It's (always) Time To Develop

I have always found the ideas of development to be very interesting. A man named Erik Erikson was one of the leading developmental stage theorists years ago. He changed his last name to Erikson to spite his father, positing that he was his own son; Erik’s Son. Erikson. Tad narcissistic if you ask me, but hey, takes one to know one.

Erikson talked about how throughout our lives we are all faced with developmental crises. At any given stage of life, one is trying to answer some sort of existential question about themselves. From the ages of 12-20 the question one attempts to answer is, “Who am I?” From 20-40 one asks if they are somebody who can love. From 40-65 we ask how we can build into the next generation. The stages aren't perfect, but if you look around you can see them taking place in people you know all around you. Whatever age group you are in, you are probably trying to answer one of the above three questions right now. He had five other stages, but you probably need to get back to work in a minute, so let’s get moving.

During another one of my necessary and uninterrupted rants a few weeks ago, my dad asked me why I kept calling them developmental crises. I should have told him to just listen or I would change my name to Colter Colterson, but I decided to entertain the question. I thought for a minute before I remembered something my professor had told us. Crisis = when the demands of the situation outweigh the resources that we have available.

We are constantly facing developmental crises. Children face them almost daily. A given situation might demand that they walk, yet they don’t have the resources to do so. They might want a cookie that is on the coffee table and for some reason, mom and dad aren’t helping them this time. When you walk to go grab something from the cupboard, you don’t see if as developmental because you already have the resources to walk. An infant does not. They have to develop the resources. In terms of science and matter, they say that something cannot come from nothing, but here it does. Walking comes from not being able to walk. Well, perhaps it comes from the potential to walk, but something large still comes out of something small.

You are facing a developmental crisis right now. Either that or you are in between them. The reason that we become stagnant is because we don’t want to face what we have to face. But somewhere in your life there is a situation that is calling you to be different. You've got to change in order to cope, to thrive, to grow, to love…

Some situation is demanding something from you that you do not have the resources to succeed in. Sure, the word “demand” might be strong. Technically, it is never demanded that we walk. Some people get along fine without walking, perhaps because of an accident. So you could say “no” to walking. If an infant were able to think at this level they might say, “I don’t know how to walk, therefore I can’t, and I won’t. I will never walk.” But walking is good! You’ll fall at the beginning, but there’s people around to support you if you don’t do it alone.

What situation in your life is requiring you to exercise resources you don’t have? Right now you may not know how to do what life is calling out of you. But one thing you do know how to do is develop resources that you didn’t previously have.

Now, I want to write about counseling.

I’m looking at establishing some more direction here. When people stop me on the street to ask if I am the one who writes that informative and hilarious blog, I often stop to respond. I always enjoy entertaining a fan. One question I’ve never really known how to answer is what the blog is about. I sort of just write whatever I am feeling. Sometimes I try to be funny, sometimes I try to be sentimental. My friend Nate writes on fitness because he is a personal trainer. I decided that I am in sort of a unique position by being in school for counseling. I have learned a lot over just the past six months that I personally believe others would find interesting too. So, I’m going to give that a shot.

Top 10 Things To Disappoint Me In 2013

For a few years now I have written a list of the top ten things to disappoint me in the previous year. I stole the idea from my friend, Ryan Harrington. His writing completely surpasses mine and I suppose his ideas do too, since it was his idea. Never-the-less, I have created my list for 2013. I realize that I am eight days late on this. I apologize to my eight readers.

10. The Bachelorette - I was at a friend’s house earlier this year. His wife was watching the bachelorette. I peered over at the TV to see what craziness was taking place on the screen. Amidst my comments of disgust I noticed that I have moved to standing by the couch. As she began to make out with yet another man on the show after a date with a different gentleman, I had moved towards sitting on the arm of the sofa. It must have been only five minutes before I had learned her name and the name of most of the other guys and was full on lounging on the couch at this point, completely engulfed in the show. The show had won. The ridiculousness had pulled me in. I went to their house the next Monday for dinner again...and to watch the bachelorette. Maybe I should change this one to “myself.”

9. Google + - College humor recently released a video joking how google is going to blackmail you into joining google plus by sharing everything you’ve searched on incognito mode and all of the embarrassing emails you’ve written over the years. I think if more people don’t start using it soon, this may become a reality.

