Christmas in Central Europe

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One of the main reasons people visit Europe during November and December are the Christmas markets. Markets that pop up during the Christmas season date back to at least the late Middle Ages, can be found all over Europe, and are so popular that cities across the United States do their best accurately replicate the experience.

Like their American replicas, they are filled with booths that sell food and beverage.

As well as shops that sell decorations, such as ornaments and nativity displays.

They can be fun places to hang out both in daylight and at night.

Actually, with all the lights, they can be all the more magical at night.

These Christmas markets are pretty sizable, with some being large enough to have multiple sections, like the Salzburg Christkindlmarkt at the Dom and Residenzplatz in Austria.

And, while Munich’s main Christmas market is at Marienplatz.

Perhaps their most interesting one is at Odeonsplatz, a mere 500 m (less than half a mile) away. This one was large enough to not only have the usual food, drink and ornaments, but also had a full Christmas children’s display which included my favorite part of this journey: A singing moose that sings “Winter Wonderland” in German.

Seriously, I could not get enough of this video!

Throughout my time in Europe, going to Christmas markets, I did make one observation that was somewhat strange to me. At the surface, Christmas in Europe seemed a bit more religious, with nativity scenes everywhere. At this Christmas market in Prague (Chezchia), the first thing visitors see is a nativity scene in front of a gigantic church.

This seemed odd given that, as a whole Europe is seen as less religious than the United States and the Czech Republic is among the least religious countries in the world!

Yet, somehow, in the more religious United States, the primary symbol of Christmas, that is seen everywhere is Santa, the quintessential symbol of commercial, secular Christmas.

And it’s the post-Christian Europe where one will see nativity scenes, the quintessential symbol of Christian Christmas everywhere!

How does that make sense? Well, the answer is, it doesn’t. Most traditions don’t. Most traditions are some kind of jumbled up combination of the history of a place and the present day sensibilities of the population, combining the here and now with the nearby, both spatially and temporally.

There are reasons behind them, but they are complicated. Sometimes they involve specific, almost random events that would constitute historical minutia. It seems like to try to understand all the history behind every custom or tradition from around the world would be like trying to drill down to the specific reactions involving every sub-atomic structure to explain all the physical wonders of the world, including human behavior.

Maybe, observing anything that seems contradictory like this is a lession for all of us to learn about overthinking things. Overthinking can sometimes seriously rob people of joy. While hanging out in a Christmas market in a light Christmas-y snow, is it better to be fixating on why a less religious continent has more religious imagery than mine, or is it better to just be taking in the experience and the people around me?

Munich in November

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It was barely above freezing when these brave individuals bared the cold river and graciously showed off their amazing surfing abilities in Munich’s English Garden. In the summertime, it is likely quite a challenge to get a peak at these amazing local athletes from the bridge over the Eisbachwelle along Prinzregentenstraße. In November, at least before noon, I was able to just walk up to this overlook and get a glimpse of this incredible performance. By the afternoon, however, this bridge would be packed with people doing the typical 2023 thing, taking photos and videos.

Munich in November is not for those who prioritize comfort. Most days are cloudy and chilly. Cold rain and wet snow is quite common.

Also, daylight is quite limited. This photograph of the BMW world headquarters was taken a little after 3:30 P.M. with darkness already starting to encroach upon the city.

The key is maximizing the daylight hours as much as possible.

To take advantage of those rare instances when the sun does come out.

And to find a fair share of indoor activities. Luckily, Munich is home to the world’s largest beer garden.

As well as countless other places people go to eat and drink.

Perhaps the most famous tourist destination is the Hofbräuhaus.

The easiest way to describe this place is that it takes every stereotype you may have about Bavaria and leans into it 100%. Most people are drinking large quantities of beer and there is a band in the middle playing polka or music of a similar variety. During peak tourist season, this place may be so packed it is hard to get a table, making November a pretty good time to visit this place.

Of course, there are activities for those times when you just don’t feel like drinking. On this trip, I visited multiple museums dedicated to showcasing Bavarian history.

Another place easier to navigate due to the relatively low volume of tourists compared to other parts of the year is the Oktoberfest Museum.

All discussion around town about Oktoberfest defied my expectations. Oktoberfest is a tradition that goes back to a wedding celebration in 1810.

For some reason, I expected the locals to mostly be annoyed by an event that brings a lot of people to town to get drunk, act stupidly and sing songs in a foreign language. However, most people I talked to seemed to be proud of it. Maybe this is just the tourism industry trying to get people to come back, but I was told it is an event I need to experience.

