Manversation

In honor of the famed Austin Powers, “Let me introduce you to…um…myself”.  From here on out I will be known as “Bol”. I selected this screen name primarily because it allows a certain level of anonymity to the outside world, but also carries a distinctive classification among my friends and family.  Like the other fine gentlemen on this site, I intend to use this forum to simply share my perspective on various experiences of the modern 30-something male.  Although the men of Manversation share a slightly homogeneous being and share several core principles crucial to long-term friendship, we intend to leverage the various endeavors each has created over the years to offer an insightful and unique perspective.  I am happily married of 5 years (rapidly approaching 50) to a very beautiful, motivated, organized, selfless yet and subtly tenacious wife.  We have two extremely energetic daughters who remind us each day how fast life happens and if we don’t enjoy it every chance we get, it quite simply will pass us by.  Our eldest, “R” is turning 5 this winter and enjoys the typical childhood activities that we all have been forced to try a time or two, but she truly seems in her element at school (more on this later…).  Our youngest, “L”, just turned 2 and is quickly absorbing every habit (the good and the bad) her big sister imposes at every waking moment.  I love being a father and a parent (it’s easy to say now, they haven’t hit the teen years yet) and so you can expect many more postings around this subject.

At 32, I take a lot of pride in acting anything but my age, whether it is playing kickball, enjoying endless bodily function comedic sketches, or wearing shorts when at all possible, (thanks to our “sauna-like” abode) I strive to be ageless.  Since society only allows for a certain level of negligence and immaturity (turning 18 and leaving high school is the socially-imposed threshold) you quickly learn everything you do has long-term consequences.  So, after high school I went on to college (many more posts of this nature down the road) for a bachelor’s in Zoology in ’98, spent 5 aimless years before finding and marrying the wife of a lifetime in ’03.  I was able to sneak in a Master’s degree in Business related management before the kids’ activities took over our free time.  Since then, we’ve been establishing permanent roots in the Denver to leverage the best family and friend network anyone could ask for, and for this we are extremely grateful.  For 8 hours a day each weekday, I pass the time sandwiched in a grey fabric-covered cube just trying to figure “it” out.  I really don’t mind the job itself, but I feel very strongly that I have much more to contribute than my corporation is willing to tolerate.  Nonetheless, I’m looking forward to this blog adventure and I hope that despite my seemingly self-therapeutic posting style, (consider yourself forewarned!) you find my stories better than a stick in the eye!

Well, I’ve done this a little out of order, it would seem. I’ve already posted on a few other topics before writing my intro post. There were a couple reasons for this:

1).    I thought it might be kind of monotonous to have four days straight of intro posts about us.
2).    I wrote the content for my other posts first.

Anyway, as you’ve no doubt surmised from my previous posts, I like travel, cooking, working with my hands and doing creative things in general. I think of myself as a Renaissance man or jack-of-all-trades kind of person. I was very heavily into art as a child and drew and painted pretty much whenever I got a chance up through about high school. Since discovering music in my junior year of high school, I’ve sang in choirs and played classical guitar and other musical instruments on and off for about 12 years including a 2 year stint as a music major where I played upright bass in the university orchestra and jazz bands. I’m fluent in Spanish and that’s what my undergraduate degree is in.

Somewhere in there, I dabbled a little bit with computers, I think around junior high. I wrote some role playing game type programs in basic on the old Apple IIe but unfortunately didn’t stick with it so my bio isn’t going to read like so many others on the web that state something like: “…then went on to learn Linux, C++, html, JavaScript, built a circuit board in my garage, started a web-hosting service, and am now making boatloads of money writing this blog.” Nope, sadly, that’s not me; I lost interest after tinkering with good old basic on the Apple IIe for about six months and I rely on Nate for the heavy lifting when it comes to the design and programming on this blog.

Like many (most?) other people with a non-professional degree, I work in a field totally unrelated to my major. I think my job is really about as good as it’s going to get for an office job – my bosses are quite reasonable, my coworkers are generally pretty good people and the pay and benes aren’t bad at all - I get five weeks paid vacation per year and in less than two more years that will go up to six. However, like a lot of other people who are “knowledge workers,” or office drones, I don’t feel like this career is my calling and I can’t see myself staying here until it’s time to retire.

