Posts Tagged "dave caselli"

So Priscilla and I have this house we bought.  We are on our way to being completely domesticated.  And on our journey, we decided to build a garden in our new backyard.  There is a small area between our lawn and our house located on the back wall that stretches about 20 feet across.  It gets direct sun about half the day, so we decided this was the best spot to start our little experiment.  Now, growing things is pretty foreign to Priscilla and I so we asked my parents to help out with some gardening knowledge to get us started in the right direction.  When they came to visit in May for my birthday, they were ready to get dirty.

My mom suggested that we plant the following:  2 Tomato plants, 1 yellow bell pepper plant, 1 jalapeno plant, 1 zucchini plant and 2 yellow squash plants.  It seemed like the perfect plan, so we bought our seedlings and our seeds and started digging.  The first thing we discovered was that our perfect little spot was covered with rocks and full of this red clay dirt that was incredibly hard.  So we had our hands full right off the bat.  We picked so many rocks our we were able to create a stone border around our plants.   It actually looked pretty awesome.

After the preparation was done, we dug our holes and planted our garden.  It was pretty impressive.  With no surprise it didn’t do much for the first couple of weeks.  Eventually we saw the squash and zucchini sprout out of the ground and makes it’s way upward.  The tomatoes, jalapenos, and bell peppers  were seedlings when we started so we knew they would make it without much work, but it gives you a strange kind of accomplishment when you grow things from seeds.  We watered every other day if it didn’t rain as it does so often in the Southern Summers.  We kept an eye on them until all of a sudden we had a garden.

The tomatoes shot into the air engulfing the wire cage we gave them for support.  The zucchini and squash slowly creeped into leafy bushes with bright yellow flowers.  The jalapenos and bell peppers grew to about 3 feet before they started growing small white and yellow flowers followed by small vegetables.  Yep, I said vegetables.

The tomatoes started and never stopped.  We have more now then we will ever need.  The jalapenos kept coming too.  I never have wanted more uses for jalaponeos then right now.  We put them in everything and they are hot.  Really hot.

But, the bell pepers never really did much.  We started to see flowers and then we saw a small pepper starting to grow.  That was over a month ago now.  It has materialized a little, and has recently strated to turnh yellow (they are yellow bell peppers) but not much else has happened.  A small second pepper has started to grow, but that is it.  As pathetic as the peppers have been, the Summer Squash and the Zuchini have done much worse.

LKike I said before, the plants grew.  They grew into large vines with think leaves and giant yellow flowers, but thats when it got strange.  They got a fungus called Powdery Mildew.  It created a lite white powder that covered all the leaves and eventually killed them.  At first I had no idea what it was so I just strated chopping the infected leaves away.  When I was done there wasn’t much left.  I read later in a book Priscilla gave me for our one year aniverary, that all we needed was some spray I could buy at Target.  I bought some and sprayed it on the leaves that were still standing and all of a sudden I felt like an ideot.  The plants tried to come back.  They really did.  But ever time a fruit would strat to grow, it would die.  Eventually, it was littered with white flies and roating veggies.  Last night, I cut them all down.

But at least we still have our tomatoes and our jalaopenos.  They are striving.  And our peppers are trying to produce they just aren’t doing that well at it.  Maybe a few more months.  They better hurry up though cause its only getting colder from here on out.  But so far it has all been a great learning experience.  Even with our plants still producing I am excited about next year.  I think I might try out some of the same stuff and maybe some new things too.  And next time I will take care of that Powdery Mildew before it starts.

This was a project that turned into a mess really fast. It took months to complete, but after the work was done I had learned a whole lot about html coding and different ways to build a website. The outcome was great and I am now able to modify it without a problem. I think that the design still holds up today and is still pretty impressive as far as My Space pages go.

www.myspace.com/davecaselli

I love to smoke. Well I don’t love it anymore. No I still love it. No I don’t. Maybe I do. Honestly, it has been so long now that I’m not sure I do anymore. I had my last cigarette May 24th 2009. I was really drunk and it was my one and only relapse since I have quit. I’m not trying to toot my own horn here, I’m just laying out the facts. I started smoking when I was about 18 years old. So I was a smoker for about 11 years. Wow, 11 years. It’s hard to fathom that long of career of smoking. But like I said, I love to smoke.

