I am sick and tired of the 24/7 news cycle. The politicization & sensationalism surrounding everything. Baby, this is the way that it is. And always will be.

We are allowed to question things. To ensure that truth prevails. We are not our ideas or beliefs, no. But we are led to believe so. I, like the ideas and beliefs, are constantly changing. Processing both perceived “bad” or “good” information, and adjusting as necessary.

We don’t need more trouble.

Love. Truth.

I can be Chad Ripley. And Nothing, but everything. Shut up and pass the joint, Chad.

Communication can always be stronger.

So If I be wrong, don’t fret, just adjust accordingly.

River’s gon’ keep flowing, it ain’t worried about where it’s going.

Early morning sunshine tells me all that I need to know.

Baby, This is the way that it is…

You can still love others & be true to oneself.

You don’t need to hold any expectations; to stay true to oneself.

The research and time you put in to be as one is. It is your life. How do you want to spend it?

By the ocean. Existing.

I’m sick and tired of this 24/7 news cycle. The politicization + sensationalism surrounding everything.

Baby, this is the way that it is.

Someone once told me that time is a flat circle, where everything we’ve ever done or will do, we’re gonna do over and over again.

I don’t know if I believe that, but if that’s true; I hope that we can see through these perpetual thought + behavior patterns that often tear us apart, rather than bring us together.

That we can escape group think, to value and love community but to evade identifying with one particular tribe. & realize we are just 1 tribe, humans. Where we go from there, well, that all depends on whether or not you know that this is the way that it is.

August 12 & 21 journal + free write. Thank you.

Take care of yourselves.

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“It’s great to be lately, & I hope the same for you too,” scribbled on the last page of the notebook paper in my leather-bound journal, etched with my initials and a mountainscape on the front cover. It’s mine, yet for some reason, has always felt just a bit foreign to me. Don’t get me wrong, the idea of a personal journal, only to be read for my eyes and customized to me personally sounds ideal for a writer, right? Not for me, at least.

For the last year, as I’ve scribbled notes about work, life, and play all in these small white pages, I’ve come to realize a few things. Life is a constant ebb & flow of perceived negative and positive instances. What I mean is that all these things happen in our lives, new and old relationships, struggles of identity, and the “right path” to take, it’s all so real and difficult at times. But do we have to identify with all these perceived negative or positive instances of our lives, or can we just flow with it and take them for what they are; experience.

There is this weird pressure that we all put on ourselves to be something, anything. That we have to be sad or mad when things go bad, and vice versa. To identify with the good, the ugly, the “oooh and ahh” or the “FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK’s,” well, it just seems so fucking trivial at this point in my life. At least, that’s how I feel recently.

Most of my friends and myself included all spent four years at a university being told that we were in the process of becoming something, working towards becoming a “journalist” or an “engineer” or whatever for that matter. When we graduated last May, we were all thrown into a world where nobody had any clue what the next day would bring. While some held so tight to the idea that they have to continue to prove to everyone around them that they WILL be this ONE THING and there is no other way. I for one, took the hint from the world to just to strip myself from all these fucking titles, roles, whatever we all put on ourselves and hold so fucking close that in some cases, it ends up causing more harm than any good.

Sure, I may write from time to time. I take pictures and do some video work as well. And I even run my own business as a painter and general contractor, but those are just parts of a larger whole. A mere fraction of myself. Let’s just start with, My name is Chad Ripley and I am a human being. Where we go from there, well that’s up to you and me.

Yes there are times I can go back in the journal from the last year and notice times where I was identifying with the mellow drama of my own life, as Ram Dass like’s to point out. But if I’ve garnered anything from pages and pages worth of suffering and triumph, just plain old existing in this realm, it’s these few things.

Growth is all we can ask for. Progress, not perfection. And a constant surrender to all that is. And that the rainbows always do come after the rain. This game of life isn’t easy, not one bit. But next time you’re stuck in the “FUUUUUUCK THIS,” just try and see if from a different perspective, maybe that “bad” may not be so bad after all.

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The other day less than 20 seconds into my drive to work, a bright red cardinal swooped down and glided mere fractions away from the windshield. Eventually pulling up and making his way up to a nearby branch. I laughed to myself and said, “I wonder who that was?”

