My wife gave me a special present for Christmas this year. It was totally unexpected and I was blown away that she was able to completely surprise me. This is a post about a gift, yes, but as always there is more than just some consumer review for you here at weirdforgood.com

I opened the squareish hard plastic packaging of my GoPro camera, a few days before Christmas. Lindsay insisted that I go ahead and spoil the surprise. She was smart. I needed a few days to get used to the thing, before the family togetherness, so that I would know how to use it.

I began right away, making a mini video of her and I just sitting around the living room. Then I had fun with my nephews running down the hall at Mom’s house too. Anytime you put a couple three-year-old faces on the screen, cuteness ensues 🙂

I spent hours working on editing and processing family videos over that first week. I also found the urge to upgrade the accessories I have for it. I also dumped a few hundred more dollars into my computer for faster processing speeds.

I know a lot more about the whole world of GoPro today, than I did when I first opened the package. My intelligent and thoughtful wife, found something she knew I would enjoy, and spent the money to give it to me 🙂 I am blessed 🙂

I watched some interviews with the founder of the GoPro company. He is a guy that just wanted some good shots of his experiences out in the water, on his surfboard. He did the research, found a camera maker to work with, and the rest is history.

He said that these little, super-mountable cameras have become a ‘life-capture’ device for the tons and tons of people who now have them. He is right. I have been using mine for basic ‘life-capture’.

See, I not only have taken shots at family events, but I bring the thing to our volleyball games too. I also can be found setting it up at the Brand’N Iron, where I eventually plan to make a fun little video for showing people our food, our place and most importantly our great team. I will post it on facebook and our website, I think it will be lots of fun 🙂

Now that I have several and I mean several hours of footage of my own life, I have started to notice some problems… See, when I see myself on video, I don’t always enjoy watching that footage…

I see in the volleyball videos, my unathleticness…

I see my body from new, and unattractive angles…

I see missed opportunities and moments where I’ve failed myself and the team.

I even filmed some practice from yesterday. It felt good at the time, but I see in the video, how much room I have for improvement… Wow, look at that jump! Bleh!

At the Iron, last night, I shot more clips there too… Upon review, there are certain things I will choose to leave out…  🙁Sure, I have some good moments in all these activities. I even win points sometimes in volleyball, even with my dismal athletic prowess… But the super interesting thing to me, is how completely different my own life experience feels from driver’s seat inside my mind, to how it looks from the completely objective perspective of that little camera’s lens.

In fact, what this GoPro device really does, is remind me of the time I was really working on the art of Life Coaching. This camera performs a service, which is quite useful and powerful and presents us with a way to understand ourselves better than ever.

If I shoot a video of you, I look at it, and see, what I usually see. But when I take footage of myself, I see something that I can never, ever, ever get in any other way. I see the truth of how I walk, how I talk, how mobile or not, I appear from outside my own body. I get to sit with the images, the audio and the story of me, told by a completely opinion-less device.

In the coaching world, we understand that people are absolutely unable to perceive their own selves without a mirror, another person, or another lens that looks at them from the outside. When I see my own problems from inside my mind, looking out at the world from my own skull, I cannot physically or metaphysically understand all the possibilities and tools and opportunities I have at my disposal.

From inside my own self, my perspective is a tiny sliver of the spectrum of truth. It is filtered through a lifetime of regrets or low self-esteem. Huge dangerous dark risks can be overlooked from that point. Inherent hope and bright white light may not be noticed from the inner space of my tiny mind.

The best coaches that I ever met, worked a lot like the little GoPro camera. They just captured a moment of my life, then showed it to me. They could report diligently and without any opinion or judgement or any shielding of the cold hard truth. They simply showed me, what was. They then gave support or ideas or cleared up the moment to help me decide what I wanted to do about that truth we experienced together.

The little GoPro is not a replacement for a life coach. I don’t recommend everyone swap compassionate human intelligence for chunk of plastic and wires. There is huge value however in noticing ourselves from a brand-new perspective. I see now, how I want to make changes in myself. I want to do that, to better connect and to bring closer together the ideas in my mind, to how I operate in the world.

I can be soo negative on myself. I can get lost in the muck and mire of every-day-ness. With my little camera, maybe I can start spinning some new loops of thought into old broken records. Maybe I can see myself at work, at play and in moments of success. I can let those little filmstrips play on repeat and begin to build something fresher, more positive and delightful as a way of being, than just noticing my faults again and always again.