Now I know that 4 months isn’t that long. I guess it just seems like a long time. I remember I quit once before for about 4 months before I had a relapse and started smoking Black and Milds before I went back to my favorite Marlboro Ultra Lights. For some reason that seemed like it was a lot shorter of a time to quit back then. I remember I wanted to cheat so bad. It was unbearable. But the truth was that just that I really didn’t want to quit. I think that is the biggest difference between then and now. Even after four months of wanting a cigarette and watching other people light up right in front of me, I still want to be a non-smoker. And after 4 months it still sucks balls.

I labeled this blog: “The Beginning of the End” because I know it’s not over yet. Actually I doubt it will ever be over. I will always want to cheat one way or another. I have recently smoked a few Black and Mild cigars while I was drinking and around smokers. I am in no way addicted to Black and Milds but I do have to stop smoking them. They help me keep myself occupied without actually smoking. I am making excuses now. Black and Milds have nicotine. I am addicted to nicotine thus I am addicted to Black and Milds. I know they are bad, I just find a way to convince myself they are ok. I am not going to let this detour me though. I am not going to let this bring me down. I will not quit quitting.

The next step is getting past the urge when I am drinking. I always knew it was the hardest, but I have been strong enough to not smoke a Marlboro so far so that’s a step. I quit drinking for a month to help and that kept my motivation up. I am not scared and am very confident this will be that last time I have to quit. I just have to keep on keeping on and I will.

Originally I wanted to continue my “Could I move to..” series and add one about my families Cabin in Tahoe, but I figured it was unrealistic because our cabin is unlivable in the winter. But don’t get me wrong, I would still love to live there. The Caselli Cabin lies at the base of the 39 Mile Track on Highway 50 and is seated approximately 100 feet from the Sacramento River. The 39 Mile Track is right on the edge of a small town called Strawberry and is about a 30 minute drive to Lake Tahoe. It is a magical place that is the host of so many of my best childhood memories.

Now it can’t be accessed during the winter because it snows in the winter. It snows a lot. Now one might think that it snows in a lot of places. Yeah, it does, but the 39 Mile Track is a dirt road that goes pretty much straight down a massive mountain. Snow plows wouldn’t have a chance. The cabin is plenty secluded, but there are quite a few neighbors too. The 39 mile Track itself is the home to a bunch of cabins that share the forest with the Caselli Cabin. But I do have to say that our cabin has one of the best stops on the track because it is one of the only cabins that sits right up against the river.

My Dad’s parent’s inherited our cabin from my Grandmothers Aunt. As far as I know, she was pretty wealthy. Though I have never met my great Aunt, I think I can tell a lot about her from the way the cabin is decorated. It has change significantly over the years, but there are still reminiscence of the 1940′s throughout the small house. Pillows with Norman Rockwell paintings on an old orange coach are in the living room next to two wicker chairs. There is an old Humphrey Bogart poster on the wall next to a whole bunch of photos of my grandparents when they were young. The ceiling sore up twenty five feet and are open showing the beams that hold the place together.

The outside is painted green and yellow to match the forest surroundings. The color choices are limited by the government which makes a ton of sense in my opinion cause I would hate to see a bright pink cabin next to ours. Anyway, our wooded cabin has a large tin roof and and stone fireplace surrounded by a giant deck that looks out on the river. The terrain is scattered with large boulders and huge pine trees. Squirrels and Chipmunks are seen playing everywhere and are accompanied by a ton of noisy blue jays and robins.

Like I said the river is but a few yards away from the front of the cabin. As far as rivers go, this one is quite small. About 50 feet across. When the river is high, you can’t get near it cause the water is moving too fast and when its at it’s lowest, it can easily be walked across. It is one of those mountain rivers that has house sized boulders with waterfalls around each turn. It’s filled with a ton of Rainbow Trout which I very rarely fished, but the few times I did, I had a blast. Our neighbor once pulled out a 19 inch trout with his fly rode right in front of our cabin. It was unbelievable.

