Great news! I'm starting my own freelancing business called, "Writing Your Wrongs." I'll be doing freelance stories for various publications, editing for businesses and webpages, press releases, and other public relations writing. And of course my oh-so-lucritive true passion, writing fiction. I have met a guy here who has his own advertising business who has done work in almost every form of media imaginable. He has many connections with newspapers and magazines around Oregon and when I told him I was interested in finding some writing work he practically started this business for me. I'm writing a story currently on my good friend and boss Kevin (who hired me at Mt. Bachelor) and the interesting story of how he became a ski coach for the U.S Ski Team and now a top administrator at a ski resort while only having one leg. This new friend of mine is also subcontracting me to write several press releases for clients of his that will go in national publications and has offered to let me write for a local outdoor publication he plans to put out in March. I'm obviously pretty excited about the potential of getting to be my own boss and getting paid for doing what I love, but it's also a little scary to be thrown into this so quickly. I don't know what to say. My confidence lies in my ability to write and I'm just hoping the business end will come with some education and experience. I know I have a few other writer friends out there that read this occationally so if you are interested in doing something similar I'd be happy to send you some links and references for finding freelance work. The greatest part is there's no overhead to start a business like this, you can do it in your free time as much or as little as you like, and you get to write off pretty much everything vaguely related to your office as a business expense. So wish me luck in the upcoming months and if you have good story idea, know of someone opening a new business that needs some PR, or someone who needs a writer or editor send them my way. Thanks!
Oh, I've also had a lot of people ask me what happened with the modeling gig I wrote about a few months back. I'm guessing the guy was a fake. I don't know for sure, but we corresponded for awhile and I kept pressing him to show me a contract before I could fully commit and then I didn't hear from him again. C'est la vie.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Jesus Camp Review
I was finally able to see the documentary "Jesus Camp" that I had previously posted a trailer to and I have to say it was both sickening and reassuring. I say sickening because I think extremism troubles everyone. The things that were said by some of the kids in this movie and the adults that were teaching them were so far out that I can't imagine anyone not thinking, "Wow, I didn't know these people existed." Things such as, "Harry Potter is a warlock and if he were real he'd go straight to hell!" I just wanted to sit this minister lady down and calmly explain to her that Harry Potter is FICTIONAL (do you know what fiction is little girl? That means he only exists in your imagination. BOO!) and that warlocks are no more real than ghosts, goblins, demons or Satan's bogeymen. It's just madness and I can't help but think that the majority of it comes from sheer boredom. The evangelicals in this movie are so angry and so frustrated with the world and what I really want to know is why they think the world is supposed to be a good place. No one ever said it was. There are parts that are. There are parts that aren't. It's just life. Does that mean don't stand up for what you believe in? No. Does it mean tempering what you believe in with facts and evidence based on modern information? Yes, I think it does.
I say that the movie was reassuring because since this movie was produced much of what these radical evangelicals want moderates and liberals to be afraid of is that they have control of the white house, the congress, and the supreme court and we know this isn't the case anymore. Had I watched this a couple of years ago I may have been a little freaked out. "Could people like this that sit around in their small towns brewing over how horrible the world is really have the discipline to take over powerful parts of our government?" And a few years ago I would have had to look at the situation and say, "Yeah, they're doing it right now." Fortunately, most people (arguably all people) know what is too much and recognize when something that in moderation might be considered beneficial, even inspirational, has gone too far and needs to be cut down to size. I think we've seen this with the delusional decisions Bush has made during his time as president and if anything I think he has given a lot of radical, ugly people a platform to show the country how dangerous religious minds can be when unbalanced by logic, moderation and an open-minded education. The polarization in America has to stop. It can't continue. Liberals cannot divorce themselves from conservatives and visa versa. We're stuck with each other. And anyone who has dealt with group dynamics will tell you that what comes as a result is no more divinely inspired than it is controlled by logic and planning. It's just a dynamic. If our two parties were greens and democrats the country would be decidedly more liberal. If they were moderates and republicans, more conservative, but it's not about right and wrong--not to me. It's simply what has come about by throwing several different groups together in a system where they can't trump each other without risking backlash. Conservatives have been trying to trump liberals for the last thirty years. Now it's going the other way. So let's not get melodramatic about it. Sure it's good to learn about who is hanging out on the fringes of your society, but to watch a film like "Jesus Camp" and come away thinking anything other than here is a group of people who are taking a peaceful philosophy and turning it into an angry political tool is being extreme in a reverse fashion. Hollywood loves to jab at middle America because it doesn't understand why people in this country would choose to live such slow, simplistic lives, and middle America loves to jab back because Hollywood seems so whimsical and petty that they can't grasp why these people don't take life more seriously. I've seen the good and bad of both sides in my travels and I have to say we're all more or less the same when you get outside the little boxes we put each other into. Be a human being. Use your brain. You're not one or the other. You don't have to fit in a category to be normal.
