Author Archive for Chris
Planning My Own Walk in the Woods
I re-kindled my love of camping in 1993. I was in the Oklahoma Army National Guard, and we were doing our annual two-week training/summer camp. That year, instead of setting up the usual big-ass tent that could house my entire platoon with our cots and all of our gear, we bivouacked, which is basically forced camping. One evening, I was sitting on the ground outside of my pup tent and reading a book, and thought that some coffee would be good. I looked through some MRE packets and found packets of instant coffee, sugar, and cocoa mix. Meal, Ready-to-Eat (MRE) packets are widely despised except by me and 3 other people in the world. When some of my army friends walked by my tent, and asked what the hell I was doing, I would tell them. They were all skeptical of the idea of an MRE mocha, but after one sip, they were hooked. By the time the sun had gone down, there were 4 or 5 people sitting around my canteen stove, drinking coffee and talking about whatever. It was great.
A couple of friends and I liked it so much, we went camping a few weeks later, and that was it. No army uniforms, roomier tents, and a huge crackling fire. No phones, no work, no noise. (To this day, whenever I claim a campsite for the weekend, I feel like a big weight has been taken off my shoulders. Cindy feels it, too.)
Anyway, we would go on small hikes during these camping weekends, and we started thinking about doing longer ones. When you start thinking about stuff like that, sooner or later you hear about the Appalachian Trail, a 2,200-mile footpath from Georgia to Maine. The AT is like Route 66 for hikers. It would take lots of time and money to hike the AT, and if I ever had plenty of one, I had none of the other. So, I put it off.
It’s been 15 years since I first started talking about hiking the Appalachian Trail. I still haven’t done it, but I still talk about it a dozen times a year. A few years ago, I read A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
Case in point: A couple of months ago, Cindy and I were sitting on the couch, and she was reading Bryson’s book, and after reading a section about bear attacks and missing hikers, she looked up and said, “And you want to do this?!” and proceeds to read aloud the section about bear attacks and missing hikers. “Are you crazy?”
“Well, I don’t want to do that part,” I said.
I still don’t have the time or money to thru-hike the AT, but that’s okay. I don’t really have the body for it anymore for it either. I think I would be satisfied with just spending 4 to 7 days on the trail, a section of it that’s not too harsh. I want to enjoy the experience, after all.
It’s on the list for 2010.
So, I have already taken steps toward making that a reality this year. I’ll keep you updated when everything starts coming together. I can’t say much right now because I have two friends that are going and it all requires some co-ordination.
My Goals List for 2010
Okay, this is not everything I plan to work on, or towards, or do, or whatever, but it’s a fairly big chunk of mostly-little things that I would like to do this year.
- Complete 365 Days Project on Flickr
- Try 52 new fruits
- Write one novel
- Keep my blog updated
- Write one short story a month
- Lose 50 lbs.
- Get a tattoo
- Write one screenplay
- Float the Illinois River
- Hike part of the Appalachian Trail
- Start a weekly podcast
- Participate in the 5K Alien Fun Run in Roswell, New Mexico
- Make mozzarella
- Make bread
- Make beer
- Make chocolate-covered bacon
- Visit Kansas City, MO
- Visit St. Louis, MO
- Set aside time to write daily
- Join or start a writing group
- Go camping at least 6 times
- Make time to read
- Try a new wine every week
- Make a great costume for Halloween
- Stop using so many damn plastic eating utensils
- Do a better job of getting Christmas stuff together
- Make a living will
- Make pizza from scratch
- Learn a second language
- Make a pound cake
- Be more positive
- Nest at work/Create a positive working environment for myself
- Take Cindy to an elephant sanctuary
- Visit my cousin in Durant, OK
- Refinish a piece of furniture
- Go to a crawfish festival, preferably one in LA
- Save for a pick-up truck
- Take more naps
- Get more sleep/Go to bed at a reasonable time
- Create a small side business
- Hack a Magic 8 Ball
- Make a Millennium Falcon birdhouse
- Participate in Script Frenzy
- Participate in Nanowrimo
- Put quality before quantity/Fewer things, but better things
- Carry a notebook everywhere I go, and remember to use it
- Start an Emergency Fund
- Start saving more
- Contribute regularly to our Edward Jones accounts
- Do 30 minutes of cardio each day
- Complete the P90 workout program
- Do crossword and logic puzzles
- Give to charity each month
- Plant a small garden
- Start a compost bin
- Save stuff that I use at work that can be recycled and recycle it
- Visit Tiffany, Tom, and Allison in Lake Charles, LA
- Get the watch my dad didn’t wear for 30 years fixed
- Organize my finances
- Rebuild my Ghostbusters proton pack
- Ride my scooter in the Ghouls Gone Wild parade, or spend Halloween in New Orleans, LA
- Make soap
- Update my resume
- Get rid of a lot of stuff I don’t really love, use, or need
- Organize our storage unit
- Have a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving dinner with friends
- Get a membership to Art Museum
- Renew our Zoo Friends membership
- Buy our Flaming Lips Freakout tickets early
- See some roller girls in action
- Put a sports rack on the car
- Put a trailer hitch on the car
- Have turducken
- Create a vegetarian version of Thai soup
- Make som tum tacos and hot dogs
- Cook blue crab
- Make a crawfish bowl and have king cake for Mardi Gras
- Go bowling
- Increase readership of my blog
- Do something with each domain that I own
