New Face, New Job, New York

Happy September! 

"Chasing Light" - Atlanta, GA - iPhone 6s Plus

It's a Monday night, and I'm drinking gin with a splash of soda while Caspian obnoxiously attempts to make herself comfortable across my chest. Since you already know me well, you can probably predict what's drifting from my speakers. Maybe it's a coincidence, but it seems kismet that Taylor Swift albums fall into my life like bookends, marking the end of one season and the beginning of another. 

Like music, I also, perhaps bizarrely, find significance in geography. Although, I suppose I have a propensity to find significance in everything, turning the most mundane events into metaphors. Part of this season has been about making peace with myself, even the sensitive, mildly melodramatic parts. 

This December will mark three years since I've graduated college… which somehow feels both infinitesimal and an infinity all at once. 

College was an important place. I think mountains keep us safe; they make us brave, there's something magical about them… there's something that makes them home. 

Life at sea-level was initially jarring. Returning home I was surrounded by physical beauty, solitude, but simultaneously enveloped in memories and unanswered questions. No longer protected by mountain peaks, there were things I needed to face in this valley, in this physical place, that I couldn't do anywhere else. 

Trading my childhood zip-code for my first true adult one, I moved into a downtown neighborhood in transition. The deconstruction surrounding me mirrored the state of my soul (see, I told you I find metaphor everywhere) as I worked through my theology, philosophy, vocation, sexuality, and all manner of other existential questions. But, instead of working through them alone, I learned how to find a "sacred circle" and found myself on an island of misfit toys, a place where shame didn't exist. A place where my entire self had a seat at the table for the very first time. 

In short, I found the darkness isn't so daunting when you let your eyes adjust and see all the people sitting around you, and realize they've been there all along. 

That brings us to today, early September 2017. I'm currently entering the final stages of acquisition negotiations. The sale will sell off all my corporate assets and dissolve my LLC in its entirety. Being an entrepreneur has been incredible - it's been an honor to work alongside a fantastic team, partner with Books for Africa to construct a library in Ethiopia and save over one million books from ending up in landfills. 

It's been an amazing ride and a challenging journey, but I realize there are bigger dreams of mine. While I'm still figuring out what those are, I've sensed the time has come to pass on what I've created and begin again with a clean slate. 

Speaking of clean... my beard will be gone for the first time in years very soon. I'll have to shave for an invasive double-jaw surgery concerning a TMJ disorder this Thursday, September 21st, at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. The operation itself is blocked for six-hours, and my jaw will be wired shut for four to five weeks. 

However, not to worry, I've given my surgeon a photo of both Clark Kent & James Dean for reference and am looking forward to doing a Percocet/green-juice cleanse for a month. 

In short, there's a lot that's about to happen. 

New face, new existential perspectives, no real job… I feel like Soren Kierkegaard and Kim Kardashian's lovechild. It's the start of a new season, and along with it a new place; New York.

Many of you know that for years I've wanted to call the five boroughs home, it's simply never been the right time. 

If you haven't heard, I've been working on my first book, a memoir, and am going to share the first chapter with you in the next couple weeks! It's gotten a lot of great feedback, and I hope my own story can remind others their own is worth living. 

Simultaneously writing "Brave Once More" (www.braveoncemore.com) alongside ghost-created articles for various business executives on topics like the power of narrative or marketing strategy has made me realize why I'm passionate about communication in all its forms… I'm passionate about 'story' because I'm passionate about change. Both my personal and professional experiences have taught me genuine change only occurs when the other party sees themselves within the story you're telling. 

As I prepare a plan to move to New York, I'd like to find myself in a space where I can help others do just that. I'm exploring roles that would allow me to use both sides of my brain - strategy, AND creativity. Specifically, positions within brand management, creative strategies, innovation consulting, and copywriting… All of which, I realize, have their nuances and differences. 

I'm still figuring life out, and in a lot of ways I suppose I still don't know who I want to be when I grow up, but for the first time I know who I am now... and I'm okay with him. 

It feels weird to ask for help, I've always been better at self-deprecation than self-care… but (damn therapist) calls it a "growth path" so here I am soliciting it. 

I'd love to meet any friends you have in New York City (and probably flirt with them if they're cute.) Also, if you have professional contacts who may have a use for my skill-set, or are working in industries, and with companies, I may be interested in, I'd appreciate any leads. 

As I enter a new season of huge transition on multiple fronts, I appreciate your advocacy, help, and thoughts. I also would specifically covet your prayers as I prepare to go under the knife for six hours in just a few short days. 

More than anything though, I wanted to write and say thanks. I don't know if you've ever heard of Herman Hesse, but he's a brilliant author and personal inspiration. In his first novel, he writes, "love isn't there to make us happy… I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure." 

If there were ever a quote to define a season of my life, that would be it. 

Thank you for making me feel loved and believed in throughout a season where I struggled to love and believe in myself. 

Grateful, 

- JM

Hearts & Handcuffs

Nerstrand - Big Woods State Park / Apple iPhone 6s Plus 

It’s winter and I’m deep in the Minnesota wild, my fingers locked tightly inside yours. We’re sliding over icy rocks, your voice echoing through the trees, rising toward the sky like gray smoke. Stumbling through the snow we make our way down toward a frozen river. The solid water terrifies me, I’m afraid to crack the ice. I hesitate and you look back at me.

I’m uncertain, not just about the river… about you. I’ve never felt this way before…. I see half my life’s story in your face and I’m not sure I want to. I pause, and for a moment your smile steps off stage, then performs an encore as I trust my heart and take your hand once more.