8. Understanding That Studying Hard Yields Better Grades - When I say that I am a poor test taker, I think what I mean is that I don’t like studying so I don’t do it and play sports instead. After working very hard on a 25 page pager, 20 page paper, and theories final, I procured a 96%, 91%, and 92% respectively. No longer can I say that I don’t know how to get good grades, I now have a responsibility to act or continue on not caring. My comfort in the latter is rapidly increasing.

7. American Beer - Ignorance is bliss, a popular theme in my disappointment lists. That sort of rhymed. When I was in the UK this year, I learned about cask ales. After ordering my first one of the trip, I did not order a beer for the remainder of the trip that was not a cask ale. Unfortunately, they are not nearly as popular in the states. I have only been able to find two breweries in Denver who offer them. In some ways, I wish I had never learned about them.

6. Going So Long Without Learning About Lulullemon - Last Christmas my mom gave me some clothes from lululemon. I opened up the box and found what seems like some regular athletic clothes. She then told me that they were from lululemon. I had never heard of this store and it sounded quite feminine. I became skeptical of the gifts as to preserve my already very masculine image. She told me that her trainer wears them (he is a badass and in the special forces HOF) and that they are very comfortable. Indeed she was correct, they are the most comfortable clothes I have ever worn. Also, being that very few dudes shop there, the logo often draws attention from females that I encounter in my daily life. “OMG, are you wearing lululemon? That’s awesome!” Masculinity preserved.

5. The Number of Nice People at Seminary - Most of my life I have fit in the angsty one at the church. This semester, I have come across so many nice and open minded people that I have little to be angry about. My angst is met with phrases such as “I can see where you are coming from,” and “I admire your passion.” Now I’m just left in the crowd trying to be nice too. Problem is, I don’t know how to do it.

4. Learning about Lululemon - There is no way that I can afford to shop there. Instead, I browse eBay hoping that some rich person tried the clothes on, didn’t like them and decided to sell them on eBay for a fraction of the cost. Given that rich people usually don’t waste time trying to regain $20 on eBay, this has yet to become a reality.

3. Our Take on Miley Cyrus - This one is actually kind of serious. Here is a young woman who is literally falling apart before our very eyes. The only person who has really stepped up and tried to help her is Sinead O’Connor. Instead, we will watch her plummet to her inevitable stint in rehab and scoff at what a mess she is. Maybe if we weren’t so engulfed in the train wreck that is taking place in front of us, producers wouldn’t keep having her whore herself out on national television.  

2. The Phoenix Suns - This was the year. After seasons of being stuck in sheer mediocrity the suns had finally started to build in the right direction. They had gotten rid of their better players, anybody with experience, and loaded up on guys who had hardly cracked any rotation in the NBA. Vegas had us pegged at 19-63, wow! We were going to be awful and were going to get a top 5 pick in the draft next year, hopefully number 1, landing us a future super star. Instead, the suns go off and start off at 17 and 10. I went to the game the other day and they beat the lakers by 27, they looked incredible. Goodbye Andrew Wiggins.

OMG! I can't believe anybody
listened to my album!

1. IOS 7 - God, if this wasn’t an easy one. This is the most runaway winner since Taylor Swift’s “I can’t believe people like me look” won in 2011. I was perfectly happy with my iPhone 4. Now the phone runs like an overweight man who is one KFC bucket away from disrupting the earth’s rotational axis.

Ok, thanks,

Being Prepared

I once met a man who told me that while he was in college, he took a short spout as a vegetarian. He would go months without eating meat but then every now and then he would get a craving that he just couldn't deny. He would roll through a fast food joint, grab a hamburger, and then go park his car in a parking lot and eat it. He said he would feel immense shame and did not want anybody to know that he was eating meat. We of course laughed at the story and I wondered why it was that he was so ashamed. Lots of people eat meat, I said it’s not like he owed anything to anybody. He could be as much of a vegetarian, carnivore, omnivore, or whatever he wanted to be. But from what I gathered, there’s something that hurts us inside when who we want to be, say we are, and are...don’t line up.

