Oliver the Friend…Mending It

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Friends are those people in your live that become your second family.  They are the ones outside of family that you spend the most time with.  They are the one that are there for other moments that your family can’t be at.  The best ones support, humble, and tell you like it is when you feel that you don’t need it.  They are the ones that care and want you to succeed and the ones that at your lowest point will be there.  Friends are important.  But those few friends; those true friends are the ones that everyone I believe need to find, have, and nurture.  Because they are the ones that will be there for you and surprise you the most.

Well a couple of years ago, I had one such friend.  Although I won’t disclose the details of what exactly happen ( that would just turn out to be a very stupid rant, that I would like to spare you ) but looking back at it now.  That friendship connection was lost all because of ME.  It was solely me and me along.  My friend / buddy, didn’t really need that from me especially at a time when we were good buds.  And if you are reading this, I’m SORRY.

I’m sorry for questioning our friendship.  I’m sorry for being stupid enough to think that you didn’t care.  I’m sorry for not realizing what you where really doing.  And I understand why you didn’t want to deal with it.  And know it was completely and utterly my fault.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago.  That friend that I mentioned, contacted me and wanted to hang out and catch up.  At this point, we both have started building amends and slowly building up the friendship again.  But just like all friendships that start, it does take time to build it again.  Especially with the way that I acted.

When we met up.  I was freaking nervous as HELL.  I didn’t know what to expect.  I didn’t know of the old scares would be brought up or if there was still some anger there.  But time and time again from what I learned from the World Domination Summit; I had to be vulnerable and see what happen.  Let what was about to happen, happen.  And just go through it.  Face the fear and uncertainty in the face.

So with the text sent, I had to make the phone call.  The reason being was because I was lost in trying to find he’s apartment.  And nervously I waited for the phone to be answered. And when it did.  With a split second heath, I said; Hey dude.  And I got a response of hey.  After a minute or two of orientation of where exactly I was, we met up.  And with a hand shake, everything seem well.  And it was well.  Nothing but a warm welcome and a good conversation.

As we chatted it looked and felt like we just left off where we ended or temporary put on hold our friendship.  At least on my part there was still a bit of nervousness because I just didn’t know.  But slowly I eased into the conversation and it felt like old times.  The conversation of what was going on in our lives and what trips and photos we took recently.  And also catching up on how some mutual friends are.  I totally felt bad for the amount of time that we didn’t speak to on another.  I couldn’t help but think of the adventures we would have been on since then.

Now not stewing on what ifs or should have beens, I took this opportunity as a new way to start the friendship over again.  I truly do hope that our friendship continues.  It would be nice to have that again.  Relive that one.  It was good friendship and one that because of stupid things had a bumpy road.  But I’m glad that we are able to be friends again.

Here’s a few pieces of advice if you are having difficulty with some friends:

  1. Think about what really is going.  See if there is an external reason causing any of the hardship.  And look for it because usually there is.
  2. Be HONEST.  Seriously this may be hard but you’ll need to face at one point or another.  Do it sooner than later because later words that you don’t mean come out and just make things more complicated.
  3. If you have more than one friend that is still encouraging you to salvage the friendship, trust them, and see if it can be salvage.
  4. Friendships are relationships and it might take some time to mend and strains but if it truly worth it do give up.
  5. And if all else fails, YOU have to, as cleanly as possible END IT.

Oliver the Photographer…And you can’t Win them All

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This past week was the first Professional Photographers of San Diego of San Diego County’s (PPSDC) Image Competition.  These are bi-monthly competitions where entrants enter their images to be judge and critique by their peer of judges.  With each competition comes a great learning opportunity and even some victory.  This also was the year that I was in charge of running the image competition.  Which in its own right it is a victory in itself.

After attending, entering, and helping with the image competition over the last 2 years that I have been a member of PPSDC, I took over the reins of this very exciting and gut wrenching competition.  And from what I can tell thus far, organizing and running competition is a lot of work.  A LOT of work.  But that’s not the point of this post.

The purpose of this post is to talk about what happened at this latest image competition.  And I’ll just come and say it; I TANKED!  I tanked in a major way.  None of my images Merited on this night.  I’m not going to lie, it stung and it hurt a lot.  It hurt enough that I seriously wanted to just leave and tell everyone to go fuck it.  The insecurities that I had as a photographer once again showed its ugly head.  It’s ugly head spewing out the; you’re not good enough, that sucked, you sucked, do you really want to do this, you don’t have talent, and you just don’t have it anymore.  You’re a one trick pony.  And to top off it seemed that people that usually didn’t do well in the competition actually did pretty well.  And as much I am happy for them, I’m slightly more annoyed that they did.  I know this is coming from my insecurities and even some cockiness from my end.

