Category Archives: Philosophy

Place

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As I described it last weekend, “I’m finally feeling stable, and now I just have to decide what to do with that.”  The statement feels almost ironic in light of a few mistakes I’ve made lately, but seemingly in line with my previous post- the mistakes only reveal the necessity of further commitment to core values.

A few weeks ago, my good friend Chris invited me back to Alaska for another amazing trip on the north side of Denali National Park.  This would not be technical climbing, but a true experience pushing our bodies packrafting and backpacking in deep wilderness.  He sent me the maps a few days later, and I took a look at the bank account. I think this works- maybe it feels like a stretch, but these are the things that I do, and perhaps even more, that I live for.  Monday night, I bought a plane ticket to Anchorage and started to dream of being up there again, in one of the great wild places.

Me and Chris at McGonagall Pass, June 2011.

Something was gnawing at me though- there was a doubt in my head, and something didn’t quite seem right.  Tuesday night at band rehearsal, it hit me.  I had committed to playing two gigs during the time I had just booked in Alaska.  The gigs were already booked- I had already committed to my friends and bandmates.  Chris’ dates were firm, so I was out of luck (fortunately AlaskaAir’s cancellation policy is relatively generous- for $75 you get back whatever you gave them…).

I was stunned, but it got me thinking.  My original plan for this summer was somewhat simpler.  I’m still living frugally, and trying to plan carefully for future financial goals.  My big goal for traveling right now is for January in Australia, and I was looking forward to a summer of exploring wild places much closer to home (that’s why I moved to Montana in the first place).  In my life, having fewer, simpler (but no less lofty) goals usually means I end up achieving more of them.  Bailing on a trip never feels good, but hopefully this might evidence a simple rule- you usually find what you go looking for.  Have I gone looking for the wild experience here, in the place I’m in?  Only a little bit.  Does it make sense to fly and drive 3,000 miles when I haven’t really spent much time in the wilderness 30 miles from my house?  Despite all the incredible experiences I’ve had in Alaska, maybe not this year. I think the experience is am important reminder that right now, I need to commit to the place that I am in and the people I am with.

Core Values

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This weekend was about core values- what are they?  How does my everyday life reflect them?  Why do they matter?  I was feeling punchy for most of the weekend, and it’s funny how life boils very quickly towards questions of your core values:

Why do you go to work in the morning?  How does your work connect to your core values?  If you can’t tell, then you are in the wrong line of work.

Do you like the girl?  How does she inspire you to live closer to your core values?  If she doesn’t, then don’t waste your time (or your heart).

Should I spend the money on [insert blank]?  How does that purchase support your core values?  It’s surprisingly hard to negotiate with yourself on this one.

Why aren’t you reaching some of your goals?  How committed have you been to the core values that reaching the goal demonstrates?  More commitment = more accomplishment.

Dedicated hard work yields honest worthwhile rewards.

So what are they?  I finished up my series of seminars with the New Leaders Council (NLC) on Saturday and Sunday morning.  We reviewed some of what we had sorted out during our time- and realized that back in January, I had put together a pretty concise list:

Accountability, community, humility, resilience, optimism.
Adventure, teamwork, quality, necessity, fun.

Interestingly enough, when I frame my life and activity with respect to the core values, I’m always pleased to realize that none of these values seem to contradict each other.   My life of late has been feeling very busy, but not necessarily full.  Sorting through the clutter leads towards questions about commitment to core values, and for whatever I’m cutting out- it always feels good to let go of the extraneous.  Appropriately, I enjoyed finding this gem on facebook from my friend Oscar:

Less more, more less.

The Weekend Summary:

I finished work early on Friday, met my friend Jess, and I ended up sending my first project of the season in Kootenai Canyon.  5.10c, all gear, with a delicate yet powerful crux well above your last piece.  As usual, it’s all about letting go of the baggage and getting that feeling to stick.

Identity Crack- tick. It only gets better from here.

As usual, the NLC conference was a very good time- I look forward to continuing to strengthen the many valuable relationships founded through our time together.  Despite a very fulfilling time together, I needed some time outside to finish the weekend right.  Accountability and humility point me at improving my running- and I’ve been working at it for months.  Ultimately though, that means that you have to run with people faster and stronger than you.  I only had one name to call, and I knew it was going to hurt.

