I am a gym rat.

There was a guy at the climbing gym today who kept jumping off the wall, as if he suddenly remembered he forgot to pick up his dry cleaning. He would climb past the hard part, seemingly home-free, and then leap off and walk away. One second he was present, the next he was miles away. Every now and then, this guy would look at his iPod, mutter to himself, and continue to climb. It was so bizarre.

The following interaction was purely visual. No words were exchanged.

Guy:

PinchPinchanotherPinch!NowfootonorangeblobAndgrabthatbluething — Oh? What? Yeah, maybe I will have a drink of water from that fountain over there after all.

Me:

Hello, guy. Where do you keep going? Are you talking to me? Did you say... finances? Oh. No, you're in a conference call. It sounded like you were talking to me while you were doing pull ups on the crux of my project. 

Not crazy, I guess, but definitely a whole new meaning to the words "professional climber".

Then there was the girl fidgeting with her harness near the lockers. That "trouble" song was on the radio, which I always take time to acknowledge because it is so good. I was writing this interaction down in my notebook and putting on my shoes when I felt her blinding sunbeam eyes on the side of my face. They burned, then they shifted just as quickly as they burned, existing as a momentary weapon. I looked up to see her laughing out loud at me, though deliberately avoiding eye contact. It was so strange I found myself at a loss for words.

I live on the moon. I must be living on the moon, I thought. At least they have Taylor Swift on the moon.

Ohmygod I'm a gym rat. The snow cannot melt fast enough.

Riley.

http://letterformyfriend.tumblr.com 

Big Timer. Grown Up Child.

It didn't used to be this hard, living life that is. I would assume that past-Jackson would say, I had the option of being more mindless. Please don't misinterpret my words though, I'm not suggesting that previously I was a pseudo-conscious human being who didn't carry intent and value through most of his actions. I'm saying that I thought I had a lot of responsibility, but really I was an idiot and had no conception of what a lot of responsibility entailed.

The implications of responsibility is what I understand - improperly training my staff on how to correctly navigate a canoe down a rapid could result in endangering the lives of my clients and consequently my life - or failing to know without question or doubt the role, strength and value of each piece in my anchor also endangers my participants lives. I guess I may be mixing "consequences" and "responsibilities". What is happening, I think.. is the meaning of being "responsible" has completely changed now that I'm not guiding, not a counselor, not in school and not living under the roof of someone else. It seemed much simpler when I was directly responsible for the emotional and physical well being of a group of people. Now I have trickier things to worry about.

like..

Time.. and food.

Time management used to mean getting up in time to make coffee, get my kids up, make the breakfast, get them to the things they needed to do in time, already have my stuff together so I can help them with theirs, manage all their needs and wants in perfect harmony with the agenda of the day, address emotional outbreaks in a timely manner and communicate effectively with my partner in order to balance the "responsibilities" and stress of working 24/7 for 16 days in a row.

Now I'm just responsible for myself? What the hell. Why is this shit harder?

Taking the time to do laundry, is literally the greatest feat in my day. I don't do laundry for at least 3 weeks, because I know I can get away with it. Actually, making lunch for future-Jackson, the night before I have to work, so I (present-Jackson) can enjoy food when he gets hungry is the greatest feat of my life - cause you know I ain't making lunch at 5am. I'd rather sleep an extra 30 minutes and be hungry for 3 hours. I have yet to do that, just to let you know.

Yeah. FOOD? Are you flippin joking me, world? No meal plan? No mom or dad offering to make you dinner, no brown bag lunches?? Yeah right. Not no way, not no how. This is insane. I'm either getting take out, buying food at the restaurant upstairs in the hotel and losing money because it's to much money there - or i'm not eating. Because you know why? Because I have to go grocery shopping. Serious? I have to take the time, out of my day off, to feed myself. Woa.

Re-reading that paragraph, I realize my life has been way to privileged and easy, which is odd because my (preferred) line of work/life is so uniquely challenging most adults or humans can't understand how I, or we in the profession, manage to do it. Really I just don't understand how adults do it - "it" being the adult living thing, which I definitely am not doing yet. I guess 'adult' and 'responsible' don't necessarily coincide - that's a future blog post in itself though.

Regardless.

I still am a dude who would prefer to live life out of a backpack, canoe, sea kayak, trusty truck, eat rice and beans 3 times and day, buy bulk rations for 2 weeks instead of freshies every 2 days, poop in a hole, wipe with a rock, never have to re-stock toilet paper, wake up in the middle of no-where with no heat or AC, filter my water by hand from the stream, go to sleep with the setting sun, stir in the night because I rolled off my therma-rest and drink warm beer if it means I get to do it on the side of a cliff overlooking a mountain range..

So I guess that means..
Well I don't really know.
Adapt or die?
Adapt or be inefficient?
Adapt or no more hot baths..
Yeah that's it.
Adapt or no more hot baths.

-Jackson
The child with a whole lot of responsibility.

I want this.

I don't want to talk about how I want to be somewhere else. I want this. I just want to fill up my time with things and be done with it.