I say that the movie was reassuring because since this movie was produced much of what these radical evangelicals want moderates and liberals to be afraid of is that they have control of the white house, the congress, and the supreme court and we know this isn't the case anymore. Had I watched this a couple of years ago I may have been a little freaked out. "Could people like this that sit around in their small towns brewing over how horrible the world is really have the discipline to take over powerful parts of our government?" And a few years ago I would have had to look at the situation and say, "Yeah, they're doing it right now." Fortunately, most people (arguably all people) know what is too much and recognize when something that in moderation might be considered beneficial, even inspirational, has gone too far and needs to be cut down to size. I think we've seen this with the delusional decisions Bush has made during his time as president and if anything I think he has given a lot of radical, ugly people a platform to show the country how dangerous religious minds can be when unbalanced by logic, moderation and an open-minded education. The polarization in America has to stop. It can't continue. Liberals cannot divorce themselves from conservatives and visa versa. We're stuck with each other. And anyone who has dealt with group dynamics will tell you that what comes as a result is no more divinely inspired than it is controlled by logic and planning. It's just a dynamic. If our two parties were greens and democrats the country would be decidedly more liberal. If they were moderates and republicans, more conservative, but it's not about right and wrong--not to me. It's simply what has come about by throwing several different groups together in a system where they can't trump each other without risking backlash. Conservatives have been trying to trump liberals for the last thirty years. Now it's going the other way. So let's not get melodramatic about it. Sure it's good to learn about who is hanging out on the fringes of your society, but to watch a film like "Jesus Camp" and come away thinking anything other than here is a group of people who are taking a peaceful philosophy and turning it into an angry political tool is being extreme in a reverse fashion. Hollywood loves to jab at middle America because it doesn't understand why people in this country would choose to live such slow, simplistic lives, and middle America loves to jab back because Hollywood seems so whimsical and petty that they can't grasp why these people don't take life more seriously. I've seen the good and bad of both sides in my travels and I have to say we're all more or less the same when you get outside the little boxes we put each other into. Be a human being. Use your brain. You're not one or the other. You don't have to fit in a category to be normal.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
MLK Day in the Northwest
It's been a little while since I've written anything, but we're finally moved in and settled here in Bend so I'd like to get back to writing more frequently. One of my favorite things about traveling is getting to see the various colloquialisms that make up the culture of a place. In the U.S. it's particularly interesting because so much of our culture is homogenized. Suburbia in Bend, Oregon is no different from any other city I've ever visited. They have Home Depot and Best Buy and Target like anywhere else, so you have to really speak to the locals to get a feel for what a place is all about. I'm getting worse at picking up on these things as I get older and more content with my views. Where as visiting a new city at age twenty-one was incredibly new and exciting and I was enamored by how different everything was from what I had previously known, now I have other places to compare to--so I've become a little more critical. That is, I can see the pros and cons rather than just blind passion for something new and interesting. It's kind of like dating in that respect. Eventually you start to see the similarities of life no matter where you are (or who you're with) and you start to accept places (and people) for what (who) they are without imposing your own vision on the experience, but at the same time you're more wise to the ways of the world (you're not the naive kid that parks his truck outside a hotel room with all his earthly possessions hidden under a thin tarp in the back to be stolen by homeless vagrants outside of Phoenix. Who does that? Just like you wouldn't give your heart away to any two-bit drunk you meet at the bar).
