What is it to live a purposeful life; better yet, what does it mean to live a purposeless life? I think that to live a purposeless life is to ignore what you know that you are good at, your God given talents, those things that make you smile while you are landing that jump, planing that board, finishing that painting or just about anything that you can imagine. We have all been given gifts and talents in some area of our lives. To ignore using these talents and to just exist is truly a waste of what we have been given. In Matthew 25 Jesus tells a parable of a man that entrusted talents to three servants. You know the story, the two invested the talents and multiplied them for their master, the one simply buried the talent in the ground and gave it back to his master. Are you burying your talent, only to give it back? “No, that’s OK, I don’t want it, here, you can have it back.” If you don’t want it, do you think you will receive anything else in exchange? What you have been given is not by accident, what you do with it is a big deal. What you don’t do with it is an even bigger deal. Can you imagine a ship in the ocean without a rudder? Without a rudder it would either sail in circles or be blown by the wind wherever the wind is blowing. Purposeful living is sailing a ship with a rudder. You have a course, or at least you have a general direction of where you want to go. If you don’t have a purpose, then you will be blown by other people’s emotions and drama, whatever wind is prevailing at the time. Another analogy is either being a magnet or being a piece of steel. Purposeful living is a magnet that draws others to your purpose. They want to be a part of what you are doing. Purposeless living is being a piece of steel, drawn to whatever magnet is close by, not having any magnetism of your own. We all have magnets within us that draw us north, to that place that bring fulfillment and peace in our lives. For me, Christ is my true north, giving me the ability to know how to utilize that magnet that is planted within me to give purpose to my life; but that’s not all, He expects me to use what He planted within me to bring meaning and purpose to myself and others around me. When we don’t have a sense of direction, it’s easy to get sucked into the drama of others lives. If you are sailing a ship, you have to keep an eye on either the compass or a spot on the other shore to sail to. You can’t take your eyes off of it or you will end up either lost or miles downwind from your intended destination. You don’t have the time to watch the drama in the dingy floating next to you. You know that you have a destination and the dingy holds just enough of a distraction to get you off course. This doesn’t mean that if the dingy is sinking you don’t pause to help out, but you don’t put out your anchor and live there, you get them on their way and pick up where you left off. Some have a purpose that is in the limelight more than others, yet that doesn’t make them more important, just a different purpose and a different destination. You have your own specific destination, to sail to where others are intended to go, only makes getting back to your destination take longer. With all of the social media, it’s easy to read and view all of the squawking seagulls trying to bring attention to themselves, yet again, this is just a distraction. I dare you to live your own purposeful life and to not check your Facebook status every 10 minutes, being pushed by the wind of who likes your post and who doesn’t. Your life is more important than that. Let the 99% of people live by the opinion of others, you live guided by your purpose. I dare you to set sail for that purpose you were created for or do you want to continue to live your life based upon a daily opinion poll? The choice is yours.

My wife and I decided to paint the bathroom this weekend. Seemed like a rather quick job, except the replacement of the faucets for the vanities. There was wallpaper that had to be removed first. This took more time than we had expected. After removing the wallpaper, there were gouges in the walls which needed to be filled with spackle. We then needed to cut out the seams where the wallpaper seams were in the water closet. We decided to not remove the wallpaper in that small area since it took so long to remove the wallpaper in the main part of the bathroom. We were covering up a taupe color which required two coats of paint and lots of cutting in. We started on Saturday and finished Sunday afternoon. We still have faucets to replace and mirrors to install, but the bulk of it is done. After working with websites and computers for the past 10 years, I have become accustomed to instant changes or at least changes that don’t take a lot of time. Before I got into this whole website business, I would have not thought twice about taking on a huge remodeling project. I would know that it would take a huge investment in time, dust, sweat and tears, but that would not have fazed me a bit. Now, when I take on a remodeling project, I want instant results. I want to take a digital application, run a few lines of code, upload it to the web and see instant results. I tend to want the same when I do any kind of manual work. Am I getting lazy? Am I getting old? I DON’T LIKE IT! I know that it is due to the digital world that I make my living, yet I do not like what it has done to my previous world of nuts, bolts, wood shavings and satisfaction of actual manual work. Do you find yourself in a similar state of mind, that is if your actual vocation involves 0’s and 1’s. Have we become a digital replication of reality? Do we favor digital relationships over real ones? I dare you to ask yourself the question. I know that I have.

