30!

I had an amazing time last night celebrating my 30th birthday with these great people! I am truly blessed by this circle of friends. 

Fighting Resistance

A great friend and amazing photographer, family man, and God-lover, Jarrod Renaud, was interviewed by The Photographic Journal. Read his story. It's inspiring. 

The interview, click here.

Pastimes

A sweet little video of my friend, artist and photographer, Jarrod Renaud, catching some air. Check him out.

Happy Birthday Chris!

It wasn't hard to find a picture of you jumping off of something or doing something cool. This is Lake Michigan, July 2007, after you devoted most of your week to helping Kate and I move to Milwaukee. I may not always express it, but I appreciate how you're always willing to do crazy stuff at the drop of a hat. It's not exactly how I roll, but as friends it is also our differences that strengthen our bonds. Here's to another great year for you, one full of adventure, love, travel, long conversations, and cliff jumping.


Have a great day tomorrow.

Atypical Bachelor Party Photo

I was just going through some August 2011 photos this morning. A lot happened that month and there are so many pictures I would like to share on here. Here is just one of them from Kyle's bachelor party. Kyle is on the left. Erik is to the right and above him. And Aaron is standing on the ledge to the right of Erik. Cliff jumping into the Cache la Poudre River.

the War of Art: Redux

I first blogged about The War of Art on April 1, 2009 after reading it because this man recommended the book. Well, I’ve just been hit by a wave of anti-resistance. The resistance I write about in the older blog. You can read about it there. But I just wanted to share some passages that still rock my world. Thank you, Pressfield.

“Late at night have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be?”

“Resistance will bury you.”

“If you take Resistance at its word, you deserve everything you get. Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.”

“The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

“The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.” Pressfield brings it with this one.

“Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance.”

“Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification, and hard work, we simply consume a product.”

“What makes it tricky is that we live in a consumer culture that’s acutely aware of this unhappiness and has massed all its profit-seeking artillery to exploit it.”

Man, I hope one of these quotes just came up into your life and tossed things about like a little tornado in your soul, especially that last one. Read this book. And go do what everyone is telling you, you can’t do.

29 Years Old

Lots of happy birthday wishes today. Thank you! One of them was posted by one of my former swimmers to Facebook last night and I've shared it below...


"29 years ago today the world had no idea it was going to change forever....and be a bit taller."

Charleston Wedding: Saturday and Sunday

Irene killed a lot of starfish. Damn her. 

Horseshoe Crab. Dead. Missing two legs. Huge, scary looking creature.

The plaque in front of this tree (the Magnolia Plantation oak) reads: Though its age cannot be determined by boring, it was referred to as a "large oak" in the earliest days of this 300 year old plantation. Because fires were built in its interior by early plantation workers, [they mean slaves, my addition here] this tree has been completely hollow for more than a century, and its growth thus retarded. However, measuring over 30 feet in circumference, it remains one of America's largest specimens of live oak. (Quercus Virginiania)

It bothered me that they used the wording "early plantation workers" on the plaque. Why don't you just call them what they were? There's no sugarcoating that era and when I ran into even a hint of it in the South it really made me miss Colorado.

Once again, the oak. 

And its large, old arms.

Amazingly, I hadn't sweat through the front of my dress shirt at this point, but I was well on my way. This, I believe, was taken as Courtney walked in. 

Frank. Isle of Palms. Riding his bike he brought down from Jersey.

Frank on his way back.

Sunday. Irene gone. Pleasant coastline and dunes.

Charleston Wedding - Thursday and Friday

Orange glow of Sunset meets the hint of Irene. (I am really digging Blogger's new format options with photos. These are huge now.)

On the horizon, way out to the left, you can see some of the big clouds, representing Irene's outer bands. 

Same night: Thursday. I am a sucker for sunset pictures.

Irene and her dirty waves hit the South Carolina coast.

A picture of the wedding photographer, Jarrod.

More of Irene's dirty ways, I mean, waves.

Collin meets Irene.

Why not hand my camera off to a pro for a few seconds? Thanks, JROD.

The scene from the rehearsal dinner. Beautiful. Another amazing sunset with a full rainbow too, but I found the waves mesmerizing.

This guy kept walking around as if he was going to go in. I watched him for a while. He never did. I can't say I blame him. Look at him, he's in knee deep water where there isn't supposed to be any. 

Also from rehearsal dinner site. Not a bad spot.

