Weekly Recap #5:Â "Travel on Travel & Having a Routine"
Forgive the grammar errors & lack of editing, but this weeks recap is already happening a little late & I just want to get the post out there. I wanted to get to it Sunday night or on the plane Monday, but it really comes down to being so out of routine. In the last week I have been in New Mexico, Colorado & Michigan, & to be honest, I'm tired.
Amongst my family & friends it's a pretty well-known fact that I function on very little sleep, but now, as a father of 3, I find myself needing more. It's kind of funny to think that my "more" is still below what is recommended. I would say ever since high school I've been able to function at a high level on just 3-6 hours of sleep, and I'm just now reaching a point where 6-8 hours would be preferred. The crazy thing about being a creative is, I'm at my most creative state between the hours of 9PM-5AM.
It's an absolutely unhealthy way to function, but I'm one of those people that has a hard time focusing on something like writing a blog when there's fun to be had. If someone wants to enjoy the outdoors I'm one of the first to jump on the opportunity. I LOVE being outside, & I love the extra boost of energy a fun work out can give you when you soak up just the right amount of vitamin sunshine. Living in sunny San Diego year-round definitely doesn't make it easy to stay away from the outdoors. However, as previously stated, I'm a dad, and have been one for just about 5 years & im trying to find that groove; the balance of work vs play.
My wife & I are fortunate enough to have a work environment that is pretty flexible, but with that flexibility comes a responsibility to share the parenting load & manage our time for ourselves & our jobs wisely. When managing time comes from yourself rather than a "Manager" predicting your schedule, you have to be a responsible enough adult to achieve & prioritize your weekly tasks. Being a parent adds another x-factor to that because kids, while they thrive on routine, can also just throw you for a loop.
Last year my wife proposed this schedule:
• Monday, Wednesday, Friday are her days to get things done.
• Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday are my days to get things done.
• Sunday is a family day.
This is the schedule we have tried to stick to, & for the most part it's worked out great. It's definitely not perfect, & I'd say my creative work with film-making & photoshoots has infringed on the schedule most, due to the fact that I have multiple day shoots, travel & client's schedules that also come into play. However, my wife has been gracious through it all, & right now on this family vacation, I'm finding myself craving that routine again.
We head back to San Diego this weekend & Sara will be getting right back to training next week for her school. I'll have to blog/brag about her school sometime in another post, but feel free to check out Inspire Charter Schools if you're a parent looking for a phenomenal home school program. It's been an amazing blessing for our family for Sara to teach 90% of the time from home, & I've been blown away seeing the types of opportunities her school gives to kids that need a little bit of flexibility in their schedules.
Now to the more fun & creative stuff from this past week!
One of the first family things we did when we got to Colorado Springs was go to The North Pole. Yes, you read that correctly, we visited Santa in July 🤓 I was pleasantly surprised by how fun this place was for my kids. It's basically an amusement park with a Christmas theme that celebrates the beloved holiday year-round. All the rides are pretty basic and it has a bit of a state fair/carnival feel, and my kids absolutely loved it.
We even got to take a classic crying picture with Santa (who was very knowledgeable about this years popular toys & incredibly funny).
As random as it may seem, having Santa's workshop up in the mountains of Colorado seemed to make sense. It wasn't exactly at the North Pole, but I would recommend the quirky little theme park to anyone with kids younger than 13.
For the weekend I left my wife & kids with family in Colorado Springs & flew out to Detroit. My "little brother" and Best-man from my wedding 9 years ago graduated from high school and was having a grad party. I say little brother, but this young man, Trent, was a kid from my church that I had baby-sat since he was one. I never had a little brother, and I watched him & his sister Ava for 8 years of their lives before they moved to Detroit. Their parents were like a second set of parents to me in high school & my early twenties, & basically became family.
I flew out there on Friday afternoon & left Monday afternoon & man did we pack in a good amount of activity. We drove around the city doing a quick tour of Detroit, saw Jack Whites store & record pressing company Third Man Studio, went to Shinola, ate Ramen at Johnny Noodle Co, and drove all the way down Woodward through 8-mile and got the best donut I've ever had in my life at a little hole-in-the-wall shop called Dutch Girl Donuts.
The weekend was filled with a tour of good food & it also may have included a nostalgic stop at White Castle, just because. But it was definitely one for the books & proof that true friendships can always pick right back up where they left off in spite of distance and time.
(A photo of Trent & Ava, that I shot in high school back in the dark room developing days, was on display at Trent's grad party)
Trents dad, Brad, is one of the most creative humans I know, and has definitely passed that creativity down to Trent. Seeing that I also had a hand in raising the boy, it's been easy to see that some of my creative interests have rubbed off on him too, & as a typical little brother would do, he has taken some of those interests, like guitar, to entirely different level. I've definitely enjoyed watching him become better than me at so many things over the years.
(A plate of delicious tacos made by Brad for Trent's Grad party. Brad has definitely inspired my creativity in the kitchen & opened my mind to trying new foods)
Trent & I had plans to disc golf on Saturday, but we were rained out for a few hours. So what happens when you put two creatives together on a rainy day? Well, this silliness was the result:
In just a few minutes we came up with a concept and immediately began to roll with it. We chose a few locations, looked up some hockey terms to see if we were covering as many silly subjects as possible, & of course Trent being the resident expert in the field of Hockey, he was able to improv a lot of lines inspired by actual silly locker room talk.
Spoiler alert, he really isn't giving up hockey to follow Barista dreams. In fact, he's moving to Alaska next month to go join a feeder team in Fairbanks that will hopefully help him along his path to landing a college scholarship & possibly one day make it to the "Chel" (NHL). We'll have to wait & see, but in the mean time some underlying teenage hockey-angst provided for some pretty funny material on a rainy day.
It didn't rain the entire weekend though, & we eventually ended up getting a few rounds of disc golf in, which led to a pretty awesome moment in my recreational disc golf history. I threw my first "Ace" (hole-in-one) at Trent's home course, and it was a pretty cool thing to share that moment with my little brother. Being the competitive person he is, he'll probably call me in the next few weeks saying he aced the same hole.
Photography is such a great outlet for creativity & an amazing time machine. In the following two photos you'll see a photo of Trent from my wedding 9 years ago, & a picture of us this past Monday at the airport leaving Detroit on the way back to Colorado Springs. The boy can now grow a beard, & my Filipino genes still don't allow for the same level of manliness.
2008 with my nephew, Isaac (left) & Trent (right).
2017 with Ava & Trent. (I now have to stand on a curb because Trent is 6 inches taller than me)
Well, that's the basic rundown for the week. A lot of GoPro & Mavic footage was gathered as well, and I'm going to be making a summer recap video when our vacation is over. Definitely going to have a lot of footage to dig through 😬