This winter, I came back to Philadelphia. The latent steps to my career-ladder were unimportant. The doldrums of the year are the perfect interruption to momentum, and my intent was to rewrite my ambitions. There, the place of my upbringing, served a singular purpose. I came home for a professional intermission, as it were. I didn't want to focus on the next great thing, my resume for a long shot job, or some tirelessly crafted cover letter which would only see one pair of eyes. Life would be so simple. So refreshing. But to my dismay, I am again confined to rock climbing niche I so happily forced upon myself. The collection of relevant jobs in such an unlikely place would have been to any other person, wildly exciting. And I admit, it is cool. Comfortable. But what I came east seeking was not progress, but rather an answer to the questions "what do you want to be when you grow up?" or, "why do you want to be what you want to be when you grow up?"

See, we all dream. There are days when I frantically scribble thoughts down in my notebook on the bedside table at 3 in the morning or squander an hour of precious, precious life studying the crux pitches of the Northwest Face of Half Dome with a jittery anticipation of spring. Everyone has their own, personal Northwest face, of course. I am absolutely happy to continue on living one of many dreams in the outdoors, but a relentless pursuit of these dreams will surely result in the fabulous, roman candle blaze Jack Kerouac so haphazardly described. Maybe self-doubt is as important as self-confidence?

Yesterday I make a collage, and, sure enough, I still don't want to be an artist. But it was worth remembering I don't want to be an artist any more than anyone else wants to be an artist. Art is hard. The same goes for any niche(rut): Make sure it's the right niche(rut).

So make a pit stop somewhere and do something categorically useless. Give your glowing and eager eyes a moment to forget which way is up, or down, or forward. Soon, you'll be somewhere filling the gas tank of your home in the middle of the night with not so much as a molecule of hesitation or confusion, which will feel perfectly reassuring. I want this, I know it.

Riley.

P.S. Merry Christmas, buds! I miss every single one of you.

The New American Road Trip Mixtape: A Book by Brendan Leonard from Brendan Leonard on Vimeo.
This dude preaches, big time. So good.

"Happy Holidays!" A.K.A.

"Happy Holidays!" I said to 4 girls on vacation.

But what I really meant was,

"Go Fuck Yourselves."

Yup. Thats right.

I tried my hand at pedi-cabbing the other night. When I say pedi-cabbing, I mean peddling a giant tricycle around with 1-4 humans sitting in the back of it. We in the biz call this phenomena, "the chariot of destiny". Essentially I was catering to wealthy or drunk individuals - or both - and riding them wherever they pleased. 

"This is a gratuity based service", I would add when asked how much to pay me. 

or..

"However much you would like to pay a guy riding a giant tricycle in the freezing cold for money on his day off from work."

Now, lemme tell you, when you take this job - your signing up to be a servant to the village. You will do anything that needs to be done to get that dollar, within reason of course. So, when 4 teenage girls from mexico want a pedi-cab ride, you best believe I'm giving them the ride of their fricken life. They requested that Aleq (my pedi-cab compadre) and myself race our chariots. To which we said, "racing costs extra." They said yes, yes, yes! So we raced. Talledaga Knights style. After that, they wanted us to ride them around the ice skating rink - so we did. While we were doing that, they wanted me to sing to them - so I serenaded the holy hell outta them, singing Michael Buble n' shit. 

After their ride was done, they started acting real weird, and handed Aleq and I one piece of gum each. 

At the end of their almost 20 minute ride, they handed us... ONE piece of gum.. each. 

Aleq and I glanced at each other, like this was some type of mexican joke, or whatever, and then stared at them. Handed back the gum, and said, "This is not our form of currency."

They again, began acting odd and talking among themselves in spanish.

To make a long ridiculous useless dialogue shorter, they ended up giving us 1 dollar - which they offered to rip in half so we could both have some of it. We handed it back and told them that this is our job, we do this for money, so come back tomorrow or the next day with 10 dollars and we'll give you another ride.

Hours later, I saw 2 of the girls. They walked straight past me, and I said,
"Hey its you! What's up girls!" Very audibly, I might add.

They gave me the cold shoulder! Didn't say a single word! Just kept walking down the street.

So I told them.

"Happy Holidays!"

-Jackson

Happy Holidays y'all,
Sincerely this time though,
With no aggressive undertones.

The Houseless Chronicles, Part 4: A Quenchable Thirst for Freedom

Going to bed doesn't usually feel like the greatest feat of the day - it's often the moment when you can finally indulge in relaxation. However, during "The Houseless Chronicles", at times, bedtime could reveal itself as just the opposite. Whether its playing long games of life size Tetris with the majority of your belongings or not, the adventure to visit Mr. Sandman can actually take days.... It seemed like. I remember a couple of nights being ready to melt into my tiny mattress around 8pm or 10pm - or whatever - and having to search for hours finding a suitable parking spot. You ask yourself; will any security guard want to find me here? Does that spot have too many bright lights around it? Do we have to pay to be here? Where is the free land? Why cant I park here? Are we in America?