Ever since I lost my Papa five years ago, I’ve led myself to believe that Cardinals are the souls of loved ones checking in. They are often missed or hidden in plain sight, despite their bright red firetruck feathers. Occasionally they make themselves feel heard or seen, and ever since September 16, 2016 I’ve seen a lot of Cardinals, whether or not it’s Big Rip, I’ll keep telling myself it’s something.

Sometimes it feels like my dear best friend William Wheeler, who passed away nearly eight years ago. A month ago while on my normal sunrise walk with my dog, when turning right onto the street both Will and I grew up on, a red cardinal came swooping by my dog and I. It was a so close I saw the red flash before my eyes. I followed the Cardinal into the brush he entered and right before I turned my head to continue forward, he poked his head out and made himself be seen. I walked by the house Will had grown up feeling totally beyond myself, like I had just communicated with him somehow, someway.

The Cardinal that swooped in front of my windshield made me stop at the yield sign at the end of the road to take a moment. It took my breath away. A thousand questions and emotions rushed to my head, my stomach. I was half-laughing, crying, it felt really odd, yet grounding. I was grateful but also was reminded in that moment the suffering that losing someone brings about. Death has been something that has unfortunately just occurred just all too often in my short 23 years of life.

I can remember in 3rd grade turning off my Playstation 2 immediately after my mom came down the stairs and delivered the news that a classmate had passed away due to a brain tumor. From there, the list only grows, and with too many of them too close to home.

On March 16, I was reminded of that pain, the suffering that ensues when the phone rings and it’s death calling again. The only word that could come out of my mouth when I heard my dad say, “Casey died in a car accident last night,” was FUCK.

Casey only knew suffering, with so much loss in his own life it’s remarkable and admirable he kept it together for so long. He and I had something in common, we both lost a dear friend in Joshua Bonnell back in 2012. Josh was the son of one of my dad’s best friend, Gary.

All throughout my childhood Josh was the one who introduced me to all the things he loved, some of which included Grand Theft Auto, to which my Mom still isn’t thrilled about and riding anything with wheels. As long as it had wheels, Josh found a way to make them turn. He inspired me to get my first BMX bike, he brought me out in the trails in his dune buggies and ATV’s. Alongside Josh all those years, was Casey.

All of my memories with Josh for the most part involve Casey. I’ve been hanging out with Casey for what seems like the past 23 years. But when Josh died in that car accident, a piece of Casey, I selfishly believe, died with him. They were inseparable, the epitome of best friends. They caused a ruckus, made a lot of noise and just always had fun. I can only imagine that a loss of that magnitude just shook his whole entire existence. There’s no fucking playbook for how to react after you lose your best friend, you just try to make it through each day.

At least that is what I felt when both Josh and Will died in high school, like I really hadn’t a clue where to go or what to think. It just made me numb for a long time, and I’m sure Casey might have felt the same at times in the past decade or so.

With yet another Cardinal flying around, I am once again left to reflect on death. Nobody wants to talk about it, and I don’t blame them. I complained to my dad last night that this all sounded too “Woe-is-me” but after reading and “completing” it I feel more grounded and lighter than I did before. I was also reminded of just how big of a heart Casey had, despite all his scars, when the people lined up yesterday afternoon to celebrate his life. That all of this goes beyond our physical selves, that these Cardinals show up in times in our lives when we are lost, broken.

As the slideshow of pictures of Casey through the years played in a room separate from his urn, a picture of Josh and Casey popped up with their skateboards. Josh’s driveway was not one for skateboarding, yet those two always found a way to keep those wheels rolling.

Rest in Peace Casey McNamara, give Josh a big one for me.

Be like the river. The river eternally flows, despite all that it endures in a 12-month cycle. Freezing temperatures, fallen trees and leaves, and all those that inhabit its precious waters, whether for lifeline or pleasure. The river is one that doesn’t allow the obstacles in front of it to dictate how it flows. Sure, it might throw it off track to the right, but the water always finds its way down.

Be like the river, Chad. You haven’t written in months, but that’s okay. Keep on flowing, keep on learning and most importantly, just jump in the fucking water.