Sitting there running the competition and seeing the scores and seeing others doing well made me feel small again.  I kept a straight face as much as I could.  But friends that do know me, usually can tell.  I don’t know if did that night but I think I showed it.

I think the thing that made it worst was that there are some people that got credit that I know they didn’t earn and most annoyingly I know that with such allocates it would be a “look at me, look at me” show.  And it being a couple days since, I know it did.  And too me that was the most annoying part.  I could attribute part of that to be jealous and that is true.  I was jealous.  But still, it was the fact that now it was just going to be shoved in my face not on purpose (well…that’s up for debate) but it was going to be presented in away that I feel that it shouldn’t.

But with this round of ranting and venting over…there are a few things that I did realized that night too.

For one, I understood, you can’t win them all.  And you can’t.  If you did, it wouldn’t make the times that you did special.  Right?  So I know that you need to go sometimes with a down so you can ignite the fire to start it up competitor mentally again and start the process to dominate it.

Secondly, you can’t rest on your laurels.  I think what happened in this competition is that I didn’t follow my normal procedure of getting input from friends that I usually ask if I should enter.  I rested and assumed on my end that my images still would be good like they where last year.  And when I think about it, they are good as last year but that was last year.  What I did wrong in this situation was that I was still producing the same old work and not innovating and creating images that won me the allocates that I did in the past.  I remember I told myself and other that I would always keep people guessing on my work.  And looking at what I entered, it was easy to pick out my work.  And on top of that, there wasn’t much imp ace in those images.  So they should not have merited.

Although, I should note, however it is not an excuse, that the judging that evening was a pretty tough.  Cut throat, blood bath, and massacre come to mind.  It was hard.  And those images never stood a chance.

Another thing I learned that night was that there are a lot of people that truly care, support, and genuinely want me to do well.  And that’s the biggest realization that I got from that night.  Truly the people that showed up, helped, messaged, and text in terms of “how can I help,” truly made the night best for me.  If they are reading this they know who they are.  And as I’m writing this my heart is healing and being filled with love and gratitude from those people.  I seriously love and appreciate them.  I hope they you know that.  If I could I would hug and give you each the world for just doing such a simple gesture.  With that I think I still came out on top.  The night ran smoothly as can be, it was long one but they stuck around, and afterwards we got to have a laugh and enjoy each others company.

But come November, I’m going to bring it.  And bring it BIG.  And along me with I’m going to make sure my friends that I support and truly believe also bring it.  I want them to also succeed and make their dreams come alive.  You can’t win them all but I surely will help those that I believe in without hesitation.  Buddies, I promise you this.

The following are the images that I entered.

Laser beam of light in Antelope Canyon

Laser beam of light in Antelope Canyon – 78/100

Long exposure of a rock lit by Moonlight

Long exposure of a rock lit by Moonlight – 77 / 100

Seattle taken a dusk

Seattle taken a dusk – 79 / 100

The famous potato chip rock in Mt. Woodson.

Oliver the Adventurer…and the Potato Chip

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With a jump down and after another few minutes of waiting.  I confidentially and slow walk to the edge, ever knowing that there is a fall in three directions.  I stop, with my knees slightly shaking, and pose for the shot.  As I stand there, I’m thinking, HOLY SHIT, I’m doing it, I’m doing it.  I’m standing on a thin slice of a rock, known as Potato Chip Rock.  As I’m standing on this death defying natural spectacle, as my friend Bryan is taking my picture, I’m still thinking that I freaking did it.  It did without fear and I just committed.  And then all of a sudden, it rush right back.  The fear of falling, the fear of this rock breaking, etc etc etc, hit me.  And when it did, I nearly fell off.  But I quickly composed but not the stance, confidence was cracked and I started thinking, I can’t wait to get off this rock.

This was the climax of a trip that my college buddy, Mikey planned out for the labor weekend.  My buddy Mikey as we call him, is a fellow engineer.  He and the our gang of friends mentioned in the previous article have been friends since our college years.  Which if you think about it hasn’t been very long.  We as group have done a lot of adventures together from weekend travels to cities, annual snowboarding trips, and crazy hikes in the heat.  We are friends that we treat each other like brothers and sisters and even though we don’t see each other often when we do it like it was only yesterday.

This particular adventure begin several weeks ago.  Mikey has been trying for months to hang out with me.  With me being “busy” all the time, it was a bit difficult or nearly impossible for us to meet up and hang out.  So knowing how my schedule can get when you ask me a bit late, he scheduled the whole labor weekend for himself.  Which then it was aptly named “Mikey’s Spectacular Weekend.”

So Mikey had the weekend.  And the only people that could overthrow that would be family.  Yes, even a wedding client couldn’t book a wedding during that weekend.  It was Mikey’s and he’s alone.