Being 3000 miles from home sucks for a great number of reasons. Other than being away from my family, the cabin is right up there at the top of the list. All the times I missed being at the cabin just makes me sad. As time goes by I can only hope that I can let my future kids enjoy the cabin as I once did.

Indigo Studios website was designed and created by Dave Caselli. The site is currently being maintained and updated on a monthly basis by Dave Caselli. You can see the website live at: www.indigostudios.com

Avid hired Indigo Studios to complete some web animations for their new website.  I created the animations.  Though simple and straight forward, the website is not only functional, but very well designed.  My animations only add to the experience.  Check it out.

www.avid.com

Who do you think you are? Do you know? Do we ever stop and think about who you are. I mean physically. You are an animal just like your dog. You are no more than the organisms living in your bathroom sink. You are a creature of this planet just like the rest, right? We are human beings. We like food and sex. We make friends and create unions. We fight and cheat. We strive to be good and to become better then we are. We want to learn. We want to evolve. We want to think we are more than the creatures we share this planet with but the truth is that we just the same.

I like women. Most guys do, but I cant say why I do. It was bred into me way before I was born. I have a sense of competitiveness. I’m not saying I like to fight; I’ve never been in a real fight. But I think most guys like to compete for superiority over other males. It’s something we do cause we want to, but in reality we need to. It’s part of what makes us who we are and who we are is human. I am breed to survive. Survival of the fittest, right? I am breed to think. I am bred to procreate. So what else am I bred to do? There are parts of my nature that I need to remember are just the human parts. So why deny that?

Now society in general has grown to the way it is for a reason. Orgies, serial murders, and street fights are all frowned upon. This is a good thing, but all those things still happen. As horrible as they all sound they are still something that are inside each of us.  They are something that we decide to suppress. Again, this is a good thing. We don’t want any Dexter wannabes reeking havoc or some Eyes Wide shut parties all over our neat, well manured neighborhoods, now do we?  No we don’t.

I guess my point is that maybe we are different from all those crazy animals on this planet because we want to suppress those things. The more I think about it the more I think that our God, or our Creator wouldn’t want us to suppress who we are. I mean, he made us the way we are. Yet, we want to be more than who we are. So maybe its the fact that humans are always trying to better themselves that really makes us human. Yet you can also claim that animals in general do the same thing on a smaller/slower scale. Shit, if dogs can open doors and birds can talk, it seems to me that they are making progress.

So maybe we are all the same then. Humans are just a few million years ahead of our animal neighbors. The more we adapt, the more we evolve, the more we strive to be better, the more human we are. Or maybe that just makes us more like the animals we are.  And we shouldn’t deny that.

I am a drinker. I’m not out of control or anything, but I can say I like to put them away more so than the average guy. I like to have a good time. I like to party. I have friends that like to party and they have friends that like to party. I indulge in the activity of drinking at least once a week but most likely more than that. I have noticed that most social gatherings, when you are in your twenties, has to do with drinking and most of the time it has to do with drinking a lot. Sometimes more than others, but most of the time it’s enough to make you take a cab home. Society today really embraces drinkers so everyone seems fine with the idea of “going out for some drinks after work”. That’s just the way it is. I didn’t really see the whole extremity of the situation until I decided to stop drinking for a month. It’s almost strange how it is so natural to drink when “going out” or when “hanging out with friends”. It’s just what we do and the way things are. And we all know that people stick with what they know and what seems comfortable.

I can’t take credit for the idea of giving drinking a break. Though it seems like a simple concept, I hadn’t met anyone who had actually considered doing it until I met Priscilla’s good friend Meghann Quirk. She gave up drinking for Lent a couple years in a row before I had decided to partake. This was about two years ago now. I didn’t really quit because I gave myself three “give me’s”. Three days that I could drink within the six weeks that I couldn’t. It made it a lot easier and it more than made up for the days I didn’t drink by getting plastered the days I could. By the end of it, I did feel a small sense of accomplishment, but it was short lived.

