Yesterday I took Jordan on our first runaway date since we got married last month. We drove up to Duluth for the day and skied it up at Spirit Mountain. It was super good but very cold. For Jordan this is a first, and she did really good! We’re both looking forward to getting out there and ’shredding’ it up again.
Digging back into the archives quite the ways here is a video put together during the summer of 2001 with footage from my first ever ski event held in bemidji, MN at Buena Vista ski area. It was a small turn out of about 20 skiers, a couple snowboarders, and a little crowd.
The event was fun and this started my launch into producing events and led to MSO2, MSO3, and the Midwest Skier Open in the following three years. As-well-as the production of two movies Good Ideas and espionage (which will be posted in part/full later).
Lately my mind hasn’t had much time to slow down and rest. In less then 10 days I will be back in the US. It has so many implications for my life that it is taking a long time to wrap my mind around from; Leaving France, getting married, leaving Midwest Skier, and even projects from France.
Since 1999 the website Midwest Skier has dominated the online community of Midwest freestyle skiing. From it’s birth the community and subsequent partnerships with magazines, events, and even at times branching into event and video production had become the visible pulse of a much-neglected movement. Midwest kier is now for sale.
It’s been a couple days and I’ve got the website coming along quite well. I’m excited to see how it all falls into place and to see if there will be any growth out of it. I’m using a CMS (content managment system) this time around instead of writting my own. I just have to finish the identity of the site and then from there design some clothing and put it online for others to print. I’m pretty stoked about it and how it’s coming along.
Here is the new typeface, working on a logo and sheild for later.
We’re going for kind of a medieval/ren. period and we’ll see how it goes over. I might fidget with that a bit more but it’s mostly how it’s going to look. Any critique is more then welcome, please!
And welcome to crunch week. I really wish this could have taken place next year but with the event moved up two weeks because someone at red bull can’t check a hockey schedule properly, I am forced to be a bastard this week to my sponsors. The fortunate thing is that all budgets should be filed and approved by this point so it’s just a matter of me getting on them and getting the product/cash sent my way.
Here is what has been going on in my mind for the last couple days. I don’t expect anyone to read this and/or understand it. This is just to help me write it out and maybe come to some sort of conclusion.
Have you ever felt as though you were at a point in your life where you truly stood at some sort of cross roads? I’ve been standing here for over a month trying to decide what to do, testing the waters in every direction I can sense, though it seems as if I am blind to my options. Which, even though this might come off as arrogant, hasn’t really ever happened to me before. I have strived to live my life where I knew the choices I had and could logic out the choices I needed to make and have made. There are very few things in my past you could ask me about that I couldn’t explain. Now I need to take things on faith, being able to separate what I want from what is my fate.
In the past few weeks there have been to many things to call it coincidence and it has me very worried. Worried because the direction I’m being lead to is not one which I have much experience, or good and positive experience. I will be the first one to admit that I’m scared, because in the past four years what have I failed at? Every major under taking which my heart was set upon has been blessed beyond compare and now I am feeling led to give it all up, but am I being misled. Could I be misled by my own selfish desires, or is it something greater then me all together?
It pains me to write this out, because of who might read this. Here it goes though… My event may not happen, it has a six-day timer set and running. That event is the only thing that I’ve been hanging onto with skiing, of which my passions are dying for. I spent last weekend in Utah and still felt next to nothing, because skiing has become work for me, and work that causes me stress. Coming from a guy who rarely has to deal with those feelings. Furthermore, what if I am meant to stop this event, should I disregard everything that I’m doing for the Midwest skiing scene? Now for the larger picture.
I’ve been taught invaluable skills over the past years by running CTP, but is this the time that I’m meant to stop and pull the plug? My vision in blurred and I can’t tell if it is His will or not. Either that or I can see what I am to do but am scared that it isn’t what I want, or that I won’t make it. Just what is there to be scared of, every time I have called upon God he has been there with more then I’ve needed from Him. I think back to several times where prayers have been answered. This just feels as though there is no one I can turn to who will understand me and what I’m going through.
Maybe it’s just that I make assumptions that people won’t understand my faith, last time I explained it to someone she told me she couldn’t help me. I didn’t need anyone’s help with my faith. I feel almost as though I’m under constant attack because I’ve reached the place I’m at. I’m just having a hard time knowing what to do with what I’ve been told. I know it feels so right but at the same time I feel like I was made for more… not to belittle it at all, but I feel almost as though it would be forfeiting something. Alas I’m selfish and in time will have to deal with it.
God bless,
~paul