Derek and I met at “the M” and traced the “Double Dip” route backwards.  ~13 miles, ~3,000 feet of climbing, and 2hr18min later we were back at the bikes, and I was distinctly not feeling punchy any more.  Derek ran me into the ground like I hadn’t been in a long time- and I think he still had quite a lot of fun doing it.  I’m looking forward to next time my friend.

Acting

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Last year, a group of people raised a bunch of money for me to benefit from. I didn’t ask them to, or know that I would benefit from their work when they raised the money. They took action because they believed that what they were doing was worthwhile, and that one day I would want to thank them. They were right.

I’ve been attending weekend-long seminars called the New Leaders Council (NLC) since January. I’ve written about these seminars before (here, and here), and this past weekend was again spent inside rather than out, and once again, it was worth it. I came to Missoula with big talk about “community” and “local action,” yet my action was small. Talk << Action.

NLC has been about getting connected, and connecting is the first essential piece of acting in the community. I’ve met local leaders, built business and personal relationships, and gotten to know this community on a level that in some ways is much deeper than my involvement with “community” in Portland. Attending the seminars has made me more aware of social justice issues that haven’t been on my radar, and put me in touch with a compassionate, engaged, and intellectually stimulating people that I probably wouldn’t normally get to know via the adventure circles I usually travel in. I leave each conference feeling more alive, and more aware of what needs doing, and I’ve found that invaluable.

NLC is free if you are selected to participate, and that comes with the responsibility of raising money for next years conferences. It costs ~$500 per person to put on in Missoula. We’re having a fundraising event in Missoula this weekend and it should be a very good time- please stop by the Stensrud Building (314 N. 1st St.) between 6-8pm for live music and refreshments. If you can join me in making a donation so that someone next year has this opportunity, that would be rad (click here and select “Missoula Chapter”). If you can’t (and I understand that you can’t), I’ll ask you to consider what you might do to make yourself more alive and connected to your community.

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” (Howard Thurman)

Thermodynamics

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I got a letter yesterday, and while the content was important, I noticed something different about the envelope:

Freedom, forever? I am very afraid not.

It was the way the American flag and the words below it were crossed out.  We in America (‘merica!) seem to care so much about our freedom, but what “freedom” is really about is energy- the energy to put food on our tables, to stay warm, and also to have fun.  In essence- the energy to live.  Yet, when people talk about freedom in America, they rarely talk about energy, and when I think about our energy situation, it makes me think freedom is surely on the way out.

Some people who even like to talk about things like “sustainability” generally don’t get the picture about how much energy matters.  “Sustainability” is all the rage in the building design community, it’s even (slowly) taking hold here in western Montana- but it tends to result in wheatgrass fiber wall paneling and bamboo floors rather than energy conservation.

Sustainability is not about your wall finish, riding your bike to work, or your office-wide recycling program.  A fair look in the mirror: sustainability is also not about my patagonia clothes, my used Jetta TDI, or the fact that I don’t have kids to provide for.  Sustainability is about thermodynamics, plain and simple.  Thermo-what?  Thermodynamics- the science of energy.  It’s an abstraction, it can seem hard to understand, and it is such an essential part of our everyday life.  These things are all great, and in some small ways, parts of the solution- but really its going to take a lot more.

Buildings are an amazing opportunity- everyone uses them, they all have utility bills, and almost all of them could benefit from design and/or retrofit work that would make a significant difference in energy consumption.  If your utility bill isn’t zero (seriously!), then it needs work.  Am I an elitist?  Does it matter?  It doesn’t matter if we have 40 years of oil and coal left or 400 years.   We aren’t living right and each of us needs to play a part of changing that.  What do you want to know about energy?  How can we make energy consumption more visible?  What does a real plan for “freedom” look like?  I look forward to your thoughts in the comments.

“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or a politician.” (Miklos S Dora, paraphrasing Kenneth Boulding)

IWD

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My last post was about how hard my job is sometimes.  I’m a white, able-bodied, well educated male living in the United States.  In every job I get, and most of the human interactions I have- the truth is, I probably couldn’t have it easier.

In honor of International Women’s Day, I need to recognize so many of the incredible women that have been some of my most important teachers, mentors, role models, climbing partners, friends, and inspirations.  To my Mom- thanks for setting the standard of womanhood so damn high, and to many many others, thank you for meeting and exceeding that standard.  I am unbelievably grateful there are too many to name in this post.