This time I didn’t give myself any free days. I set a time to start and a time to finish. It just happened to start on my friend Dennis’ Bachelor Party and ended on his wedding day. It seemed fitting since I knew I would be drinking heavily at the Bachelor Party and then again at the wedding. The four weekends in between were uneventful unplanned weekends without traveling, or guests, or parties, or birthdays or holidays. With nothing to stand in my way, I knew it would be the easiest time to be successful. Is that cheating? Maybe a little, but I still had my hardships and those four weekends filled up pretty quickly with drinking events.

Right off the bat I had a run in with temptation. I joined a kickball league with friends that had games every Tuesday night after work. The games were sometimes followed by dinner and drinks at a local Pizza joint Mellow Mushroom. I drank my water and ate my pizza. It was harmless. Nobody really got wasted so it wasn’t that hard. That weekend Priscilla and I went to a concert to see Rascal Flatts. (A gift from me to her for our Anniversary) We tailgated and everything. I watched Priscilla try to down as many beers as she could in the four hours we were there. It was pretty entertaining to try to get her drunk. That was until the ride home when she complained the entire ride about how she had the hiccups and wanted to throw up. All in all it was still fun though.

The following weekend was uneventful. A weekend of rest and being lame. We stayed in both nights. The weekend after that was looking to be a challenge though. We were visited by Priscilla’s college friend Michele and her husband Jake. I thought I would have some long nights at the bar in front of me being miserable the whole time. I lucked out though because they were ready for bed after dinner each night. Now don’t get me wrong, they had plenty of wine and drinks through dinner as most people do, they just didn’t want to get crazy and stay up all hours of the night. I wasn’t complaining.

Then the last weekend came a visit from the in-laws. This doesn’t seem like it would be hard, but they do drink so it is was present. Plus, a few drinks while the in-laws are around makes everything a little easier to withstand. The weekend was fun and we filled it with shopping and cooking. It wasn’t bad at all.

So now the wedding and the cutoff date is slowly approaching. Only a couple more days left. It really hasn’t been hard. People wouldn’t understand when I would explain I wasn’t drinking. They mostly would give me a strange look like, “what a weirdo”. Everyone would ask me, “why are you not drinking?” I would always answer, “Just for Fun” but the real answer is that I just wanted to take a break from something I do all the time. A break from something that isn’t good for me and something I most likely should cut back on doing. I still like to drink and I think I will most likely will be getting pretty drunk at the wedding this weekend, but I do plan on cutting back when I start back at it. Not completely, but maybe through this experience I can have a better perspective on how much I drink. But especially how much I drink cause everyone else does.

UPDATE: I drank the day before the wedding cause I counted the days and it had already been 32 days. So I had a couple to get my liver ready for the wedding the next night. The wedding came and went and yes, I drank enough to get drunk. It was a good time. By Monday I was sick as a dog and had to miss work cause I had a fever. Hooray for alcohol.

Velocity Medical Solutions Website was designed and created by Dave Caselli and 23 Designs.

http://velocitymedical.com/

Dave Caselli designed and produced all Flash animations for Better Basketball. Better Basketball is a company that produces and sells basketball training videos. Sean Cantkier of DarwinStudios.com did all the programing and html development.

Magazine ads designed for monthly occurrences in Slam Magazine. These designs are still used today.

Created for Indigo Studios and Dunkin Donuts. These are logos created for specific campaigns for Dunkin’ Donuts.

23 Design created the artwork and photography for the new basketball training videos for Better Basketball.

Promotional Photography for Rick Torbett. These shots were used on the DVD packaging for his Better Basketball training videos. These were shot by Dave Caselli of 23 Designs.

Priscilla and I bought a house in March of this year. It is a suburbanized home in Smyrna right outside of Atlanta, Georgia. We took our time to find the right one. We worked with a mortgage broker and determined how much we can afford and how big of a loan we can get.  In turn we would know how much house we could buy. Priscilla and I got a kick ass deal on the two story, three bedroom house in Atlanta. The economy told us it was the best time to buy with the home prices and interest rates being at an all time low. We dove in head first and bought our first home. I had saved up some money from freelancing and had a chunk of money from my late grandparents inheritance so we used that money as a down payment and to do some much needed renovations to the house. When we finally moved in we were in a good place financially. We had a great house with money still in the bank. We were happy.