So with MLK day coming up here comes my one month analysis of racial issues in Bend. Some of what I've experienced here is very similar to other places in the west. The west has this general "cool" feel about it. Even people who are no where close to cool still dress and act the part. For younger people this is just typical behavior. Kids are trying to act cool all over the country, it doesn't matter where you are. But the interesting thing about the west is that even many people who are middle-aged still dress and act in this, "I'm too fucking hip to have a sense of humor about anything, just be cool," sort of manner. It's kind of funny. They get way bent out of shape about things that they really have no idea about. Let's take political correctness for example. First off, there are no black people in Bend...period. I have not seen a single African-American in a month here. Yet, when my ski-students like to yell out, "I'm black, I'm black" as they run for the multi-colored stalls at the ski lifts, or someone says, "Do you do blacks?" (meaning, do you ski black diamond runs) and I chuckle, I get funny looks. For people who grew up in the south or close to the south or anywhere in the Midwest where racial issues are still issues this kind of off-colored (no pun intended) humor is not taken offense to by people on either side. I see this as true equality--black people laugh at white people, white people laugh at black people but they all stay friends and mean no disrespect. In the northwest it's not like this, generally speaking, because minorities are more or less an academic idea. Racism isn't anything these people have ever dealt with so even someone joking ironically about racial issues is in bad taste. Racism is something they learned about in schools and see on Hollywood movies about farm towns in middle America--it doesn't happen a whole lot in Bend. Not like in central Missouri where the people who came to buy our bed before we left told me they were going to, "Jew me down" on the price as though this was just common vernacular for making such a transaction. I'm over uppitiness though. I went through a phase right after college where I took all these new PC ideas to the extreme and wanted the whole world to be this happy little inclusive place where no one's feelings ever get hurt and we all live in peace and harmony. Then I left my pleasant bubble of academia and more or less hated everyone I came in contact with for two years after that. Hating people who hate doesn't help the situation anymore than being radical and uppity about hate issues. Human decency is my new kick. The thing about many of the people I've met who are supposedly the educated protectors of civilization in the U.S. are also some of the biggest assholes I've ever met. They wouldn't throw their best friend a bone if he were starving on their doorstep. "I just don't want the hassle. If I help him now he'll never learn to take care of himself," they'd say. And maybe they'd be right, but they'd still be an asshole.
Part of this whole, "I have a dream" American vision of peace amongst a country of immigrants boils down to basic human decency. Manners. Please and thank you and have a nice day. Even if you don't mean it. It's the social lubricant that keeps things moving in a pleasurable manner when all anyone really wants is to talk about themselves and be left the hell alone to live their life as they please. Engaging people in political, racial, religious discourse has it's time and place--and it isn't in the check-out line at a grocery store. In a college classroom--fine. In a religious institution or political organization--great! But please people, you're not helping by putting on this air of intelligence and chastising people for mocking what they don't understand (that's what blogs are for!). Perhaps they'd like your input. Some people would genuinely like to know if they are saying offensive things. Others would rather you jump off a cliff. The fact of the matter is, not everyone can afford the education and travel that brings with it an open mind and accepting outlook. Some people with very good hearts just don't know that what they are saying is extremely rude and inappropriate. And those people, I promise you, are not going to walk away from a chastising saying to themselves, "Wow, I really get that. I should be more respectful. They're more likely to say, "What a pretentious ass. I shoulda popped him in the nose."
So please try to be civil people and enjoy the long weekend. I will personally be celebrating MLK day by teaching rich white kids how to slide down mountains on really expensive sticks. I hope some of you actually have a more culturally rich experience. Much love, Jeff.