- Visit the Ruckers
- Have movie nights and dinner
- Do two charity walks
- Cheer on marathon runners with Misti
- Get a group together to cheer on the Gay Pride parade
- Keep track of the books I read this year
- Get everyone’s contact information updated and into my address book and cellphone
- Fix that hole that Hooper tried to squeeze through
- Ride with one of the local scooter clubs on a day trip
- Visit that thrift store in Enid that we keep talking about
- Get an eBook reader – either a Kindle or Nook
- Dress better
- Make something artsy-crafty and sell it
- Always carry a book to read
- Always have music or audiobook to listen to
- Learn the metric system
- Fly a kite
- Spend a day at the horse races
- Learn 3 ways to make fire
- See 4 stage productions
- Contact friends I haven’t seen in a while
- Drink more water, and avoid bottled water
- Start a vehicle repair fund
- Set-up wifi at Cindy’s parents’ house
- Learn how to fillet a fish
- Learn to play chess (and then strip chess)
- Avoid the Rapture and stop it from happening again this year
- Make some beef jerky
- Stop complaining and stop making excuses
- Actually go somewhere for our anniversary
This is not the full list. Sure, there are some big things here, but most of the items are small, easy-to-do things that I’ve thought about doing, and put off year after after because they are small, easy-to-do things. I keep thinking I’ll do them later. Then, one day, you realize you’ve been meaning to “make beef jerky” for the past 15 years.
Deeper Motive
As many of you know, I have a bazillion projects that I never quite get around to…but this is changing.
My new site, Deeper Motive will be the place where you can track my progress on whatever project — creative or otherwise — I’m working on. I see it as a place to explore my own creative process, share my thoughts about engaging in creative work, and talk about whatever goal-setting, self-improvement thing I’m struggling with. I know I could post this stuff here on my personal blog, but I also know I’m not the only one that struggles with trying to make time, and find the courage, to work on creative projects. Not everyone wants to know what I did over the weekend in Tulsa, or where Cindy and I ate last night. So, I thought it would be better to have a separate place that focused on being creative and productive.
In keeping with the Kaizen philosophy, I’ll be adding pages, pictures, posts, podcasts, and design elements to the site over the next couple of weeks.
I’ll post the first entry on July 1, 2009.
I hope you come over and check it out.
Fool Mettle Alchemist
I was reading Seth Godin’s blog last week and he had posted this video:
Here’s what he said about it:
My favorite part happens just before the first minute mark. That’s when guy #3 joins the group. Before him, it was just a crazy dancing guy and then maybe one other crazy guy. But it’s guy #3 who made it a movement.
As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been taking one hour a night and devoting that hour to working on a project. I have about a dozen projects, and, all totaled, I believe they can be completed within a year.
Many of these projects are creative ones. Doing something creative, and putting it out there for the world to see can be scary. After watching the video, I found myself thinking about what it was like being on stage at USAO.
Our drama department put on some pretty damn good shows. They didn’t start out being damn good shows. Usually, they started out as awkwardly-delivered lines and half-understood scenes. But we would stop, re-read the lines, pick apart the scene, the words, we would try saying the lines a different way maybe, we would try out different blocking to see what worked best. We devoted ourselves to understanding the story, and the characters. And, by the time opening night rolled around, we knew what the hell we were doing. We knew how to make the audience laugh, and we knew how to make them cry.
And the reason the performances were good was because a group of people agreed to look foolish together, and to say that it’s okay to look foolish. This permission to look, and act, and be foolish is why members of an acting troupe can be so close to each other. Only by being willing to suffer through looking foolish can we develop our skills.
If you want to learn how to roller-blade, you have to be willing to look foolish. You’re going to scream, flail your arms about wildly, and fall flat on your ass. Somebody will laugh. You might be tempted to give up, but you shouldn’t.
Give yourself permission to look foolish, and over time, you’ll scream less, you’ll perform fewer gravity-induced gyrations, and your bruised ass will heal.
Now, that first guy in the video? He’s brave and/or crazy. The second guy? He’s also brave and/or crazy. But that third guy, the one Godin says turned crazy dancing into a movement? He’s the tipping point, the one that gave everybody permission to look foolish, to do the thing they wanted to do when they saw Guy #1 and #2, but couldn’t because they were too afraid. He’s the one that gave them permission to express themselves, and have fun.
But it all started because Guy #1 didn’t quit, and we need to remember that. So, if you have your own creative project, you and I, we’ll be Guy #1. Our friends? They’ll be Guy #2.
And let’s keep going until Guy #3 shows up, okay?
We’re In The Club Now
I took the idea of the grape soda Ellie Badge (if you’ve seen Up, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t seen Up, go see it…take tissue) and changed it to better suit me and Cindy. I think Moxie is more fitting for us. Not only is it one of our favorite drinks of all-time, but it’s a quality we strive to bolster within ourselves.
And we’re going to need a lot of it to get us through the next couple of years 