Reality tv is NOT reality. Do you really want to be a Kardashian? Get a “real” life. If you don’t want to be one of the masses with an ordinary life, going to an ordinary job living in an ordinary city, then you have to do something to be different. Your friends predictable habits will get you predictable results. YOU have to do something different to change your current life every day. YOU have to work later, work harder, think outside of the dull square box if you want a meaningful life. Sure, going to the pub, the club, the typical places your friends go is fun, but if you go there too much, you will have the typical life. Life doesn’t just happen to you. YOU have to fight against the current, or end up with results that people who go with the flow end up with. It’s up to you. Don’t look for your “big break”, you will be waiting forever. YOU need to chart a course for that new land, that one that is waiting to be discovered.

A dream has to be bigger than yourself in order for it to be worth achieving. If you have a dream, but already know the hows and whens of what is necessary to achieve your dream, then the dream isn’t big enough. There needs to be a bit of “how am I going to get from here to there” in your dream. The unknown is what drives us. Sure, we can play it safe, and look back on our life that we played it safe, and wish that we had of taken a few calculated risks. When the US decided to go to the moon, do you think that we knew everything about space travel, or what the surface of the moon was exactly composed of? Sure, we had a good idea, but we didn’t know everything. Now, the US has decided that putting a man on Mars isn’t a good investment, but the return on our money can’t be measured in dollars and cents. There were so many fringe benefits that the moon shot accomplished for America. There was a generation of kids that were taught to believe that any one of them could become an astronaut. Before the space program, every boy wanted to be a fireman; now every boy wanted to ride a rocket! The Steve Jobs and Bill Gates of today were the same kids that watched Neil Armstrong walk on the lunar surface. It was the American dream to push further than we had ever gone that stimulated the imaginations of young boys and girls that later launched so many of our tech industries today. We were taught to dream. Today, it seems as if we all want to play it safe. We want security, in a world of uncertainty. We want guarantees in a time of unknown resolutions. If you take the road that is traveled by the masses, don’t expect to receive the results of those that dare to dream. Walt Disney used to have a phrase that he used, “Plus it”. It was rather simple, but what he meant was, “Don’t just settle for what you did, what CAN you do to make it perfect?” There was a guy that had quite an imagination. His brother Roy had to find ways to make Walt’s dreams become a reality. Walt was the idea guy and Roy was the money guy. Whatever your dream is, it involves money to be sure. You can’t let money get in your way. You can begin small, most everyone did. Do you think that Bill Gates started with 100 programmers and a 10,000 square foot building? No, he pretty much started in his bedroom, like most of us dreamers do. The difference between them and others; they started. They didn’t just think of an idea and do nothing. They started, they began, they said, “What if”. Make a promise to yourself today to never be afraid to dream, nor ever to think that there are too many obstacles in the way to realize your dream. We all want to see what you can do!

Life is too short to spend 8 hours or more per day of your waking 16 hours working at a job you hate. Ok, so you can’t just quit and then seek your ideal job; you have responsibilities, possibly a family to support. The way I look at it, you can either breathe some excitement into your current job or start searching your soul for what would be that ideal job where you would actually look forward to going to work each day. Some of us have avocations that bring fulfillment to our lives, but is it enough to offset the 8 hr. routine? It’s never too late to do some research on a possible career change. Read up on things that interest you and people who have turned these interests into careers.

We went with our new neighbors to a Bronco’s game. Fun times with what seemed like all of Denver. There were 72,000 people in attendance. Its pretty much an all day event.

