in the wind weekly #7

Dear Friends,

I paused my podcast and changed it to listen to some music on a twenty-minute drive today so that I could think about what I was going to write this week. If I were to be given your ear for a few minutes of time, what might be worth sharing? I was at breakfast this morning with an old friend from the days of guiding Wilderness Therapy and his partner and found myself in some awe at how the conversation flowed, grateful to be sitting with two truly kind and beautiful souls. I wish that I could have just recorded the conversation and shared the transcript with you all as we flowed from psychology to physiology to finance and business to mental health and what we want to do with our time (in general). So, as I drove, I wondered if I could relay some of it, to share some insight into what we got to talking about.

I’ll start with a story because that’s what I feel like writing about, and end with some practical content.

Story first:

Just about three years ago, I checked my bank account while I was “van life-ing” in the Southern-most portion of Utah, bouncing between national parks and different towns that my recently-graduated classmates had found themselves in.

Fresh out of a relationship and not having a van (at the start I was in a Subaru Sedan and quickly transitioned to a 4Runner), I took the time one day to check my bank account. A staggeringly low number lead me to immediately find a coffee shop and start applying for jobs. First interview was a Wilderness Therapy company up in Oregon in a town called Bend.

They offered me the job on the spot (which, mind you, is not as impressive as it sounds because they do that for nearly everyone because ~who in their right mind would want to go spend 8 days in the backcountry taking care of rowdy teenagers???~).

And you sure bet I packed up later that day and began the trek up to Bend, sight unseen, with no friends in the town, for a 6-day interview. Yes, you read that right. Six days straight in the backcountry to see if you could “cut it.”

For those of you wondering, Backcountry is the term that describes being in a location that is not accessible via car in an easy manner, or “sparsely inhabited rural areas” as Google would define it.

Now, fast forward 10 months and we were getting laid off from that job, which is a story in itself, just days after signing a new lease with my friend who goes by his trail-name, Dreamer, and a few others. He took to morning shifts at a Bagel shop down the street while I flipped burgers at a local chain down the road in the opposite direction.

And, in the mornings and afternoons that we weren’t working, we would drink coffee and talk about philosophy and stocks and options and started to explore day trading.

We were laughing this morning about how silly of a time that was and how much had changed since then. Only having crossed paths a few times in the interim. And when we sat down at my favorite breakfast spot in town (Bo’s), we dove right back into the dynamics of life and business and travel and whatever it might mean to find balance.

What am I trying to say here? I guess there are some practical takeaways.

First off, and more so with each week that passes, I deeply believe it is about living in a community and being able to support and grow with others that we care about. In some ways, the book, “Think Like a Monk,” would call this living a life of service. And what a wonderful gift it was today to reconnect with such a dear friend of mine and

Secondly, a metaphor that we kept returning to in conversation: The goal cannot be to shift the entire system, the weight of such a task is absolutely unbearable. But, if you were walking in the desert with the goal of walking in from point A to point B and set a compass that was only a mere 10 degrees off, given that the two points are greater than a certain distance away, you would end up in a completely different location then you anticipated.

All from a change of ten (metaphorical) degrees. If you don’t believe me, go grab a compass and test it out! Navigation is by itself an awesome skill, but add the ability to translate it to success and business. Sounds like a no-brainer to me!

It would look something like this:

Now, this can work two ways. First off, if you have your goals and values and “future path” clear, then you might be able to get that compass error down to seven or three. I don’t believe that anyone ever ends up hitting the exact target, but maybe that’s part of the point.

The other way is what so many “self-help” books and businesses target. If you can see your path as raw as possible, exactly the trajectory of where your habits and practices and daily movements will land you, then you can take advantage of this concept.

If you can shift your daily practices three or six or ten degrees, then you will land in a significantly, and hopefully healthier and more “successful” position over a significant amount of time, say a few or many years. One that you can be proud of and that is in line with who you want to be.

I think this is to say that most of us don’t have the time/financial/mental freedom to change our habits overnight, though some have and many in the future will. But I do think that even a slight change will lead to a bit of a snowball effect whose results will only be understood with enough Time.

And lastly, I was reflecting on reading the first half of “Shoe Dog,” the Nike memoir by Phil Knight, that shares the journey over the years of beginning and developing the company into what it is. The book is incredible, and I highly recommend it if you haven’t read it.

He tells the story year by year of all of the hurdles they faced as a company, from not having bank funding while grossing over 2 million in sales in a year, or earlier on need to pick up a “normal job” to make ends meet while he built the foundation of the company. The most intriguing part to me was that on a train (the business) that was already moving, he shares the story in such a way that every hurdle was the point of continuing further.

Even when he wanted to jump ship, or thought the business was doomed to fail, or one year ran at a significant loss, they stayed on the train and did what they could to embrace whatever place they found themselves in. And with enough time, by staying on the train, well, chances are you know what Nike is….

This reminds me so directly of what it looks like to set out to hike a long trail or climb a multi-pitch climb or anything of the sort. If you set out to hike 1,000+ miles, the only way to get there is to hike a handful of miles at a time, which broken down even further is somewhere around a mile every twenty minutes, and even further comes down to every individual step.

If you are three pitches into a five-pitch climb, you got there by doing one pitch first and then another, and even further so, one move of your hand followed by another.

Reading Shoe Dog, I was settling on the concept that business, like life and like thru-hiking or other outdoor activities, comes down to taking every step along the way regardless of whether it is where you want to be, simply because that’s exactly where you are.

And that sounds so damn simple writing it out. And somehow I feel that we (I) lose track of that sometimes. So, maybe next time I’ll write some thoughts on how to not lose track of what matters and how to either make active changes in lifestyles to start moving toward a different point on the horizon or how to get more clear on the place on the horizon so that you know where you are trying to travel to.

Or, maybe I’ll just share another silly story of the strange life I have lived.

Regardless, I hope that you have gotten some joy or understanding of anything really from my words today. It is and will always be in gratitude that I write these, knowing that time is possibly our most precious resource.

Breathe deeply, my friends. Catch some sunlight in the morning hours, and notice the rise in the birds that are celebrating the coming of Spring. Maybe find some time to connect to someone you care about and haven’t talked with in a while.

I want to leave you with a question:

Do you know the degree to which your compass is set and is it pointing to the lifestyle you want to continue living?

Contemplate, or don’t. Email/text me your answer, or don’t. I would love to hear from you, and will always read what you care to share. And if you disregard it, it’s never a worry. Your time is valuable, I figure it’s important to be conscious of how we spend it.

w/ metta,

Sage