Some men might accuse me of putting women above men or furthering some measure of male-guilt about the position we’ve put women in.  I’m looking for nothing other than unbiased equality and fair recognition, things we are a long way from yet.
(Note, this holiday is NOT official in the USA, but IS official in such “notorious” places as China, Afganistan, and Uganda)

Silver Wattle. Traditional IWD gift. Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Acacia_dealbata-1.jpg and Eugene Zelenko.

“I believe that it is as much a right and duty for women to do something with their lives as for men and we are not going to be satisfied with such frivolous parts as you give us.” (Louisa May Alcott)

Hard Knocks

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I answered a call from the office this morning in the cold, damp crawlspace that I’ve spent most of this week in.  My colleague asked how it was going- I replied, “if you had told me how much stuff I would screw up on this job before I started, I wouldn’t have believed you.”  I realized over lunch- I must be attending the school of hard knocks.

If it looks like a maze...

When you are 6’1″ tall and working long days installing ductwork in a 4′ tall, 4,000 s.f. crawlspace, knocking your head into a floor joist every once in a while is to be expected.  Along the way, this project also managed to knock out my design skills, planning ability, and a good portion of my self-esteem.

My position is as a project manager, responsible for everything that it takes to make a job happen (including making a profit!).  In this case (and with a lot of help!), I met the client, wrote the proposal, designed the system, ordered the material, scheduled the job, and installed the system (with the install team).  The process is far more integrated than most other firms, but we believe that leads to higher quality, better performance, and greater profit.  I’m new to the job, and new to contracting, and none of the above really has all that much to do with my past experience, which involved managing very different types of engineering projects.

22" diameter ductwork is all custom. Don't forget anything, because it's 55 miles back to Missoula.

We aren’t quite done yet, but we are almost all the way there.  Fair being fair, I made no truly major, work stopping mistakes, but every day there have been significant errors that have come to light- some piece of gear I didn’t order, some task I didn’t follow through on. When you are actually trying to build a functional system, every error is glaring.  Day 1, we ran into all sorts of issues- shipping delays, forgotten plans, miscommunicated orders.  On my first day of my first big job, I figured I could shrug it off and keep going.  Day 2, missing fittings and layout changes, ok nothing fatal, but that’s low style Skander…  Day 3, order of operation, co-ordination failure, error tracking nightmares.  The mistakes kept coming, almost to the point of humor and pretty much my worst nightmare from a project management standpoint.  Suffice to say, it has been a valuable education in hard knocks.

For everything though that went wrong, none of it seemed to impact the amount of satisfaction I got out of getting to install something that I designed.  It reminds me of one of my favorite NY Times pieces.  I have an incredibly forgiving and good natured boss working with me (but letting me take responsibility for the mistakes) and helping look in the mirror at my work.  We joked about the fact that I have a degree in science from an expensive private university, and yet the real bread and butter of business and design still involves getting down in an unfinished crawlspace and knocking your head around.  It’s been a hard week so far, but also supremely satisfying.  I’m taking tomorrow off, but back again on Friday to wrap things up, stay tuned.

Humbled, with checklist in hand.

“The real work of planet-saving will be small, humble, and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love), pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous.” (Wendell Berry)

Do the humble work.

Untitled 1

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I spent 13 hours today getting crushed at work.  It was day 1 on-site for the biggest job I’ve managed yet, and I got thoroughly humbled.  There is an accountability piece of contracting work that is undeniably brutal- either you planned for the job correctly or you didn’t, and when you try to install it, it becomes suddenly obvious if you made the grade or not.  It was humbling and demoralizing, and a very important experience in my development as a professional.  It was also a solid lesson in learning to let go of my ego and screw things up.  Not often do I fail to exceed expectations, but this was one of those days, and it was hard for me.  From the beginning of this blog, the point has been to “let the baggage go”- and learning to let go of my failures (once I’ve learned from them) is part of the deal.

Despite a long day onsite and long commute, I headed back into the office tonight to wrap up ever more loose ends.  It was raining when I walked home, just in time for me to hop on my bike and make it to the grocery store.  I was still in my long underwear and didn’t notice the cold liquid running down my legs as I rode.

