NYC- Sort of Home

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Few places have as high of a profile as New York City. Few places inspire as much thought and discussion, and, in North America, there are few places that are portrayed as frequently in popular culture. New York is one of those places that everybody has a reaction to. Some are in awe of it, see it as some kind of magical place where excitement looms around every corner and dreams come true every day. Some see it as intimidating. Others resent the influence it has on our culture.

At 8.5 Million, New York is by far the largest City in the United States of America. This is less than 3 percent of the National Population, but it’s influence expands far beyond its borders. Every day, millions of Americans living nowhere near New York read two major New York publications, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Across the country people look to New York for the latest in business, music, fashion trends, musicals, and more. And, one would be hard pressed to find anyone in North America that does not recognize Time Square at first glance.

Countless shows and movies are set in New York. At Washington Square Park, it is easy to imagine running into Billy on The Street, the cast of Impractical Jokers, or one of the many other shows that often uses this park as a backdrop for crazy antics.

At Rockefeller Plaza, I imagine being in the cast of 30 Rock, or one of the shows that is actually filmed here.

Yet, what I actually encounter here at Rockefeller Plaza is people in suits waiting in line for a salad, and tourists paying far too much money to skate on an ice rink that is far smaller than one would expect.

Day to day life here appears to be some kind of a tradeoff. There are tons of fun places to go, and things to do! I was only in New York for several days, and this was two weeks ago (I am behind on blogs- life gets in the way sometimes), but I am still thinking of all of the great food I had while here.

It must be amazing to have access to the best of pretty much everything the world has to offer right outside your door.

What intimidates me most about the idea of living in New York City (I say idea because I have no specific plans to move) is the work culture. While the experience one has in any job is more related to the particular industry and particular organization in which they chose to work, geographic location does seem to play a part, and, from what I hear, employers in New York expect a lot from their employees. I actually imagine working at a major corporation in New York City as all of the things I hate about the standard working environment; strict hierarchy, lack of caring, people stepping all over each other, feeling disconnected and like just a cog in a machine, dialed up to 11.

Yet, as I walked around New York City, I realized the first thing I would miss is the friendliness. I do not live in the Midwest or the South, the parts of the country known as being the friendliest of all. But, in Colorado, I feel as if I can smile at strangers, and even strike up conversations with random people as I walk around my neighborhood, go to the store, or go about my life in any other normal way. Here, not so much.

What would the average American feel if they were to move to New York City? What would I feel? Would I fall in love with the cultural institutions, concerts, shows, restaurants, and bars open until 6? Or would I see a City full of people who appear to have had the life sucked out of them by their professions, hurrying from meeting to meeting, yet accomplishing nothing.

New York, despite being like no other palce on this continent, is a city of contrasts. Here, in this City, at any given time, there are people having their lives made, and people having their lives ruined! The City is congested. Yet, one can get around the city quite quickly via subway.

It makes every other system of public transit I have ever ridden (with the possible exception of Washington D.C.) seem slow and frustrating.

I walk down 14th Street. The sidewalks are just as crowded as I remember them. People are as eager to shove those who dare to walk slowly out of the way. It is the fast paced, driven New York of every stereotype.

For blocks, the only vegetation one can see is roped off to avoid overuse and destruction. Yet, a few blocks away, one can find a quiet street, and almost find tranquility.

In summary, in New York I feel both at home and in a foreign country at the same time. With how similar it is to the rest of the county in some respects, and how different it is in other respects, I imagine many Americans would feel the same way. I guess that is why some people would love to call this place home, while others would be frightened by the very idea of it.

Where New England Begins

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Everyone has this idea in their head of the ideal place to live. For some, it is right in the middle of something; the middle of the big city where everything is happening, the middle of the woods, or somewhere else one can truly immerse themselves in the kinds of activities they enjoy most. For others, it is places like this, places that are kind of on the edge of two worlds, that combine easy access to several types of amenities.

Greenwich, Connecticut is literally the first town across the border from New York State. Since the people of New York, and the people of New England have a mutual preference to not include New York in the region known as “New England”, this is the exact place where one enters New England.

But, how much does one really feel like they are in New England when here? The town is clearly a suburb of New York City. There is no unincorporated area that separates Greenwich from the adjacent suburbs that are part of New York State. With an express train, one can be at Grand Central Station in Midtown Manhattan in around 40 minutes.

The town does have a New England-like charm. One needs only travel, by foot, several minutes away from Greenwich Ave. (the town’s main street), and the train station, before they enter an area of windy roads, dense trees and quaint houses one often associates with New England.

It has a charming downtown, as well as a “Commons” outside their City Hall, which is something I have come to associate with New England, as I had not seen areas like this referred to as a “Commons” in other regions of the country.

Perhaps one of Greenwich’s greatest attributes is the beach in an area referred to as “Old Greenwich”.

One of the largest beaches in the area, and one of the few that permits dogs, it attracts a significant number of people, even on a dreary day in January.

Once again, here at the waterfront, one can see where this town sits geographically. Even on a cloudy day, at the end of the Peninsula that extends southward into the Long Island Sound, one can see both the rocky shores that pop up the along the shores of New England, extending all the way from here to Maine, but can also see the skyline of New York City.

Around town, I got that same hybrid-like vibe. The pace of life is definitely different from New York City. In New York City, people appear to have some kind of sense of urgency in everything they do. I tell people who have never lived in New York to imagine the second or third most stressful day of their past year and assume that every person around them is having that kind of day. In the short amount of time I spent in Greenwich, I did not sense nearly that level of urgency in the people around me.

Greenwich’s New York-like and New England-like characteristics are overshadowed by one characteristic that seems to define everything here; wealth!

Dealerships selling expensive cars, even Bentleys, line U.S. highway 1 coming into town. The beachfronts are lined with large, multi-million dollar homes, and downtown is lined with shops selling expensive designer brands.