I had a similar experience to this when I was in high school. A friend and I decided that we were going to take part in a 24 hour fast together. We would hold each other accountable to the fast and both learn from the experience. So we got together for dinner that night. Afterwards, we went and did something very active. I can’t quite remember what we did, but it was something like playing soccer for an hour or so. After that, we were of course hungry because we were high school boys who had just run around for hours. But we stuck to our word. We both ended up sleeping at his house that night and didn’t get a lot of sleep since we wanted to hang out, stay up late, and watch movies.

The next day we woke up tired and hungry. I left fairly soon because all we could think about is that you are supposed to eat breakfast in the morning, and we were just left to stare at each other, wallowing in our hunger. Tangent, yes I understand that this is not a long time to go without eating in comparison to the rest of the world. But anytime you are purposely skipping meals for “spiritual growth” you tend to think about it and your body starts telling you, ”Hey, this is when we eat!”

I had to go to band practice and ended up having a terrible practice. Everyone in the band made a bunch of popcorn which smelled so good. You always know when somebody in your office is making popcorn because it ruminates throughout the building and you just want to know if you can have some. While everyone laughed and ate their popcorn, I got mad and ended up having a terrible practice and getting mad at my friends in the band. On my way home from practice with about 6 hours left to go in my fast...I couldn’t take it anymore. The McDonald's on the way home might as well have been calling my name. At this point, I wanted everything on the menu and I’m sure I ordered just short of that. I went and ate in my car in the parking lot and felt so much guilt. Why did I feel guilty though? I eat all the time, why was this different than any other time? It’s because it didn’t line up with who I said I would be that day. The next day I saw my friend and he said that he couldn’t make it either and ended up eating way too much as well. We both felt the shame of not living up to who we wanted to be.

I told this story to another friend and he told me that I didn’t fail because the fast was hard. I failed because I didn’t set myself up well. I exercised way more than I should have if I wasn’t going to be giving myself food. I stayed up terribly late and didn’t get a lot of sleep. I then went and surrounded myself by other people who were eating tasty snacks. It wasn’t the fast that was the problem, it was all the other factors that I put around myself. But what ended up happening was I cursed the fast. I cursed the goal. The fast had gotten in my way of eating and enjoying myself. However, I now see that wasn’t the truth. Other factors got in the way of who I said I would be. I understand that sometimes we may not amount up to who we want to be but I think it is important to note at what cost do we find ourselves falling short of our goals. For me, it was running around too much and staying up too late. Perhaps I’d have been willing to compromise my goal for something greater, but looking back, I don’t remember what movie we watched that night and I don’t even remember what game we played. All I remember is that I fell short.

Another goal that I took on about six months ago was in my workout routine. I committed to doing 20 squats per week, starting with just below my body weight, and adding 5 pounds each week. It was always a very miserable process, but the idea was that if I only added 5 pounds a week I could be lifting twice my body weight in just a few months and doing it at 20 reps! If you aren’t familiar with squatting, you can look it up on YouTube and understand that repeating the motion 20 times is grueling on ones body.

Each week I pretty much never wanted  to do the squats. I liked being able to say that I had done them and I liked that it made me stronger, but while I was in the middle of them, I thought it was hell. Now, I had a very specific routine I did in order to prepare myself for the 20 reps. I would get to the gym and warm up my legs with some box jumps. Then I would superset hamstring curls and leg extensions at 50 reps each for three sets at a very light weight. This would get my hamstrings and quadriceps nice and fired and ready to work. Then I would head over to the squat rack and do about 5 reps with just the 45 pound bar. Then I would do 5 reps with 95 pounds on the bar, to warm up a bit more. After that I would do 3-4 reps with 135 pounds, just so my body wouldn’t be shocked to go from 95 pounds to 175 and I could feel some weight on my back. At this point I would usually nervously jump and think about how much I didn’t want to do it until I got myself under the bar, lifted and said, “It will be over in a minute. It will be over in a minute. Just keep going, it will be over in a minute. God this is awful.” And I always did it. Except once I failed at 15 reps, but we won’t talk about that. But the key to success wasn’t in just trying for the goal, it came in the preparation. And the preparation was more extensive than when I got to the gym. I had to have something on my stomach. Something with some protein, carbs, and I probably needed some caffeine. And, I needed a good night sleep the night before. You see, I always succeeded (except for once) because I did everything to gear up towards success. I’m sure that if I had gone straight from McDonald's and tried to succeed, I wouldn’t have done it. Which is fine, because nobody else at the gym was doing what I was doing. Nobody expected it of me. But I gave my word, and said that’s who I wanted to be. And your word to who you want to be is important, even if it’s only to yourself.