Life continues to prove to be increasingly challenging. Give your loved ones a hug and if you can’t do that, keep on flowing any way you can until the river mouth opens and you are set free to the ensuing ocean. Lately, it’s this mantra of “be like the river” which has kept me going.

A mantra that born into this universe just some short few months ago, on an expedition to the Northern Country, master blastin’ i-93 North with a dear friend of mine. As we meandered our way up the trail of Georgiana Fall’s, we both were humbled by all that surrounded us. It’s a pretty simple hike, but the tree’s felt a little bigger, the water rushed a little bit harder and the view’s sitting atop those falls, well, all that much worth it after some trailblazin’. We smiled that day, knowing that it’s all right in front of us.

And it’s still right in front of me, just a little hidden from plain sight. Tangled in all the bullshit that stems from just, well, life.

And while I haven’t found much time to write anything that is truly cohesive and well-thought out, like this piece, I have found myself jotting notes throughout these past few challenging months. Here’s one of my favorites:

who am i to write when 

maybe it’s the same thing as when i listen to justin wren depict his battle with his life and I feel this sense of deeper connection. like fuck man, i thought i was all alone in some of this shit. 

but our ego’s, especially mine, has this ability to make us feel lesser or greater than whatever it may be, person, place, thing. when simply we are all connected and equal, despite our physical, mental ailments, we are one.

the impeachment trials and everything else on cable television and social media is driving us further apart. we are a nation divided, a nation that strives on the empowerment of an ego, to believe that we are larger, the top of the food chain. but we aren’t.

i am no different than the herd of 14 deer walking through my backyard, no more than 20 feet away. 

i am no different than the boy in cameroon who has limited access to school supplies and works from the age of 13.

i can’t control that i was born into this life, but i can control how i choose to move throughout it. one that is aiming to be centered around empathy, connection, vulnerability. i may be a white straight male but first i am a fucking human being, so let’s start there. 

we all come in the same way and go out the same way, so how you gon choose to lead this existence? 

come on man, get beyond it.

Thanks for reading. Peace and love.

For the past few weeks, Dan Auerbach’s “Undertow” has started most of my mornings. The tune is just one of those ones you’d imagine in an opening scene of a movie, driving a dirt road, whatever, you know what I’m talking about.

Ironically, every time that song comes on I almost appears to leave my physical self for that 3:23 seconds. The kick drum matched with the bass and guitar line in the intro, into the explosion of sound to the first verse makes me truly feel like I am in a movie. Every. Fucking. Time. 

 And maybe that’s all this life has to be, imagining yourself as the star of the movie, a movie where you have full and complete control of how the script moves and reads. You have that control, even though the current state of our world has all of us thinking otherwise.

Sitting in the dark morning hours drinking my coffee like I do so many mornings, I try to find something different to listen to, something that might spark one of those moments where second nature kicks in and out of nowhere, I find myself writing, deciphering, weeding out all the good and bad that fills this mind of mine. 

Discursive thinking has always impacted my life, negatively and positively. The flow of thoughts has always been that of a wild river, like the ones you’d expect to see in the b-roll of an opening scene of a movie, with “Undertow” backing it.

Writing, creating, whatever takes me from the mind of a jumping Mexican bean to what I believe is the closest thing to a flow state, the state where I feel most free, connected to whatever “god”, universe, higher power out there. There is no need to even try to put a name to it. In those moments all you have to do is just be. JUST BE.

Joe Rogan talks in a podcast with Bryan Callen about how you should look at your life like you’re the star in the movie. Think of Will Smith in “Pursuit of Happyness”, although dramatized and made Hollywood, that flick is something I’ve come back to many times in my short 23 years in this world. 

“Hey. Don’t ever let somebody tell you, you can’t do something.

Not even me. All right?

You got a dream?

 You gotta protect it.

People can’t do something themselves, they want to tell you you can’t do it.

You want something? Go get it! Period!”

The idea that YOU have all the power in the world to make something out of yourself, whether or not that is a Wall Street broker or an artist, the pursuit of something once imagined or only in your wildest dreams is something nobody should squander or push away. Rather, sit with and sort through all that there is to these types of things. Doubt, resistance, the list goes on and on. It’s easier to just squash all of these ideas and continue to sit in the comfort of your present situation, even though oftentimes that comfort is more painful than the actual change itself.