Gucci, Louie, Michael Kors… I do not even know the name of all of them. Frankly, I do not even care. I can never picture, even if one day I become this wealthy, choosing to spend my money that way. The only reason I know the names I do know is that they pop up in popular song lyrics, particularly rap music. While sometimes I can get extremely annoyed by designer brands, particularly if I am EVER pressured into making a purchase, I cannot help but have some kind of odd admiration for the people that managed to market them, and, convince people to spend the amount of money they do on such products.

The people who create and market designer products have a keen understanding of human psychology (albeit, they could have used it for a better purpose). Anytime anyone spends money (and sometimes time) on something, they want to know what they are getting. It is the same dynamic that takes place when we ask our friend regarding their experience with a specific doctor, or a real estate agent. We do not know what we are getting. Through brands, we create trust. “I know Subarus won’t break down on me”. Or, “I trust the Cohen brothers to make a good film.” So, we buy the product. Those that created these designer brands managed to create a reputation so powerful that millions of people worldwide purchase this product when they could easily purchase something similar for a fraction of the price!

The two main things that stop people from living in that “ideal place” in their heads are job availability and money (which are closely related). The fact that people with this amount of additional money chose to live here speaks volumes to Greenwich’s appeal as a place that combines the best of both worlds. People who live here seem to have the best of both worlds; easy access to New York City, the city with more amenities than any other in the country, and fairly easy access to outdoor activities. Friends that moved here from Manhattan tell me that the move has reduced the travel time to nearly all outdoor activities (hiking, skiing, the beach) by 30-60 minutes. While it’s easy to come here and be envious of the fortunes here, it is also quite easy to see, even from someone who might have a different “ideal place” in mind, why people chose to live here.

Going Back to My Roots

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“If you know your history, then you’ll know where you’re coming from”, Bob Marley explains in his classic hit song Buffalo Soldier. It’s hard to really know how many places the functional equivalent of this phrase has been uttered throughout the history of mankind.

What does it mean to “know your history”, or “know where you’ve been”? Is it sufficient to know your personal story? Or, do you need to know the story of your parents, and your family’s ancestors? How deeply must we understand the cause and effect relationships of events in the past? After all, history, whether we are talking about it in an academic sense or in a personal narrative is about more than just facts. When asked, nearly all people can recite the rudimentary factual aspects of their lives. Where they were born, what schools they attended, when they moved, married, changed jobs, etc. I always wonder, though, whether they understand their life’s events more deeply, how certain things impact one another, what emotions were involved, and what events were significant. In other words, do they understand the “story” of their lives?

This holiday season, and by holiday season I am referring to Christmas and New Years, was kind of a trip back through my own history, or at least the places where said history took place. First, Christmas was spent in the suburbs of Chicago, with my immediate family. I spent a little bit of time in the City of Chicago, with friends, which is where I spent the four years before moving to Denver. But, I largely spent that time in Buffalo Grove, a sort of typical suburb 35 miles northwest of downtown, and the place where I spent my Junior High and High School years.

It’s been said, particularly of Millennials, that young adults go home for the holidays and revert into their teenager mode, subconsciously, because they have returned to the setting of their teenage years. For me, it is a little bit more complicated. Some things are the same, but some things are different. Some things get a little bit more different every year. There is the obvious course of change any particular location undergoes over time; that restaurant that closed, with a new one opening in its place, the road that was reconstructed and widened on the other side of town, and the new neighbors. But there’s also a strange change in how we respond to things, sometimes things that are exactly the same as they were in previous years.

Over the course of our lives, we periodically re-examine things (I do this more than most). Maybe it’s a different experience, or being exposed to a different point of view on something, or some major event. Each year we come back with a slightly different perspective, and, that experience, which was the same exact one we had last year, the year before, and back when we were 14, is viewed differently in our own minds. When it comes specifically to what my family does, both during the holidays, as well as in life in general, there are mixed emotions. There are some things my family does that I did not really appreciate with I was younger, but have found a new appreciation for. There are other things now seem strange to me. I am guessing many people who have moved a significant distance away from “home” have a similar experience at the holidays.

The Chicago area is not my full history. The first 11.5 years of my life, I lived in New York, outside of New York City on Long Island. I didn’t specifically travel to New York on New Years Eve as part of some plan to revisit my past.

But, the two practically back-to-back trips did line up in a manner where I could not help but think along these lines. New Years is already a time when people reflect on their lives. Having just spent time in the place where I spent my recent past, and now being in a place where parts of my early childhood unfolded, I could not help but think it is time for me to re-connect with who I am.

The move from New York to Chicago, my college and graduate school experience, jobs and more recent move to Colorado are the rudimentary facts of my life. My “history”, is the memories, the periodic experiences, the kind of person I was and the kind of people I was around. It is something that is remembered, hopefully accurately, and something that can be reconnected with, but only partially. The New York of 2016 is not the New York of the 1990s. Neighborhoods have made transitions, different kinds of people have both left and moved in, and some of the things one will experience here are significantly different.

However, some of the things are the same. And, while I was not reliving a childhood event, coming back to the places where our formative years unfolded can help us reconnect with our roots. Through this experience, I feel like I am being called to return to my roots, the person I am, naturally, rather than the person we are all pressured to become as we adults in today’s world. It’s like 2016 begun with what the year’s theme needs to be. Outside of whatever negative feedback we have received, the adjustments we have made to be accepted, and who we were told to be, there is a person inside of all of us, the person we naturally are. In this midst of everything I do in my adult life, this is a person I need to not lose sight of. It is a person many of us need to reconnect with. It is my sincere hope that in 2016, we all reconnect with our roots both individually and collectively.

Life On Monument Hill

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What does a dog lover do when they suddenly find themselves dogless? Well, they gladly accept the opportunity to “dog-sit” for their friends when they leave town.