However, after dabbling in many different things as listed above, I have found what I believe to be my true calling in life. About three years ago I bought a house (big mistake, more on that later- perhaps much more and many posts), and was looking around for furniture and getting pretty annoyed with the flimsy crap that was available in my price range. I remembered having read or heard about some woodworking classes at my local community college and decided to go learn how to make my own coffee table. Now, three years later, what began as a one-semester plan to make a table has turned into six semesters (and counting) of studying woodworking and furniture design. I’m in the process of building a workshop in my garage and my goals for 2009 include opening an online store to sell some of my smaller projects such as boxes and turned items like peppermills, and getting into an art show to exhibit some of my larger work like coffee tables.

I’ve been perpetually single with the occasional random fling for the last few years. During that time the longest relationship I had lasted a little over two months. I think both my threshold for putting up with female craziness and my inherent drive to get sex are lower than that of the average man. You know the guy who lives for nothing but to chase the ladies and spends every spare moment (and dollar, probably) thinking about his next hook up, trying to get numbers, buying girls drinks etc? Well, that sort of thing has always seemed like a waste of money and energy to me and I’m pretty much at the other end of the spectrum. I like having a girlfriend but I think I’m just too lazy to go through some of the customary and necessary gyrations to get one.

I guess I do need to make more of an effort in that department, though it has grown increasingly difficult to generate quality leads as more and more of my friends get married. This has the twofold effect of; 1). Reducing my pool of available wingmen for heading out to the bars and clubs, and; 2). Reducing the amount of single girls in my social circles that I could easily meet or that people could set me up with (married couples don’t tend to hang out with very many single women). Though as I write this, I’m still feeling pretty good about the girl I met last weekend, and if that doesn’t pan out, there’s always online dating again. So, I’m sure that with my long list of other interesting topics I’d like to cover, you will be hearing about some of my observations about wading through the modern dating scene.

Hello. My name is Brian; a proud member of this group of gentlemen, determined to hold a meaningful conversation with the men of the world, filled with substance, value, and real significance. Welcome to the new definition of the Manversation! Allow me to introduce myself and my point of view.

I’m a very young 32 year old married guy. I love who I am, but I deal with my fair share of frustration. I’m still uncertain about my direction in life. I’ve been going to school for what seems like forever but I still don’t have a degree. I work in a corporate hive of cubicles, toiling at menial office tasks, dreaming my life away. While that probably sounds depressing, it’s not meant to be. It’s not who I am.

I’m a risk-taking entrepreneur in spirit, a conservative realist in action. I’m a good athlete, and a good sport. I love my wife, and I cherish my friends. My interests include self education, technology, fishing, poker, science, racquetball, working on cars, camping, filmmaking, road trips, dogs, soccer, cooking, gardening, trivia, tinkering in the garage…okay; the list could go on forever. As I’m sure many readers can relate, my interests are so broad that it’s hard to devote all my time to just a few. You can expect this same expansive vision from my posts on this blog.

Greetings and salutations all, let the Manversation begin.  Thank you for stopping by.  This first post will be about me and my interests.

My name is Nate; I am thirty two years old and have a lot of hope along with plenty of angst for what the future holds for me, my family and my friends.  The purpose of this blog is to cover some of the pressing topics we all face today.  I will tell you up front I am neither heavily political nor religious.  My interests lie in the intrinsic value of the human being, the incredible innovations we are capable of, the amazing technological advances created by the human brain, and our limitless imagination.  My absolute favorite magazine is Popular Science, which feeds my craving for what’s new and what’s on the horizon.  My ultimate dream is to have my home off the grid via a combination of solar power and wind power.  Jay Leno has been doing it for around a year and a half. I know, he has plenty of money and the reality of me being able to afford such a system is unlikely, and yes, I know the link is for popular mechanics (I said my favorite magazine is popular science) that’s just where the info is.