Kyle's Bachelor Party Pics

Cliff jumping in the Poudre Canyon. This is Chris.

Kyle, on the left, and Erik jump at a spot we have been going to for 8-10 years?...I don't know when we first went here, but it was a while ago.

The man of the weekend.

The view of the Red Feather Lakes area from the cabin we stayed at.

Not a bad sight.

Catching up and drinking by the fire.

Aforementioned fire.

6:30am.

The morning after. Bachelor parties don't end well for everyone. Luke flew ten feet before landing in a dirt road on his nose and knee.

Time for Another Bachelor Party

Airing Out 2010

I want to sit down and churn something out about 2010. I want you to read it and be astonished at what you’ve read, be in dismay about the year I had because maybe it was boring, but I made it sound like so much more than that.

2010 was anything but boring, but I don’t know if I can convey that anymore. As it did like the year before, 2010 started off with a trip to Florida, but through January, February, the birth of my nephew, and a conference championship my mind was with my MFA applications to ten schools. I had labored over them for almost a year and I felt like I applied to the entire spectrum of writing programs out there. Starting in late February, or was it early March, the rejections started to trickle in. First, was Wyoming. Then I can’t remember who came next. But I do remember there were nine more and the agony of going to the mailbox every day was sustained until the last letter arrived in April. I took it—the last letter—up to the apartment with me. The blinds were drawn. It was dark. I lied on the couch. I didn’t weep. I didn’t tear up. I yelled. I fucking yelled.

March is a blur. I had the whole month off. I don’t even know what I did. I wrote about the rejections. I did an annual spiel on the Oscars, self-published of course. There was a power outage and I wrote about, writing, what I believe to be, some of my best words in 2010. On the way to work one day I pulled over and threw the key to the Longmont house into Lake Michigan, cursing it in the air and hoping some feelings would sink to the bottom of the lake with it. And then Kate and I went to Wyoming and Colorado. It was cold and snowy and being in Laramie was tough knowing I wouldn’t be going to school there in the fall.

I wandered aimlessly through April, wallowing in failure (a little like I am now, but hey, that was a huge chunk of 2010). I not only coached practices, I did practices. I threw myself into them, destroying my body and finding out that I can still be fast in the pool. When I do my best in sports I tap a vein of aggression and I get lost in it. I had plenty of fuel.

The venting continued in May, one of the most stressful times of my 20s. We had made our plans for the next two years and they were denied from us. In the middle of it all we went to Mexico to escape it. We were successful in that, but the stress was waiting for us the day we got back. What next? What now? Then I went to Colorado and spent a few nights with good friends looking for our new home. Then, a wedding in May for two people in love. But it was tough and weird at times, stages of the healing process. Getting everyone together again felt right and wrong, stages of the aging and living process. Instead of a strong bond among all of us I was acutely aware of an aging history held together with feeble attempts to reestablish community. Honestly, I thought the shit was going to hit the fan this week. It didn’t so much. Some things went better than expected and for the other things, well, words went unsaid and feelings unshared, traits once rare among this group.

Like Milwaukee knew we were leaving, it threw us thunderstorm after thunderstorm in June, ephemeral, but breathtaking and humbling exhibitions of power. I searched everyday for jobs. I didn’t land one and started to doubt the wisdom in moving back to Colorado. My Mom visited us one last time in Milwaukee. Kate and I started watching Lost this month on Hulu and we never looked back. Concerning movies and TV, Lost was easily the highlight of 2010 for us. It was outstanding and our devotion to it was respectable.

July started with another vacation. This time we were off to California to see friends married, to see family, and to breath in some salty air. And then we were back in the Midwest for a few more weeks of packing and thunderstorms, one of them giving us seven inches of rain in three hours. Imagine if California got that? In our final days in Milwaukee we shed tears, took a lot of pictures of our apartment, and welcomed my Dad to Wisconsin so that he would help us move to Colorado.

I blogged twice in August. We settled into our new home, not the home we thought we would be settling into, but we thank God every day it wasn’t. We drove up our first fourteener. We went to Wyoming. The West opened its arms for us and we basked in its warm, dry, sunny climate. The proximity of friends and family helped ease the joblessness on my part. And after working for a week, Kate was offered a full-time job.

I wrote a love letter to Milwaukee in September. I witnessed Boise St. give Wyoming an ass-kicking. We finished Lost, with a blitz of 3 episodes, plus a two-hour finale, in one day. And then I got a job and we started P90X.