The Oktoberfest Museum covers not only the history of the event, but the history of beer, sometimes in a comical manner.

It also validated both my love of all things bicycles and my instance that inflation is a bigger issue than most people give it credit for. Inflation cancelled this event for two years!

One thing that will be hard to miss in November, pretty much anywhere in Europe, is preparation for Christmas, with trees going up and people getting those amazing German Christmas markets setup.

Of course, Europe is not the United States and they do not have the Thanksgiving holiday. However, they seem to kick off the Christmas season in a similar manner. Most of these markets open up just before or just after Thanksgiving.

And, perhaps unfortunately, they have not only adapted the worst aspect of American Thanksgiving, Black Friday, but managed to turn it into an entire week.

Seriously, I know some people are ashamed of the history of Thanksgiving. However, today the holiday’s primary purposes are to gather people together and express gratitude. If people in other countries started adapting this tradition, as an American, I would wear it with pride. Our consumerism, not so much.

Whenever I travel anywhere, I like to really immerse myself in the food, sometimes even eating things I would not normally eat.

It’s another way of getting a real cultural experience. These traditional German dishes are pretty heavy. Eating them feels far more natural in the wintertime.

To sum it up, there are advantages and disadvantages to visiting places like Munich in November. Munich’s November weather is less than ideal. However, it is great to see people setting up the Christmas markets, and have far less lines and crowds, as well as some cheaper prices for things like airfare and hotels.

Also, had I not visited in November, I would not have learned about another completely unexpected tradition, this strange combination of curling and bocce ball, played on ice.

Seriously, I have no idea what this sport is called, but it felt like it was everywhere, particularly at beer gardens. This makes sense as I would be hard pressed to think of a better drinking game to be played outside in cold weather.

Prague: Where the Past Come to Life

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The first thing that stands out to anyone visiting Prague for the first time is the architecture. Navigating the city’s confusing, densely packed roads, visitors encounter one elaborate Medieval or Baroque era building after another.

Many of them show off the centuries of history they embody, as well as what had to have been thousands of hours of attention to detail in design and build.

It is perhaps an even more amazing set of structures to behold at night.

It is no wonder the city tops many lists of the most beautiful cities on earth.

Perhaps the most crowded destination in the city is the now over 600 year old Astronomical Clock, right in the center of Old Town Prague.

For anyone visiting destinations that are “touristy”, it is imperative to find the right time to visit destinations like these where crowds are constantly gathering for things like the hourly show this clock put on. This clock itself is ironically a window into Central Europe’s past, particularly the 15th through 17th centuries when the majority of its individual components were created. Embedded in the structure is an implication of the values of the time. There is religious imagery. The clock shows the positions of the sun, earth, moon and all of the zodiac constellations. It is also hard to ignore the skeleton adjacent to the upper right portion of the clock itself.

There is probably a near infinite number of inferences that can be made about the values of the past from what features were included in the design of this clock. Historians can rely on other sources and, if they can avoid the trap of their own biases, can create a more accurate description of what the Late Medieval and Early Modern people valued. Looking upon a structure like this, the important thing to realize is that their values were different than ours are today and that many of the assumptions we take for granted in 21st century life do not apply to building constructed so long ago.

Construction on the famous Charles Bridge started even earlier than the astronomical clock.

This bridge is beautiful to walk both by day and night. On both ends of the bridge, end there is a monument to pass under.

This bridge is one of many places around Prague where the city’s religious past is right in front of everyone’s faces, ironic for a country that is now one of the world’s least religious.

It’s odd because the Prague Castle, which is now the residence of the Czech Republic’s Head of State, is also home to several huge churches.

As an American looking upon this, I cannot help but see, right in front of me, the true reasoning behind one of the founding principles of our nation being the “Separation of Church and State.” There are many Americans today who fear any intrusion of religious based values into our public policy is a threat to this principle, but here in Prague, for centuries upon centuries, the church and the state were not even physically separated! Like many Medieval European governments, the church and the state were intertwined, with Bohemia being part of the Holy Roman Empire and often also imposing policy dictated by the pope.

Of course, there were some who questioned it, including Jan Hus, whose Proto-Protestant movement pre-dates Martin Luther by roughly a century. It is here in Prague he preached many of the same principles that would be promoted by Luther, at the Bethlehem Chapel.