So with MLK day coming up here comes my one month analysis of racial issues in Bend. Some of what I've experienced here is very similar to other places in the west. The west has this general "cool" feel about it. Even people who are no where close to cool still dress and act the part. For younger people this is just typical behavior. Kids are trying to act cool all over the country, it doesn't matter where you are. But the interesting thing about the west is that even many people who are middle-aged still dress and act in this, "I'm too fucking hip to have a sense of humor about anything, just be cool," sort of manner. It's kind of funny. They get way bent out of shape about things that they really have no idea about. Let's take political correctness for example. First off, there are no black people in Bend...period. I have not seen a single African-American in a month here. Yet, when my ski-students like to yell out, "I'm black, I'm black" as they run for the multi-colored stalls at the ski lifts, or someone says, "Do you do blacks?" (meaning, do you ski black diamond runs) and I chuckle, I get funny looks. For people who grew up in the south or close to the south or anywhere in the Midwest where racial issues are still issues this kind of off-colored (no pun intended) humor is not taken offense to by people on either side. I see this as true equality--black people laugh at white people, white people laugh at black people but they all stay friends and mean no disrespect. In the northwest it's not like this, generally speaking, because minorities are more or less an academic idea. Racism isn't anything these people have ever dealt with so even someone joking ironically about racial issues is in bad taste. Racism is something they learned about in schools and see on Hollywood movies about farm towns in middle America--it doesn't happen a whole lot in Bend. Not like in central Missouri where the people who came to buy our bed before we left told me they were going to, "Jew me down" on the price as though this was just common vernacular for making such a transaction. I'm over uppitiness though. I went through a phase right after college where I took all these new PC ideas to the extreme and wanted the whole world to be this happy little inclusive place where no one's feelings ever get hurt and we all live in peace and harmony. Then I left my pleasant bubble of academia and more or less hated everyone I came in contact with for two years after that. Hating people who hate doesn't help the situation anymore than being radical and uppity about hate issues. Human decency is my new kick. The thing about many of the people I've met who are supposedly the educated protectors of civilization in the U.S. are also some of the biggest assholes I've ever met. They wouldn't throw their best friend a bone if he were starving on their doorstep. "I just don't want the hassle. If I help him now he'll never learn to take care of himself," they'd say. And maybe they'd be right, but they'd still be an asshole.
Part of this whole, "I have a dream" American vision of peace amongst a country of immigrants boils down to basic human decency. Manners. Please and thank you and have a nice day. Even if you don't mean it. It's the social lubricant that keeps things moving in a pleasurable manner when all anyone really wants is to talk about themselves and be left the hell alone to live their life as they please. Engaging people in political, racial, religious discourse has it's time and place--and it isn't in the check-out line at a grocery store. In a college classroom--fine. In a religious institution or political organization--great! But please people, you're not helping by putting on this air of intelligence and chastising people for mocking what they don't understand (that's what blogs are for!). Perhaps they'd like your input. Some people would genuinely like to know if they are saying offensive things. Others would rather you jump off a cliff. The fact of the matter is, not everyone can afford the education and travel that brings with it an open mind and accepting outlook. Some people with very good hearts just don't know that what they are saying is extremely rude and inappropriate. And those people, I promise you, are not going to walk away from a chastising saying to themselves, "Wow, I really get that. I should be more respectful. They're more likely to say, "What a pretentious ass. I shoulda popped him in the nose."
So please try to be civil people and enjoy the long weekend. I will personally be celebrating MLK day by teaching rich white kids how to slide down mountains on really expensive sticks. I hope some of you actually have a more culturally rich experience. Much love, Jeff.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Make a Wedge
"Make a wedge with the tips of your skies, stand up nice and tall, and push your shins against the tongues of your boots." This is what I spend the majority of my day saying to young kids at Mt. Bachelor resort here in Bend, Oregon. Instructing ski lessons is a long day, somtimes rewarding, sometimes very frustrating. Even at ages four and five the difference in athletic ability between these kids is staggering. Some will grasp it immediately and will be ripping around on steep slopes before their lesson ends. Others will spend the entire six hour lesson trying to stay on their feet and make it down an incline the pitch of a roof on a one-story house. It's also not a cheap sport so it is rare to get the appreciative child who is grateful to be there and listening intently. More often I am fighting with kids--who could literally be my own--about whether or not their parent's ski instruction supercedes my own.
I've discovered that although I've skied several seasons as an adult in several different states I had no idea what I was doing until I came to ski school training two weeks ago. My strategy was always to turn my skies downhill, swerve when I started getting out of control, and stop on a dime when about to run into something. This always sufficed in the past. Now I will never make a turn again without analyzing whether or not I could have done it better. "Was I leaning too far forward? Was I sitting back on the pot? Did my skies stay parallel through the turn?" So much to think about. Self-improvement can be annoying as an adult. Sometimes you just want to do something without knowing so much about it. It's part of the fun. Once you know what you're doing, you have to work at it. Bummer. The same used to be true for walking in the woods. I used to like to go out on hikes just to get away from the city and unwind, then I tried to make this leisure my job and had to learn the names of all the plants and trees and animals and the natural cycles that we are all involved in. Next thing I knew I couldn't go for a walk in the woods without analyzing every detail of my surroundings. "Is this grove too overgrown? Should they do a controlled burn here? Why don't they do some trail work on this eroded site, it looks like shit." Even nature has become something for my mind to pick apart and organize. It's exhausting.