October: I worked some. Spent some time catching up with friends in Colorado. We had visitors. Colorado proved to be as beautiful as ever. Life went on.

A lot of people voted Republican in November. I didn’t. Are you kidding me? We spent our first Thanksgiving as a married couple with my parents and grandparents. Kate worked through the holiday and it didn’t seem relaxing for her at times, but my busy holiday schedule started at 4:30 the morning after Thanksgiving. November was warm.

In December I’ll tell you now, publicly, that I celebrated a private accomplishment. The month flew by with busy work schedules and the time to relax and celebrate our Creator was upon us in a matter of hours. We had a new camera to document it and the years ahead. The wounds sustained earlier in the year have partially healed, yet I still sometimes find in me a crushing doubt, chanting, “Failure, failure,” at me every time my hands rest on this keyboard. In the waning days of 2010, Kate’s family joined us as we welcomed 2011 into our lives, a year that can’t possibly contain in its 365 days what I want it to contain, but I will greet its every sunrise and toast its every sunset in search of it.

Dear Milwaukee,

My first memory of you, not necessarily the first time I was visiting you, but the first time I realized this was where we were making our home was in May of 2007. Kate and I came out to you and we tried to find a place to live. The weekend is a blur, but I remember the heat and the humidity. It was like the jungle. I kept saying to myself, “This is just for a year.” We stayed for three. If only I knew then what I know now about you.

You are surprising in every way. I wish you got to surprise more people. I leave you having not shared you with anyone besides a few family members. You are our little secret; three years of our lives will be unknown to my friends and even family members. Only our parents will know what we refer to when we talk about the beach in Milwaukee or Alterra or a restaurant called Carnevor. I am still sad about all that. Someone once referred to it as stubbornness. It is not that. It was a desire to have people visit us in our new home. We leave holding you dearer in our hearts than we could have imagined. And we are the sole keepers of these three years and that is an important task for us for there are fewer people to ferry these memories into our next community and tomorrow’s conversations.

Milwaukee, you gave us hard times and we were recipients of bad news over and over again while we resided within your borders. You made us feel a world away when we wanted to be next door. Had we not been a thousand miles away I would have gotten into trouble, thrown a couple of punches and might have defaced a church. I often daydreamed of it and you kept me from those releases of bitterness and anger. I have stored those away for now. Occasionally, they poison me and I feel some anger rise up and I wonder, will moving back renew some of that? I don’t want it to, but it isn’t out of the question. Returning to the source of your demons forces you to confront them. And Milwaukee, you prepared me for that. I am more able because I have felt a greater depth of pain and disappointment here than I had ever felt before.

But I have also felt and known a deeper love, a greater respect for life and its wickedly beautiful and tortuous twists, like the day I realized I love you. I thought it would never happen, but that idea took a beating from so many people, places and things. The walks with my wife on the shores of Lake Michigan, the once untapped city at our fingertips, the friends we made, the team I grew to love, the championship, immersing myself once again in the wonderful world of swimming and the coaches who coached beside me, and the lovely upper-Midwest touches of humidity, cheese, fish fries and snow on the ground for months; all of these things built up a love for you. I will miss the color green and the abundance of it here, the green screaming from the forest’s edge, forest of the likes I hadn’t seen since 1991 in New Jersey, a forest you can’t find in Colorado. Impenetrable. A massive, verdant wall.

Your inhabitants are one of a kind, Milwaukee. With 1.5 million people, you are diverse like any other big city, but nearly all of your inhabitants are native to the state and, on a larger scale, the Midwest. I’ve never encountered so many people so unhappy with their hometown. Not that you are bad, you are lovely, but there is just this propensity for Midwesterners to stay put. Moving out of state is not something your people do. They exude a sense of duty and loyalty to you even though they want to leave, even though they seem envious of people moving on and moving out. Yours is a grounded people. Happy and sometimes frustrated with you, but not going anywhere, even for a little while, because the Midwest is where they live, where they will always live, and that is fine with them…for the most part.

Milwaukeeans are fiercely loyal to you. You should be proud. From your boring Brewers to your agonizingly overrated Summerfest, there is no shortage of fans. No one tailgates like you do before every single Brewers’ home game. Mini grills and a lot of crappy beer being drunk. That is another thing your people are astonishingly proud of—the crappy beer. You are a beer city, but a domestic beer city. Yes, you have standout joints like Café Centraal and the Sugar Maple, where you can’t find someone drinking an MGD, but your lifeblood is Miller Lite, High Life, Milwaukee’s Best and something called Schlitz. This is what your people run on and that humors me because I think there is so much more out there to experience in the beer world, but I know that your people don’t care. They are unwavering in their devotion to you and your products. It is beauty that I can raise an eyebrow at and simultaneously deeply respect.