Where can I truly be free?

When I set out on this adventure, I had a vague idea about the questions I wanted answers for. I'd been keeping track of them for years and thirsting for their transformation into potential epiphanies.

My family, however, knew precisely what questions needed answering - they were really more like pseudo skeptical inquiries though. Of course it was warranted, they were concerned that the newest college graduate in the family was living out of his truck. They would ask things like, "so where are you going to wash your hands?" or "but where will you go to the bathroom?" I replied, "In the sink or river, and in a hole or a toilet?" Those questions weren't exactly the ones I had in mind... regardless, That's the whole point! Not knowing what will arise - appreciating the value of those simple novel unanswered questions, and discovering a depth to them that was once unimaginable.

You may not have known that you were looking for it, but eventually you find that unadulterated freedom you've been yearning for, wherever it may have been hiding. You know it when you wake during the night to the sound of coyotes, instead of garbage trucks. Or when you turn 360 in the box, open the tailgate and look up to happen upon the sights of an unexpected meteor shower.

How ever long it took to find your spot, to find a place, even though you wasted a hot bath or two, it was all worth it. Because it doesn't matter how homeless you actually think you are, or how much unorganized crap you have on your bed - when the car turns off, and the E-brake is up, your home is where you are.
"This spot looks good."
"Look down there!"
"Oh, that spot looks good too."
-Jackson

The Houseless Chronicles, Part 3: "So do you live here?"

The habitual and forcefully obvious, if we don’t find something in common within the next few seconds this will be awkward – question. “so where are you from?” or “and you live here now?”           

The 4ftx6ft box has become my native lair, a lair for sleeping and occasionally eating upon. By night a dark and mysterious disarray of miscellaneous treasures and tri-cams -- by day, a mattress, costume box, bag of definitely not clean clothes, a backpack stuffed with climbing gear, a guitar, 1 lantern, 5ft x 1½ft  of food and coffee, 5ft x 1½ft  of ropes and tiny treasures, and one gigantic handle of what may or may not be amazing whiskey. It very well could be chamomile tea, but there is for sure only one way to find out. Labels can be deceiving.

            Now that list of belongings is not ordered in any way correlated to how the 4’x6’ box is, lets say, arranged. I have adopted a well practiced form of organization. Its called, “the things I use most are easily accessible, and the things I don’t use as frequently are theoretically impossible to get to.”

Don’t judge. Look we live in a world where I’m not trying to waste time making my shit look good. What ever works and is most efficient… eh? I’m just fighting for that hot bath at the end of each month – that I can afford to take, with all the time I've saved up being more efficient than the rest of the world. I save that time in the hot bath bank, if you were wondering. They have an excellent roll over minute plan  and cancellation policy.

            Its not really a sexy site to see me trying to golden retrieve a needed item from the abyss of my box.  You got to, kind of, vampire your way into the lair. If you can hover, use that to your advantage. Know what I mean? If you can't, then you get your head in the box first, then it is a push up on tail gate/plank/jump motion in the forward direction. However, my big ass gets in the way most of the time, it likes to hit the top of the camper top. It’s kind of hard to explain, so here’s a picture of me trying to clear off my mattress at the end of the day. Also, I'm trying a new "get in the bed" tactic, its working well as you can see. Riley seemed to think it was funny enough to take a picture of. I think that also says something about the time it took me to retrieve – Riley had time to rummage through my crap, find my phone, figure out how to use it, and take a picture.

           

Yeah, I have a living room, and a back porch, and a basement, and a bedroom. It's just like Zoolander though, I might as well be living in a house for ants.

-Jackson

The houseless chronicles, part 2: Fueled by coffee, driven by dreams

The crust of sleep held my eyes in a sleepy-limbo as I crawled from the backseat of my car. We were in Moab and our bellies hurt. Not the hurt you would associate with things like hot sauce or heartbreak or the sudden drop of a roller coaster. It was much more intestinal. Not nausea, not diarrhea, just very-bad-no-good belly ache. The day was Tuesday, or Wednesday, or whatever.

Lately, Jackson and I had been encountering a problem. We had no Internet. Or rather, someone had Internet, but we had to buy coffee in order to use it. I lack the basic confidence it takes to sit down and steal the Internet without buying anything. So, we had only one option: buy coffee. One cup? No problem. Two cups? Well, okay. Today, I will buzz. Three cups? I sip intermittently, waiting for the moment my coffee is tepid enough to abandon.

Jackson and I were in the process of learning a valuable lesson about frugality. Our guts yearned for a simple, inexpensive lifestyle, but our stomachs yearned for a balanced, less acidic diet. One with more food. And in retrospect, one of those desires had much more resolve than the other.

See, Jackson is a good friend. But, a good friend asks hard questions they already know the answer to:

How much is too much coffee?

Riley.

This is what I've been listening to recently in case you're wondering why my ears have been ringing.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c24zrnwlni9j6b7/December%2011.zip