE project I did last year with a good friend, I haven’t nurtured that part of “me” in a very long time.  So I really want to turn that around the best that I can.  For the most part so far, the daily aspect of this promise to myself, while challenging, has been really rewarding.  This will hopefully translate into more content on my blogs as well (yes, that includes this one ;) )!

I also want to take better care of my body.  As far as bodies go, I’ve been very blessed in that out of all the stupid things I’ve done in my life, I’ve only come away with a broken nose and whole slew of the cuts and bruises.  I should’ve gotten a lot more banged up and broken but for whatever reason, be it luck or just simple resilience, I’ve fared quite well.  But, now that I’m turning 35 in less than a week, I’m definitely noticing some general wear and tear from my years in a mostly sedentary job.  When I get up to do things that involve any kind of physical movement, I tend to feel it much, much more the next day.  So this year I’m going to try to take better care myself, inside and out.

Mel and I have already been working on the “inside” part.  We’ve mostly fallen into a vegetarian lifestyle eating a lot of raw vegetables and cutting out more and more cooked meat (though I still love the occasional burger or meat lover’s pizza) and processed food.  There’s also ethical stuff that’s finally sinking in and over-riding my food choices on a more frequent basis, cutting out McDonalds completely for instance, or trying my best to eat local meat that I know’s been humanely cared for.  I can’t do it all the time, but when it’s feasible, I go the extra mile to do so.  I’ve always imagined that I will go 98% vegetarian someday, with the occasional fish and bird thrown in to diversify, ending up 100% vegetarian.  I just feel better when I do.

I’m also cutting down on alcohol. It’s tough because I love the taste and creation of beer (and good vodka), but I’m finding a little can go a long way and a hangover is no longer worth the “fun” of earning it. Wanna talk about self-loathing?  I’ve grown to hate even the smallest hangover now. What a waste of quality day-light!  Anyways, I’m not knocking it out completely because I really don’t want to, but I have noticed I imbibed too frequently last year and I want to give my body a little more of a rest between tasty pints.

On the physical end, I really want/need/crave some multi-day hikes and I have high hopes for this spring! In between now and then though, I’ve been seriously considering getting back into the yoga routine that I started with Mel years ago and working on my stunning lack of flexibility.  Melinda has  been WAY deep into her practice for the last year or two and I’m hoping I can kindle the same fire in me and find my own personal path in it all.  I really appreciate the inner focus it requires, simultaneously building and nurturing outer and inner strength.  It may require more discipline than I’m currently capable of, but this is the first time in a LONG time that I’ve been thinking about it as frequently as I have been.  It can only be viewed as a good thing in my very humble opinion.  Hopefully I can make it work, as I know it would be very good for me.

There’s frivolous fun in all of this too!  I really want to see more movies this year in the theater.  So basically, I’m getting over my intense irritation of the inherent rudeness of crowds today and I’m gonna get my ass to the cinema to the films I’m interested in.  Mel and I definitely have our love of music etched firmly into our lives (it’s about the one thing we both didn’t bend on these last few years) but movies are just as important to me/us, so I’m going to make an effort to see more. I’m always psyched when I do.

In the end I’m hoping all of this will produce a happier state of mind and tame the frequent storm clouds of anger and irritation I often feel.  In short, a happier, more present “me”.

Sounds good doesn’t it ;)?

If you lurk on my site and want to share, feel free to share your hopes for this year in comments below! I’d love to hear about them!

Category: day to day, music, pipe dreams, ruminations
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The Year of Uncertainty…

Posted on | December 16, 2010 | No Comments

There’s a site that is promoting a writing challenge that Mel’s been trying to take part in at the end of this odd little year of ours. It can be found at http://www.reverb10.com/ and while I haven’t been taking part, I have been reading the topics, or “prompts”, of inspiration.

Described in their own words…

“Reverb 10 is an annual event and online initiative to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next. Use the end of your year as an opportunity to reflect on what’s happened, and to send out reverberations for the year ahead.”

…it pushes you to do what you are probably doing subconsciously anyways at the end of the year: stop, breath and reflect. The first “prompt” they put up was a doozy, asking you to sum up your last year with one solitary word. It seems like a conventional “end of the year” request, but honestly, when I took time to stop and think about it, it’s damn hard to come up with something genuine that fits.

After a lot of thought, all of these words ricocheting in my head, the one that kept rising to the top was the word “uncertainty”.

“uncertainty”

At face value it seems like a downer of a word. But, in reality, it actually was a good year all told. Yes there was some sorrow, but for the most part, a lot of good things happened. REALLY good things. So why choose that word out of all the others? Well, the thing is, all of it, the good and the bad, all occurred in ways we never expected.

Plans got unplugged, aspirations got diverted, old goals got squashed and new ones were created. All of these occurred by issues WAY out of our control. Typically the big things we plan for the year play out somehow. But this year? Situations we couldn’t have hoped to see coming kept occurring, sometimes at the last minute, rerouting our lives entirely. I’m not a huge subscriber to the concept of fate but, it certainly seemed like something was pushing us in a different direction.

I’ve never really had a year like this one. A year where, after the third snafu in a row, I felt like all I could do was just float and let this grand river we call life take me where ever it needed to. We definitely relinquished a good amount of control that we’ve become accustomed to and I think it taught us a lot.