It has been almost 6 months since we have been home owners and the time seems like it has just flew by. Since March we have made several improvements to our new home, some of which we knew about going into it and some we didn’t. When the weather started to turn hot and humid as Atlanta normally does come summer, we noticed that our upstairs bedrooms and closet never seemed to cool down the way they should. I didn’t want to believe we had an issue with our air conditioning, so I put off calling the repair crew as long as possible. Now, we got extremely lucky these first couple of months of owning our first home. The air conditioning needed a new compressor and that was looking to cost over $1500, but our awesome real estate agent David Willard bought us a home warranty on the day we closed on the house as a wedding gift. The warranty covered the entire thing except for a $200 deductible. It was incredibly lucky and we knew it.

The warranty came in handy one other time when our water heater valve was leaking. Only a $50 deducible covered that small fix. Oh, and before the compressor was replace we spent $50 on a deductible for a guy to come replace a non-working thermostat. As you can see, things are starting to add up. We just had our new kitchen table delivered from Room Togo which is just what we needed. It fills a huge hole we had in our main living area and it was something we were planning to buy the moment we moved in. Another expense. The list of things we need to improve or fix grows by the day. Priscilla and I are both somewhat perfectionists and we need to have things a certain way. Because of this I’m sure the list will ever go away.

I love our new home. It is everything I have ever wanted in a house. It is expensive though. Very expensive. I have never been so aware of my finances as I am now. Credit Cards are the devil but they are saving my ass right now. I know things will settle down and my debt will recess, but until then I am watching every bill and pinching every penny. I guess it is good for me. I figured I would eventually have to lean on my credit one day. Living without debt is unrealistic, but I tried as long as I could. It’s a helpless feeling owing money you don’t have. I don’t like it. Not at all. But again I love my house and it’s worth every penny.

My wife Priscilla doesn’t cook.  She never has and I don’t think she ever would have either.  That is until about a month ago when we both decided to trade off days during the week when we both cook dinner.  Not a Fast Food pick up order or a pizza delivery guy.  A real home cooked meal.   Now, cooking a meal at home may seem simple to some people, but to Priscilla, cooking is a really, really big challenge.

Priscilla can clean and organise and even do yard work with all the confidence in the world.  She can take a messy closet and turn it into a rainbow of organised shirts, undershirts, button downed shirts, dress shirts and suits all in order and all color coordinated.  Don’t get in her way when she is in her “”clean mode”.  She is like a runaway train.  She will clean the house til you can eat off the kitchen floor.  I can’t even take a shower two days after she cleans cause it will dirty the tile.  (just a joke there)  She will spend hours pulling every weed in the yard after she mows and edges the grass.  It’s incredible how meticulous she can get over some of the smallest things.

Well, as domesticated as she sounds, she has never been a chef.  Apparently she has never cooked in her life.  Ever.  I, on the other hand, was a line cook in a restaurant for 5 years as I made my way through college, so I know my way around the kitchen.  Now I have always been proud of my cooking ability and have always cooked for myself and then for Priscilla when we started to date and eventually got married.  I didn’t mind then and I don’t mind now but I do want Priscilla to learn how to cook so she can appreciate the world of the Culinary Arts and try new and exciting foods.

Priscilla has always been a picky eater.  Ever since I have known her she has been very particular about what she orders off a menu and what restaurant she attends.  She is usually not  ”in the mood” for anything other than chicken fingers and quesadillas.  She has her moments of being open minded about what she eats, but most of the time she just isn’t feeling it.  The idea of having us both cook opens up the idea of making new foods and trying new things we normally wouldn’t want.  We are letting the other person choose the meal and make it the way they like.  The main thing I wanted wanted to achieve for us both was to appreciate these meals because it took time and effort to create them.

