Well, here goes.  I started a blog.

The idea for this blog came to me last year when I was explaining to a friend my process for tanning deer hides (don't worry this isn't a blog entirely about tanning deer hides).  This should get pretty interesting.

When I was growing up I was really lucky to have a group of friends who were really talented.  I knew great musicians, skaters, photographers, athletes, mechanics, etc.  You name it and I had a friend who could do it, and could do it well.  So it got me thinking, "What's my thing?" Thus began a journey much akin to what you would see in a teen movie or novel; the classic "Who am I?"  So I set out to discover my 'thing,' if I even had one.  I wish I could make a montage of me trying all these different things. I imagine it would be pretty funny. It started with little things like hackie sack and doing tricks off the monkey bars and then through high school evolved into auto mechanics, a number of musical instruments, breakdancing, photography, acting...and the list went on and on.  I picked up all these things fairly quickly but never felt that I had my 'thing.'  I was never as good of a photographer as Christian, or as good a breakdancer as Keyko. Steven could own me on any instrument, and my Mexican friends sure knew how to work on cars.  I had become the proverbial 'Zack of all trades; master of none.'

Such is growing up I suppose.  I felt that if I could have found a label to fit into then I might have had some peace about my identity but I wasn't really a bandy, or a b-boy, or a photographer.  Who was I?

My search continued until one day when I was living in England; I'd been living there for about a year and was having a conversation about cars with a close friend.  As we talked about cars and mountain biking and fixing bikes I got really excited to fix up bikes and make Jeep rock crawlers with this kid when I got back to America.  I also realized that my list of things to learn when I got home was getting longer and longer.  Then it hit me. My 'thing' wasn't anything specific. My 'thing' was Learning.  All those things I had tried for a month and then moved on from had just built upon the person I already was.  I didn't have one label, I fit into all of them!

A lot of amazing things happened to me when I was in England and I learned a lot about who I am while I was there.  With all this life reflecting I was glad that I didn't have a label all those years through school; I'd like to think that we are better than labels.  Instead I was this big mess of talents, passions, and experiences all thrown into an average 22 year old with rather unkempt hair.  Realizing all this is when I first decided that I liked the young man I was turning out to be.  The other thing that I realized is that the love and gift of learning was nothing new to my family.  As a young kid I remember watching my dad hand-tie flies on an old sewing machine he had converted into a fly tying machine.  He also took on most home repairs himself whether he knew much about it at first or not.  My mom was no stranger to learning as well.  Books filled my childhood home in almost every room and we all grew up readers.  In addition to that my mom would come home one day and say, "I've enrolled in a master gardner class" or "Kids, I've learned how to make soap" or "Try this curry that I just learned how to make."  For how much I love and admire my parents it made me that much more grateful that I had inherited/learned from them their love of learning.

So when I got back from England I started through that list of things to learn.  I like the idea of a 'To Learn' list much better than the idea of a 'To Do' list.  When you learn something it becomes a part of who you are and adds even more depth to your character and personality.  It never really ends either, instead of crossing things off a 'To Do' list you are continually adding things to your 'I Know' list.  Again it started with little things like my little sister teaching me to fish-tail braid and making fruit leather, and then moved on to bigger things like making leather goods out of deer hide that I tanned myself and learning Arabic.  A long the way I've added probably hundreds of things to my 'To Learn' list and moved maybe 50 to my 'I Know' list, but I love every minute of it.

Now back to the blog.  Last winter I was putting some of my newly acquired tanning skills to use and started making dream catchers. 100% homemade.  It's a pretty interesting process as you'll see in the coming months.  Whenever I'd finish a dream catcher I would usually just give it away to the first friend or family member that walked in the door.  I didn't really have a huge desire to decorate my room with loads of dream catchers; I just liked making them.  It became the same with my homemade jerky and Maori necklace bone carvings.  I'd finish something and it would be gone the next day.  That semester I was sitting in a marketing class and had the idea for this blog.  I would make a blog of all the stuff I liked to do and show people who may be interested the way I do it and then when I finished making something they could have to chance to buy it.  I am always adding stuff to my 'To Learn' list so a consistently updated blog with changing products every year works much better than starting a dream catcher business one year and a bone carving business the next.

It really serves me two purposes the way I see it.
1. Documentation- I'll take pictures of what I do and give some basic instruction (while withholding my trade secrets) for anyone who would like to try it themselves.
2. Sharing- I like to tell people that my parents taught me how to share when I was a kid so this is a chance for people to be a part of what I do for fun as well.

It is my first real attempt at this kind of thing so be patient with me and any type of feedback would be much appreciated.  Now, let's learn something today.