Riding The Bus

*I wrote this one time when I had only been awake for about three minutes. I guess I have less of a filter at 7 am. I could edit it, but somebody told me to try writing right when I woke up, this is what we got*

Once upon a time I had to ride the bus. Well, had to makes me sound like a martyr. I got to ride the bus? I suppose got to makes it sounds nice. I paid the city of Denver and they would send a person to pick up me and a bunch of other people and drive me around. I (insert completely neutral verb) to ride the bus.

It’s rare that I really desire to start a conversation with somebody in such a setting. Nobody ever has anything good to say and is just talking for their own benefit. With the crowd that rode my bus, this was probably because their brain was fried from drugs and they had no social cues. Now, if I was reading a book and somebody noted how they had read that book, I would most likely be happy to have a conversation. I think you need to identify some point of common ground in starting a conversation. I once sparked the interest of a young woman on the bus based on the fact that we were both white and there was rarely anybody who was white on the bus. I received her phone number under the guise of a business contact and we went to coffee and talked about work for three minutes and then our social lives. But hey, in the moment, being white was unique enough to build a connection.

I was never sure if I liked the bus or not. I liked decompressing after work on my way home, that was for sure. One thing that I hated was waiting for the bus. I hate waiting for anything. I knew that it took me 2 minutes to get to the bus stop from my house if I jogged. This meant leaving the house every day at 7:07 to catch the 7:09. If the bus driver had been comfortable with me hopping on without the bus stopping as it turned the corner, I would have done so as to facilitate a speedy transition.

One day, a woman at the front of the bus was going on about how hard her life was and how she was going back to school and trying to raise her kids. At this point I was able to take a break from thinking about sports and not talking to everybody in order to listen to her. Well, I was more forced to take this break. Perhaps a stronger man could have continued in his thoughts while she yelled, but I was not that man.

At this point in my life I received some smug sense of satisfaction from printing off parts of scripture at work and taking it home with me. This was before I had a bible phone, so this helped me read the bible on the bus.

I don’t know why, but I decided that I wanted to give her some money. I don’t think it was much, maybe 40 or 60 dollars. When she got off the bus, I walked up to her and said, “excuse me ma’am, this is yours.” I had enclosed the money in the 15 or so pages that contained whatever section of the Gospel I was reading at the time. She didn’t even look me in the eye, said “thank you,” took it and walked off. As if it was indeed something she had dropped earlier or we had some prearranged meeting on the bus for me to give her something that was due to her. I derive all of those conclusions based on the sense she gave me that she deserved what I was giving her.

It sort of made me angry. I mean, I don’t know what I was expecting. I was just going off of a little intuition that perhaps she needed the pick me up or a little help. I think I always want this moment where I do something brief that hits the nail right on the head. You know, like walking up to a stranger and saying, “it wasn’t your fault and I am sure he loved you.” Then she breaks out into tears because that is what she has been needing to hear for the last 10 years. God, even my acts of giving are marred with selfishness.

I don’t know why I wrote about that today. Well, it actually came because I wrote down “once upon a time” and then tried to remember something that happened in my life that would fit in that scenario.

Give it a shot. Once upon a time...

10 Pound Bicep Curls

There’s this one bro that I always see at the gym. He kind of looks like me. He’s my height but the only difference is that there would have to be two of me to make him. He’s not fat, he’s just pure beef.

I usually like to watch the guys at the gym who are really strong and see what they are doing in their workouts. You know, try to pick up a few pointers from afar? A few things I’ve noticed is that it’s rare that they are on a machine, they incorporate a lot of body weight movements (pull ups and push ups), and here’s the biggest thing: don’t care what others think about what they are doing.

There are of course the strong guys who want everybody to be watching them and really care what others think of them. However, the overwhelming amount of tribal band tattoos, tapout shirts, and wrist/elbow bands plays trump to their muscular appearance and I no longer desire to look like them, thus have no pointers to pick up.

I digress.