Perhaps because the region that is now the Czech Republic did not suffer quite the mortality rate of the rest of Europe from the “black death”, the battle between Catholicism and Protestantism that would take place here would foreshadow what was to come for the rest of Eurpoe.

Around Prague, it is not just ancient history that comes to life. The Dancing House was built to on the site of the Prague bombing of 1945.

The Retro Museum is one of two museums that depicts life under Communist rule, this one focused on the 1970s and 1980s.

Prague has only been what it currently is for a little over 30 years. So, to experience Prague and its consumer culture and apparently legal marijuana is to be very much in the present day.

The Czech Republic’s per capita GDP is right around the same as Estonia and significantly higher than Poland, making it one of the more successful ex-soviet countries. With an amazing amount of green space and parks, the place seems like an incredible place to be and live.

To be in Prague is to be in the present moment, but constantly surrounded by echoes of the past and be constantly reminded of what series of events made the world what it is today.

90 Minute Hikes Outside of Denver

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Phenomenon like “quiet quitting“, the “great resignation” and some places experimenting with the four day workweek should make it abundantly clear that there is something less than ideal about the standard work culture of the post industrial world.

Note: This book was published in 2010

Our general work setup is built around a world that no longer exists. It was built around the industrial world of one income families of a hundred years ago. On an assembly line, the amount of value someone brings to a company is directly connected to the number of hours they are present. The eight hour workday represents a compromise of sorts between business owners and labor. It is based on this direct connection between value and hours worked, as well as a world where most laborers were men with women at home tending to childcare and household upkeep. Today’s world is completely different and needs a completely different paradigm.

A silent disco co-working pop-up in Denver, curtsey of Cifernoise Productions

However, realistically, it is going to take a while to get there. We are still in the beginning phases of exploring the new nature of work after the pandemic.

And, there are plenty of powerful interests trying desperately to keep as much of the old, flawed system as possible. This will certainly delay progress towards a new paradigm.

At this time, living a healthy and balanced life will require being innovative and working with what we have available. This is why I have taken an interest in hikes that can be done in roughly 90 minutes close to home. This fall, I tried two.

First was Pence Park, between Evergreen and Indian Hills.

The hike to the top is about a mile and a half (2.4 km) with an elevation gain of 750 feet (230m).

For a short hike, the views here are quite stunning, especially at the top.

My other 90 minute fall hike was Panorama Point, just outside the small town of Kittridge.

This hike has a round trip distance of just over three miles (≈ 5 km) and an elevation gain of 625 feet (190m). These hiking trails are actually only a few miles apart, so it is not surprising that they feel quite similar.

Panorama Point has an overlook of the town of Evergreen at the top.

So, there are some slight differences, but both hikes take about an hour and a half and are about 45 minutes to drive to from downtown Denver.

This activity address two of the biggest shortcomings of “9-to-5” office jobs. Spending those hours doing work inside, whether it is in an office or remote, can limit one’s exposure to sunlight. Some studies have estimated that well over half of Americans are not getting sufficient vitamin D, which mostly comes from exposure to sunlight. Additionally, most of these jobs are sedentary, involving sitting at a computer all day long, which is certainly not helping with the obesity epidemic.

These 90 minute hikes offer an opportunity to get some sun, exercise, and even be a bit social in the middle of the day on a weekday, particularly in the spring and fall seasons. On hikes like these, there is even the potential to limit the amount of time spent out of contact to under two hours. Eating and working from a nearby restaurant made my time away from my computer, messages, etc. not too much more than a standard lunch hour.

Blackbird Cafe in Kittridge, CO

Of course, not everybody lives in a place with amazing short hikes nearby. The key is to be creative and work with what you do have around you to find habits that help correct the imbalances created by a less than ideal work setup. Hopefully, the time will come sooner rather than later when we’ll determine how a majority of people can be happy, healthy and provide value to the organizations they work for. Until then, I hope you can find your version of the 90 minute hike less than an hour from home.

Small Town Colorado

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Travel has the potential to expand one’s point of view beyond the habits, priorities and perspectives that they are typically surrounded by. Visiting another location and being exposed to another culture serves as a reminder that the way things are done in the particular time and place a person lives is not the only way things can be done. However, in order to truly embrace this lesson a traveler must visit a place where they will truly be surrounded by different types of people and actually interact with some of the locals.

A lot of people visit places that are beautiful, but touristy.