That wouldn’t be the first time you’d make me brave. 

Like my teeth in thirty degrees weather, my Sony shutter clicks as I capture you leaping from rock-to-rock up the isolated icy waterway. 

Your laughter melds with the wind between the trees in eclectic harmony; pure white snow laps the heels of my Red Wing boots. 

I wish I could live here forever… for in that moment, and the many more we’d share, shame had no place.

On the water with you, the space between who I am inside and the way I projected myself to the world no longer existed. The place between who I am today and who I want to become had vanished.

Underneath a Midwestern sky the dissonant chasms within me where shame called home faded to cracks. Love had shrunk the gaps.

Love not in the abstract, love as a verb… love in the now (and the snow, as it were). Like coarse salt on the icy roads that winter afternoon, only love built upon vulnerability can dissolve shame.

Vulnerability is often conflated with ‘authenticity’ and yet the two words are markedly different; love in its truest form being more closely related to the former not the latter.

Authenticity is letting someone see your heart in handcuffs. It’s allowing them to bear witness to whatever story or idea of yourself you want to share, but restraining their ability to hurt – or to love you.

Banff National Park / Sony A600 / 20 MM 

Vulnerability is letting someone see your heart and handing them a knife. Vulnerability is inviting someone into the story within you… and seeing if they stay. It’s laying down arms and tearing down walls, standing defenseless and giving someone else a choice. That’s what makes it hard. That’s what makes it love.

Vulnerability is the antidote to the shame epidemic. This is why we need other people, not just romantically, platonically too. When you find a sacred circle with whom you can bring your entire self to the table, the impossible happens – shame ceases to be an adjective in your life. When you’re not at home in yourself, life feels like a house of mirrors; shame a constant, ever-changing companion. But love, born out of vulnerability with others, shatters the glass.

It’s been over a year since I heard your laughter in the trees. What once was so alive is now nothing more than a ghost. Yet, something you taught me has remained true in the months and miles since our first date in the snow.

Shame lives in the space between who I am inside and how I present myself to the world; the insecure place between where I am today and where I want to be tomorrow… and the only way to close the gap is to let someone inside it.

The theme of my writing has always centered around what it looks like to be brave... but the thing about bravery is we can’t do it alone. It’s only when we’re courageous enough to let ourselves be loved we find ourselves free from the chains of shame.

Vulnerability is not without risk, and one day you’ll inevitably give the wrong person a knife. Often when we get hurt it's not even malevolent. As you change and grow sometimes people in your life you once let in are going to tell you you’re too different or too much or that you’ve changed. 

Let me be the first to tell you that says more about them than it does you. You shouldn't revert to shame or rebuild walls, even as your heart cries out and the wound is still fresh. Let your sacred circle triage you and remind you who you are. You have nothing to fear. Perhaps one day the person who hurt you, who let you go, will realize all of who you are is more important than whatever idea of you they'd wanted to keep.

You'll never know true love — and the accompanying shamelessness — as long as everyone around you has their hands tied behind their backs.

So take off the handcuffs... and take his hand instead.

Courage dear heart,

-       JM 

hazel (part two)

The night is quiet and I’ve never been as content as I am right now inside a dark coffeeshop nestled into the Smoky Mountains. The bell on the front door jingles and I look up into your handsome whiskered face. Your torn jeans and tanned forearms tell a story, but your soft eyes a volume unto themselves. For a moment that feels like forever, yet remains not long enough, your green eyes meet my brown... an alchemy of irises creating a delphic hazel chasm between us. And for a moment your smile steps off stage, then does an encore, leaving me to wonder when brown and green would meet again.

---

To the Celts, hazel was the color of wisdom and poetic inspiration. There’s an old legend about nine, old hazel trees born around a sacred pool buried deep in the Scottish highlands. This “Well of Wisdom” as it was known was full of salmon who ate the nuts fallen from the trees. In mythology, Fionn MacColl, eventually one of the High Kings of Ireland, fell into the sacred pool and nearly drowned - but ate of the hazel filled salmon and found himself strong enough to swim. When he resurfaced, he returned the wisest man on Earth and became one of the famed heroes in Celtic legend. 

So revered are the hazels for their life-changing properties, to this day, you must have a permit to cut one down in Ireland. It isn't just the Irish either, in Norse mythology Thor himself protected them as the sacred trees of knowledge. 

Son of Zeus and Greek god of transitions and boundaries - Hermes is often depicted with his staff of hazel, said to be the source of his intelligence and wisdom.

Roman legend says the hazel tree is found at the border between worlds where the mystical and mysterious come to pass. In narratives passed down for generations, the Romans told stories of the ones who returned from the hazel tree at the edge of the world–stronger and more courageous than when they left. 

Like the lore that came before us, when we forsake the primary colors of life, we find wisdom in the hazel, enlightenment in the coalescent gray. Black-and-white is a perfectly good way to live an ordered life... but not a way to live a wise one.

Lean in and let the hazel spaces change you... for regardless of what you believe in this moment, beautiful and powerful things can happen in the margins. While it may feel lonely, you're not alone in the Celtic's sacred waters. Many before you have also found themselves between depression and joy, marriage and divorce, faith and doubt... who they are now and whom they're becoming. If the liminal has taught me anything it's that I'm so much stronger than I think...  and you are too. 

The next time you feel lost in all the ways you never wanted... look hazel in the eyes and ask him to make you brave again. 

Courage dear heart, 

- JohnMark 

hazel (part one)

not green nor brown

not black nor white

these gray spaces

appear hazel too

this liminal place,

this sweet in-between

would be a primary color

if i’d just chosen green