Those that have lost a pet before know the situation. It is just too soon to get a new dog. But, I had become accustomed to spending time with dogs. It still feels sort of strange to come home and not see my dog waiting for me at the door. So, sometimes the best thing to do at this point, while I am missing just hanging out with dogs, is to go somewhere and spend several days with someone else’s dogs.

The first time I drove over what is referred to as the “Palmer Divide” it kind of caught me by surprise. It was my first time driving from Denver to Colorado Springs. As one who loves looking at maps, I knew there was a ridge between the two towns, and I knew it was referred to as the Palmer Divide. I was, however, caught by surprise by how high in elevation I got to just simply driving along Interstate 25. 7,352 feet is over 2,000 feet higher in elevation than Denver, and around the same elevation as Lookout Mountain, a place people can go and overlook the City. It’s way higher than I thought one could go without actually going into the mountains.

A most general simplification of Colorado’s geography slices the state into thirds. The eastern third is essentially part of a larger region that extends nearly 1000 miles east called the “Great Plains”. The central third is the Central Rockies, and the western third is often referred to as the “Western Slope”. In this extremely simplistic model, Monument would technically be part of the eastern third, but it’s high elevation makes it significantly different than most other places referred to as part of the Great Plains.

In some ways, this town has the same look and feel of any fairly recently built suburb. Although the town was incorporated in 1879, most of it’s population arrived since 1990. Unlike in urban areas, the roads wind, and subdivisions are all disconnected from one another.

I actually spent the later half of my childhood (7th-12th grade) in a suburb with a similar layout. My parents house (in which they still live) was in subdivision built during the 1980s. The area is somewhat more densely populated than this, but the experience was actually quite similar. Most suburban subdivisions are across the street from some sort of strip-mall. At my parents house, we happened to be only four houses in from the main road, making the shops across the street quite close.

Over the course of that six year period, I had actually become quite accustomed to an experience that would be considered strange to most people. Given how close all those shops were to home (the grocery store we always went to was less than a quarter of a mile from home), it seemed strange to me not to just walk there, as opposed to driving. However, as anyone who has spent a significant amount of time in suburban areas built in the later part of the 20th Century would attest to, these areas are quite car-centric. For a lot of people who live in these areas, it doesn’t even cross their minds to walk somewhere. Therefore, I would quite commonly be the only person walking anywhere in a place not built with pedestrians in mind. This is an experience I had become accustomed to, but would likely seem strange to most people.

The apartment complex I stayed at in Monument Valley is across the street from a fairly major shopping center, which includes Wal-Mart, the Home Depot, and several restaurants. Theoretically, one could live in a place like that, and, other than whatever commute they have to work, be able to satisfy all the basic needs of life without having to drive anywhere.

As the weekend progressed, I walked back and forth across the street to shops and restaurants, the same way I did all those years ago. I kept thinking to myself about what life is like for people in a place like this. Obviously, most people don’t walk, even if they are just going across the street, but if I lived here, I most certainly would. But, if I lived here, I wonder if I would get bored. Being so close to the mountains (closer than Denver), there were some interesting cloud formations that I would see on a regular basis. But, as much as I love the weather, and was blown away by this long flat cloud in front of the mountain range, that would not entertain me for an entire day.

For nearly all of my life I have been judging certain areas, where there aren’t any interesting bars, restaurants, or other fun places, as boring. In fact, one of the strangest things about the Denver, is that there are sections, within the city limits, that do not have anything within walking distance. When I saw these neighborhoods, I decided I would not want to live there.

But, I really thought long and hard about life in a town like this. Would there theoretically be a way to make it work? I mean, I know that I would miss a lot of urban entities, and taking Ubers, busses, trains, etc. to get around. But, obviously a significant subset of the population does just fine in places like this. They just do something else. Maybe they go out to the park instead of going to a fancy brunch, or they have house parties instead of going to the bars. I would definitely still prefer to live in areas with interesting entities around me, but I maybe I should not be as reliant on places within the neighborhood for entertainment. After all, it does get expensive. If experiencing life in a place like this for a few days can teach me anything, it is that sometimes we need to be creative and figure out something amazing to do with our time on our own, using limited resource.

The CrossFit Games

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Sometimes it is difficult for me to wrap my brain around the entity that is CrossFit. It is definitely not your typical gym, where you pay some kind of monthly fee, and get access to group exercise courses, weight rooms, and the like. My primary exposure to CrossFit is living on the same block as an affiliate gym. Nearly every morning, when I would be walking my dog, I would encounter large groups of people running along the sidewalk. Sometimes they would have something in their hands, like a tire, a medicine ball, or something that just looked like a giant jug. I would always think to myself about how these people woke up sometime around 5:30 A.M. to come in and do an intense workout, while I was just walking my dog after eating a bagel with creme cheese.

CrossFit is a also completely different philosophy, on exercise, and on life. Unlike at a typical gym, CrossFit-ters (is that the right way to refer to them, I do not know) do not work out at their own pace. In fact, the workouts appear intense and competitive, and so does the lifestyle.

It was a mere ten minutes after arriving that I realized that I may have inadvertently brought a contraband item into the gym. With a bottle of Coca-Cola in front of a sign strongly advocating against the consumption of sugar, I felt quite ridiculous.

For several reasons, I was a little bit hesitant to come to the CrossFit Regional Competition. The intensity of the workout regiment does not really match my personality. I have also all but lost interest in “working out”. This is primarily due to the fact that I now live in Colorado. I just find it hard to motivate myself to go run on a treadmill and lift weights when there are mountains with trails, ski resorts, rivers with rapids, and endless adventure possibilities so close to home!