Even though the lens captures ugliness, there is beauty there too. I see our team. I see hard work. I see family and smiles. I see myself trying and failing, but at least trying to create something fun and bright and unique in this ever mind-numbingly repeatative world.

Thanks My Love, My beautiful pregnant wife, who I am so honored to be blessed because of. I appreciate you so much 🙂

Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols

How soon does your gut tell you the truth?? When does it let you forget the truth? The stomach-brain is something I have heard of before, probably blogged about before, but really have no education on. I was thinking about my stomach-brain yesterday morning.

That ‘thinking’ is done with my head, my skull-brain, I guess. I was working with a professional serviceman, he was there to help us. Actually he was late, compared to the time we were told he would arrive, to help us. As the problem was being diagnosed (at our restaurant) and technically dissected, I got messages from my stomach brain.

I knew a couple things about the situation: Overall, everything would be fine. In the long run, we would be back to good working order, and even better than before, eventually. I knew we would have a hassle and extra effort for the next few days working without our main big walk-in refrigerator.

We had already cleared our inventory and found other less-convenient places to put the produce and dairy and meat, but it was not easy to find the pieces in our new tightly packed puzzle. Yet, I was not knocking my knees together, wondering how we could operate for a couple short days.

The next thing I knew was that our technician and the company we were dealing with wasn’t a great fit for my personality. Throughout the day this became more evident as the expected phone call and bid, never arrived. I still have yet to hear any real numbers as of this morning. We were told that the fix could possibly be underway quickly, even Today, possibly. Yeah, that ain’t happenin’.

So what, big deal, crap happens. This I get. I am not upset or derailed or angry over it. I do want to acknowledge the wisdom of my gut however. When a professional suggests a time, or an action that will take place, their stock drops quickly, for every minute they are late, or that phone doesn’t ring.

In our business, at The Iron, we don’t guarantee times of delivery on our menus or for the drinks and especially the food. We would be in hot water, when things get backed up and the food takes a long time. Either way, people have a reasonable expectation and need to be talked to and communicated with, about their orders. I try to do a good job of that.

My stomach-brain is so much more steady and relaxed than my flickering-twittering-strobe-flashing-hamster-wheel in my head. It is a deeper and more understanding place to operate from. I got that funny unsettled feeling in my gut yesterday, about the way this repair job will play out. Again, in the big picture, it will all be fine. Life goes on. We may pay more than we like, it may not happen as quickly as we’d like. I do trust that things will be installed correctly. I will update you, if my gut has mislead me on these truths.

Today, I only want to take the time and energy to write out the concept of noticing the wisdom of my gut. I do want to shed the physical jiggling mass of the belly around it. But I don’t want to disregard the power and depth of it’s intelligence and concrete discernment.

For the last several months all the energy went through my head, I thank God, that somehow the flow is shifting ever again, and my gut is doing some clear-headed talking.

I hope you have a fantastic weekend. Wish me luck, as we move forward, always with a challenge, but always able to rise up with the demands of it. Some how some way, by God’s almighty Will.

Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols

I want the ‘Once and for Always’ solutions usually, no make that… Always. Maybe it’s a man thing, maybe it’s a ‘me’ thing, but when I engage and work on a problem, I want my hard work and time invested to create such a fantastic fix, that the problem never occurs again…

Reasonable, right??

Uhh… nope.

Specifics you say?? Well, just this week I was down under the bar at our restaurant. I sawed and cut apart pipe, then glued new pieces together. I taped and threaded heavy brass chunks together, making a monstrous combination of plastic and metal. It was unorthodox plumbing work, to say the least. We had been experiencing a leak back there for a couple weeks, and I wanted to create a final and permanent solution to that problem…

I almost did. I stopped 99.9% of the water from dripping onto the floor and that is a big improvement over the mini-ponds we’d been mopping up lately… The fix for today does seem to be holding, but how ‘permanent’ can I really expect it to be? The last incarnation of this poorly designed water supply lasted almost ten years. Even ten whole years is faaaaaar from forever.

