Category: Self Discovery
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Nerd
I own tiny computers, amateur radio equipment, cameras and enough cables to last several lifetimes. Somewhere along the way I realized being a nerd isn’t really about technology. It’s about curiosity.
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Awkward
I’ve spent a significant portion of my life not knowing what to do with my arms. At six foot seven, there is a lot of me to organize. Somewhere along the way, though, I started realizing that awkward doesn’t always need fixing.
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Goofy
I have a personal connection to this word. Goofy is part of the persona I think I needed to develop to let people know that the behemoth standing before them, metaphorically, of course, wasn’t dangerous. Not necessarily the traditional Disney version of Goofy everyone knows. I probably felt a little more like Mr. Bean. Although,…
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Pause
I am not particularly good at doing nothing. Even when I’m sitting still, there’s a pretty good chance some part of my brain has wandered off and started a project without consulting the rest of me. A pause in a conversation before answering. Sitting in the car for another minute because you’re enjoying the company.…
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Texture
Photographers love texture. Peeling paint on an old building. Wrinkles on a face. Weathered wood. Rust on an old truck. The hair on a horse when the light hits it from the side. Give me an old barn that’s been neglected for fifty years and I’ll probably photograph the hell out of it. Give me…
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Expansion
At 6’7″, I have a complicated relationship with space. Airplane seats don’t have enough of it. Cars occasionally don’t have enough of it. Hotel beds definitely don’t have enough of it. I have spent a surprising amount of my life trying to fold myself into spaces apparently designed for significantly smaller humans. So maybe it’s…
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Homes
I grew up in Seattle. If someone asks me where I’m from, Seattle is still usually the answer. I know those streets. I remember places that aren’t there anymore. There are parts of that city that will probably always feel familiar to me. But I’ve lived in Eugene since 1996. At some point, without anyone…
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Delight
Yesterday I spent a lot of time thinking about whether I’m enough. Today, as I was on my way into work, I watched someone playing with their dog at a park and saw the dog lose its mind over that ball. I’m beginning to think that dog may have this whole happiness thing figured out…
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Enough
I don’t think I’ve ever taken a perfect photograph. I’ve taken some damn good ones. I’ve taken photographs I’m proud of. I’ve even taken photographs other people apparently thought were worth paying money for. But perfect? Nope. Give me enough time with one of my own images and I’ll find something wrong with it. The…
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Wonder
Somewhere along the way, humanity spent billions of dollars launching satellites into space so I could use them to find a Tupperware container hidden behind a tree. Think about that for a minute. There are machines traveling thousands of miles per hour above my head, communicating with a computer I’m carrying in my pocket, calculating…
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Effort
At one point in my life, my mother referred to me as “the original joiner.” I would join a group or try a sport, only to discover that it was harder than I expected, wasn’t as much fun as I hoped, or simply required more effort than I wanted to put into it. I’m pretty…
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Balance
Everyone thinks that being tall is a great thing. It does have its benefits, like being able to help people retrieve things from the top shelf at the grocery store, or feeling a little safer walking out at night, but there are also some disadvantages. Back pain, knee pain, and intimidating just about everyone until…
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Presence
There was a moment this past weekend where I reverted back to some old ways. Something someone said caught me in a way that triggered a particular feeling. Rather than address the situation, I let myself get caught up in it and decided not to let it go any further. We headed back to the…
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Play
Without rehashing a bunch of the same things from previous posts, I will say this to sum it all up: I spent more time doing things for others than I did for myself. I did play a little, but for the most part, I was three-quarters-time others. After doing that for so long, it is…
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Adventure
Our high school had a form of team building exercises to get us out with other class mates through a bunch of different types of activities you could sign up for – one of which was climbing using climbing gear. Once on top of the mountain, or rock, the other half of the equation was…
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Energy
I have never really thought of energy as something that comes and goes based entirely on how much sleep I get. At least, I didn’t used to. I always figured that if I was tired, I would eventually catch up on sleep and everything would be fine. Apparently, my body has decided that it has…
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Desire
For most of my life, I don’t think I spent much time thinking about what I desired. I knew what needed to be done. I knew what other people needed from me. I knew what my family needed, what my job needed, what needed to be fixed, and what needed to happen next. Desire seemed…
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Freedom
For most of my life, I don’t think I really understood what freedom meant. I thought freedom was being able to do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, without someone telling you what to do. As a kid, that probably meant riding my Green Machine down the alley as fast as I could without ending…
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Purpose
For most of my life, I never really thought about what my purpose was. I was too busy doing what needed to be done. There was always a job to go to, a family to take care of, something that needed fixing, or someone who needed help with something. Life seemed to provide its own…
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Resilience
When I was a young whipper-snapper, I would run around wearing nothing but cutoffs. No shoes, no shirt, just Jason and his trusty pair of jean shorts with no hem, leaving the dangly bits you see on the newfangled “torn” look jeans. I was a trendsetter. Being a kid, you can probably guess that things…