The first weekend in May will always be special. Not only does my dad turn a year older, it also is the weekend we opened EVOKE. May 1st, 2012. That was the day that felt like the beginning and the end and the in between all at the same time. That’s strange, I know. But it is true. May 1st, 2012 ended the long planning process (you know, that 10 or so years of dreaming I’ve talked about before). It started the next phase of my coffee life and a time for which I had no idea what was coming.…
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Coffee post for you on this Friday! I bet you thought I did not write about coffee these days after the past few weeks. Sorry – coffee still is all over my brain and this morning it smacked me upside the head as I walked out on the sidewalk around 6:30a. It never fails. When my feet hit the pavement in the early hours of a crisp, wet day, my mind ends up at Uptown Espresso – a long time Seattle coffee staple . that I guess is now owned by Fonte Coffee Roasters (that was news to me –…
Leave a CommentI hear it a lot. I hear it at City meetings. When talking about opening new businesses. On bicycles and skis. At the dinner table with my kids. I hear it everywhere and I decided something. I hear it because we aren’t willing to put in the effort to make it possible. It got me thinking to a time when I was sitting in a meeting with many of the City’s leadership staff. I remember telling one of them to stop telling me that what I thought was best was impossible but, rather, use that energy to tell me all…
Leave a CommentI talked a few days ago about this idea of living with less. A time to declutter physically but also mentally. Spiritually. Holistically. A chance to start anew and to really begin to feel the freedom to live out the life we have wanted to live. Dreamed to live. I don’t know where I heard it but through the noise of an afternoon at the house, I remember hearing this quote. It popped in my head so clearly and I’ve been trying to unpack it ever since. “This is not the end of your story.” Feeling stuck. At a dead…
Leave a CommentThroughout our married life, my wife and I have always teetered on this balance of “less” and how our lives might be better without all the stuff. In fact, we even downsized a handful of years ago with our two sons from about 1,700 SF to less than 900 SF in order to try and “force our hands” into this idea. We had our third son there as well but had the opportunity to move into a bit better location and “bigger” house and took advantage of it a couple of years later. We had this idea dream that we…
Leave a CommentI’m working hard right now. Hard to connect and feel connected. Hard to keep pushing towards my goals, a healthy life, betterment. Last night, I was looking for a book to read in the 1 hour I’m trying to “unplug” prior to bed. I felt restless with the stack on my nightstand and my wife Jenni suggested I pick up a book she had read a few months before. Why not. It was a #1 New York Times Bestseller and Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize so it had to be good. I flipped through the first few pages, reading the…
Leave a CommentBut here is the crazy one. I have had this itch for the past couple of weeks to go back to school. Then, out of the blue, I heard about a degree that Western Colorado (or, Western State for those that have grown up in and out of the Gunnison / Crested Butte valley) is offering online. I can’t stop thinking about it! Western has been a school I have thought about often and I pretty much thought I’d end up there for my undergrad work before I landed at Belmont. Maybe now is my chance. Crazy. Jason Duncan | A Thought Over Coffee | A Crazy…
Leave a CommentI can remember finishing up high school and headed to college. I remember thinking that everything I had been doing and would be doing for the next few years would put me on the path towards that dream job.. that dream career. I often thought about the first day walking into that roll that I had been working so hard to get to. The people I had met and would be meeting. It feeling all real and exciting and scary. I was lucky enough to walk right in to my dream job right out of college. Mine happen to be…
Leave a CommentToday, I’m going to tackle that first topic in this Getting Real mini series. I’m going to take a look at financial freedom – a simple idea that will allow for investment and the ability to live out those big dreams. What do I mean by that? Getting real with your finances is one of the best things you can do and, transparently speaking, we have just not done that great of a job in recent years. We can chalk it up to all sorts of excuses but when it all boils down, we have the ability to do better…
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