Other examples at, The Iron, include; designing a dynamic scheduling system online. I have made a snazzy Google document that anyone on the staff, can view from anywhere. I can update it from my phone or computer, wherever I may be. It is a tool that is key to the operation of our business… but it ain’t a permanent fix. In theory, I would love to just plug the names in, and leave it be. A weekly rotation that works for everyone, and keeps our place working smoooooth… Ha. I did create it with good structure, but it needs constant effort to function properly.

At my tee shirt designing job at Front Row Sports, I want the same permanent fixes to our artistic problems. I intentionally send a customer three or even four design ideas for their team or organization, because I crave this finality to all my work. I want to give them several options so that I do not have to return to square one, and start again from a blank slate, as I did before. I want to give them something, anything, that can be used to continue on and build from. Most of the time, they choose one of the ideas sent, and we finalize from there. Those are great for me.

These little examples pale in comparison to other foreverness and permanence that I notice in the world. As a kid, I was always intrigued by earlier world cultures. I loved reading Greek mythology and seeing the works of the Renaissance artists, but especially I loved picture books and stories of ancient Egypt. The pyramids and tombs, the Sphinx and all those hieroglyphics fascinated me at a very young age. Talk about permanence! Those structures are mighty and built to last. Somehow, the ideas and work and stone from thousands of years ago is available today to go and view and tour. I would like to do that myself someday.

In the presence of Prometheus and the other Bristlecone Pine trees in the White Mountains of California, I felt a profound calm. Some of those exact trees were young, when the Egyptian pyramids were young too… These beings are alive. They aren’t stone or paint on an underground wall hidden from the desert elements. They survive exposed on the peak of a rocky hillside, waay above other trees. As far as living things go, they are the most permanent single individuals we know of, on our whole planet.

We walked past in the blink of an eye to them. We, as modern Americans have visited them for just a single breath of their venerable lives. We are as transient and quick as the clouds across their high altitude sky.

Ha! Permanence is a joke, and I want it in everything. Funny huh? I beg for problems to go away, once and for all. I yearn to put things behind me, never to return to them again. I’m dying to step forward onto newer ever greener grasses and to always leave a trail of fullness and completion in my wake…

Are you laughing right now?? You should be. I should too 🙂

My infinitesimally microscopic existence is such a minute pinprick of a fraction of a millisecond, that almost everything I do or say or produce, will be gone instantly, as soon as I am. The world and time and the universe suffer nothing as they spin forward, onward and toward mystery. I am clutching a solidity that just has never existed.

The pyramids are tough, yes. They are big hunks of stone, but stone crumbles. The ancients left us great works of architecture and art, but we’ve got to be here to observe them to notice their significance, and maybe we won’t last forever either. Even the Bristlecone Pines, will eventually all die. There are threats to them right now, and we may watch the death of their five-thousand-year reign on top of that mountain.

Even the mountain itself, wasn’t always, always. There are fossils up there, rocks that used to be at the bottom of a great sea. Amazing that the floor of the earth can grow to the ceiling. I’m betting that if the bottom can make it to the top, then the reverse is possible still.

I can relax a little now. I’ve spent these few minutes reminding myself that not one thing that I can see is permanent. Nothing I can can create or work on, or try to fix, will be that way forever. If I know this, then maybe I can calm myself easier, as the broken record returns again and brings me a recycled old issue that I wish would just go away.

God has created me to want forever. It seems to be stitched into the core of the fabric of my being. I notice this vast contrast between the perceivable world, it’s flawed and rotten constant deconstruction, and one true absolute divinity. The creator of all is the essence of Always. The one true God could be measured as the equation that explains everything, but that equation would blow our minds to pieces, with it’s simplicity and power. Impossible-ness, exists simultaneously with the reality we experience every day in God.

I want God. It’s not even a religious thing. God is the want, I wake up to every day. I may think it’s food or money or booze or sex or health or family or kids or business or success or prestige or comfort or even love. All those pale in comparison, they are just a flash of a hologram. The inexplicable foundational truth of God, isn’t.

My subconscious watches the world deteriorate, second by quickly passing second, and it begs me to grasp ahold of the only thing that doesn’t. Maybe my ego, my spiritual idea of myself, does not want to die. It wants to see itself live on, somehow, anyhow. It cannot handle the idea that it won’t be here forever. And it won’t, in the same way that it is now.

My soul, my essence could, however return to the Creator, to the Always, and maybe have a chance to experience something beyond these wet paper walls of planet earth…

I thank the Savior of the World, Jesus the Christ, today and every day, for his gift of everlasting life to me and to you.

Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols

Do you remember back when I posted a blog, almost as if a demon was typing? The words were about that evil spirit’s boredom with me. I assume that my subconscious on that evening, wanted to expel some darkness. I needed to let out some frustrations and anger, probably that I had attributed to choosing sobriety a couple years ago… Well, that blog, is one that I am truly proud of.

It’s kinda insane, to write like that. It really pushed the limits of what I was willing to publish for my family and friends to read. It scared me to see it on the screen. I was scared to think, what you may have thought about it, as you read it.

That’s what made it so goooood. For me.

I have to someday, finally and fully detach into a space that allows complete expression, for this writing thing to ever produce nutritious fruits. I must get there. I cannot stay in the shallows, just prancing along the water’s edge, unwilling to fully immerse. I can of course, do that. Do it forever. I don’t think that is what I truly want though. I have to release and let go of insecurity, to become the conduit for inspired work.

‘This writing thing’ could be replaced with many different ideas however. My weekly blog is a place where I can forever stay small, keep myself contained in this tiny pond of my own pretentiousnesses. I could speak about other areas where I do this too though. My work as an ‘artist’ designing tee shirts for local kids to wear while they play baseball… This work of mine is the same way. It is art, yes, but barely. It is more of a clipart puzzle game, filled with a million fonts. That’s it. There are some people however, who may use this medium to truly express ideas. They have and will change the world, with simple ink on tee. I probably won’t though.

I can keep thinking up areas in my life where I live into caution and conservation. I probably, sickeningly, do it all over my little world. Last week, we invited Bethany Chapel  Baptist Church, to worship with us, at Westminster Presbyterian. The congregation of Bethany Chapel is the Black Church in our community. They came and showed us what true expression is all about. Between their general enthusiasm, their divine musicality and the fervent, demanding and deeply spiritual sermon of their Pastor Walker, I was truly convicted. As a whole, they worshiped their hearts out. Individually they spared no gift. Wow, is all I have to say. I was in tears many times, just watching and hearing their souls singing out.

I clapped a little, and out-of-time, but I again stay in my little comfortable box. I don’t want to really let it all go.

This is a new year. Another chance to somehow start clean and make a bunch of promises to myself, most of which I won’t keep. I see that now, more as a moment to reflect, than to project. I am at least pretty good at reflecting…

Yes, to think and to dive into darkness between my ears is something I can make big resolutions about. I will certainly follow through with them. Almost without any gain or progress to show, I will run ultra-marathons in my mind in the upcoming year. Funny how the more I use my mind to run circles, the less in-shape it actually is. Allowing these dead end thoughts and re-runs to run rampant, is the couch-potato-ness of the brain.

Maybe this blog is one more place where I exercise this sloth of mind. It’s an excuse to spew my mental diarrhea, while I claim it is contributing to the comprehensiveness of the collective consciousness… Hardly. It’s another reason to sit and do nothing, instead of something great. I type this, instead of the next great novel. Not that I want to do that either.

Nope. I forsee from Jan One, a year like most my other years. I see that I am not the center of the universe, but I am the only point in which I can play with it. I pass on so many opportunities. I walk tightly the line between cookie-cutter-consumerism as religion, and begging for personal spiritual Armageddon. I want to live out some extreme sports fantasy, and yet do it, while barely moving, hanging in a hammock in my garage in Princeton, Kansas. Ha…

Yes, No matter what takes place this year, it will be like all of the other ones. It will pivot upon my ability to let go and just dance playfully with life, or my stubborn resistance and fear of failure. I can stand along the wall and watch others take center stage. I can do it again every year, forever. If I do, I hope someday to enjoy this place more. I want to at least appreciate exponentially the ‘here-ness’ of the instant I do inhabit.

I am blessed in so many ways. I suppose it could be pure lack of appreciation that allows my mind to mistake today for just living on the sidelines. I could be right in the middle of an epic moment and never know it. I think I could try harder though. I think I have more in me, than I let out. I think that something electric is awake, even if I remain prone and still.

God has put this resignation in me for some reason. Maybe 2015 will be the year I start to find out, what that reason is.

With Love, to everyone who has given their moments to befriend me on this journey, I say God Bless You. I Love You.

Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols