I have been trying to keep my senses open and let myself come up with a good idea. No, a great idea. I have always felt like I was meant to do something great. It seems that as we grow up, these ideas of being great are snuffed out by well intentioned adults trying to get us ready for the real world. Long ago they too lost hope of fulfilling their dreams and don’t want us to get our hopes up. They are just doing their job.
I see this in my own past and I see it happening to my kids today. This is the main motivation for the Transamerica trip. I want my son to see that he can do anything, huge things, one pedal stroke at a time. I want my kids to get out of the stifling institution of high school and realize that they are free and have the power to do anything they want. There is nothing holding them back. Nothing! But they have been trained their whole life to follow certain rules, to go to some type of school and get a job. It could be better and I am trying to change to help them think bigger rather than smaller.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, the world is changing and so must we. It seems like many people my age are dissatisfied with their situation. It’s too bad none of the rote memorization, the useless math, the rules of writing useless papers, the facts, the testing didn’t prepare us to be great in any way. It prepared us to be content with a mediocre life. It prepared ME to get a job and be content with mediocrity. I am now at the peak of dissatisfaction. I must interject, I love, love, love my family and actually everything about my life, except for my job. Doesn’t sound too bad except that my job with the commute takes twelve hours of every day that I work. Twelve hours. I come home tired and have to force myself to do something productive. What could I do, YOU do if we spent 12 hours a day doing something great? It’s obvious isn’t it? We would do great things.
Ok, I know I have kids and a mortgage. I have to work to make money. I am a dreamer, but far from an idiot. Shut up. It’s about thinking differently in these different times. So I am doing what I can to change a few things here at Adventure Monkey.
OK, so I’m not going to save the world today, but I am going to do something against what I was trained to do. I am going to share freely. I am not going to protect my ideas and keep them small. I am going to set them free and hope people take them, build upon them and the world may be a little brighter because of it. What do I have to offer? Well, besides telling you how to be a slow cyclist, never to win a race in your life, I do know a thing or two about photography from opening the shutter, to post processing, to preparing the image for print or the web. I am going to share my secrets.
I have freed my images for you to copy them. I used to have them locked. I am letting them go. Maybe you will use them as screen savers or print them to help you escape at the office. I think setting them free will allow them to have a larger circle of influence. They are low res and yes I do have a dream of selling them as artwork for commercial spaces or home decor. I am hoping that you all give them more life than I ever can on my own.
Next, I have downloaded some software to allow me to capture what I do on the computer along with my voice to create tutorials on how I process my images. I have to get it figured out before I post anything. Why would I give away these great secrets? I don’t know totally, but I like to teach and I want to be a helper and a giver. I won’t make any kind of mark on the world by processing beautiful images that sit on my hard drive. But maybe, just maybe someone will learn a few things and become something great with my help. Maybe I can be one of the steps he or she had to take to get to the top. Does that hurt my chances at successs? No, it makes the world as a whole just a little brighter. It’s time to think bigger, outside of ourselves by offereing whatever it is we have to the world.
I think after the 1970′s, 1980′s 1990′s and the 2000′s I have lived through I see that selfishness and greed has gotten us into a terrible situation financially and socially. I now choose to give and give as much as I can with the skills and knowledge that I can. I look forward to making a difference no matter how small. I hope you too decide to make a positive change on this earth.
Feed Your Monkey!
-Eric
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