So I went back to Colorado last week for 3 days for work. I landed at 9am, drove through Boulder to a campsite outside of Gold Hill, and hung out with my buddy Aaron. The I drove to downtown Denver to see my friends Shane and Ramon. Shane cooked, introduced me to his fiancé, and showed me his studio. Ramon made vuvuzala noises. And then I went out with a bunch of old friends downtown. That was all in a single day before I drove home to Wyoming and I took a few pictures and am now adding this update via my iPhone. If this works it will be awesome.

Everyone wants me to be something I am not. I am supposed to be more than I am to nearly everyone. Maybe that’s just how things are. Maybe the way I am destroys the things I try to make last. If that is the case though why do I have relationships that hold up? I have lasting relationships with a lot of people. Those people exist in my world and they’re fine with the way I am and they don’t spend much time trying to change me or wishing I was different and I am the same way with them. Maybe they all secretly loathe me, but I kind of doubt it.

There are a lot of different people in the world and they handle things differently. I’m of the belief that those different types of people are actually necessary for the world to function. I’m a passive guy. I don’t feel the need to change people or situations on the spot unless there is obvious immanent harm. When I’ve tried to change people immediately it’s rarely resulted in the change that I wanted or intended and it’s never resulted in me getting something better out of it. When I let time pass though, people typically come around and it’s usually an outcome that seems right. I’ve been a very happy person approaching things this way up until this year. Sometimes it doesn’t work out, but I imagine that’s the case for those that press the issue as well so I have a hard time believing one way is better than the other.

Being passive in nature about things and letting them happen the way they happen feels right to me. I’ve never felt like it was a weakness. Being an alpha requires constant fighting to maintain position and I can’t imagine having a deep sense of happiness by being in constant struggle. People respect people that put others in their place to a point; however, I don’t want to be respected because of that. Maybe I’m wrong though. I wish I had evidence to suggest which way is the best way, but I have examples in my life, even recently, where both methods have had success and failure. I feel like I may get smoked in a few battles, but I win a lot of wars.

When I want someone to change I let them know how their actions affect me and I hope that as time passes they will remember that and take it into account. It works sometimes and it fails sometimes. That’s the way everything is though. I don’t have a clue when it really comes down to it. I’m trying to exist in a way where I am happy and where I make those around me happy. I’m falling on my face right now, but I don’t feel like I’m wrong. I could be more forceful in my interactions but I don’t feel like it will result in me being more happy. I guess time will tell. If my life continues to spiral into this shit hole I am in then obviously I will have to change something; however, I still don’t feel weak and powerless.

Maybe it’s a form of manipulation to gradually feed input into situations and hope that they work out the way you want them to; however, I feel like if people have information, they tend to make good choices as time goes on. I get what I want and they’re empowered because they came to those actions themselves. I don’t feel wrong for being the way I am. Maybe I am though. It’s certainly not working right now. I’m a rambling mess.

Yea, Jeff Brooks just made that shit up on the fly during a discussion I had with him a few weeks ago. It’s a brilliant turn of phrase. There are a few phrases careening off of the walls of my skull lately.

“The stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.”
“The easy thing to do and the right thing to do are rarely the same.”

They’re all good and they all seem to apply to me lately. I’m struggling with identifying the right thing to do. My dad always says go with your gut, but my gut is silent. There is no right answer. As I get older I realize that this is the case with most things. Nothing can be responsibly boiled down to such a simple thing as to be black and white without ignoring the complexity of reality. There is no easy thing. There is no right thing.

I’ve recently completed an intro to philosophy course which was fun but has thus far confirmed my suspicions that there is no philosophy that encapsulates the complexity of the real world in such a way that it can be followed to the letter and result in the right course of action in all scenarios. There is no religion that will guide me to the right decision every time. Those things can help in many if not most scenarios; however, there are times where it purely comes down to your own decision and I think those times are the times that define your character. Thus far I have been a coward and a liar. My dad would not be proud.

In my heart I believe in a deontological approach to things, the rightness of the action is judged based on the action itself, not the outcome. I like it because there is a sense of duty and it doesn’t allow shady end-justifies-the-means justifications. The problem is that what I like and what I do are in complete contrast lately. I have a difficult time doing the right thing because I am sensitive to its impact on others. Coward… I then don’t do the right thing. Liar… Ugh.

I know what I want though. Now it’s a matter of being victorious and not surrendering and being able to look in the mirror in the morning and love the guy looking back at me.