Also, Saturday morning was COLD! Upon arrival, at about 8:20 A.M., the temperature was in the mid-teens. This was after Denver International Airport (where the official observations taken) recorded an overnight low of 5 degrees. Before that morning, the last time the temperature in Denver had dropped lower than 20 was the 6th of March, over 8 months ago. So, not only was it cold, but we were not accustomed to it.

Despite the cold, and despite the activity being outside the realm of what I would typically attend, I started having fun as soon as I got there.

The first competition I watched was a close race between several competitors. The competition involved a series of rows, weight lifting, and some series of jumps that I did not really understand. It was quite exciting! As the competitors passed through the series of events, some would take leads, some would stage comebacks. It was like watching another type of race, such as hurdles or horse racing, only with more craziness and variety.

I had came to the CrossFit Regional Competition to support a friend of mine who was competing. He ended up pulling out a victory in a really close “race”. In fact, there was an entire group of us that had made the trip up to Broomfield to see him compete. Towards the end of this close race, we were all yelling, jumping up and down, and cheering him on! In fact, part of the reason the event was so enjoyable was the group comradery. I genuinely believe that all events are better when shared with others, even in the cases where solitude is major part of the event (like backpacking).

There were also a lot of other fun events at the CrossFit games. In particular, I enjoyed watching the relay races, as they had a crazy arrangement of obstacles that each team of competitors had to overcome.

I saw people who were in crazy good shape. They all looked quite strong, and they all were capable of quite a lot. All I could think to myself was that despite my strong lack of desire to spend multiple mornings a week lifting weights and running and such, while also making it into a competition, this program works! It works for the people involved. Nearly every CrossFit-ter that I have seen, whether it be here, or on my block, is in ridiculously good shape, exactly the result they set out to get.

I am also glad that once again I personally decided to say yes to life. Had I chosen to stay home, whether it be because I was deterred by the frigid temperatures, or whether it be out of lack of a strong personal connection to the CrossFit way of life, I would have missed out on something truly beautiful. In the end, what I appreciated most about this event wasn’t the yelling and jingling my keys for the last 15 seconds of the event, or any of the other excitement one gets when watching a close race and having their preferred participant win. This event was special because I saw something that represents one of the greatest things we, as a human race, ever experience in life. It is that moment when you see the positive results of hard work in another human being. It is knowing that a genuinely decent person has taken part in something to better themselves.

Life is full of tough choices. One definitely involves how one can best spend their time. We will all receive a series of invitations (or solicitations), and must chose to say yes to some and no to others. We all know what we like. One will nearly always willingly accept invitations to activities they know they enjoy, and approach them with a positive and joyous attitude. Conversely, one will nearly always turn down invitations to activities they know they are not fond of.

What about those activities that fall somewhere in the middle? Maybe you are not too familiar with them, or have some kind of mixed emotions. Ultimately, we all must make a judgement call. Saturday’s event provided a clear reminder to me that accepting more of these invitations, and approaching them with an open mind and a positive attitude will lead to more positive experiences in life.

More Than Just a New Job

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The way the world is designed, heck, the way life itself is designed, it is impossible to go through a full lifetime without some major life changes and adjustments. Regardless of what lifestyle choices we make, we all undergo periodic transformations. Every one of us transforms from being an infant, to a child, to an adolescent, and to an adult. Afterwards, most of us will transform to becoming parents ourselves.

Life in the 21st Century requires more personal transformations than ever! Today nearly all of us go to college. A life transformation occurs both at the start and the completion of our college education. Additionally, the world is changing at an ever faster pace. Gone are the days when one would be able to learn a couple of key skills to use over the course of a 40 year career with the same company. Recent writing has even suggested that the most effective people reinvent themselves every 3-5 years. Coincidentally, the current average time that a person stays at a job is 4.6 years.

It is hard for me to pinpoint the exact moment in which I realized that I needed to undergo a significant re-invention. We often have this notion that ideas just pop into people’s heads out of nowhere. We have all seen shows where a light bulb suddenly pops upon the screen, indicating that someone has come to a sudden realization. This is not actually the case. In reality, ideas are often developed over time, with contributions from multiple people.

For me, it took two separate disappointing experiences in traditionally-structured jobs, a whole bunch of reading, extensive self-reflection, and discussions with plenty of individuals, including some who had undergone a similar transformation themselves.

Chicago_Skyline

Life after college started off really good for me, all things considered. In Chicago, I had a steady job with a large corporation, where I met a lot of people who were also in their 20s, and had plenty of chances to enjoy big city life.

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It was the life I had imagined for myself at the time, but inevitably, things had to change.

The hardest thing I learned about life working for a large corporation is that a person can put in several good years, and have their work output feel quite well received by those around them, and still have decisions made on their behalf that are not necessarily in their best interest. Essentially, what I learned, which sounds elementary to me now, is that corporations do not care about people, and that in large structured environments, people are often far removed from people making decisions. It is common for someone to have decisions being made regarding their career path by people who do not know them much beyond what would be included in a two page resume.

During this time, I did explore a bit about non-traditional work environments, reading books such as The Art of Non-Conformity. But, I guess I was not ready for it, and so I returned to another traditional structured work environment.

I have not discussed this much in this blog. As a matter of fact, I kind of feel like a phony even admitting that while I have been writing this travel blog, documenting the trips I was taking, I spent a good number of days sitting at a desk in an office like this. Most people would not consider that the lifestyle of a “travel writer”.

I am starting to believe that every life transformation has both externally driven and internally driven components. What I mean by this is that, the same way rehab programs only work for people who first “admit they have a problem”, someone can only re-invent themselves, when they come to some form of realization that it needs to happen. However, I do not see situations where someone decides to make major life changes in response to nothing.

Usually, something happens to make one come to the realization that what they are currently doing is not working. Sometimes, it’s just bad luck, like bad market conditions for a particular industry.

Other times, it is something more positive, like being introduced to something new, a new idea, a new way of thinking, or a new opportunity.