That life is meant to be unpredictable. That sometimes you just have take your hand off the wheel, accept what happens and live through it. Yeah it can end up horrible, but, in most cases, it can open your eyes to something you’ve never known or noticed before. It could be the foundation of a potential lesson, but it also could be the start of an incredible adventure!

So yeah, as scary as the word can be. I think we all could use a little unbridled “uncertainty” in our lives once an a while. Control will always be comforting, but comfort isn’t always living.

Category: day to day, pipe dreams, ruminations
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Digital Charity…

Posted on | November 6, 2010 | 1 Comment

I’ve written on several occasions about my “love-hate” relationship with technology with, what I feel anyways, a pretty acute focus on the “hate” part.

This sentiment has been prevalent for last few years, mostly because I’m trying to find my place in this great big world. It’s caused me to question all the ones and zeroes that have enveloped my life and my actions. But, that topic is for another post for another time and it’s not what I want to talk about now. The point that I was meandering towards is that I’ve been wanting to do something digitally for the world. Nothing big, just something on the smallest scale I could think of, that directly involved me, was my creation and was something that could help people out in some way. Without any hope or expectation of reciprocation.

After looking at time, responsibilities and demands I settled on video as my building material for all of this.

I’ve been making video tutorials for my WordPress clients and family for about a year now and they’ve been well received. At first it was a very time consuming process but once I got a workflow down and thoroughly learned the vid capture software I was using, I was able reduce that creation time to something way more manageable. In fact, I spend way more time rendering/compressing the video then I do actually creating them. Which is a good. So once I could accomplish this task in under an hour I got the idea that I should start making support videos for EVERYONE on this crazy planet of ours.

So I did…

At first, this process took me way out my comfort zone. I was on camera, in motion, my voice was there, I’m imparting information, I’m telling strangers what to do, it’s all very, very “not me”.

But after the first couple videos went live, I breathed, forgot about them and moved on. After I realized I wasn’t going to quit doing this (and started getting traffic to the initial channel I setup) I started realizing that this could be a really amazing science experiment utilizing the web that could help a lot more people than I currently was.

So I then challenged myself to see how many more people I could reach around the world. I opened accounts on as many social networking platforms that I could think of, cross posted all the videos I’ve made on them and I simply sat and waited.

The initial stats that came in were a trickle. I was psyched when I got my first 100 views! But as this project got more and more inertia I started reaching the same amount of folks in less than 24 hours. Then I started seeing stats of where in the world people were hitting my videos (all over the globe) and it wasn’t long before I found myself interacting with folks, (I chatted with a guy Saudi Arabia last week). Some of the interaction has been more questions, or critiques, or spam, but for the most part, it’s been a simple “Thank You!” .

And that was the target I was aiming for. To simply help folks. Mission accomplished.

So where do I go from here? Well, the project continues to grow faster each month. In fact, it got big enough to have it’s own home which I finally launched last week. Go check it out if you’d like, it’s at http://www.simplewordpresshelp.com .

I hope it continues to grow, but, if it doesn’t, if it fizzles out, I won’t be bummed. I already achieved what I set out to do. I dropped that pebble in the pond and seeing where those ripples reached has been incredibly rewarding.

Category: News!!, pipe dreams, ruminations, tech, Web Site Launches
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Taking The Time To Give Back…

Posted on | October 2, 2010 | No Comments

The last few years Melinda and I have had grand aspirations to give back to society and, to a certain degree we’ve been somewhat successful. We did the Breast Cancer 3 Day six years in a row and raised a good amount of money to help find a cure to that terrible disease. We’ve also helped my father with charity events in his local rotary club. But aside from doing our best to be the best people we know how to be every day of lives we haven’t done much more than that.

Put simply, we’ve always wished we could more. A LOT more.

But the problem with making time to do philanthropy is that you will ALWAYS find something else in your life that needs doing. So you put it off with the hopes of doing it some other time that’s more convenient.

For us though, we discovered there are rarely “more convenient” times to do these things. So this last weekend we took some steps towards not over thinking the moment and “just doing it”. Mel saw an opportunity at a local park that we often take brief hikes at. They needed help with trail and boardwalk maintenance so we jumped at the chance to get outside and do some good. They only needed a couple hours of help so it was kind of no brainer for that day.

We were psyched to see so many folks donating time (mostly kids!) when we got there. It didn’t take too long before they divided us up into two groups. Mel and I got to be in the boardwalk maintenance group with about 10 other really nice people. We hiked down to the boardwalk with pressure treated lumber (always forget how heavy that stuff gets) and supplies and got to work! Mel and I volunteered to walk in new timbers and carry the old ones out.

All told, we ripped up 15 timbers that looked worse for wear and replaced them with new ones! We worked hard, we used our hands, got dirty, mingled with strangers, it was perfect! When finished, we stopped and looked at our finished work, it came out nicely I think! When our set time was complete, we said our good byes, hopped in the car, grabbed some lunch and went home to Cadence.

It’s so easy to get in ruts and routines in life. Melinda and I are very guilty of this, but we want to do more. When I think about all of the time I put into my day to day it’s pretty unnerving. You get to worried that this time you put in to your day job will somehow end up defining you. For us it simply doesn’t, so it was nice to take that baby step forward and put some time into something that does.

It felt really, really good and we can only hope do more.

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Currently Listening to “Hints” by Jose Gonzalez off of his album “Veneer”

Category: day to day, eco ramblings, pipe dreams, ruminations
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