The Second Sandbar: Passion and Exploration

Passion. It's exciting and fun to live within the depths of this emotion. Exploration. It's a path where I try to remain.

Day to day demands of life can interrupt or sidetrack us from where we'd like to be. Our journey is not always filled with passion or exploration. But with that mind-set, I try to set out each day.

Today, I found it out on 'The Second Sandbar'. I've enjoyed my little series of videos, entitled, 'Another Walk with Mike'. I naturally do these things, regardless of if a camera is present. It's my drug. It's clean. But since I've begun cataloging some of my excursions on film, an added dimension has been established.

I feel a sense of contribution. I feel an extra sense of worth within myself. It may sound grandiose or at the same time, trivial, but it is how I feel.

I am at a certain place in my life. I am searching and I am finding. On my journeys I receive something from Nature. It completes me. But, most often, when I am in the throngs of exploration, I am by myself. And during my quest, a multitude of stimuli abound and I am excited. But, something is added when I shoot and then share video of my excursions.

As a boy, on a skiing vacation with my family, I was in love with the activity of sliding down the white powdery slopes. But I missed something. I wished that I could share the experience with my friends back home. I was incomplete. I needed the added dimension of give and take with those I cared about. I wanted to see joy in their eyes just as I felt it in within me. I needed that connection to lift the experience to another level.

I think it is that feeling, that emotion, that propels me to want to share my videos. I empty my emotions out during my quest, my exploration.

It also buries my head in the sand. It provides me a diversion away from the pain of not having my son, Evan, and my darling little princess, Mikelynn. It passes time and helps me to not dwell on my misfortune, the absence of what truly makes my heart beat soundly.

And my videos also connect me with my little wonders. I call them and say, "Daddy has a neat new video for you", and I hear their voices, their excitement.

I tell them that when we are together we can make some videos of our own, and their minds race at the possibilities. They conspire and they imagine. And they imagine life with me. And I smile.

And I think, what can my next video entail? Where can I take the little ones so they can be a part of something great with me? What experience can we imprint on our minds, in our souls, and digitally online? I think of how they can one day look back, just as someone will look back at a photo album, and my children will see and remember a journey taken with me. And they will be proud of having done so. They will bask in the glory of having had me as a Dad.

Again, grandiose? Well, with only one shot at life, I'll shoot for that. I'll shoot for sharing. I'll shoot for creating. I'll shoot for passion and exploration and learning, and I'll shoot for love.

I loved my trip out to the second sandbar. I hope you did too.