For me, it unfortunately took a combination of experiences. At work, I once again felt that feeling of alienation, as once again decisions were made without my best interests in mind. It actually lead to a work environment that I found not only non-fulfilling, but also unpleasant.

Through the afore mentioned self-reflection, reading and discussions I had over the course of 2015, I came to several key realizations that go beyond the standard “I need a new job”. I realized that….

I had originally decided to apply for the types of work I had applied for because I had not really considered the alternatives.
It is not just the few bold people that work in environments other than office jobs with 9-5-ish hours.
With automation, globalization, and other forces, we are going to have to be more creative, self-directed, and individually motivated in order to maintain our current standard of living.
In order to get what I want out of life I am going to make some major adjustments myself.

For the last few weeks, I have been transitioning to a new employment situation, as a “consultant”. This environment is described to me as being halfway between being in a “traditional” structured office environment and being a freelancer. It requires me to work differently, think differently, and act differently. As is the case for many that are self-employed, there are some financial risks, but in exchange, there is increased flexibility and autonomy. With all these changes, who knows what adventures await!

I am actually quite excited about making these adjustments.

In my new world, there are no more cubicles, and I do not have a permanent office. This means that both meeting people and finding work will require significantly more individual initiative. Without having the same people around me every day, I am going to have to determine for myself which people I should be associating with, both in a personal and professional sense.

In my new world, there is significantly less structure. Nobody is there to tell me what time I should be doing what. In order to ensure productivity, I will have to create this structure myself, determining each day, week, and month what I need to get done and when I will be doing it.

And, most importantly, my new world requires me to fully embrace thinking of life as a “slalom”. Just as those that compete in slalom skiing must think several turns ahead of time, I must be prepared to think several moves ahead of time to ensure that I am setting myself up for a successful, and more importantly, enjoyable life both short and long term.

This requires a new me, and hopefully a better me. It requires me to be more confident, both in what I believe in, as well as what decisions I make and what I believe myself capable of. It requires me to take initiative without being paralyzed by the fear of failure that causes so many people to not pursue their ideas and passions. But, most importantly, I believe it requires me to not lose sight of who I am and what makes me a unique individual. Of late, I have been active in encouraging others as they pursue their individual pursuits. What I am hoping for, both for myself, and for everybody around me, is that we do not transform ourselves into a completely different person, but that we are able to become what I refer to as the best version of yourself.

Tea that Isn’t Really Tea

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Tea is not something I ever give any real thought to. For me, it is one of those products that has always just been there. As much as I claim to be a curious-minded person, I had never even sat and pondered who was the first person to come up with the idea to take a bunch of ground up leaves, put it in a tiny little bag and dip it into a cup of hot water. In fact, if you think about almost every product we use on a regular basis from the standpoint of a culture that has never been introduced to that product, it probably sounds absurd. As I write this, I am eating a bagel. Imagine telling someone who has never heard of a bagel that you have an idea to take condensed bread, bake it into a cylindrical shape with a hole in the middle, and maybe put some random seeds on top.

You would have probably been told, by at least some portion of the people around you, that your idea was either absurd, or unnecessary. If I could, I would communicate this point to an entire generation of aspiring entrepreneurs, as nearly all of them, will at some point receive a similar reaction from people they describe their idea to. In fact, some will even be turned down and laughed at by potential customers and investors.

One of the reasons I had never given tea too much thought is that in my mind I had always associated it with things that I do not find too exciting. Our subconscious minds have this strange ways of synthesizing our experiences, the experiences we hear about, and even some of the media we consume into some general associations. Whenever anyone mentions tea, the image that naturally pops into my head is a fancy table with fancy chairs on someone’s lawn, in front of a garden on a day with the most pleasant weather imaginable, and people wasting that pleasant afternoon, with so many possibilities to engage in activities and explore what the world has to offer, just sitting around drinking tea.

In fact, I did not even start drinking tea until I got my first job after Graduate School. It was free at work. I started drinking it to save both money and calories, particularly on chilly mornings. The only variety of tea that was free at my job was “black” tea, which is perfect, because, as I learned at the Celestial Seasonings tour, it is one of the most heavily caffeinated teas out there (surpassed only by Oolong tea). So, I conditioned my taste buds to the rather plain flavor of black tea and did not ponder other options.

However, Celestial Seasonings is a place that has way more character than the stuffy images I think of when I think of the average “tea time”. It was started by a bunch of hippies, which should not really surprise me given that it is in Boulder and was started in the late 1960s. They would gather leaves in the Rocky Mountains outside of Boulder to make their beverages.

However, the leaves that constitute “tea” come from plants that cannot be grown in this part of the world. So, the beverages they put together were drinks that could not actually be considered “tea” by the technical definition. They would have been considered “herbal infusions”. The phrase “herbal infusion” had a clear association with the hippie movement. So, to sell these products to the general public, which was (and still is) largely skeptical of the hippie movement, they labeled the beverages “herbal teas”.

Now nearly a half a century has passed. A lot has happened. First, the hippies reached full-fledged adulthood (over 30, is that what they said?), got jobs, bought houses on cul-de-sacs, and, eventually SUVs and mini-vans. A new generation emerged, powered by a rejuvenated economy, and became Yuppies. They managed to both continuously enlarge the houses and vehicles in suburbia, while also turning formally blighted neighborhoods in city centers across the country into high-class urban playgrounds. Many of the areas that were once focal points to the hippie sub-culture, including San Francisco, and even Boulder, are now firmly under the domain of this new urban culture. Of course, this is all an over simplification, but hippie communes still exist, largely in the same way soda fountains and other relics still exist. A family will randomly encounter one in an out of the way place on a road trip, and grandma and grandpa will explain to the children what they are/ were all about.

