It has been almost a year—a busy year—busyness that doesn’t need justification beyond communicating that this post will be an update that resembles something like Swiss cheese: missing important highlights and diving a little into things that are less important than parts I missed.

My last post communicated my hope for balance. I think I have some but in different ways than I expected they’d play out. I’m becoming more aware of how momentary everything is. Momentary quests demand my attention until they’re needed: laundry and checking tire pressures take a backseat for extended periods: that’s okay—they get attention when they need it.

LIFE UPDATE:

Life is ever-moving. I long for some sense of consistency, and the last few weeks have done a fantastic job of evading it. I traveled with some friends to film some horse racing content and returned home to deal with multiple, conflicting resonances that have made life feel unsettled — all of which are minor and undramatic, but they’ve culminated in anticipation for “normal.”

Three weeks ago, I started writing music every day. My goal to start is to finish SOMETHING every day. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it has to be done. At first, I’m working with the gear in the studio we built at the house. Playing the guitars, messing with the amps, testing the mics, pre-amps, computer, mixing, a new-to-me recording software (Ableton Live from Logic Pro), and co-writing songs with friends as often as they’re able or would like to come over. I’ve learned so much in the last few weeks.

Carrie called me yesterday morning to tell me there was a school shooting in Nashville, TN. It was not at our boys’ school, but the private school where victims lost their lives is closer to our house than our boys’ school. I heard what I assumed to be news helicopters and sirens all afternoon echoing off the hills.

I recently watched a video about grief that explained the process in a “brain-science” fashion. It helped me understand some reasons I’ve been struggling for over a decade. To those of you in the psychology world (and everyone), I apologize for my lack of brain-science accuracy, but this is my current understanding of how this works.

When we experience an event in our lives that matters, a part of our brain (called the hippocampus) TIME STAMPS that event.

In mutually-respecting company, I’m a convicted believer and forthright communicator of my beliefs. Intelligent and respectful conversations and debates help me learn where my beliefs have holes. 

Everyone operates from their own experiences, susceptibility to cultural influence, and intellect. I believe most people do not wake up in the morning committing their day to spew what they believe are falsehoods. If they do oppose their intuitive truths, the motive is probably altruistic or selfish.

My intention is not to communicate an acceptance of poor behavior—especially actions that hurt others. Many beliefs hurt people. Many beliefs I’ve ascribed to in the past hurt people. I’d be ignorant to think I don’t still function with beliefs that hurt people. 

I’ve worked really hard to be comfortable in what I refer to as “the gray.” Being comfortable in the gray is the concept of feeling comfortable with the fact that very few things are fully true. Wholly binary arguments dismiss other perspectives: whether they’re unknown or intentionally unheeded. People’s belief in a truth seems to be dictated by their tribe’s mostly-unanimous agreement of their specific truth’s infallibility. The reason seems to be because the human animal is terribly vulnerable alone, and their (our) survival rests far more on social agreement than it does accuracy.

I was recently challenged by working with someone who’s beliefs are quite different than mine. I respect their right to believe different than I do. I also had to make a choice of whether I’d continue working with them.

Some history for context:

I don’t work with assholes.

I don’t.

I won’t.

I have.

I’m filming something awesome with really cool cameras.

Look at how cool my baby is.

Check out my website.

Check out my friend’s website.

I’m doing a shoot for Red Bull.

I’m working with Apple and Ducati and Rolls Royce and…

This was what my social media looked like a few years ago.

My life looked “amazing” at the same time I felt miserable.

It is borderline (at best) cliche to point out that social media posts are often the happiest of happy moments and don’t highlight reality…

This is a text to a friend who matters. This might matter to you.

I’d like to reiterate my support for you as a person and your value where you are in time. Past moments can be shitty on so many levels (because of our temporal view of the decisions we made), but they have no functional impact on today and tomorrow other than what we give to it. You’re okay. You’re not a fuck up.

Enjoy today, my friend. ;)

was sitting at a coffee shop recently, and a kind older gentleman looked me directly in the eye and said, “I expected to see more shoppers.” Like many moments in my life, I didn’t really understand, but I rolled with it to see what magic might unpack from this strange start to a conversation. He explained that the hospital was close, and he expected more shoppers. As he persisted in his seemingly-strange understanding of the world, I started to creatively justify why shoppers would be near a hospital. I remained open to the concept. A few sentences later, I realized he was talking about helicopters: “choppers.”

In high school, I got to go to a Dave Matthews concert. He played “Crash Into Me” and said “hike up your skirt a little more you little boy.”

It felt weird that he sang it. It felt weirder that everyone loved hearing him sing it. Later, I realized he was saying “hike up your skirt a little more.” Admittedly, this brought a bit of relief.

