Yes, you can

Yesterday, I announced that I had joined Backpacker Magazine as a contributor. Almost three years ago, when I moved here, I would have never dreamed that that would be possible. I am NOT a self-help guru. I have issues, I have fears, I have hangups and I have warts. I have obsessions, and I have compulsions. I have bills that need to be paid and I have stress galore.

But they still chose me.

I haven't climbed Mount Everest, and I never will. I haven't even climbed Humphreys Peak, the Arizona highpoint.

But the reason that I believe that they chose me, and the reason for ANY success that I have had in the outdoor industry, what little that may be, is because I am only me.

Today, an unnamed person that participated in Teton Sports' famous #hikerchat said that their dream was to do something. I told them that if they could dream it, they could do it.

Two years ago, I didn't even have any dreams. Certainly not any outdoor ones.

But lest you say, 'Look at him, now', remember that what I did or do in the wild certainly pales in comparison to what many of my friends have done, and do.

I used to think that points of view like, 'if you can dream it, you can do it' were so much psychobabble. And to some extent, it may not be completely true. But one of my favorite hashtags is #tryingstuff. You do not have to be great at anything that you do. You just have to try. If you try and fail, it is better to fail, than to not have tried at all.

When I first started blogging, I thought my blog was terrible. I thought the platform was cheesy and that because it wasn't WordPress like many of my friends' blogs, that it was crap. (Yeah, really...)

But as it turns out, people like the blog (and me?) because I don't follow the herd.

You may not know it but my Backpacker picture was chosen by me because I am wearing a white tank top over a long sleeve Reebok base layer undershirt. No one else wears this. I even admit that I look silly, but I wear it because I like it and I feel comfortable in it. I purposely chose a picture of myself that I knew made me look silly because the silly is me. I'm not silly, but sometimes my outfits are!

Now... the me has changed. I used to be awful about comparisons. Yesterday, when I read all of the blog posts about #Monumentsforall, I had a crisis of confidence. See, I'm not good any more with meticulous research. I lack the patience to do that type of research and documentation any more.

To quote, Colonel Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman, "I'm too old, I'm too f*****ng blind."

What I do is speak from my heart and in the way that I feel IN THAT MOMENT.

But I'll always be me, and being me is just good enough.

I'm certainly never going to be confused with Jon Krakauer. Hell, I'll never be confused with my friends that blog about the outdoors. But what I am good at is giving advice. If you read this, and you think that you can't do something, yes, you can. You really, really can.