Lets fast forward to a couple of hours before the first paragraph.  It was determined that for the Mikey’s Spectacular Weekend would be a day.  A day filled with adventure and hiking.  Hiking?!  Really?!  In this heat?!  “Yeah” says Mikey.  I reluctantly said, “Ok.”  And in the back of my head I was think what the hell, seriously?!  But this was he’s weekend and I gave him the benefit of it.

Mikey decided that our adventure with a couple of other friends would be to the famous San Diego Potato Chip Rock.  This particular hike, as become popular recently as it has been seen, retweeted, facebooked, blogged about, etc etc in the social media stream.  Which this made me kind of not want to do this hike because everyone did it.  But Mikey wanted to try it and do it.  And honestly, I actually wanted to do it but I just had all this noise in my head about doing what everyone did before.

The trailmarker for the hike.

The trailmarker for the hike.

We decided that we would meet up at Lake Poway around 8:40am to begin the hike.  And as always there was something that came up.  For this morning, it was running a few minute behind, I think it was about 20 minutes behind and the push start would be at 9:00am.  Okay, I said in the text message.  So I decided to take my sweet ass time getting ready.  And then do some errands beforehand.  Like pick up water and get gas for my car.  Well taking my time and finally heading there, I text them thinking they would be late.  Well I was wrong.  I should have known Mikey would make up time by speeding on the freeway.  And what do you know it he did.  He apparently speed at an average of 85 – 90 mph on the freeway heading down to San Diego from Orange County.  So unknown to me he got there when we said he would originally be there.  So now I was was the one who was late.  And all I can say for myself was, Ooops!  Sorry man!

After arriving about 10 mins after they did, I got my water, camera, and hat on an met them a few feet away from where I parked my car.  With introductions, Hi’s, and hugs out of the way we began making our way to the trail which would take us up to the Potato Chip.

Only 2 minutes into the hike, we already made our first wrong turned.  For this trip I decided to make a video diary, just like we were going to be stranded and lost and this would be the video the rescuers would find.  A little dramatic yes but it makes for more of an exciting trip.  And after a couple of minutes of looking at the map, talking it out, and a few jokes to poke at Mikey we found the correct trail to go on.

It was now 9:00am and the heat was rising but we were all in good spirits.  Okay, this was one of the first hikes for me in a couple of weeks.  I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to make it.  However with our troops of friends one of them being a nurse, we slowly and steadily made our way up.  The views along the way where beautiful.  Lake Poway where we started was calm and blue as the morning clouds burned off as the sun rose high and hotter throughout the morning.

Getting into the stride of the hike, the breathing started to get labored and heavy.  And at that moment all I can think of was, I can’t wait until this is over.  But being the competitor as I am sometimes, I didn’t want to give up and I didn’t want to miss on the chance to get a photograph at the chip.  So push on I go.  Luckily the group of friends that I went with understood and encourage breaks here and there or more so anytime anyone wanted to have a break.  So include the determination, group of friends, and a multiple breaks along the way it made the hike was not as bad.  I was seriously a bit nervous to embark on this hike because of the heat.

After hiking for more than 2.5 miles, we finally reached the spot.  Within the last few hundred of the chip, it showed itself in all its glory.  From far it looked small and ready to break.  And plus it showed the crowd of people that sat and or waiting to go to the chip.  And with only a wait in front of us, we excited reached out destination.

This is where the introduction comes in.

Photo Credit: Bryan Lin My friends and I reach Potato Chip Rock!

Photo Credit: Bryan Lin
My friends and I reach Potato Chip Rock!

After spending nearly an hour at the top, we had to make our way down.  The trip down the mountain wasn’t as bad as the trip up.  This time we had gravity to help us down.  But with that said it still wasn’t the easiest of hikes to go down.  Now boulders and the afternoon heat was the issue or the struggle.  But it luckily the breezes picked up a bit and that help regulate the temperature and the comfortableness of hiking down the mountain.

And finally after about an hour of hiking down, we reach the bottom of the hike.  Hot, tried, but happy and excited to know that we accomplished the hike, got some pictures, and had great bonding time with each other.  It was a great way to catch up with one another and also challenge ourselves mentally and physically.

The things that I learned on this hike is the following:

  • Don’t under estimate yourself.  You must start out with every task no manner what with a positive note.
  • Friends are there to support, humble, and encourage you.  It is a two way streak.
  • Physical challenges are what brings friends together.
  • Friends don’t always have to ask what you need, they just do it.
  • Always have fun and poke fun at each other.
  • Walks are great times to relate to one another.
  • Cherish the moments with each other and share something about yourself that is true and honest.

I would love to do this hike again and can’t wait for the next adventures that we take together.  Chances are it will be this coming winter; Snowboarding anyone?

