The Couch vs. Christmas

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The Couch vs. Christmas

We usually love playing music together.  Whether spontaneous or planned, at home or at an open mic, we love it.  Even better is opening our home for Live Music Night every few months.  Encouraging others and sharing what we create is our family love language.  But the idea of performing in a huge Christmas concert, makes sitting at home on our couch look pretty good. 

So how did we end up in the Christmas concert every year for the past four years?  I imagine the movie trailer narrator booming, “In a family where everyone wants to sit at home on the couch, one dad coaxes his family onstage at Christmas.”  

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Walking Off A Cliff Backward

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Walking Off A Cliff Backward

My ten year old son was up on a cliff ledge, about thirty feet up.   It was a crisp autumn afternoon and this was his first time to the cliffs.  I was standing at the bottom and shouted up, “Just walk off the ledge backward.”  As soon as I said it I realized how wrong it sounded.  My son was terrified, crying.  Could I blame him?  But the truth was, stepping backward into the openness was the best thing he could do.

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Do You Need An Emotional Massage?

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Do You Need An Emotional Massage?

Will you be my wife?

Erik says he’s the only guy he knows who asked a woman to marry him without already knowing what her answer would be.  He didn’t have a job.  He hadn’t talked to my parents or his.  There was no fanfare.  No speech.  No dramatic gestures and no ring.  Just this bold question that I wasn’t expecting.  

It’s not that I never thought about it, but Erik had told me early on that we’d just be friends.  We’d been friends for three years at that point. Two great friends.  Sitting on a carved stone bench.  In a manicured park.  That August evening was lit by 288 feet of glowing marble that formed the Washington DC LDS Temple.  It was built the same year we had been born.  So Erik and I and the temple were all 21 years old.

"Yes," I said.  So, we’re doing this.  I don’t know what the next step is for most people, but for us it was to grab our Franklin day planners out of the car to make some plans.  Since I’d considered this option a lot on my own, I had ideas about the logistics of potential housing, jobs, budgeting and how we could get started from next to nothing.  Erik started to tense up.

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Why Do We Wait to Do the Things We Say Matter the Most?

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Why Do We Wait to Do the Things We Say Matter the Most?

I’m trying to figure that out.  I’m sitting in the lodge at Half Dome Village.  I’ve dreamed of coming to Yosemite Valley since I was a teenager.  I came close once in high school.  I actually flew out to Utah, met up with some buddies and we drove through Nevada and up to California.  I was the second youngest climber in the bunch, a junior in high school, so I wasn’t planning the trip.  Turned out we ended up climbing in the highlands of the park (Tuolumne Meadows), where it was cooler and less crowded.  We didn’t go down into the Valley, the land of the big walls.  Even so, it was the best rock climbing of my life, and I promised myself I’d come back and climb in the Valley.   Twenty five years later I’m here.  Why did it take so long?  Again, I’m trying to figure that out.

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Are You Getting In Your Own Way?

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Are You Getting In Your Own Way?

Sometimes we get in our own way.  I know I do.

With my eyes closed, my weary head on the pillow, and a fluffy duvet beginning to warm me, Erik asked, “What are you interested in these days?”   What a thoughtful sweet man trying to connect with me at the end of the day.  I rallied.   My brain flipped through the mental files of my day.  I told him about a podcast on philsophy in the secular age, a Google search on fascial tissue (our bodies are held together with snot!), a news article on teens growing up in New York City (we have some of those), a new geography resource book, and how bacon isn’t actually that bad for you.  My enthusiasm grew.  Eyes open.  I was sitting up now.  I told him about DIY word books for Lily, and this terrific ebook series on copywriting...  ZZZZzzzzzzzzz.  Erik? Before I got halfway through my list, he was asleep.

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Answer to the Question Everyone Asks

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Answer to the Question Everyone Asks

We’re not sailing again, but we are spending a lot of time thinking about sailing, because we’re presently working on a book about the trip.  It’s going to be epic, so stay tuned.   We promise it will make you laugh, make you cry, transform your life, double your income and probably be better than the iPhone 7.  But we’ll see. 

That said, digging into the book has conjured up lots of thoughts about our time on the water as well as what it means for our lives right now.  Life certainly never stops.  It’s a constant dynamic of going back to remember and extract meaning from the past, but also continuing to live going forward. 

I don’t see us spending a lot of time reminiscing about sailing Fezywig (we’ll save that for the book), but I couldn’t resist one crack at that time and what it meant.

Since living on our boat with our five kids, I would say there are two questions we’ve been asked most frequently: “Did you run into any storms?” and, “What did you learn?”  The answers are:  Yes, and keep reading.

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The Happiest Days

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The Happiest Days

They say the two happiest days in a boat owners life are the day he buys the boat and the day he sells it.  With all sincerity of heart I can say that is not true for me.  We sold Fezywig today.  And more than anything, I am sad.  Sad for me, but happy to for the family purchasing her.  And happy someone else is about to begin a beautiful journey for themselves.  After returning to NYC last fall, I helped Travis and Jamie Anderson sail the boat back down to the Chesapeake Bay.  Here’s what I wrote in my journal about my last day on Fezywig:

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Bitter Sweet: Available for Purchase

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It's a bitter-sweet thing to sell one's boat, but the time has come to pass the baton.  Fezywig is now available for purchase.  Nothing would make us happier than for her to go to a family who loves her as much as we do.  Please don't be shy about asking questions.  Click here to learn more.  Thanks!

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Erik Orton

Hello, I’m the co-founder of The Awesome Factory. 

Many people want more than a conveyor belt life. At The Awesome Factory, we equip and and encourage individuals to build a creative, adventurous, deliberate life. We envision a world where adults avoid regret, come alive to their own potential and inspire others. 

A Sentimental Fool

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A Sentimental Fool

"Change is fast.  Transition is slow."  I picked that up in some self-help book many years back.  I’ve adopted it into my life.  And I would say we’re living through it right now.

We just marked two months of us being off Fezywig.  I figured it was as good a time as any to take stock.  We gave our Living Room Lecture several weeks back.  I learned a lot doing that.  Sorry, the recording didn’t work, so now it’s lost forever : ( That said, I did put together a little slideshow as part of that.  And that I have.  We showed it to a friend over Thanksgiving.  Paraphrasing her:  “I’m glad to see you had a good time.  From your blog posts it sounded like it was mostly just hard.”  We had a lot of hard days.  We had a lot of great days.  It’s easy to write about the hard stuff.  It’s hard to write about the easy stuff.  So we just took pictures instead.  More on that in a minute...

I’m asked fairly frequently, “How does it feel to be back?”  It’s a good question.  A fair question.  I feel fortunate.  I was able to get working (earning) again, shortly after returning.  We have our same apartment.  We have a wonderful gathering of friends and family happy to have us back on land.  We’re grateful for all of that.  The kids have adjusted—mostly—but the more time passes, the more we seem to miss it.  I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll share these two bits with you.

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