Allison and Brooke came up to Coal Creek Canyon last February to spend a couple of days skiing and snowmobiling. This is a pic of us on the back deck of the cabin we leased for 6 months. My brother, Drew, came up and spent time with us as well.

Before Laurie and I moved to Colorado, people would ask, “Why Colorado?”. Why not Colorado? Ever since my parents took me to the Shenandoah mountains when I was 13, I fell in love with the mountains. The view from the top of a summit is awesome. To me, I can see the beauty of God’s handiwork. I used to read books on rock climbing.  I loved the outdoors. I spent many weekends on scouting trips and camping. I knew I was really hooked was in 1973 when my parents took my brother and I on a road trip to Alaska where my mom was raised. Mountains took on a whole new meaning with the shear size of them rising from the ocean. Even though my mom is from Alaska, she loves to go to the beach. The outer banks of NC were her idea of God’s beauty. To me, it was just sand, sand and more sand; let’s don’t forget the intense heat and humidity to go with it. The mountains were in my blood. I love to ski, even though I’m nothing to write home about. We went snowshoeing last winter for the first time. I found the forest to be so quiet, especially when there is snow to absorb the sound. Another way to enjoy the outside is camping. It is a great way to get away from it all. Hiking during the day, then coming back to camp to enjoy a great dinner by the fire with only the stars as your only light.  The air is dry here, so there is very little humidity. You can go outside during July, take a hike and barely perspire. Here in Estes Park, you never run out of things to do. We are at the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. Downtown Estes has some sort of festival most weekends until around November. Boulder is only about 1 hr away. In Estes Park, everyone is from somewhere else, so you don’t end up with attitudes about you being new. It’s sort of like a melting pot. We have found the people to be extremely friendly throughout the state. Leaving family back east has been hard; fortunately, our parents will be flying out for Thanksgiving to spend time with us. My youngest, Brooke, just left for college, so she is busy with her new surroundings. Our other children are in their mid 20’s to 30’s so they are very busy with their lives. We do miss seeing them, but hopefully we will fly them out here for Christmas. Eric, my youngest son of 27 years will hopefully move out here in spring with his new bride to work for me at our company. We hope he will send this very contagious bug back east and who knows, we might see a few others follow him here. So, why not Colorado!

I have decided to bow out of Facebook and to blog here instead. If you want to see what I am up to with more substance than “Just woke up and have a headache”,  then you can check this out, but if you like one line thoughts, keep going to Facebook!

Have you ever tried to put a polarized plug into a receptacle backwards? It doesn’t fit does it; try as you may, you just have to turn the plug around so that it will finally fit. That’s kind of how I was feeling back in VA for the past 10 years. I don’t know if it is due to the large military population in Tidewater, but the people we would meet would slowly move out of the area, many times due to being transferred or moving due to work. Going through a divorce didn’t help things. A normal byproduct of going through a divorce is losing relationships. It’s a hard reality I have had to deal with. Now that the kids are on their own, Brooke is at High Point University, Eric married, Allison living on her own and Steve doing his thing, well, there wasn’t a whole lot holding us in VA anymore. For the past 3-4 years, we have traveled to CO, trying to find a town that would meet most of our wish list. We finally settled on Estes Park, CO. That choice has been confirmed since we moved here September 1st. Estes Park is a small community. Everyone knows everyone. Nobody is really from here. Everyone is from somewhere else in the U.S; because of this, people seem to be more open. There are so many organizations that you can join. We are going to a new group on Thursday called Estes Park Newcomers Club. It’s a way for people to get to meet one another. There are all kinds of personal interest groups within the club. There are many retired people in our town, which reminds me of the Outer Banks. We are not retired, but hey, we are not too far from that time in our lives. That takes some getting used to, slowly realizing that I am closer to retirement than closer to raising a young family. You just can’t fight the reality of your age. That doesn’t mean that you give up and coast, it just means you realize where you are in life, what you want to accomplish and then, using your past experiences with a dose of reality, go for it! For those of you back east, we miss you, but we are loving our new surroundings and the new friends we are meeting. A new town, new friends…