Although these trips are fantastic, they usually find themselves surrounded by other tourists.

Many of whom have similar circumstances and outlooks as their own.

Truly getting out there and being exposed to different types of people, with different ways, different priorities, different customs and concerns requires being deliberate, both with respect to where to go and what activities to get involved in. An American could travel all the way to the other side of the world to do something like take an English language tour of the Taj Mahal and not really be outside of their comfort zone.

Luckily, the reverse is also possible. One must not travel far to be in a different place. In big cities like New York, ethnic neighborhoods give people the opportunity to visit a different place right in their hometown.

A state like Colorado gives people the opportunity to visit the other side of the primary cultural and political divide in the United States of America: The urban/ rural divide.

However, this requires going to places like small town churches.

Coffee shops

Or festivals

And talking to people who live that small town life.

Sometimes it even helps to take part in the activities they enjoy.

From an urban standpoint, it is easy to ask questions like…

Who would want to live in a place where the nearest Chipotle is an hour away?

Who would want to live in a town where you go to the same bar every weekend and encounter the same ten people every time?

What do people even do here most of the time?

And of course, the media and many political activists will not hesitate to to exploit those differences. It’s an easy way for them to get ratings, clicks and donations. Perhaps most sinister of them all, if a politician or political party can convince most of their constituents to fear the other, they can count on their support out of fear, disgust or contempt rather than having to actually serve their constituents needs.

Unfortunately, the big loser in this is all of the average person, becoming more isolated, depressed and distrustful of one another.

As is the case with every other cultural divide, on the other side of the urban/rural divide are people who, generally speaking are not all that different. They just live at a different pace.

There are some great ideas here and many take part in activities that are quite healthy from a physical, mental and spiritual point of view. Despite the divide and how its exploited, most people on both sides of it are friendly and accepting.

Travel, like life, has ebbs and flows. Some years offer many travel opportunities with abundant resources to explore exotic places on the other side of the world. Others require the focus to be kept close to home. These times do, however, provide the opportunity to explore what one can learn, see and experience relatively close to where they live.

It would benefit most people to reach across any of these divides. Particularly when a cultural divide is accompanied by a political one, there is a tendency to reduce entire groups of people to caricatures that are often a blatant missrepresentment of who they are. By meeting people and talking to them, it is possible to see who they really are.

September Backpacking in the Rio Grande National Forest

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We drove two hours from the nearest town, Monte Vista, Colorado just to get to the Three Forks Trailhead in the Conejos River Valley.

It’s hard to imagine being any further away from civilization.

It’s the trip I needed, as it is the trip we all need from time to time. Three days without the constant distractions of modern life. Three days where one can just gather thoughts and reset from the constant onslaught of information.

It started on the final day of a rainy week. The trails were quite muddy from the previous several days.

It was actually somewhat of a miserable day. It’s hard enough to climb roughly 1400 feet (425m) carrying heavy backpacks. The morning was cold and mostly cloudy.

Then came the rain, somewhat heavy at times and the fog. And, it was a cold rain, the kind of rain that soaks coldness down to the bones. The kind of rain that made us want to just sit in our tents, which we did for over 12 hours that afternoon and evening.

The fog obscured the views of Blue Lake, at nearly 11,500 feet (3500m) both in the evening and especially the following morning.

After climbing a little bit higher the next day, we could see the manner in which this morning fog was impacting some parts of the forest but not others.

I guess we just happened to be in one of those unlucky spots where the thick set of clouds had established themselves for the entire night. There is something both humbling and satisfying about experiences like these. We live in an era where people try to predict and control everything. It’s nice to know what to expect from our experiences. However, something gets lost when we achieve a certain level of certainty in life. It can make things feel emptier, more formulaic, even robotic at times. Surprises bring beauty. Surprises bring anticipation. They lead to appreication. Surprises can make us feel alive.

Sure, I was miserable the first day, but once everything cleared up it was spectacular!

The less than ideal conditions on day 1 probably made me appreciate day 2 more. In this case, it even created a more unique experience. Often times, cold rain means snow at higher elevations, which we saw when we looked up.

As we approached the pass, along the Continental Divide, we even began to encounter some snow from the previous night.

Yet, it was also somehow drier.

One of the things I love the most about the mountains is how full of paradoxes it can be. With each valley and mesa being subject to different weather conditions each day, experiences can often be wildly different from expectations.

Combined with a type of natural beauty most of us are deprived of in our urban lives.