I was tired.  I didn’t make the grade at work.  I didn’t get to workout today, didn’t take care of some personal chores, and didn’t really get any personal time.  But as I rode home in the rain, somehow things seemed alright.  Maybe that means I’ve already let go of the weight of the day, and in that there is success.

ps. the title of the post is a fantastic Sigur Ros song and fitting for the topic.  Enjoy the link.

Portland #4: In Limbo

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The most recent adventures have pulled more on my heartstrings than my hamstrings.  About a month ago my boss invited me to join him for the PassiveHouse Northwest conference being held in Portland.  Aside from the topic matter (that has become increasingly more important to me of late), I wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to see friends and spend some time in the previous home city.  About a week ago, I realized that making the trip was also likely to involve some challenging emotions.  We’ll stick to the facts first.

PassivHaus is an aggressive German standard for designing and constructing buildings with ultra low energy use and ultra high air quality and comfort.  In the design community it has a reputation for attracting some of the most zealous and nerdy folks that the architecture and engineering community can offer.  I prefer to think that the standard simply represents the next logical step in how buildings really must be designed and built. In general, folks at the conference were well behaved, very amiable, and geeked out really hard (star of the show was the guy who built a PassivHaus in Fairbanks, Alaska).

Yes, yes, this is a bunch of people standing around gawking at a window mockup-- only at a PassivHaus conference.

Close up of what all the fuss is about. Really high performance windows from Germany.

A mildly color adjusted image of a double stud wall with no thermal bridging. Nerdy as charged.

Building materials test chamber- for wind driven rain up to 200mph...

In between conference duties, I squeezed in time with old friends, and wandered in old familiar places.  I stared down some heavy emotions about careers, opportunities, friends, love, and the direction I’d like my life to take.

I miss Portland.  I miss the deep and high quality friendships that I have there.  The high salary gave me ample freedom of choice, and the city itself met much of my criteria for where I want to be.  I found two musical partners there that continue to write and perform music that I love, and loved to be a part of.  I honed my skills there in a career that is important and meaningful, and yet somehow in my gut, my life isn’t there.

I love Montana, and have ever since my first trip as a kid.  The access to the outdoors is phenomenal.  I’ve found meaningful work to get back on my feet, and live a simpler life that is more locally oriented.   In many ways, life here is better balanced, and I’m looking forward to many awesome, local adventures.  I feel honored to work with the people that I do, and am excited to be developing new skills an knowledge in the building design field I’ve done well with in the past.

I’ve found a little more peace since returning to Missoula, but my heart was in limbo for most of last week.  No doubt, I’m sticking to my commitment to Montana, but it was an interesting trip to Portland.  Below is a small bit of wisdom I picked up on the way:

John Ruskin was a wise man.

“Any pain associated with leaving something behind is usually a good sign that it was worth what you paid for it in the first place.” (George Veech)

Live Your Life

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I spent this weekend around a conference table in second meeting with the NLC.  It was certainly worthwhile, but the long days of discussion leave me mentally drained.  Saturday after the conference I didn’t have plans but eventually found myself high above the city walking over Waterworks Hill.  I had invited friends to join me but ended up walking alone. It didn’t bother me though, I enjoyed the quiet space to reflect.

I’ve spent more time doing things on my own lately- I think in the mood of moving to Missoula I was eager to make friends again and put myself in a hyper social situation.  Having been here a while now, and slowed down a bit, I’ve found myself thinking of what my life was like one year ago (at the beginning of this blog), and realizing that one of the goals in leaving Portland was not to “settle down”.  I miss the travel, the adventure of being on the road, and the many fun times with people, but the fact is that being in the same place has no impact on how independently I am able to embrace the adventure of life.  I’ve been thinking of my travels often recently, missing them yes, but also drawing strength from what they taught me.  I was fortunately to share experiences with many other wonderful people, but I choose the experiences and destinations based on my own intuition and principle.

It’s easy, with the rhythm of more familiar places, more regular routines, more regular people, to think that the rhythm can determine how I should spend my time.  I have no less responsibility to choose just as deliberately now.

Live your life.
Reject the notion that the rhythm will determine what you should do.
Refuse to be a victim of circumstance.
Make a deliberate choice for your actions that resonates with your own core values rather than to anyone else’s expectations.

Sometimes the adventure is deciding what to do when you find yourself in a familiar place.

“We are what we repeatedly do.” (MFT)  If you want to your life to reflect the journey you want, then treat every moment as the next step along the way.