Life As Ricochet

[camrogers]

Life as Ricochet.

A friend of mine had his entire life change direction because of a single human hair. And that got me thinking.


www.camrogers.net

Comments

[flemco]

That was a damn good read. You and I have a fair amount in common, philosophically.

To share:

My life changed because of a police helicopter hovering over my house at 4 am, yelling Spanish out of the loudspeaker. It woke me up. It got me thinking. I still don't know who they were ordering to arriba sus manos near my house.
I'd grown up in Southern Cali. With the exception of a few surf weekends in Mexico, a few quick trips to Mormon places like Utah and Nevada, and one staggeringly fine vacation in Hawaii, I'd spent my entire life in the confines of Southern California. I honestly thought everywhere in the continental United States would be the same as SoCal. Throughout the years, my dreams had been hammered flat by reality - I'd accepted that I'd never be a writer, never be a cartoonist, and the job I had working at the Texaco oil refinery was probably going to be my life career. My fiancee's family had moved to Texas a year prior, and we'd been working on moving her back to SoCal to be with me.
The day after I heard those helicopter cops, I called her up with a new plan. A month later, I quit my job, packed my meager pile of shit, said goodbye to my family, and moved halfway across the USA to a place I'd heard legends about, but never even seen. I arrived in Texas with 5 changes of clothes, my guitar, no job, and no idea what the fuck I was doing. I was 20 years old.
That fiancée and I never wedded, but I stayed in Texas because I love the place. I've also learned to go adventuring. To not fear a place I've never been - no, to look forward to exploring it. I've learned that sometimes the best adventures are the ones that you are wholly unprepared for, wandering as a stranger in a place you never expected to visit, and making new friends and enemies. As you succinctly put it recently, "always say yes." Take a chance. Nobody ever lies on their deathbed thinking "At least I worked a 50 hour a week job until retirement and sat around in comfortable boredom." No elderly person I've talked to says "Yeah, I sure did watch a lot of television" proudly. I interviewed 4 octegenarians at a retirement home in 2006 for a mss I was working on, and they all said the same thing regarding regrets:
They regretted the things they hadn't done.
They didn't regret many, if any, of the things they'd done.
They all lamented that they'd spent too much time working and not enough enjoying life.
They noted that love, more than anything else, more than any other emotion, is important. Love of family, friends, life.

I learned a lot from those interviews.

Life is too fucking long. But it's also too fucking short. Not enough people get the fuck out there and live. Fear of the unknown, fear of failure keeps them down. Fuck it. Fuck those fears. Try to make your life wondrous instead. You only get one chance at this. And when shit doesn't go according to plan, hey! New opportunities arise.

So, care to st up a monastery for adherents to hedonism and adventure?

[camrogers]

In a freaking heartbeat.

Good story. It's the one thing I hate about writing, though: the stasis. Man, that kills. If I could find a way to have it be an active pursuit that paid, I'd be golden. It's why hardcore travel journalism sounds like sex to me. I'd love to get that working.

So when are you going to go and visit Matt?

[camrogers]

PS: Feel free to pass the link to my site around. I'm experimenting with it, trying to up the traffic. I'd like to get enough people visiting the site regularly that it gives the next thing I publish a bit of a lift. Seems to be the only way to do it.

[flemco]

Should be seeing the UK sometime in the next two years. Unlike my regular jaunts to other places, the UK is a fairly lengthy time-burn just to get there and back, as you know full well. For about half the cost, I could more easily head down to the Bahamas or Central America. BUT! I have too many fambly and friends there, so we ARE working on getting over to London at the very least.

[camrogers]

For years I was told that travel was vital to me as a writer. I knew that anyway, but it wasn't until I did it that I fully appreciated the fact.

Also, it's just flat-out good for the soul hanging out with someone like Matt, in a place like Jack the Ripper's favourite pub, drinking and shooting the breeze on a London sidewalk.

Seriously, I think you'll love it.

[greylock]

Well, that was a depressing read before my first coffee.

[camrogers]

Oh come on, it wasn't that bad.

Generally I keep it upbeat, but sometimes upbeat isn't on the menu. Last week time was so short I had to use older material. This week the same, but this was an article I knew I could write. Besides, it was worth saying.

It does make me wonder if I should adopt hard and fast style rules for the site though. People like going some place for some thing, and all the high traffic sites have a house style. I guess I thought I could get away with writing stuff worth reading - though I suppose even that's up for debate, both the philosophy and the quality. I like having a weekly deadline I need to meet, but the best stuff on the site is definitely the articles that had four days for fine-tuning, not one day for construction and release.

[greylock]

Oh come on, it wasn't that bad.

Probably says more about me than the actual content.

It does make me wonder if I should adopt hard and fast style rules for the site though.

Probably, but I suspect they will evolve naturally over time.

[camrogers]

It became clear early on that people like the funny. I just don't know if I can do funny every week - and I'm not sure I want people to expect that. I'd like to be able to use the site for people to get to know me and what I do - and I'm a sentimental loudmouth. So's my stuff.

[reddragdiva]

... Fucking hell. I just read the Cooktown visit one.

o_0

o_0

o_0

[camrogers]

By all means feel free to express your bafflement at the site or, you know, click the 'like' button.

But yeah. It's actually older material, that, from a visit I made a couple of years back. And that's only about half of it. Maybe two thirds.

[reddragdiva]

http://www.facebook.com/davidgerard/posts/10150303211114045

[camrogers]

Ooooh, that explains the unexpected traffic spike. Thanks! Quite a bit.

Also, who is Sidhe D'mento? Sounds like someone I know, but I'm unfamiliar with the FB name.

[reddragdiva]

Emailed.