Yet, the label “herbal tea” is still there, both in this tasting room, and in their packaging. It is still there despite the fact that so much has changed. Not only does the general public have absolutely nothing to fear from the hippie sub-culture anymore, but, I would argue that many of their ideas have penetrated our mainstream thinking, both “right” and “left”. We do not wear suits to baseball games anymore. People aren’t mocked or reprimanded nearly as much when they explore their feelings, and try to find themselves. There is no more stigma around going to seek therapy, and tons of people participate in yoga classes. We may largely be in boring cubicles and offices, but it is not unheard of to openly defy the authority structures there.

Despite all of this, people are still drinking “herbal tea” instead of “herbal infusions”. “Herbal teas” are Celestial Seasoning’s three top selling “teas”. Is this simply the power of inertia? Are there still a significant enough number of people that would shy away from drinking something if it was labeled an “herbal infusion”? Or is something greater at work? Our world is in a constant state of flux, and that flux includes language, definitions, and standards. The hippie movement did not survive, but some of the ideas joined the mainstream. Maybe, although, these “herbal infusions” were not considered “tea” in 1969, they are now. Very few people, when they buy these products at the store, even ever realize that they are not actually drinking tea. For all practical purposes, it is tea despite the technical definition. After all, Colorado is already a major part of a movement that changed the standards for what is considered beer, why not another product?

Hitting Goals

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Some people thrive on goals. They are always working towards something, and always working towards something that can specifically be measured. Sometimes it’s something along the lines of a specific marathon time. Other times it is a major life event, such as earning a promotion, or being able to afford a house. Sometimes it’s even something a bit more unusual, like trying every ice cream flavor at a local ice cream shop. But, in all cases, there is a goal, and a clear measurement. At any given time, they know whether or not they have achieved their goal, and, in most cases, how close they are to reaching it.

Sometimes I envy these people. Being driven by reaching specific, tangible benchmarks like this fits quite nicely into our present day results-driven society. Tons of people writing about what makes people effective, or successful, stress the importance of making and achieving goals on a regular basis, both from the standpoint of improving your confidence and demonstrating your ability to achieve to others.

Unfortunately, I tend to be driven by ideas and concepts that are more big-picture and abstract. I am more interested in knowing that I am generally in good health and feeling energetic than reaching a specific weight target. As a person who believes in flexibility and individuality, and shuns rigidity, I will often look at something like wanting to buy a house, and say, wait a second, is there some kind of way I could be just as happy in a condo, given certain circumstances? Do I need to make a specific commitment to some sort of a budget, when circumstances in life often vary, and adhering strictly to a certain number might even cost me opportunities that could go a long way towards some of the most important goals of all, which I see as happiness, purpose, satisfaction and the like?

I do, however, have to acknowledge some of the reasons we operate in this fashion. After all, we do live in a complicated world where we all have thousands of things competing for our attention at any given time. The easiest way to grab someone’s attention is to say something specific. Vail Ski Resort will tell you it has a 3450 foot vertical drop, or that it gets 348 inches of snow per year. They do not try to get your attention by saying that skiing will provide an exhilarating experience that will often improve one’s happiness as well as physical fitness.

In 2015, in addition to my big picture goal to “feel more energized and be in better shape”, I attached a specific goal. I was going to bicycle at least 1500 miles this year. Now, I do understand that this is not that high of a number. The most hard-core cyclists will often ride 10,000 miles in one calendar year. One bike ride across the country is more than 3000 miles. But, 1500 miles would make this my biggest bicycling year yet (2014 was previously my highest at 1385 miles), and it would be an easy number for me to point to as a way to indicate to others how much bicycling I do.

There were a couple of obstacles that got in the way of me reaching this goal. The first was a wet early season. In May, Denver recorded measureable precipitation 19 out of 31 days. This was followed by 13 rainy days in June. Ironically, one of those rainy days included a hailstorm, on bike to work day!

Later on, job/career related issues took some of my attention away from cycling. And, finally, although this one is definitely not a bad thing, during the second half of summer and the first half of fall, a lot of my plans took me places where cycling was simply not possible, including travel, visitors, and social events.

However, despite all of this, on Sunday, November 1^st, 2015, I reached my goal, and pedaled my 1500^th mile of the year. And, I decided to do it in style. I didn’t want to get to this milestone just anywhere, biking on some random road in some neighborhood that doesn’t mean anything to me. I wanted to go somewhere iconic! I wanted to go somewhere appropriate, for both the day’s conditions, as well as a place where I had significant experiences during the first 1478 miles I rode this year. Really, there was only one true choice; Red Rocks amphitheater. At exactly 22 miles from my home, I would hit that 1500 mile mark somewhere along my final ascent to the top of the road. Red Rocks is an iconic place, both beautiful and full of memories for mankind. And, it is a place I have ridden my bike to over half a dozen times on previous rides. One of my favorite half day rides is to go to Red Rocks, and then into Golden for lunch, followed by a nice quick ride on the Clear Creek Trail back to Denver.

Yet, the story of me and my bike in 2015 cannot simply be summarized with a number; 1500, or 1600, or whatever I get to in two months when the year is complete. It is so much more than that. It is the exhausting three day, 230 mile ride through Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. But, it is also the countless treks over the same roads in town, to and from work, and to all of the other places I went to on a regular basis. It’s the improvements I made in climbing, something I am weak at due to living in Chicago for several years, but also all the flat tires I got and had to change.

Outcomes are best communicated to others when they are demonstrated both qualitatively and quantitatively. Behind every story, there is a number, probably multiple numbers. I can say I biked 1500 miles. I can also figure out how many vertical feet I climbed, how many times I biked certain roads and trails, and even how many tires I changed. But to just say the number, without answering that all important question, why I am doing what I am doing, would also not be effective. I bike to improve my health, spend some time outside, visit interesting places, and to save some money on fuel.