Rogan says to write everything down, Matthew McConaughey says the same in his new book, “Greenlights”, and countless college professors begged us new generation to do the same. And this is far easier said than done, as many of us know. Our mind has this “beautiful” way of running rampant with thoughts up until the point where the pen hits the paper. Nothing. But that nothing often results in some of the best thoughts, that is if it is taken with patience and an open mind.

Our culture has driven us away from our minds, consumed in whatever the fuck is on these devices that litter our lives. And I don’t just mean our cellphones, I mean our televisions, alcohol, marijuana, whatever, things that often times take our minds off the present moment. And when we get lost in our thoughts and don’t take the time to weed them out and see if a new reality is possible, we jump to the next social media post or Netflix show without even taking more than five minutes to sit with this crazy fucking idea of how we’re going to pull ourselves out of this hole we’ve found ourselves in.

Write your own movie. Make your biggest dreams and aspirations possible. I’m not saying quit your job, but make time for that thing that brings you to that flow state I mentioned earlier. If you can find a way to make that flow state lucrative, explore it. Abundance isn’t an issue, rather, finding your OWN flow, your own style. Nobody likes an unoriginal movie, plot, storyline — so how are you going to flip the script?

Sometimes this idea of sharing images through Instagram can become a bit belittling. Don’t get me wrong, the platform has provided me not only a small community to share my work but also an outlet to further refine my craft.

This feeling stems from the idea that with Instagram, comes this shared product that I feel never realizes its full potential. So many times I find myself cropping images that, at least in my regards, deserve more than a 4×5 crop and a cheesy caption alongside it. Pictures that I love, associated with long-winded stories and rambling sentences, often set aside or tucked away in my archives; rarely shared to their full potential.

I’m trying to find ways to push my boundaries, my current limitations. So that I can start to become all that I dreamed of as a naive 20-year-old flipping through Patagonia catalogs and watching all the surf and ski films I could. I longed to see the snow-filled mountain peaks, point breaks along the coastlines, and even the silly moments captured in between. Beers on bikes, a bachelor pad hoisted hundreds of feet in the air in the trees, even the moment around the fire; where right before your eyes the story begins to unfold. 

I didn’t know how to put it into words at the time, but I wanted to be a part of those “good old adventures” as they say. The mundanity of a college lifestyle was boring me and more importantly, bringing me further from this feeling that resonated with me so strongly when I viewed these pieces of work.

I wanted to be the one behind the camera, or whatever the medium for that matter. I wanted to paint the picture of life’s most vivid moments.

I didn’t pick up a camera to only post to Instagram, and I certainly didn’t come back to this app almost two years ago at the start of the journey to get caught in an algorithm and forget why I started in the first place. 

That isn’t to say that the way I have told stories on the platform in the past is wrong in any way, it isn’t. Rather, merely a fraction of what I dream for myself and what I hope to share with the world.

I’ve been posed with this idea by a friend of mine and artist, John Paul Zarba through conversation and his work, it has become evident we have battled similar resistances in both our creative work and life. What I believe JP most articulates through his work is that he was created to create art, to use that medium to bring him closer to people and the realized state of his wildest imaginations. John has worked tirelessly on this journey to continue to push the boundaries and limitations of his work.

Which inherently begs the question, what on earth was I created to create? I see that we don’t necessarily create stories, stories write themselves and you piece it all together, through written or verbal words, even moments frozen in time. 

But what has rung true for many years is this idea of creating lasting connections with others, places, things. A connection deeper than Instagram posts and flash drives. That is what I believe I was created to create. Without connection, my job as a storyteller would be nearly impossible. 

And that’s what this outlet here is. A place for me to write, to create, and to tell the stories that I believe in. The stories that I believe and feel have a bigger place on this earth than a 4×5 square on a social media app. A space To build a community around the experiences I share with others.

In other words, I suppose this is my proclamation to continue to step outside of my comfort zone and begin to share what I dreamed about producing all those years ago. To tell stories and use the camera as a means to do. To continue to use Instagram as a tool and to leave behind what I feel is limiting or disheartening. To continue to grow as a storyteller and a person. One who not only points a camera or gets the words on paper but also creates long-lasting connections that blossom into a community.