Oliver the Friend…and finding a tribe of friends

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Growing up I wasn’t the popular kid nor was I part of the in crowd. I would say that I was purely independent and happy with that. But there were times more times than not that I was excluded from doing and hanging out with certain people and groups that I just didn’t fit in. Experiencing those was one of the hardest things that I had to deal with. I don’t blame this experience but it is because of this that I have become a little skeptical when some people / groups want me to take part in any activities. My usual first conclusion is, they want something from me and then afterwards I would be no use anymore. And most of the time this was the case.

These experiences where one of the hardest things to deal with and endure while I was growing up. Being excluded because I didn’t fit in was really hurtful and hard to deal with for me. I didn’t cry but my feeling and heart were bruised and aching.

The way I death with this was by keeping myself busy with things that I enjoyed and loved. Those things included playing sim city, sketching out buildings and cities, and keeping with my studies. I had friends I could hang out with but the fear of being left out of things made avoid hanging out with them sometimes. I didn’t want to put myself through that.

The one thing that did help was that I knew that there where people and friends out there to be made that would like me for me and wouldn’t intentionally leave me out.

And I did eventually find those friends. These are friends that I feel completely myself and I genuinely get excited to hangout, catchup, and be around with.

One group of friends are a few from high school. These friends I met through the sports I did in high school. These friends I connected with because they not only supported me. They also challenged me and humbled me. These are the friends that nominated me not because I was the fastest but because of my heart. One these friends, I fondly remember said to me, you have good heart. Which at time and even today means so much to me. Hearing that made me see that I was doing exactly what I was suppose to do, which was to be a friend and care and support those around me.

In addition to these friends are some friends that met in elementary school and junior high school that I’m still friends with to this day. These are the friends that when I hangout with them it feels like I just say the, last week. These are the friends that I made during the years of rejection, that didn’t reject me but wanted to be my friend. And to those friends, your friendship over the years have been great. And although we don’t talk much these days, but when we do hangout we start where we just left off. I sincerely cherish and I’m very thankful for our friendship.

The next set of friends where the ones that I met in college. These are the friends that hung out with and grew together with during those formative college years. These are also the friends that I got drunk with the first time but cared for me and made sure that I was taken of. I know it is funny to call people friends when they got you drunk however these are the types of friends that you can trust. They are the ones that will care for you no matter what. These are the friends that on drop of a dime will go out of their way to help you out when you are need. They are also the friends that will challenge you and humble you. They are the brothers and sisters that you didn’t have but you have now because you have such a bond with them. And these are the types of friends that you really need in life.

And then there’s a new set of friends that along with my previous set of friends have help me embrace a new me and let see that my dreams and ideas are more possible than before. These friends I have only met and made recently. However in the short time that we have gotten to know each other, I have grown close and find of each and everyone of them. These friends are not just great friends but they are sources of inspiration. They have not only let me see the impossible as possible but they like my other friends have challenged, humbled, and care for me like family. It is when I’m with these friends that I get my batteries recharge and feel content and peace. I can take a deep breathe and feel relax. I’m grateful and lucky to have met these friends and connected to them on another level that I haven’t been able before. And that’s not to say that my friends previously mentioned didn’t do that because they did in a lot of ways. I just wasn’t there yet in my life and ready however they are part of my life now and only made it richer. But this set of friends have enriched my soul, mind, spirit, thought, and dreams become alive and ready to burst out. They are there to help celebrate for what I can offer to the community at large. And they do so willing not because they have to but because they WANT to be there and only want me to see me succeed.

My tribe of friends however small is a very special and tight knit of friends. If you are reading this you will know who you are. And I want you to know I appreciate whole heartedly very hi, how are you, smile, hug, hand shake, laugh, encouragement, joke, high five, question, and moment that I share with each and everyone of you. You guys give me so much and don’t ask for anything in return, you just genuinely want to care for me. I and blessed and happy to have you part of my life. You give me peace, energy, and love like a family does. And with the biggest hug and heart; THANK YOU! <3

All things have a end and a begin, it is just a matter how you see it.

Oliver the…and a rough few days

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The last few days have been such a rough few days.  There so much going on, both good and bad.  Sometimes when it is like this, it makes you wonder WHY?!  One minute you are at a high and then the next you are at low.  And when that happens to you more and more it begins to wear down on you.  Your energy starts wavering and you lose interest in the things that you once did regularly.  And then you try to do those things that makes you happy but then you feel bad for trying that and neglecting / blocking out the negative, knowing that you it is not your fault but still care enough about it.

I don’t know if you ever go through this ( well I’m sure you do too) but I am going through this right now.

All things have a end and a begin, it is just a matter how you see it.

All things have a end and a begin, it is just a matter how you see it.

And going through this has been leaving me in a fog with no clarity in sight.  And the only solution that I can think of is take it day by day and see where it goes.  The only other thing that I know that is helping me is writing down / blogging how I’m feeling and just getting it out there.