More importantly, bicycling contributes to my larger scale goals of being happy, healthy, unique, and true to myself. How much different would it be to have biked 1475 miles vs. 1525 miles? Not too much. The same way a .301 batting average is not too different than a .299 average. So, I guess while I am happy I reached the mark I set out for at the beginning of the year, I still need to recognize that it is not the end all, be all. While it is good to have a goal, or a target, to stay on track, and provide a construct for how far one wants to take a certain activity, we all must keep mindful of the big picture. And, if reaching a certain number would cost us more than it is worth, we should be willing to adjust.

A Tribute to a Companion

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October has been a crazy emotional month. Most of what I write about in this blog pertains to specific experiences. This past summer was certainly filled with activities of all kinds, trips to various interesting places, and new experiences. It is what I love doing. I started writing this travel blog to catalog my experiences. However, this month, I feels like all I have been writing about is heavy emotional types stuff.

For an experience is not just simply the place one visits. It is also about what one does at that specific place. It is often about the company one keeps, and who that experience is shared with. It is the thoughts and feelings we all experience when in various places. It is the revelations we come to, about life, about the people around us, and about ourselves. It is also the connections we make, or the connections we deepen on these trips. I often have some of the deepest conversations with others on lengthy road trips.

On the evening of Tuesday, October 27th, 2015, last night at the time of writing, I unexpectedly had to say goodbye to not only a travel companion, but also a companion in life- my dog Juno.

It is nearly impossible to fully describe how it feels to have lost a companion an wonderful as Juno. Not only did we share a ton of adventures together, but we also shared a lot of aspects of day-to-day life. As one can see by looking through the pictures on this blog, Juno would accompany me on quite a few adventures, from hiking, to camping, and so much more. As a cold weather dog (Siberian Husky), she particularly loved the mountains. In fact, I remember the look on her face when we departed from one of our weekend camping trips in the mountains. She knew we were headed back to Denver, and the look on her face said, clearly, “Why don’t we live here (in the mountains) instead of there”.

But not only was she around through all of the fun times and adventures, she was also present for my day-to-day life, the ups and the downs, and well, the part of our lives that is not always as glamorous. One thing we as human beings in the 21st Century tend to do, when we invite others into our lives, is only invite them for the good part, the fun part, the adventurous part. This comes, obviously, out of the desire to be liked. So, we present the portion of ourselves that we feel is most likely to be desired by others. But, it is when those around us see the part of us that is not so great, the part of us that deals with discomfort, pain, disappointment, and heartbreak, that we build deeper connections. Juno saw me in all parts of life; the night, as well as the morning after, when the consequences often come.

It is really impossible to replace a companion like this. A friend, whether it be a two-legged friend, or a four-legged one, simply cannot be replaced. There is no substitute for the experiences we have had together. There is no substitute for the way we interacted with one another. And there is no substitute for the joy we had brought into each other’s lives. Experiences cannot be replicated by design. One can only hope to find something similar, or to happily move on to a new and positive experience when one is done.

I will miss the way Juno greets people in the neighborhood, almost invariantly getting a positive response from anyone we would walk by.

I will miss the way Juno problem solves her way through the rocky sections of hiking trails.

I will miss the way Juno would always give me a facial expression that made me feel confident in knowing that she was happy to see me.

I will miss the way Juno often sits on the ground in a manner that makes her look like a three-legged-dog.

I will miss the way Juno would alternate between sticking her head in front of the head rest on the drivers and passenger seat sides on car rides.

I will even miss the way Juno found sneaky ways to pull random chicken wing bones off the ground on walks, particularly on Sundays, without me noticing.

Most of all, I will just miss the happiness she would always bring. I guess there is no better way to describe how I feel right now that simply with the word sad. Sure, there are thousands of other ways to complexify the emotion.

I know I took care of Juno responsibly, but was I responsible enough? Juno started acting strangely roughly a couple of weeks ago. The main thing I noticed was that she was kind of lethargic, moving slower than normal, and drinking a lot of water. This felt to me like someone who has a bad cold, something which people can usually recover from with rest and plenty of fluids. It was not until Monday, when Juno did not appear to be recovering, that I brought her into the Vet. Still, I was not prepared to lose Juno this quickly. I was just perplexed by why she had not been recovering and still seemed to be acting strangely. We had brought Juno home from an animal shelter in 2011, four years ago. At the time, the shelter told us she was five years old. Some of the vets we had brought her to had subsequently estimated her age to be less than five. So, at most she had been nine years old. And, although she had EPI, a disease that renders a dog’s pancreas as useless (we had to mix her food with enzymes to get her to absorb it properly), I still seriously had expected to have her for at least several more years.

I took Juno on adventures, but did I take her on enough of them? Did I really give her the life she deserved? A look through this travel blog, which covers much of what I had done for a large portion of the time I had her, shows many adventures she was a part of, but also many adventures in which she was not included. Additionally, as someone who has had to work standard M-F 9-5 types jobs for much of life, she has spent a good number of weekdays home alone for more than eight hours. I know this is typical in today’s society, but does that make it right? I wonder how she felt all those days.

Mostly, I just hope I gave Juno the best life I could have given her. Because, as many animal lovers will attest to, a dog is not just a pet, it is part of the family. I remember how strange it would feel to come home to an apartment without a dog anytime I would be out of town for the weekend and have brought Juno somewhere else. The coming weeks will not only feel strange, but sad. There are some sad events where one reach deep down inside and find a way to take comfort. Many people can find a way to come to view a lost job as “for the best”, or see something like the not-quite world series bound Chicago Cubs as still having had a “great season” that “exceeded expectations”. But, when it comes to something like this, I dig down, deep inside my heart, and all I see is a hole, for I know that I had a great pet and a great companion, she is gone, and there is nothing I can do about it.

