The Badger Sponsorship

In case any of you don't do the Facebook thing, I had some big news on Sunday. I was selected as one of the finalist for the Badger Sponsorship, which is a contest created by Zach Davis, the author of Appalachian Trials. The sponsorship has a ton of great prizes which would really help me succeed on my hike. There were 76 video entries, and my video was selected in the top 12 by a panel of experts. Pretty awesome, right?

So the next phase is the voting - And that's where I need your help. 50% of the final standings are dependent on the popular vote on Appalachian Trials, and the other half is voting by an expert panel. If you have the time, go to Appalachian Trials and watch my video. Then click on my name to vote for me, and make sure you confirm the email to make it count.

This is an excellent opportunity for me to get my name out there, and to promote Extra Life! Tell your friends and neighbors, I would certainly appreciate it.

Remember- it's about the journey.

Slacker.

I woke up this morning, and thought about it for a moment, and realized I hadn't posted anything since my post just before New Year's. Not that I've been sitting around and doing nothing, quite the opposite. Work has been busy, my personal life has been busy and that has been tying me up quite a bit.

Here's what I've been up to - mostly dealing with some final issues with my father's estate. My brother and I are selling the land he left to us, so I've been researching and prepping. I finally got it listed. I had to make a trip up there to go through some of the storage buildings to make sure there wasn't anything valuable in there. It's astounding how much just random stuff he had accumulated.

Another project I've started on is an entry to the Badger Sponsorship, a great program made by the founder of the site I write for Appalachian Trials. I have to create a 90 second video about why I'm hiking the AT and why I should win the sponsorship. It's tough to condense why I'm going to do down to 90 seconds or less and make it meaningful. Luckily, I have a friend that went to school for video production and is willing to help.

Finally, the action is heating up for the Chits and Bits Game Marathon! Donations are coming in all over the place and we're going to have a TON of great prizes to give away and we're just getting started. Many game companies are really stepping up to the plate. Tons of hard work on the part of my friend Rob has really paid off big time. I wish I could share the list with you all, but we want to wait and make a big announcement when things are closer.

So I'm still here, I hear the clock ticking away to my departure date. I can't wait to get started. The journey will be epic!

Looking back...What else did you expect?

This is my obligatory 2015 year in review post. It's been a year of change for me with some great times, and I'm going to take this opportunity to step back and take a look at them.

The year started off for me at one job, ended with me at another. Work has had its ups and down, as they say "It wouldn't be called work if it was fun". So true. But working lets me have the things that I like, board games, good times with friends, food and a place to live. So I suppose that's a good thing. I'm lucky to have a job that pays me reasonably.

The game marathon I host for Extra Life happened in April, and was an amazing success. It was the second year of the marathon, and a number of people helped me out in huge ways. I made many new friends, and we raised over $5500 for Extra Life and The Barbara Bush Children's Hospital. We have already started planning for the next one. It's very humbling to have an idea that was really spur of the moment pay off in such a big way for a great cause.

The reason behind this blog came about in May. Recapturing a lost dream has reinvigorated my soul and given me a lot of hope. Every day I think and plan and look forward to it. The hike will change my life, I'm betting for the better. It will reset my world view and when I'm done, it I can't even fathom the sense of accomplishment that I will get from it. It is refreshing to take a chance on yourself, even when the chance seems to be inconceivable to a lot of people. In the words of Andy Dufresne from The Shawshank Redemption, -"It comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying". 2015 is the year that I decided to get busy living.

The support I've been given by my friends and family have kept me going through some tough times. It's not easy some days, but I want to thank you all for being here, for following along with my random thoughts, my impressions, my whims. The greatest feeling of success and accomplishment for me is when people have a positive reaction to my writing. It has been my longest dream to be a "real" writer. Choosing to put my thoughts in written form is daunting task some days. But I'm always glad that I did.

Thank you and I hope you and yours have a happy and safe New Year. I look forward to taking you along on my journey in 2016.

Hiking Forward

I survived another Christmas, I hope that you all did as well. I spent the day with family (both real and "adopted"). Being around my family is always interesting, as inevitably the topic of "the long walk" inevitably comes up. I'm convinced that they all think that I'm certifiably crazy to walk away from my comfortable life and go live in the woods for six months. I get the same questions over and over - How long will it take? You're walking ALL the way? What will you eat? Are you going to have to poop outside? What happens when you run into a bear? I do my best to answer them and just smile. If I have to explain the imperative to them, they'll never really get it. It will be hard, it will be miserable, but I fully expect it to change my life. In some ways it already has. Committing to it has changed the way I look at the world.

Some more exciting news, I've been selected to be one of the 2016 hikers that is being promoted by HikeForward.com. It's a great site that will promote all my posts across the various social media sites that I will be using, widening the audience that I will get. I'm really excited about the opportunity. Scott, the guy behind Hiking Forward, has some great info on the site and his blog is a great read as well. Anything I can do to spread the word of my adventure will help to get some attention for Extra Life and the Children's Miracle Network. I hope that you will all stop by hikeforward.com and give Scott some traffic!

Uh, everything's under control. Situation normal.

I'm still here, promise. It's been a busy few weeks, but not in a bad way. Lots of social engagements, some work for Extra Life and just life in general. Work is...well, work. I put in my time and then off to bigger and better things.

So Extra Life's national event is coming up on November 7th and 8th. I spent Sunday at the Portland Comic Expo recruiting gamers for Extra Life, and it was a blast! I got to talk to a lot of people, and the expo was great. It was only its second year, but it was already much bigger than the year before. I got an amazing local artist Ben Bishop at bishart.net to do a Star Wars concept cover with his interpretation of Han Solo. It came out so great! Here it is -

 

 Ben is a great guy, he donated some original art (A great Casey Jones Sketch from TMNT) to last year's Tabletop Game Marathon for Extra Life. We can't wait to see more great stuff from him in the future. It's nice to see local artists doing such amazing work!

In case you missed the announcement, the date for the next Tabletop Game Marathon is going to be April 29-30, 2016. We've started planning and already have some donations lined up! Outstanding!

Inspiration

A friend of mine sent me a Facebook message this morning, to let me know that I had inspired her and another friend of ours to start running and exercising more often. That was a little surprising to me, but after I thought about it for a bit, it made sense. Often when I see that someone else is making a change in their lives, it makes me want to follow suit. The changes I've made so far are fairly small, but they will be much larger in about 8 months or so. I'm glad that I was a positive agent for change to someone.

There's a lot of times when I don't see the impact that I have on the world, I'm just one guy who spends most days thinking what I do doesn't make much of an impact. There are billions of people in the world, and I don't have children to teach, or much of a legacy to leave behind. I know that's flawed logic, everyone has a legacy, but it is my emotional brain that runs the show a lot. My work with Extra Life and The Barbara Bush Children's Hospital is the thing that keeps that emotional, negative part of me in check. I can look back and say "Well, I didn't get much done, but at least I did that." And every time that I add another dollar to the amount I've raised, or brought someone else to awareness of what Extra Life is, it's one more tally in the positive column. Every check mark there is one more fear that doesn't paralyze me in the middle of the night when I can't sleep. If my legacy is the Tabletop Game Marathon continuing to be an event for years to come, I will rest easy. If in twenty years, I can look back at a series of pictures of me waving the Extra Life flag at various points along the Appalachian Trail, that will mean that all my struggles were worth it.

Find something that inspires you. Make a change. If not now, when?