Too Many Shiny Things

Tag: outside

  • The Love Letter – Our Hearts Are A Wilderness

    The Love Letter – Our Hearts Are A Wilderness

    I don’t rock climb. It’s not that I am trying to say that I couldn’t climb, just that my current body configuration isn’t conducive to climbing. Although this movie is based in the idea of climbing, it really is only one tiny bit of what the film is about. It’s a glorious movie about the outdoors, and life, and love.

    It captures how I feel about the outdoors, and wraps it up in a digestible nugget. It’s a really well done adventure film that lacks all of the typical pieces you’d usual find in one. It’s free of the usual million fast paced cuts, and the overly loud musical interludes. It’s a story, and a great one. An excellent, exhilarating feel good piece that is well worth your next 12 minutes.

    Funded by Outdoor Research [whom I now love EVEN more] & Osprey Packs.

    From the description on the OR site:

    Still clinging to young man’s dreams, a 30-something professional revives his youthful vision of summits and faint trails and abandons work and the city. The Love Letter follows a pair of climbers in search of new and classic climbing routes across the spine of the Sierra, into difficult to reach stretches of the range. In the clutter of the modern world, can wilderness restore the human spirit?

    Follow Fitz and Becca Cahall on their 300mile journey through the Sierra.

    It’s been making the rounds in the climber circles, but I think that it has tons of storytelling and cinematic merit as well. OR is even running a contest giving away gear and such over on a The Love Letter Project Facebook Page. What’s even better that getting free gear, is reading all of the stories that are being posted over there. Really hope filled, awe inspiring stuff. Enjoy. Now go outside.

  • Set it all on fire

    Set it all on fire

    I think I may have come to a realization, and I am willing to bet that everyone else already knows this, but … The biggest hurdle to creating change is our minds own resistance to breaking our well established patterns.

    I had every intention to make last year, a year of transformation. It started well, I found some motivation and support. I was moving towards my goals of being healthier and lighter. By a stroke of luck I was able to head to Italy to do some biking. Feeling great, and inspired. But right in the middle of the summer I was involved in a car accident that sent me spiraling down. I didn’t feel like I was hurt too badly in it or anything, but after a few days, a pain in my neck was keeping me from sleeping. I figured I’d get over it soon enough and that would be that, but it got worse. During the days, no pain, but any time I’d lay down it was terrible. I don’t know if you’ve ever been sleep deprived, but I am telling you it’s not fun, and I am not good at it. After a bit of time, I decided it was worth getting some medical professionals involved. Unfortunately for me their immediate advice was to stop riding until I could get my neck back into shape. All of my progress and motivation was quickly replaced by anger and a sort of sleepless craziness.

    I seem to have buried my lead though. The problem wasn’t the car accident, the problem was how I saw [and to some extent see] myself. In my head, I’m the smart, fat guy who can talk a great game, but rarely plays. I let the accident be an excuse to fail, because it was much easier to fail by something out of my control than to fail on my own. I stopped pursuing my goals of racing in some cyclo-cross races last year, I stopped eating right, and threw my hands up in the air, saying look at what this stupid guy in a big truck did to me.

    No more. It’s time to set it all on fire. All the notions I have of myself, all the habits I’ve developed, all of the excuses I know how I can fall back on. Time to destroy them all. I think I’ll even build a symbolic fire this weekend, maybe even burn some things … who knows.

    I now know this:

    The manner in which you see yourself, your beliefs regarding yourself is what you “send out” into the world…and the world receives your message and provides you with that which you have conceived of and for yourself

    So my time is now. To start again, a new, fresh. I’ve got some goals going forward, and why not make them real by writing them down.

    Goals:

    • Get outside – I just finished reading Last Child in the Woods, and I now consider it a moral imperative to spend more time outside, with the family or alone.
    • Stop eating crap – Yeah I know, shouldn’t be mind blowing right … but there it is. I’m going with much less processed, no xtra sugary things, and a basic concept of if it didn’t exist 150 years ago … I’m not going to eat it, diet.
    • Be a better human – Be the kind of person my mother wanted me to be. Be the kind of person I want my children to be.
    • Lead by example – I’ve always felt like a moral person in my head, but looking back over my actions, I didn’t always make the best decisions [that’s a whole other blog post, maybe we’ll get into it later]. Live how I think people should live. I am my brothers keeper, time to start looking after him

    I’m sure there will be more, and I’ll update the list as time passes. I realize that there are about 4.5 folks who will have gotten this far in such a rambling post, and I thank you, but if you’ll excuse me now, I have a fire to build.