And seeing first hand, with features like deeper snow in the areas most commonly shaded.

Well, it forces us to think differently. In modern life, we typically try to understand and control our surroundings. Based on several factors, we select neighborhoods to live in. Many of us have jobs that provide a predictable stream of income. We learn routes, create habits and form routines. Here, all we can do is prepare for all the possibilities and respond to what happens.

What is odd is that the very thing that makes the conditions hard to predict, the mountains, is what makes it a place people want to visit. It’s almost as if humanity’s attraction to visiting places like this is a cosmic sign that we are, often unspokenly, yearning for a bit of chaos, a bit of surprise in our lives.

On the second day, we even found a wonderful, amazingly scenic, place to camp.

With an overlook of the Middle Fork of the Conejos River.

With amazing alpenglow in both the evening and the morning and the ability to see the stars on a new moon night.

The final day of these types of trips typically involves hiking back downhill. We followed the Middle Fork of the Conejos River, making it the gentlest day of the trip. It is also almost always a day of de-layering. For most of us, it is not typical to see frost in September. Yet, this day switched from frost to being kind of warm pretty quickly.

The best feature of the day, and the feature that made the trip was this unnamed waterfall.

It’s so far away from civilization, so infrequently traveled that a name for this waterfall could not be found on the map. We saw it from several angles, including having seen it the prior day from the other side of the ridge to the south.

In life, it is natural to seek comfort. Being uncomfortable is not fun. Unfortunately, the prioritization of comfort and conveniences has denied many of us the most amazing experiences. Nothing on this trip was possible without a little bit of discomfort. However, while we did have one miserable evening, we did manage to avoid a second by springing for a hotel room in Monte Vista along the way down.

The Best Western Movie Manor is one of those unique hotels with a drive in movie, where visitors can actually watch a movie from their rooms, out the window. With this choice, we managed to avoid some discomfort without having it cost us any of the experiences we would have the next three days. Maybe it is possible to use our natural drive for comfort, but do so in a way that still recognizes that having the experience is the ultimate priority.

Visiting Three Past Chapters

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What is the value of looking back to, and even re-experiencing some aspects of the past? It is a question many of us wrestle with quite a bit. From Happy Days to The Wonder Years, That 70s Show and Stranger Things there is no shortage of nostalgia in our present day culture. Yet, there was a time in fairly recent history when nostalgia was actually looked upon as a mental disorder. We all want to understand who we are, but…

Is there a reason we want to “visit” the past?

Why do we want to reminisce about the way things were?

Is it a form of escapism or a form of connecting with something about ourselves and our history?

That is the question I ended up inadvertently answering this summer, when a series of trips ended up being back-to-back visits to different parts of my past.

First up was Valparaiso University, where I attended college.

This was by far the most lighthearted part. Much of it was about seeing the people I went to college with, looking at the dorm rooms I lived in, sharing stories about antics and experiences.

Valpariaso, Indiana was once a far sleepier town. Going back there almost felt like Marty McFly’s trip into 2015’s version of Hill Valley in Back to the Future. My vision of Valparaiso is the Valparaiso of many years ago. I was stunned to see a far more vibrant downtown, with more people out and about, more bars and restaurants, farmer’s markets and people out cruising around!

I then visited Chicago, a place I lived several years later, for my first job after attending graduate school.

Being the most recent chapter of my life, this was my least dramatic experience. It was nice to be back at Portillos.

Ride the train again and visit some of my friends. I even got a chance to live the kind of life I lived there going to Wrigley Field and spending an entire night out at the bars.

The most dramatic part of my trip, by far, was visiting the place where I grew up, New York.

I actually grew up on Long Island, in a town called Mineola.

To most, it is not a huge difference, but New York is the place where people make the distinction between being from Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx and consider them completely different ways of life despite the short geographical distance.

I grew up eating the best pizza in the world.

Going to swim at Barr Beach (now North Hempstead Beach).

And riding the train, both the Long Island Railroad and the subway, to get places.

While there I felt like neither a resident nor a tourist.

It’s been a long time since I’ve lived in New York. I never lived there as an adult. Yet, New York is still in the way that I walk, the way that I talk and the way that I act. The only day people viewed me as a tourist was the day I wore this American flag shirt to the Statue of Liberty.

Every other day, it was business as usual.

Still, it felt really emotional to remember all the things I loved when I was a kid, but feel so far removed from it.