My reasoning for the solar and wind system is not to offset my carbon footprint or to buy “carbon credits.”  I just like to be self sufficient and through technology I am able to be. In fact, the whole idea of buying carbon credits makes my head hurt, it’s just about the dumbest idea I’ve read about in a long time.  I saw a bumper sticker on a Subaru Forester recently stating they bought enough carbon credits to offset their cars emissions for a year.  Congratulations, the sad thing is your car is still polluting and all this individual has done is made themselves feel better about it.  You are either polluting or you are not, there is no buyout option to make your emissions vanish.

Spending time with my beautiful wife is my favorite part of any day, we are well into our second year of trying for our first child, and I’ll have a series of posts chronicling the challenges of becoming a father.  If anyone else is having a hard time starting a family perhaps we can relate and talk about how sex becomes business and not so enjoyable.  I never thought it would happen but it has.

My degree is in Media Arts and Animation so naturally along with learning web design and 3d modeling, playing computer games is a part of my life, most notably Half Life 2, World of Warcraft, (yes, I said World of Warcraft, and no, I don’t spend the entire day glued to the computer, while sucking down lethal amounts of Mountain Dew, wreaking havoc in an imaginary world, all the while satisfying my ID through immense amounts of immediate gratification.  Although, I secretly wish I could.) Diablo III is coming out soon so perhaps the statement about spending time with my wife will soon be rephrased to “spending time with my divorce lawyer.”

For the times I get outside I enjoy snowboarding, hiking, wakeboarding, camping, etc.

And a final note for this first post.  I love listening to Glenn Beck.  He makes sense, and cuts through all the crap with which the mainstream media floods the public.

Rescuing “Manversation” from the gutter

A casual Google search of the term “manversation” will reveal several definitions, interpretations and blogs based around this term, many of which are rather crude and limited in their scope. It seems that the popular view of a ‘manversation’ is that it is a conversation among men about (usually vulgar) topics that cannot be discussed when the ladies are around. However, it is our endeavor to expand and improve the definition of “manversation” with this blog. To us, a manversation is all about talking with the guys about the stuff that really matters – life and personal development, family and friends, work, leisure, health and wealth. It’s a friendly conversation among male friends to bounce stuff off one another and make sure we’re all on track to be men that will be admired as having lived a life worth living and provided for those around us. It’s a place where we turn to each other for inspiration, articles about interesting, manly activities and pursuits, and reflections on what it means to be a man in the 21st century.

The once simple role of the man as protector and provider has been expanded with new demands to be equal caregivers in our children’s upbringing, to be strong yet not emotionless, sensitive yet still manly. While many of these new demands are welcome and frankly long overdue, such as being more involved in the care of our children, some simply represent the potential minefields a modern man must negotiate in a world that has grown increasingly politically correct and hostile towards traditional manly attitudes. In short, it is a challenging time to be a man and live up to manly ideals of the past. And yet, that is what we must do if we are to continue to thrive as a society!

Four unique points of view

What makes this blog unique is that it features the writing of four men with common interests but different points of view. We’ve known each other since high school or earlier – Nate and I have been friends since 2nd grade! We’re all in our early thirties, hold relatively unexciting but stable office jobs, and we share a passion for outdoor activities such as camping, hunting and skiing / snowboarding in our beautiful native state of Colorado.

One of us, Bol, is married and has two beautiful young daughters. Brian and Nate are also both married but don’t have any children yet. Nate and his wife are trying to conceive but Brian and his wife aren’t. (Though he tells me they aren’t really being careful not to either)! Finally, there’s me, Chris, a perpetually single man currently enjoying the freedom of the bachelor lifestyle but thinking (for the first time ever) that it might be awesome to start a family too!

So, you’ve got four lifelong friends, with different talents, ambitions, and dreams. We each bring a unique point of view to the table when it comes to what it means to be a man and we hope that as we all find our voice as writers that we will help each other grow and provide some interesting and useful content for our readers too. Over the next few days we’ll each reveal a little more about ourselves in a series of introductory posts then we’ll proceed to delve into our topics of manversation!

Join in on the manversation

We hope that you’ll come along for the ride and we think there will be something for most men to enjoy. Here’s a list of some of the topics we’ll be covering soon:

• What I learned from my recent job interview
• The renaissance of the renaissance man
• A thought or two on cooking
• Dreams and goals: building a home “off the grid”

If you like what you see over the next few days, please subscribe, or join in on the manversation by posting a comment below!