Priscilla was all for it.  She knows she is a picky eater and wanted to learn how to cook.  I would be there to help and she would be there to help me too.  So far the meals ranged from Polenta to frozen chicken fingers.  All in all, we have leanred a lot.  Eventually I want us to take some cooking classes and learn even more.  I want to try new things and cook new vegtables I now consider weird or gross.  Eggplant?  Not sure if that is good or not but I want to try it out.  Priscilla has eaten everythign I have made and cooked up some excellent things herself.  The Pulled Pork was some of the best I have ever had.

I worked along side New Uniform Design and the Red Square Agency to create this state of the art web experience. I animated the interface and coded all the flash, asp and html. Check it out.

www.redsquareagency.com

I like chocolate. A lot of people do. But why do we like it? It tastes good, right? Of course it does. It’s even better with peanut butter. At least I think so. But maybe you don’t. Why is that? Is my taste buds built different that yours? Maybe. Actually, most likely. Perception is a major factor in what people like and dislike. How you perceive some determines how you like or dislike something. But what I want to discuss is that different factors besides taste buds can determine why someone may like or dislike something. In other words, I think you can learn to like anything.

A perfect example is someones choice in color. Ask a kid what his or her favorite color is. How do they come up with an answer. I remember my favorite color as a kid. Orange. Why orange? Well, as far as I can remember it was because it wasn’t blue cause that was my Mom’s. It wasn’t yellow cause that was my brothers. I needed my own color. I picked orange to be different. It wasn’t because my eyed depicted orange in a prettier light then my brothers. It wasn’t cause I was born to love orange. It was because in my experience as a person I wanted my favorite color to be orange.

Now as an adult, and an artist, I ask my self the same question. And I come to the same answer. I could say that any color is great with a complimentary color next to it. But that is avoiding the question all together. In art school the teachers would critique our work. They would give their opinion what what they like and what they would change. What they would do different. Not saying it wasn’t great to be criticized, but as an artist you have to realize that critiques of artwork are not right and wrong, it is simply interpreted by a certain individual. And one day that person my interpret it different than on the next day.

We are all human. We go through life picking up experiences every minute of our life. We gain opinions of everything we come across based on our experience. ie. A person may have had a bad experience with a dog as a child and now they hate dogs. I show them a painting of a dog, and they are unknowingly biased because they don’t like dogs. And if we realize why we like things can’t we change the way we think, thus changing what we like.

I’ve always been a smoker. I’ve always battled with weight and exercise. Recently I have quit smoking and am still getting used to what comes with being a non-smoker. Non-smokers don’t like smoke. I do. But I realize that if I do adopt this opinion then it will be easier to not smoke. If I convince myself I hate smoke, than I will avoid smoke, just as non-smokers do. The same goes with exercise. If it disgusts me to sit around weeks at a time without exercise, then I will be more inclined to work out. Now I’m not saying that you can merely convince yourself of something in order to change your actions. It’s not that easy. I wish it was. All I am saying is that there are reason people like to work out; there are reasons people don’t smoke. These reasons make them do what they do. These things make them like what they like. I don’t like to work out, but I like to be healthy and fit. I like to smoke but I don’t want to die of lung cancer.

I guess when certain reasons, certain opinions, certain experiences outweigh the others you can like something you never liked before. Your actions change with those actions you change. As you go through life you need to always learn from you experiences to order to change for the better. To start to like the right things and dislike and bad. I never want to live a strict colorless life, but if I live my life doing what I like, then I will have no regrets.

You don’t know about Bodega Bay? Well it’s a pretty incredible place. Just north of San Francisco and west of the Napa Valley, Bodega Bay is a small fishing town with ports, boats and plenty of seafood to go around. It has windy beaches tucked against rocky cliffs that go on for miles. I have plenty of memories of this magical place but the one thing I will always remember is that I have always wanted to live there.

Imagine a country house situated on a grassy field placed in between a rock filled mountain on one side and a cliff that overlooks the ocean on the other. Just driving through Bodega Bay made me fall in love. I remember the smell of the eucalyptus trees and the tons of sheep we would see driving along the roads. There is only one way to get through the small town: two lane road that curves around the coast like a snake. On the way through town there is one main square that includes a wine store, a small family restaurant and a small arcade. I loved the arcade. There was a small shop with shells and beach stuff for sale. Mostly useless stuff, but all the houses we stayed in were littered with this decor. We would make an appearence at least once to this little wharf on our way through the Bodega Bay.