I thought of my family, my family’s origins from even before we came to New York. Why do I sometimes feel so disconnected from it? Is that a bad thing? I’ve changed so much since every one of these chapters of my life. In fact, I would hate to be judged based on who I was at any of those moments in time. But, something made me feel a strong desire to be better connected with this past, as if it would provide some kind of grounding.

When I returned to Colorado, I reflected on the trip, especially New York.

I realized that, well, in life we all move on. We progress through chapters, some pleasant, some less pleasant. Some that feel more authentic than others. Based on who I am now, even though I often long for the fast paced lifestyle New York provides and taking trains everywhere, Colorado is where I was meant to be. Maybe I just feel I was meant to visit New York more frequently than I do.

As far as why we reminisce, why we desire to re-experience the people, places and activities we once did, in my journey I found myself focused primarily on who I was in each chapter. What I did. How I did it. How it made me feel. In New York, it was who I was as aa child. How I interacted with teachers, other kids my age. The experiences that, although so long ago, washed out in my memory by more recent happening, made me who I am.

Maybe that is the underlying reason for nostalgia. We want to remember who we once were. After all, in our lives we make some changes on purpose, but some just happen. They may not have been something we specifically desired. Sometimes they are foisted on us. Sometimes we’re just trying to get through a situation, like a survival technique applied to the modern civilized world.

So, maybe the primary reason we watch old shows, listen to old songs and go to the places that remind us of some past chapter of our lives is to reconnect with a past version of ourselves. And, if we are mindful enough, we can think about some of the ways in which we’ve changed and ask ourselves…

Did I want that?

Is this something that is serving me well?

And, is there something about who I was then I should get back in touch with?

Fifty-Fifty: My Story of 2023

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Sorry, this blog post is not about the popular K-Pop group. However, I am a big fan and when I heard about what inspired their name I could not help but resonate.

I have not posted much in 2023. Part of it is because for much of the year I have been primarily visiting places I have already visited.

However, I am also actively encouraging people to spend less time online as part of a broader initiative, meaning I probably don’t want to be putting too much content for people to read online.

However, this does not mean it hasn’t been an interesting year. The world is in an interesting place. Many people have put the pandemic and much of what the year 2020 was all about behind them. Yet, some are trying to hold onto those themes, while there are still others trying to recreate or recover some aspects of the pre-pandemic world. Simultaneously, organizations and professional groups are talking about how to attract and retain top talent while some large companies are enforcing very top-down return to office mandates. One minute I hear a group of people talking about how wonderful it is that we encounter different types of people everywhere they go. The next, someone is making fun of someone for being different, or reprimanding someone for living by a values system different than theirs.

It feels like everywhere I go I suddenly enter a different energy.

Even within the same organization and sometimes from the very same person I will hear messages that hint at both sides of this strange line. If I could sum up what this year’s been like thus far, maybe it is this photo from Gilpin County on a Friday in April.

At that moment in time, it was probably just shy of 60°F (≈15°C) outside. Yet a significant amount of recent snow still occupied the ground. It was also Friday afternoon, a time many consider a prefaces between the workweek and the weekend. In a way, the people in this community were experiencing both winter and spring and both the workweek and the weekend at the same time.

Over the course of the year, I have encountered communities, been involved in discussions and found places where I feel more at home than I had for a long time.

It’s even come from surprising sources; People I did not expect to have any interest in the things I am interested in. Or places I had previously associated with a completely different set of attitudes.

However, I have also experienced my fair share of the opposite. I’m riding high, then all of a sudden, a very backwards-looking message, typically related to politics, judgements of people around race, gender and age, or an excessive focus on conformity emerges in a place where it was not expected. I was just expecting to have a good time and all of a sudden I am once again exposed to this tired set of perspectives about life and who we are.

So, it’s been 50-50. Maybe I should be thankful for the former 50, that I at least get to spend part of my time in the energy of people trying to move on from the fear-based conditioning of the past. However, it appears to me as if it is now a time for choosing. What do we really want? What do we want to be around? Do we want to live our lives afraid of rejection, ostracism or some form of retaliation for saying the wrong thing, wanting to live a bit differently or doing what we need to do to take care of ourselves? Or do we want to take a little bit of time to try to understand one another so that we can all do what we need to do to live happy lives?

I know what side of this 50-50 divide I want to be on. The only questions are…

  1. Is it realistic?
  2. How much do I need to nudge others around me to have this kind of energy be the default in my life?