I’m thirty-eight years old. My saying “back when I was a kid” sounds funny to half the people reading this.

Back when I was a kid, I built forts in abandoned trash piles and trees, rode my bike to a local lake to fish, broke bones, believed I was a ninja, played with knives, skateboarded, and played piano for hours at a time. I would listen to messages from friends on a tape-driven answering machine and call my friends back on a phone that had a cord just long enough to reach the VHS rewinder I was using to rewind our at-home family cinema experience on a tube TV. Friends would handwrite notes for me to read later. I’d do the same.

Communication was mind-blowingly low-friction because it didn’t require the pony express, carrier pigeons, or hours of telepathy lessons.

When we got our new HP computer with a 1 GB hard drive, it made sure to include a sticker that clarified it was 1,000 MB. It had an incredibly-advanced BUILT IN modem that played sounds to remind me what it was like to be abducted by aliens.

I have a specific goal at the moment: create an environment of low-friction creativity.

I’ve been buried under years of emotional baggage attached to physical items in almost every aspect of my life. Carrie recently suggested I read a book that pointed to a seemingly-obvious fact—objects are morally neutral.

I don’t owe anything to any item I own.

They’re things. They don’t have emotions.

Their emotions are projected onto them by me. Nothing else…

I’ve been soaking in a puddle of consequences of my younger self’s past liabilities: particularly surrounding to-do lists and unfinished projects I could have done and projects I wasn’t able to do or didn’t do. Today, I had a realization of something I had feared; I hadn’t taken care of a years-old problem with my laptop before I let the warranty expire. I was pissed at the company about it.

Not to make excuses of why I was frustrated… but…

Communication is terribly inefficient and probably made of magic. After each idea sayer hopes the listener understands, the idea sayer becomes the listener. The role-shifting nature of communication involves a tremendous amount of trust and hope to be heard and to hear—the goal is usually to find a mutually agreed upon understanding of agreement or disagreement.

I’m an emotional being who wants to be loved and known. As I work to transfer chemical balances (emotions) to concepts before even finding the words I hope another person hears, I’m reminded that my listener’s collection of my words have to filter through their ears, transfer to concepts in their mind (from their perspective), and end up as chemical change on their end before we trade roles again…

Forgiving myself for mistakes is insanely hard. When I forgive someone else for something they’ve done to me, I have (in the past) believed I completely forgive them. If I’m honest with myself, I usually add an asterisk. I can’t add an asterisk to my self-forgiveness without the consequence of shame. I question whether forgiveness with an asterisk is forgiveness at all.

Hard turn… I’ll be back on this subject.

If I’m the victim of trauma—either caused by others or caused by circumstance—my relationship with the nature of that trauma shapes my view of reality.

A person I know recently shared some information about another person I know. The information was specifically meant to communicate the accused person’s unworthiness of being in leadership or connected to leadership. The accused person’s mistake was well over ten years ago and has been very public. They were accused, took their punishment, and to the best of my knowledge, have not repeated this mistake since.

I make mistakes. Some of my mistakes have taken years to process. As much as I wish for its existence, real life doesn’t have an undo button. 

I have to live with my mistakes, and I hope others forgive me. I hope I forgive me.

I’m realizing how healthy being “possibly nomadic” is for me. All of the things I’ve identified to hold me down emotionally are connected to THINGS that are hard to move. In the past, I’ve built beautiful garage spaces on the walls of houses with all the tools I need to do anything. And then I moved…

…If my creative space is ready to move and doesn’t have to, it’s better than a well-built space that isn’t ready for relocation at the cost of reduced creativity.

I feel like a minimalist in a hoarder’s life. A lot of the things I “own” are more in ownership of me than I am in ownership of them. To the best of my knowledge, they don’t know I own them: they just exist.

When I give away a hammer that’s not my best one, it might end up in the trash. Its feelings are unlikely to be hurt.

I returned to the endless field of beauty behind the maintenance shed and worked on capturing this otherwise-unremarkable field of unmanaged weeds.

The world had disappeared. This is what I’ve been missing.

Later that evening, I sat at the piano and started playing.

The world disappears when I get to capture moments: either musically or visually. 

I love this.I need this.

Guilt and shame suck. I feel guilt and shame when I perceive I’m letting people down. Sometimes, I do let people down. There are other times that people have felt entitled to a relationship/communication dynamic I didn’t mean to agree to.

I have a phone number that accepts calls and texts. I also have a voicemail, email, website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and dozens of other vehicles for communication people can use to send me a message. A few years ago (give or take a decade), I realized that merely having these accounts seemed to create an expectation that I would respond quickly or at all. Sometimes, people have been upset by my slow or lacking responses. Sometimes, I have felt bad. 

In order to not disappoint others, I’ve decided to…