Sorry everyone, I’ve been sandbagging. I find it easier to just update facebook with little micro-updates as opposed to writing things on here anymore. I think i am going to dismantle this page here shortly and then mantle (Jeff says that is a word and I believe I am using it incorrectly; however, I feel like it should mean what I used it as) it as a place to put my music/file goings-on.

Less talkie, more walkie.

As anyone who knows me knows right now, my life itself has been a bit dismantled lately by the undoing of my marriage. I’ve kept it pretty quiet online but I’ve spoken to many about it. It is as brutal emotionally as anything I have dealt with; however, I have been able to get a positive experience out of it by focusing on the positive and keeping my mind open to the lessons life has decided to teach me. I have been able to find a great deal of peace via a recent visit to Kauai coupled with a book called “The Art of Happiness” provided to me by my beautiful and compassionate friend Sara Warfield. The combination of events and the the book have seriously changed my life. I am making a conscious effort to be more compassionate in everything that I do. The only thing we really control in our lives is our feelings. It’s scary because it means that every time I get mad at some dumb electronic device and have a meltdown, I am the only one responsible for that. It’s liberating though because once I control my feelings, no one else can. It’s completely change the way I look at the world. My dry sense of irony is still intact, but my view of the world is more positive.

I have been having frequent and meaningful conversations with Heather and we are as good of friends as we’ve ever been. In some ways, I enjoy the time I spend with her now more than I have in years because the tension of the marriage has been eased. Some of my friends and family are struggling with not villainizing her and I truly hope everyone can sit back a little bit and put themselves in her shoes. She’s making an honest effort to do what is right for her and her intentions are pure and honest. Her effort has brought on an awakening in me as well that I and incredibly grateful for. Everything will work out fine and as long as everyone learns from the experience there is no reason to feel anything but thankfulness for what is happening.

People need many different relationships in their lives. People need their friends, family, etc. and the different things they bring to relationships. Intimate relationships are crucial to your well-being but you need to have intimate relationships everywhere, not just in your romantic relationships. Looking for everything in one person is kind of setting yourself up to be disappointed. I think Heather and I built our marriage on a solid friendship that was lacking romance. Maybe that works for some people; however, it caught up with us and neither of us is okay giving up that electricity to keep the marriage together.

I don’t know how to explain it. We’re great friends. We are great business partners. We would probably be millionaires in the next 20 years, but that spark, that primal thing, that chemistry, is missing and neither of us is sure if it was ever there. Do you give up the spark and stay married knowing that something is amiss? Or do you sacrifice the marriage and seek out that primal thing knowing that the intimate relationship you share will still remain even if you’re no longer married? How much is “sticking with it” worth and who are you doing it for? These are intense questions to really think about and the lessons I take from all of this justify what has happened.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. I love all of my friends and family and am so fortunate to have the relationships I do. Have a good night everyone.

So I watched this video today and it got me thinking about how valuable intelligence and long-term vision are.  This guy was literally laughed at numerous times on numerous tv shows by numerous famous people and yet he continued to make his point.  To do that you either have to be terribly cocky or you really grok the topic you’re taking such a firm stance on.  It’s becoming more and more rare to run into people that know a lot about anything.  People have lots of general knowledge, but little specific knowledge.

I’ve had many a chat over the years about the fact that my grandparents generation was the last generation of people in the US that knew how the things around them worked.  If my grandpa was using a tractor, he knew how every part of it worked or at least knew enough about it that if it failed he could repair it.  My generation does not know that.  When things break, we throw it away or re-install it.  To truly understand something you have to know how to build it and Americans don’t build much anymore.  A handful of people automate repetitive or difficult tasks and then other people build on top of that automation and soon enough you end up with a task that no one actually knows how to do.

I am not saying this is a bad thing in all cases.  Much more can get done when you eliminate the tedium of tasks you’re not interested in.  What concerns me is people’s lack of desire to know of how anything works.  It often seems like it is fashionable to be naive.  I don’t get why it isn’t cool to know a lot about a lot of things.  In any case, Peter Schiff, the guy in the video, is a badass.  I’ve seen lots of comments written about him where people say things like, “I wish I had his crystal ball.”  What those people fail to understand is that he doesn’t need one.  He has such a fundamentally powerful understanding of financials coupled with common sense that it appears to others that he can see into the future.  Guys like this inspire me to always be curious and always keep learning. They remind me that the answer to the title of this post is a definitive “never”.