On Restrictions (What Las Vegas Means to Me)

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Every time I go to Las Vegas, I think about the grand meaning behind this place. What makes this place the way it is? Why do so many people want to come here? And, what does this tell us about the current human experience?

I come here a lot, and have written several previous entries about Las Vegas. Perhaps the most fitting description of what Las Vegas means to the countless people who frequently visit this place is the title to one of my previous posts, Three Days Without Rules.

Most people spend a vast majority of their time doing things they don’t really have control over. I don’t think any of us who work 40 hours per week were at any of the discussions, over a hundred years ago, where labor activists and corporate owners agreed to that standard. Nor do that many of us have any idea how 9-5 became the standard working hours.

The same can be said for many of the other responsibilities we take on, including maintaining our homes, family and relationship responsibilities and many of the standards around the other things we get involved in and take responsibility for.

For many of us, most days are just seas of to-do lists.

What we chose to do in that small amount of time we have total control over is often quite telling. People like me, with sedentary jobs in front of computers, often opt for active, outdoor pursuits in our spare time.

However, those with active jobs that require physical exertion are often more interested in relaxing, watching T.V. and sports in their spare time.

I remember back when I was in college and graduate school wondering if students balance out the high level of intellectual processing involved in their studies by drinking to sometimes crazy levels of stupidity. Those the live in cold climates are definitely the most anxious to visit places like Cancun. There is also the stereotype of the person who comes across as shy and reserved having some of the wildest and kinkiest sex lives.

In a world has recently abandoned organized religion and become obsessed with numbers and metrics for everything, we now see people looking for something beyond progress and achievement. Dare I say it, beyond this life.

These observations seem to indicate that we are all trying to achieve balance and that what people chose to do with weekends, vacations, etc. provide clues as to how day-to-day life can be out of balance in the current era.

So, why do so many people visit Las Vegas?

The reason so many visit Las Vegas is the same reason so many hate Las Vegas. What goes on here tells us something about how we live our lives in the present-day, specifically what is missing, what people are craving. I recently read a book called The Comfort Crisis, which describes, both through a lived experience and references to research what aspects of the human experiences we’ve lost by prioritizing comfort (and predictability, which is really another form of comfort) in nearly all of our recent pursuits.

In our collective pursuit of comfort, we have placed a lot of restrictions on ourselves and each other. We refuse to pursue our passions to avoid the potential financial, lifestyle and reputation risks. We shy away from pursuing meaningful encounters, friendships and relationships to avoid making ourselves potentially vulnerable to rejection and potentially making others uncomfortable for a variety of reasons, most commonly jealousy or the discomfort of seeing others break social norms. We skip activities to avoid random, often overblown risks. Perhaps most sadly, we limit how present we can be with the people around us, often the people we care about most, out of this strange pressure we put on ourselves to always be available to respond to messages. We fear our bosses, co-workers, or even sometimes causal acquaintances will be disappointed in us if there is any delay in our responses to messages over email, slack and even social media and therefore end up almost chained to our computers or other work stations.

Every time I go to Vegas, what I see is a large subset of society crying out.

They are crying out for some chaos. They are crying out for some unpredictability. They are crying out for some variety in a world where we condition ourselves and each other to follow the same routine, processes and procedures every day.

It is more than likely that we need some restrictions in our lives. At some point, we all need to sober up and get healthy.

But, perhaps, what places like Las Vegas demonstrate is that we may have too many restrictions, at least in certain areas of our lives.

3 Reasons I am More Hopeful at the End of 2022

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I generally try to lean into the positive on this blog, because the world is just filled with too much negativity. However, as much as people tend to lean towards and dwell on negative things, we can’t all be positive all the time. Negativity does happen. It does not need to be ignored. We just need to balance out our thoughts by expressing gratitude and appreciation more and maybe reducing the amount of unnecessary negative content we consume.

It is in this vein that I must acknowledge that 2022 is the first time in nearly two decades I am ending the year with a more hopeful view of humanity and our future. So far this century, it has honestly felt like things were getting worse. People feel more divided, isolated and in worse physical, financial and mental health than they were at the turn of the century. 2008, with the financial crisis and smart phones and social media gaining momentum, seems like the pivotal year. I’ve even taken to labelling the period of time since then as the “Little Dark Age.”

Thinking back, two events in particular gave me a preview of the darkness that was to come. First, I saw a whole city collectively “lose their shit” over the results of an election.