Ideas I Am Not Giving Up On

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Ideas are powerful! They can outlive the people, and even the places and things originally associated with them. Rome was all but destroyed in the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries. The people that created Rome, and the representative republic which governed Rome for the first five centuries were long gone. Yet, these ideas made a resurgence in the 18th Century, when the founders of a new country called the United States of America created a representative republic in a new land far away. The writings of ancient Roman authors, from those that formed the Republic after overthrowing a King of their own, to those that later tried to defend the Republican form of government from power hungry politicians, are said to have provided inspiration for the country’s founders.

For all intensive purposes, Rome was a place that no longer existed. Yet, ideas that originated from this place had found their way to a land that Romans had no idea even existed, at a time over two thousand years later! Over the next Century, these ideas would proliferate, inspiring additional revolutions all over the world, and even counter-revolutions. Roughly a century later, that idea would actually find its way back to the very place it originated, when Rome, now part of a nation called Italy, would adapt a roughly similar form of Government.

It is for this reason people are often more threatened by ideas than they are by specific people. Today, when those of us look at someone like Osama Bin Laden, or any specific leader of ISIS, what we are looking at, and what we are threatened by goes way beyond a specific individual. Even Bin Laden, long the subject of ire for many, needed the aid or cooperation of many other individuals to successfully carry out the attacks he carried out. Simply put, for many of us in the United States, he became the face of an idea, and one that we largely found repulsive.

We all have ideas. Even those of us that do not consider ourselves creative, or inventive people, have ideas. It doesn’t have to be world changing like the invention of the computer. Maybe it is something as simple as the idea that it would be nice to have a train line or an additional road built to alleviate traffic. Or maybe it is the idea that animals should not be mistreated by their owners. Either way, as long as one understands the idea, why they feel the way they do about it, and has enthusiasm for it, the idea is worth pursuing and standing up for.

I have a ton of ideas, and many do relate to how I feel the world should work. Lately I have been hearing all the time that some people see the world as it, while others see the world as it could be. I would consider myself firmly in the later group. I commonly see some aspects of our society, and how it works, and think to myself (and sometimes say it to people around me) “we can do better”. After discussion, I will often hear from others what has come to be my least favorite sentence of all time: “It is what it is”. This is because, in many cases, I really see no reason it has to be that way. Some people see this as the mark of someone who refuses to mature beyond a state of artificially prolonged adolescence. However, I see it as refusing to give up on me, and what makes me unique.

I see an entire generation of people pursuing college education, and, more and more, post-graduate degrees, in interesting intellectually stimulating subjects just to join the workforce and be asked to perform menial, repetitive job duties and have their ideas rejected due to their low standing on the corporate totem poll. We can do better to nurture and develop these promising young minds.

I see people not being true to themselves, in their actions, their behaviors, and attitudes. We encourage one another to conform, to act like everyone else, and to live life according to a script written by and for a culture that no longer exists because many fear change and the potential loss of status associated with it. But each person’s individual and unique way of doing things is part of what makes this world an interesting place. We can be better about encouraging people to be true to themselves, and not being threatened by their unique way of life.

I see countless missed opportunities in the lives of countless people based on adherence to rigid rules and policies that do not make sense. This is where fear takes it’s greatest toll on society. Many take comfort in rules and structure. However, why should someone who has completed their work, and has no other obligations (meetings and such) be sitting in their cubicle at 2:30 on a warm, sunny afternoon? And, why should one person making a mistake with something lead to a law or ordinance preventing everyone from taking part in this activity? We can stop taking comfort in rules, and start taking advantage of all the beautiful opportunities this world provides us.

And, I see people who have failed to make deep and meaningful connections with other human beings. Many go through their lives feeling like they do not have the support system needed to get through the rough patches of their lives. This is because we live in a society that does not place a high value on building social capital. Many of us spend our days in work and social settings where we do not feel comfortable expressing our emotions and showing one another who we really are. You cannot develop a meaningful friendship with someone that does not even know who you really are. As is the case with the other ideas listed, we can do better on this one as well.

Periodically, I am pressured to give up on these ideas. I admit nobody has ever specifically told me something like “don’t be who you are”. But, I definitely feel it. “You need to act more professionally”. “Fireball: What are you? Still 22.” “Grow up, be a man.” “You can’t just….” These types of statements, and many more, come based on the idea that there are certain expectations of me that I do not believe need to exist.

There are even some that have given me sincere advice that I need to stop worrying about these overly philosophical issues. After all, there are actual reasons for all of the things that frustrate me, and those that defend the current way we do things in this world probably have some valid points. But, while sometimes I do experience frustration and rejection by acting the way I do, the alternative sounds way more depressing to me in the long run. The alternative, to me, is giving up on who I am.

I would rather encourage people to pursue their intellectual ideas, even if occasionally their bosses come down on me.

I would rather continue to show people who I really am, and continue to enjoy the activities that bring me happiness, even if I am periodically given negative feedback by judgmental people.

I would rather take advantage of all of the great things this world has to offer, all of the wonderful places to visit, interesting ideas to pursue, and experiences to enjoy, even if that periodically earns me “reprimand”.

And, I would rather occasionally get burned by someone who uses information about me for their own selfish ambitions than cease showing people who I truly am.

Essentially, I would rather get rejected as myself than be accepted by pretending to be somebody else.

We are all people of value, in our own unique way. And, for any one of us, if we go out there in this world, and find a way to be the best version of ourselves, but still ourselves, we will naturally find people who like it, and people who see us as valuable individuals. We all long for acceptance, but in order to be accepted in a true meaningful way, we need to overcome the fear of rejection, and stand up for our ideas.

The Action Story

Learning about the world and about ourselves through travel and experiences

NYC- Sort of Home

Where New England Begins

Going Back to My Roots

Life On Monument Hill

The CrossFit Games

More Than Just a New Job

Tea that Isn’t Really Tea

Hitting Goals

A Tribute to a Companion