Maybe This Is Normal?

Maybe This Is Normal?

Sponsored by CrisDental Eugene

Do you ever feel like your life is just one change after another?

It’s like you are in a boat, try to throw out an anchor, but the anchor never sticks.

New ideas are tried and failed.

Some work for awhile but seem to disappear and all around you it appears the rest of the world is doing better.

The couple in the picture is one of our upcoming (October) Truth About Timber stories.

When we visited them a few months ago in Southern Oregon I instantly felt comfortable with them.

Maybe comfortable is not the right word, it was more like a kinship.

These two have started company after company.

They are in the process of opening a lumber mill in a time many are getting out of the industry.

There is something intoxicating about being around them.

They’ll admit it’s really hard, doing what they do and sticking with it.

Hard times seem to produce a strength that is so attractive to someone like me.

Life is not about doing what everyone else is doing.

At some point you have to be less dependent on “the man” and more self reliant but our world doesn’t encourage that in fact it lures us into dependence.

You really have to fight to not get sucked into the lie, the current and drowned in a sea of complacency.

I sometimes forget how many risks Kathy and I have taken.

How many times we’ve tried something new and it failed so we move to the next thing.

What I don’t remind myself enough is the successes we’ve had.

Just because a project has a short shelf life doesn’t mean it didn’t work.

In the back of my mind I’m always looking for that project that’s going to last longer when maybe that’s not how God wants us to live.

I commit the cardinal sin of comparing what I’m doing to what my peers are doing.

That’s always a recipe for disaster.

I’m not good at doing things I don’t care about. I did that for many years in television news and I refuse to do it again.

When I take up a project whether it’s our travel series we did with Toyota for three years called “Exploregon the Backstories” or our current “Truth About Timber” series, if I’m not passionate about it, I don’t do it.

I’m still looking for more sponsors for the Truth About Timber project so we can share more stories and help people truly understand the Timber Industry and why it’s vital we fix our management of forests, now.

I want the whole thing funded and done so I can focus on content but that’s not where I’m at.

So this morning when Brittney sent me an email telling me how much story number three, about she and her husband Dustin, meant to her, it soothed my unstable soul.

I’ve produced thousands of stories in my day and not everyone gets the hidden messages I hide in each one.

Their story is about how some are still brave enough to see a future in Timber but the hidden message is we each have the capability to dig deeper and live larger if we are willing to give up our comfort and live comfortably in discomfort.

Dustin and Brittney are a perfect example.

Brittney saw what I think is my God given magic. It’s the thing that always stood out in my work. I call it my secret weapon.

It’s an ability, in a few hours, to find the thing that makes my story subjects come alive and reveal it to my viewers.

It’s not obvious and only for the person with depth and experience in hard stuff, to find.

I don’t get to do that as much as I used to and I miss it.

When I do what comes naturally, and the character see’s it, it rings all my bells.

Dustin and Brittney thanks for ringing my bells. Thank you for letting me into the deep part of your life, even for just a couple of hours and thank you for reminding me and my viewers that real Oregon Pioneers are out there….sometimes you just have to look for them in the most unlikely places.