Yesterday was a great example of this. I see this guy there all the time. I’m not sure if he lives there or not, but I definitely haven’t ruled it out. After I finished my set of, what I’m sure would only be the most impressive bench press one has ever seen, I checked to see what my friend might be doing. He was going bicep curls with 10 pound weights. He wasn’t doing the thing either where you look in the mirror and pretend like you hardly notice that you are moving weight. He was holding on to the top of the incline bench and pounding out as many bicep curls with this 10 pound dumbbell as he could, complete with sweat, groaning, and probably a little bit of resentment about how one time when he was a kid a coach told him he would never be good enough at football or something.

Most dudes wouldn’t grab the 10 pound dumbbells for anything, let alone bicep curls. Hell, I don’t like to grab less than 25. This guy was without a doubt the strongest guy in the room and he had the 10 pound weights. I’m not sure what he was trying to accomplish that day. Apparently he wanted to do something that would make him work for a long time at a light weight.

That day I understood why he was the strongest guy in the gym. It’s not necessarily because of the workouts he does. It’s because he walks in there and only cares about his goals. Not what others think of what he’s doing or what they think of his goals.

I know it’s just a gym and perhaps I’m being overly analytical. But I think that the way we exercise and treat our body has a lot to do with how we view and think of ourselves. It makes me wonder what I might be able to accomplish if my primary focus was betterment of myself for myself. Not for the approval of other men or to appear attractive to women, just for myself.

Life Update: Becoming Useful

Today is August 5th, 2013.  Thirty five months ago was the day that I packed up everything I owned and drove to Denver, Colorado along with my good friend Tyler, who would split the driving with me. Thanks again, pal...it was a long drive.

Let’s jump back for a minute to that time of life and make our way forward. I moved to Denver because I had never lived outside of Arizona in my whole life and wanted to try something new. I was offered a job at a company called Clayton Holdings as a Credit Risk Analyst. SPOILER ALERT: The job wasn't quite for me #tooextravertedfornumbers. Six months later was March 13th, I turned in my resignation, cut my hair into a mohawk, and started teaching guitar to kids. The mohawk and analyst job overlapped for a week but I dressed really nice that week as to distract everybody. “That cardigan is so nice I am sure that his hairstyle is completely business appropriate. I won’t even check.”

I thought that teaching guitar would be a job that just helped me pay some of my bills in a time of transition but proved to have a far greater effect on my life. As well, I also sought out an internship at a small church plant called Refuge Community Church and started helping to create an intentional community of ordinary radicals who would live communally in Denver. These were my two bigger passions: Church ministry and communal living.

It took about four months for us to find a house which ended up being at Federal and Alameda. If you’re not from Colorado, think of that one place of town where your parents wouldn’t want you to go when you were in high school. And you probably wouldn’t have been interested in going there either, because it wasn’t one of those hip and bad places to go. Well that’s Federal and Alameda. We later coined the phrase Culinary District to describe our neighborhood; a homage to the number of vietnamese restaurants in the area.

Moving on.

Jump to February 2013. Four of my roommates and I moved into a house that I am borrowing from the bank, in Englewood, a small little suburb of Denver. Yes, I own the house but it doesn’t really feel like you own it when the amount of money you owe is SOOOO much bigger than the amount of money you have already paid. I believe I own about a small section of the breakfast nook at this point.

As a community, we have seen our number of failures and successes. We still run our weekly  dinner night where everybody has one night a week they are to make dinner for the whole house. Different seasons have yielded different prayer meetings. There are a number of neighbors that we met, some that we have yet to meet, and others who we never did.

I still have a passion for community and believe that intentional living has the ability to change the church. Two years later I still don’t know exactly what that looks like. My prayer is that this isn’t just a two year experiment that has proved to be an exercise in futility. I would pray that we are still very much at the infancy of what has the potential to be a long lasting, well oiled machine for hope and change in a broken world.

Rewind to a few months ago. I believe it was February 12th. I found myself in a meeting room at First American TItle signing about 400 papers to purchase a house on South Inca street. I’m not sure if I was supposed to, but I kept the pen that I used to sign all my papers. It wasn’t completely full of ink but it probably had 75% left. I considered it a win and left the building.

(left to right) Nick, Colton, Jamie, Dave, and Bonnie all in Texas

Ten days later, my roommates and I had moved into the new house. I was and still am very grateful that they all moved in with me. If it wasn’t for the knowledge that I would immediately have four friends to rent rooms from me, I would not be able to afford the house, nor have enjoyed living in it. As well, I went into the house with the knowledge that I had four people in my life who supported me, loved me, and would see through these dreams of intentional living with me. I love the house that I live in and love the people that inhabit it with me. I will always be grateful that they made that possible for me.

So many things in my life were lining up the way that I wanted them. However, there was one major part of my life I couldn’t quite get to work. Work.

I am able to pay all of my bills and even have a little bit of extra money for fun and saving. However, there was nothing that was putting me on a steady path to have a stable career and have a family someday. As I believe I’ve mentioned before in my blog, I now romance about what it might be like to have a wife and kids and live in that house. I’ve realized that if I want my kids to eat, I would probably need a bit more money.

Money is not hard for me. I’m very good with money and I can usually find a way to get more of it. Money wasn’t the problem. The problem was stability. Trajectory. A path. Call it finding a career, shaking hands with people, moving up over the course of 30 years, and not hating it all the while. There’s no word for that? Hmm. Strange.

But I'm tired of waiting!

I could get back into finance, but I think I might rather get paid to go to the dentist every day. I was pretty good at teaching guitar and parents seemed to like me and I could continue building up clients. But that only solved the money problem, not the trajectory one.

Then it came to me like when you realize it’s raining. You may have felt the first raindrop 5 minutes ago and a few in between, but you really needed to feel the rain before you believed it was actually going to rain. The first drop is never enough. Plus, maybe it wasn’t even a raindrop to begin with.

I digress.

The thing that I loved most about teaching guitar was the one on one time. The personal and vulnerable interaction and somebody allowing me to connect with them on a deep level. I had thought about this for a long time but as I sat in the living room with Dave one night, it became very clear that I ought to go into counseling. Perhaps it helped to hear a close friend say that he thought that was exactly what I should be doing.

We mulled it over and the more we talked about it and thought about it, it was a perfect fit. Denver Seminary was about 3 miles south of my new house (I can even ride my bike along the river to get there) and they have a fantastic counseling program. I already lived with two people who had graduated from the program there and know a handful of other counseling graduates. Though it was already the middle of summer it was not too late for me to apply.

In addition to the time of schooling seeming to work out perfectly, it felt like the perfect career for me. The biggest reason being that when I thought about a career in psychology, it made me happy. It was the first time in years I was able to think about a job (besides professional basketball player) that I would be excited to go to. I took some time to pray, think, and discuss it all the while moving forward in the application process.

Several weeks went by and I was able to work with a fantastic admissions counselor. He completely understood my urgency in wanting to start classes this semester and moved the process along as quickly as possible.

I called up friends, asked for letters of recommendation, asked to have my entrance essay edited, and ordered my transcripts from undergrad (in which I coasted in hardly above a 3.0 just in case I ever wanted to go back to school, though I never thought I would... phew!). Thank you to all who helped me! Whether editing papers, writing references, talking with me, listening to me, or praying for me, thank you.

On July 24th I received word that I had been accepted into the program. I was excited, relieved, nervous, and hungry (always hungry) all at the same time.

Jump back to today. I am having coffee next door to the seminary at a little coffee shop I found that is just off the bike path. I will start classes on August 26th. I will be in school for the next 2.5 years putting me at 28 when I finish my masters and begin my career as a counselor.

So that’s where I am now. Three years into Denver, a couple jobs, a lot of questions, and a few answers. I am far from complete in my own personal journey. Two months shy of 26 I still have so much to figure out. However, I am so grateful to the Lord that I am able to put down one more building block in the foundation of my life.

I’ve committed to writing in here more. So subscribe to my blog if you want to keep up and journey along with me. I’m sure you’ll at least get a few laughs. Sometimes because I want you to laugh, others because you have made the same mistakes that I might currently be making, and others because you are figuring out the same things I am figuring out.

peace,

Colter

p.s. If you clicked on the link I emailed you because of the spoiler alert and found yourself not satisfied with the spoiler... Spoiler alert: Snape kills Dumbledore.