I'll stop that thought right there though, because who can honestly complain about working as a ski instructor? It's not an office. There's not a whole lot of responsibility (except not losing your kids somewhere in a snowstorm). It's a fun way to spend the winter and live in a beautiful part of the country. However, life doesn't just stop when one decides to do something like this. There are still bills to pay and food to be purchased and all the same wants and needs as before. So it takes a little sacrifice--like sleeping on a giant blow-up mattress to avoid the cost of yet another bed you won't be able to take with you when you move. Needless to say useless things like cable TV don't make the budget and amazingly if there is money that shows up in the bank account it seems to go effortlessly toward the outdoor gear we get at absurdly low prices. So the culture becomes one of homeless vagabonds with backpacks, skies, and mountain bikes that cost more than some people's cars. It takes a certain kind of crazy to live this way and one I'm finding myself growing out of. Don't get me wrong. I'm having a ball, but at some point the costs start to out-weigh the benefits. You get to the point where you're talking to the parents of these children--who carelessly throw away two-hundred bucks to have their kids get ski lessons from a group of homeless psychotic athletes--and you're thinking, I could do this person's job. I could be on the other end of this transaction...and the dream wanders off to better things.
I have so much more to say about this adventure and so little time to sit down and write about it. I'll try to keep this updated as the winter goes on. Hope everyone had a happy holiday and a happy new year! Welcome 2007.
I've discovered that although I've skied several seasons as an adult in several different states I had no idea what I was doing until I came to ski school training two weeks ago. My strategy was always to turn my skies downhill, swerve when I started getting out of control, and stop on a dime when about to run into something. This always sufficed in the past. Now I will never make a turn again without analyzing whether or not I could have done it better. "Was I leaning too far forward? Was I sitting back on the pot? Did my skies stay parallel through the turn?" So much to think about. Self-improvement can be annoying as an adult. Sometimes you just want to do something without knowing so much about it. It's part of the fun. Once you know what you're doing, you have to work at it. Bummer. The same used to be true for walking in the woods. I used to like to go out on hikes just to get away from the city and unwind, then I tried to make this leisure my job and had to learn the names of all the plants and trees and animals and the natural cycles that we are all involved in. Next thing I knew I couldn't go for a walk in the woods without analyzing every detail of my surroundings. "Is this grove too overgrown? Should they do a controlled burn here? Why don't they do some trail work on this eroded site, it looks like shit." Even nature has become something for my mind to pick apart and organize. It's exhausting.
I'll stop that thought right there though, because who can honestly complain about working as a ski instructor? It's not an office. There's not a whole lot of responsibility (except not losing your kids somewhere in a snowstorm). It's a fun way to spend the winter and live in a beautiful part of the country. However, life doesn't just stop when one decides to do something like this. There are still bills to pay and food to be purchased and all the same wants and needs as before. So it takes a little sacrifice--like sleeping on a giant blow-up mattress to avoid the cost of yet another bed you won't be able to take with you when you move. Needless to say useless things like cable TV don't make the budget and amazingly if there is money that shows up in the bank account it seems to go effortlessly toward the outdoor gear we get at absurdly low prices. So the culture becomes one of homeless vagabonds with backpacks, skies, and mountain bikes that cost more than some people's cars. It takes a certain kind of crazy to live this way and one I'm finding myself growing out of. Don't get me wrong. I'm having a ball, but at some point the costs start to out-weigh the benefits. You get to the point where you're talking to the parents of these children--who carelessly throw away two-hundred bucks to have their kids get ski lessons from a group of homeless psychotic athletes--and you're thinking, I could do this person's job. I could be on the other end of this transaction...and the dream wanders off to better things.
I have so much more to say about this adventure and so little time to sit down and write about it. I'll try to keep this updated as the winter goes on. Hope everyone had a happy holiday and a happy new year! Welcome 2007.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