I didn’t cry when I left you, I cried when I realized I was going to leave you. It was months before July 29, when I was driving to work over the Hoan bridge and it was a crystal clear day with the skyline in front of me, Lake Michigan to the right and I-94 far below me, weaving westward to the horizon. I didn’t just remember the last three years at that moment; I felt them wrapping around me, pulsing through me at the speed of light, like a wave crashing over me, flipping me end over end over end and whatever thought filled my head last made me smile and shed a tear.

Milwaukee, I learned so much while I was within your borders. I thought I knew a decent amount about life when I arrived in the upper Midwest. I thought I had some crap figured out. I didn’t. Life only got more confusing, but you helped it become more beautiful too. Kate and I will be lucky to find that again. You will always be our first home and you will always be missed, no matter how many smiles our new home brings us.

I love you.

This Just In: People Make Mistakes

As my time in Milwaukee comes to an end, I am seriously considering rejoining Facebook—after a 19-month hiatus—in hopes that it will help me stay in touch with friends in Milwaukee. After spending a significant amount of time off the Facebook grid, it should be easy to evaluate whether or not I feel more connected to friends or if communication with them has been eased and made more accessible. If Facebook proves once and again to be inconsequential to maintaining close friendships, and instead becomes a waste of time (no matter how many minutes are burned up by it), then I will quit it again.

But just as I am about to sign back on, I read this article at NYTimes.com called “Company on the Verge of a Social Breakthrough,” by Michiko Kakutani. The article is about Facebook and a new book about it, which was written by David Kirkpatrick, titled The Facebook Effect. Kirkpatrick was granted unprecedented access to the Facebook team for months and was presented with arguments in favor of the social-networking tool’s presence in our lives. He writes in his book, “Some claim, for example, that because of Facebook, young people today have a harder time cheating on their boyfriends or girlfriends. They also say that more transparency should make for a more tolerant society in which people eventually accept that everybody sometimes does bad or embarrassing things.”

I take issue with both of those claims. Firstly, I doubt the first statement is true. If it is, provide me with the numbers showing the decline of relationships having come to an end because of cheating. Facebook’s transparency does not contribute to moral fortitude, it perhaps makes having an affair or cheating on someone harder to hide, but when it comes down to that moment when you commit yourself to an affair, Facebook isn’t going to be in your decision making process. If you are going to cheat, you are going to cheat. Facebook, cell phones, text messages, Twitter and the blogs aren’t going to stop you. Additionally, people are increasingly voyeuristic (the other meaning) when it comes to their Facebook addiction. They love, in a sickly way, to see people stumble, to see flaws. And there are also those people who are more tempted to cheat on their boyfriend or girlfriend because of the social shockwaves it will send through Facebook. These people most certainly suffer from narcissism, they crave admiration and are willing to get it even if means self-abasement.

Secondly, let’s focus on the next statement about the transparency of Facebook leading to “a more tolerant society in which people accept that everybody sometimes does bad or embarrassing things.” Which is to say, what? That before Facebook people didn’t believe or accept the idea that everyone screws up every once in a while. Please. The fact that humans aren’t perfect isn’t exactly breaking news. Maybe folks over at Facebook and its most ardent supporters love to believe this, but to attribute the discovery of human infallibility, and its acceptance as a universal trait, to a social-networking site is absurd.

Furthermore, this statement assumes we benefit from knowing every bad or embarrassing thing our friends and acquaintances do. I am not convinced this is healthy. Concerning our lives, mistakes and errors in judgment included, privacy is important. While sharing with a close friend or relative about a bad thing you have done is very important, sharing about that bad thing you have done on Facebook via a status update hinting at a mistake, or a post, video or picture about it is not comparable or healthy. While the former approach is an attempt to heal, the latter is more of an exercise in narcissism once again and a cry for help from someone who doesn’t know how to share the old fashioned way. We are left to assume that friends of the person who takes the latter approach will meet the other person halfway and make a connection with them, but I don’t believe that is happening on Facebook, at least not in most cases. Why? Because Facebook—ironically called a social-networking site—is outrageously impersonal. It is too easy to walk away from someone crying out for help on Facebook. It is not too easy to walk away when they call you on the phone sobbing or show up on your front door completely broken. The latter scenario is both harder for the person seeking help and for the person who help is sought from.