In 2004 I was living in Madison, Wisconsin, a city that is quite beautiful and culturally rich. However, at that time, it felt like they were just a little ahead of the curve in becoming obsessed with partisan politics and being outright mean to anyone who even shows an indication that they are not in 100% agreement on issues that largely split the country 50/50.

Then, my friends started getting smart phones. Normally, it is not a bad thing when someone obtains a new product. However, I began to see more and more people become so obsessed with this device that they would ignore the people that are actually in front of them, just staring at the thing the entire time. I just knew this could not be good for humanity.

The world got darker. But now, I see a coming better era. Three moments from 2022 captivate this sentiment.

1. When I met up with my friend who is a professor

My friend Kevin is a professor at Valparaiso University, where I went to college.

I met up with him at the start of the month. We went out for deep dish pizza and went to the Christkindlmarket, because, well, Chicago in December.

I had honestly not seen him since before the pandemic and I asked him about student’s cell phone use. What he said indicated a marked improvement. He talked about how back in 2016, students were constantly being distracted by their phones, doing things like scrolling through social media. He indicated to me that now it seems like the majority of students’ phone use in class seems to be class related. Maybe they’re looking up an equation or a historical figure to enhance what the discussion in front of them is. This feels like a new generation of people is finding a far more productive way to use this technology that recently disrupted our lives.

2. Random song lyrics

These particular song lyrics hit me hard, in a good way, in 2022. They both represent people looking inward as opposed to outward. They represent a switch from the finger pointing and accusations that were quite common during the pandemic to self-reflection and trying to be a better person. This represents a trend that has the potential to be both less divisive and also more empowering. Focusing on what we, as individuals and communities, can do offers far more hope than dwelling on external factors and obsessing over how to either change or exact revenge on certain groups of people.

This kind of echoes what I have been seeing elsewhere in culture, including movies and T.V. shows. Without getting into detail, It feels like from roughly 2017 through 2020 most of pop culture had an us vs. them theme. Many songs, movies and shows seemed to be strongly advocating that everyone adapt perspectives that are in line with what people in Hollywood think (or, just taking them as ground truth despite them being up for debate generally). This year, I saw Top Gun Maverick, Elvis and Spirited, the new Christmas movie. These films, along with some other things I watched this year seem more themed around how we can improve while still being true to who we are. Thus, combining wanting to be better to those around us with acceptance of what makes all of us unique.

3. People I encountered throughout the year

As the year went by, it felt like I was encountering more and more people with a different focus. It started when the Commons on Champa, Denver’s entrepreneurial hub, reopened the last day of May.

This lead to meeting entrepreneurs from all over Latin America, associated with the Young Leaders in the Americas Initiative. What a wonderful, appreciative group of people. I’ve been told multiple times that people from poorer countries are often better at appreciating what they have as opposed to focusing on getting the next thing.

Then, on top of Mount Antero in August, I encountered some of the friendliest people I’d ever met.

They were friends from California and Arizona on a road trip together. They offered me a ride when my dog got blisters on her paws. They picked up litter they saw on the trail. Everything they talked about was positive, things like how amazing the music they were listening to is and astonishment at the scenery on the hike.

For much of the second half of the year I heard countless people describe things like their desire to get away from a lot of the stress and negativity of recent years and reconnect with themselves, their families, communities and nature. I had many people tell me about what they are doing to reduce their screen time, such as placing time limits or deleting apps and adapting new habits.

This culminated with my experiences in Cancun and Chicago in late November/ Early December. Between that and the messages I got from strangers at the Awake Festival and StartupWeek, I felt a level of appreciation I had not felt in years. Sometimes it feels like I opened a portal to accept certain influences in life. Or maybe, the world is finally moving on from the fear based responses we had to the events of 2012 through 2020 and we are finally doing the work that needs to be done to create a better future.

I coined the phrase “Little Dark Age” based on the term “Little Ice Age”, used to describe a cooler period on the planet from roughly 1300 -1850. The “Little Ice Age” reached its apex in 1816, when volcanic eruptions and a relative minima in solar activity lead to what is coined as “The Year Without a Summer.” However, by 1900, we were clearly out of the “Little Ice Age” (and on the path to better food security). My hope is that 2020, the year that everyone was as isolated as ever and yelling at each other over their responses to the pandemic and racial unrest was that moment for this “Little Dark Age”, and that now, we are on our way out, to a better (although not perfect) 2023.