Guest Post: Owning The Moments
Moments catch me by surprise. They are fleeting yet permanent, critical yet unimportant. Understanding how to apply attention and intention amidst the storms of life is a necessary skill when transitioning toward a more stable paradigm. My goal is a paradigm founded on core values and principles true to the person I was and am called to be in our world.
My COVID-19
My COVID-19 began in April of 2019. An aimless voyage of a marriage, tattered and unrepaired, took on too many moments, the critical and permanent variety. The forest was set ablaze, and two people took back the nutrients and sunlight as they separated and reattached their threads to the world. Two lives came of this relationship, two precious boys who needed full measures of their parents and not the half-cooked versions. I was gifted an opportunity to build a more vibrant life for myself and those around me, a life filled with intentional transcendent moments.
Nothing happens in an instant; rather, it takes an immense amount of purposeful and intentional work. It also takes family. People who care, listen, speak and collaborate towards new ways of being. Understanding I was incapable of resetting by myself was critical. I was on a cycle of dissecting a decade of moments as if one caused the topple. Instead, I discovered it was simply a way of life that was unsustainable. Two people had succumbed to the societal blueprint of the mirage of safety – team up to amass family, finance, and security. I neglected to account for my own happiness. This was no way to live – this was not transcendence. I had slipped the plastic bag over my own head figuratively and literally.
The Pivot
The pivot happened months later as I partnered with a coach. Dave met me in my most vulnerable and shipwrecked space, threw a pack on my back, and embarked with me on a journey. As we traveled, he demonstrated mastery of moments, referencing books, talks, thoughts he placed in my pack. We navigated psychological terrain, conditions, and experiences. We paired insight with introspection, purpose with vision, growth with practice. The collaboration flowed abundantly into all spaces of my life, and suddenly I pulsed with the efficacy and enthusiasm I once dreamt of in my youth. I was mastering moments of my own, alert and aware, awake to the multitudes inside myself and quantum scope before our every millisecond. It was not a rebirth, rather a confidence to live with a firm back and a soft front. It was not a mere reaching for the moment but grasping and repurposing it for a better self.
Finding my Stride
When people felt the shutdown and crumble from COVID and life in 2020, I was finding my stride and interacting with my reframing tools in my pack. I cherish the pause in life created by the shutdown because it allowed me intentionally process my processings. My thinking was open to the infinite possibilities each moment offers and who I wanted to be in those moments. Allowing my broken self a grace I rarely explored, I gave myself permission to feel. Acknowledging my brokenness and gaining the freedom to learn, grow, and fail as I remembered my capabilities, I developed a framework to practice authentic living.
I began equipping my own pack. Just as new wine calls for new wineskins, we refreshed my pack. We adapted tools uniquely tailored to serve my enhanced skillset. I was ready to serve and fulfill my purpose of meeting people’s essential needs of connection, love, and belonging, building foundational partnerships to create appropriate space for listening or wisdom. I found myself, and along the way, an appreciation for my abilities and the moments I am trending towards. None of it was easy, yet all of the work was rewarding. The insight available during Covid’s pause and reflection allowed me to map and explore extensive parts of myself; it was a compass to identify the gloriousness of life, even during the roughest of seas. So I breathe deep and press onward with awareness and resources on my back to help me bring my best self to the moment I am set to enter.
My Current Path
My current path requires strength. I’ve remarried, and my wife is pregnant. I am helping four kids navigate distance learning and trying to keep them on track with what they need to know for their current grade level while parenting and guiding a three-year-old who is absorbing life too. I am successfully training two mindful puppies, a Great Dane and Labradoodle. I am developing a curriculum for the physical education and leadership courses I teach to middle schoolers while seeking out better ways to create agile coursework for the future. In a couple of weeks, I begin work on my initial administrative license, which will fulfill my goal of becoming a school principal in the near future. Fortunately too, I have booked several weddings as an entertainment option for couples in 2021 and 2022. In all these moments, I am ultimately simply attempting to be more instead of just doing more.
I am living out my statement of purpose by seeking to meet people’s essential needs of connection, love, and belonging while building foundational partnerships to create space for listening and sharing wisdom when they desire. I’m able to do this for my family, professionally as an educator, swim coach, wedding DJ, oh yeah, and hosting and producing a podcast too. I just laughed because it is a lot! It is also how I squeeze the most out of my experiences. It stabilizes my vision and allows me to pursue my goal of being transcendent. I fall short, I adjust and take aim again.
Spencer has an MA in Elementary Education and Teaching from Concordia University and a BA in Journalism from the University of Oregon. Check out his other work:
DJ Crum: www.djcrum.com
Hermes Radio Repair Podcast: www.hermesrepair.com