Lastly, I wouldn’t be that surprised if the transparency on Facebook, which, people say, helps people accept that everybody does bad things, doesn’t lead to more tolerance, but leads to lowering the standards of human behavior and morality. I know, this makes me sound old, like some fuddy-duddy who just doesn’t get it. Well, is it so hard to imagine a world in which every one of our mistakes is known by our friends and relatives because of Facebook’s transparency? No, it isn’t and in this world would we become comfortably numb to errors in judgment from one-night stands to trying cocaine? Yes, it is possible. ‘Everyone screws up’ and tolerance are great things to practice, but it is dangerous to let them become your mantra because although we all screw up, we all need help too. While Facebook may help with bringing the former truth out of the shadows, the latter truth, the one that speaks directly to our love, compassion and our need to edify each other, isn’t exalted by the saturation of our world by Facebook and all of its friends.

Bachelor Party Backpacking Pics

Seven of us hiked up the Greyrock trail on Wednesday, May 26, 2010. We spent the night under the stars/clouds. The weather held after a rainy morning. It was a beautiful start to a long weekend of celebration leading up to Erik and Brianne's wedding. Above: Chris, Erik and Ryan during a water break on the way up.

The man of the hour/day/week, Erik Haagenson with beard, before he would, quote, "GQ it up a bit" before the wedding.

A lookout on the way up.

After we arrived at the campsite, we needed to find firewood. We set off to gather some up by any means possible. Hands, feet, medium-sized boulders, leverage and Kyle's hatchet. This hatchet probably wasn't the hatchet Gary Paulsen had in mind, nor were we the handlers of the hatchet that Paulsen likely imagined. We are large, fit, barrel-chested men, not scrawny, stranded boys. This hatchet could only last so long. Fittingly, Erik was the man using the hatchet when it broke, but it could have been any of us. Above: Matt uses the pathetic head of the hatchet to unsuccessfully split some firewood. Stem of broken hatchet seen in foreground. Broken. Useless. And, I think, plastic. That could have been the problem.

I probably got the best shot of all the group of Fort Collins, pictured above, just beyond the lowly, sunlit foothill. I did have the most powerful camera and the biggest lens. The guys were impressed when I turned my camera off and the lens automatically retracted into the body of the camera. It was a very powerful moment.

Erik and co-best man, Chris, pose near the eastern summit.

I don't mean to toot my own horn here, but I do. Above: Chris and Erik stare contemplatively at the horizon, making for a damn fine picture. When I look at this, I see their adventurous spirit, I feel our bond and I think of their history of climbing, camping and mountaineering together and the reverence they have for God's majestic creation. There isn't much else to capture.

Erik and I, trying to gameface.

Our campsite, just at the top of this pond, was picture perfect, flat, with pre-formed fire pit and accessible water. Chris can be seen climbing down from the rock outcropping in the lower-right corner of the shot.

Nearing sunset, taken from the eastern summit. This is my desktop background right now and it is destined to be blown up and on a wall soon.

Collecting firewood. Chris and Erik with a prized catch, a piece of wood which probably burnt up in five minutes later that evening.

The aforementioned hatchet buried in wood after throwing many a small to medium-sized boulder at it. No one will free this hatchet.

Facing west from the summit of Greyrock.

Wes facing westward.

Ryan and Chris with his significantly weaker camera.

Ryan, taking in the view, and Erik, thinking about being a runaway groom.

Ryan, still taking in the view, and Erik, with a reversal of mood, deciding to now go through with it and seeing the beauty in it all.

Chris proudly exhibiting his fascination with man, especially hairy-chested, New Belgium Ranger IPA-drinking man.

The morning after. I was first to wake. I felt very old and thus sat by the burned out campfire thinking about the other times I have felt much older than this group of friends while they slept on.

Sarge. He joined us for the trip. He's awesome, massive and a great hiker.

Our last stop before heading down to Fort Collins was our traditional cliff-jumping spot. Only three people jumped. Above: Erik jumps and begins his rotation for the gainer that he successfully and safely completed before plunging into the snowmelt.

Matt takes a leap into the frigid Poudre River, ending the festivities in the mountains.