Next we would always stop at a local stop that served up the best Smoked Salmon I have ever tasted. Crazy awesome, but the place was a little scary. It was orange. Weird. After that we would stop at the Kite store which was an old house turned shop that sold the craziest kites you have ever seen. Plus, it has a huge selection of local Salt Water Taffy. After stocking up on candy, we would make our way to the house we would rent. We stayed in a number of places over the years, but they all seemed to have their own personal charm. Never technology driven, they were simple and quaint. A classic beach house. They always were a five minute walk to the beach and surrounded by sand dunes and small waterways. The terrain overall was unlike anything I had seen anywhere else. Even to this day I’m sure that Bodega Bay’s overall geography is unique to anything I have seen before.

We would spend our days traveling the countryside and going to the beach. There is even an area called the Elephant Rocks that are just these giant boulders that sit in the middle of a field. I cant really explain it but it’s pretty awesome. Bodega Bay is also the town the original movie “The Birds”was filmed. We went to visit the old school house in the movie which is now a church. At least I think thats cool.

Besides the overall look of things I guess I would have to say that Bodega Bay was special to me because of the memories. I had plenty of family vacations there. Some with my late grandparents and some with just my immediate family. Every memory is a good one. After I retire I could see myself moving to Bodega Bay in a small house looking over the water. It’s pretty much the most stress free place I’ve ever been.

Denial is a powerful thing.  It can make you blind of the truth when it is staring you in the face.  It is the facts you don’t want to see.  You unknowingly live in a reality that you create yourself because you do not want to accept what is actually happening.  It happens to us all.  Sometimes we do it to help us through a hard situation and sometimes we need another truth to live with ourselves everyday.  Sometimes we force ourselves to forget or we prevent ourselves from seeing the truth.  But then there are the times that we need to see the truth and we just can’t.  We need to break through a wall of denial in order to get on with our lives.  We are living in the dark and need to be shown the light.

I had to learn about denial the hard way when I was about 19.  A girl I was dating was a dirty skank and I didn’t even know it.  She was my first girlfriend and she meant a lot to me at the time.  It wasn’t til much later that reality hit me in the face.  I had already moved to Atlanta and was back home visiting.  My friends let me know that truth and it finally broke the barrier of denial.  It hit me like a train.  I don’t think I have ever been so angry in my whole life.  But it made me think.  It amazed me that I could live in such a lie for so long and be totally oblivious to what was actually happening.  Something that was staring me in the face for so long.  There was so many things that told me the truth that I just totally ignored because I didn’t want them to be true.  It scared the shit out of me.  What else am I not seeing?  Could this have happened before?  Can it happen again?  Are there things I am not seeing right now?

The experience opened my eyes.  Not only was I totally avoiding dirty tramps from that moment on, I wanted to be aware of the truth.  The truth of everything.  I wanted to see the facts and let them determine what I see.  I wasn’t going to take pure belief rule my life.  I believed this girl was a perfectly honest human being.  I was wrong.  Sometimes when you believe something is true, it’s not.  Sometimes when you want to believe something is true so bad, there is nothing that can persuade you otherwise.  You will make up false truths to back your own misguided belief.  You will ignore the obvious and concentrate your own made up reality.  In turn, you live a lie.

But where there is skepticism, there is also trust.  Trust is equally as powerful as denial.  Without trusting the person next to you you are alone, but at the same time I think that people lean on trust way too much.  Actually people “trust” without seeing the facts.  Sometimes trust is the only thing keeping people from embracing the truth and eliminating denial.  Sometimes the “truth” is the scariest thing to face.

I feel that being skeptic of the truth will lead you to an answer that will either reiterate your own belief or completely open your eyes to something that you never would have thought of  otherwise.  It could potentially turn your life in new new direction and open your mind to experiences you never thought you could ever have partake in.  I feel that weighing both truth and trust equally is the best way to live your life.  Let your head lead you but trust your heart.  Trust your Mind.  Believe in yourself.