A Letter

Dear loved ones,

I want to share a little something with you.

After high school, I went to a technical college for one year. I didn't get a degree from an institution that would allow me to do anything I loved. Back then I didn't know you could do things that you actually wanted to do for a living. I thought work was something you hated doing, but it kept the family running which made it worth it. I saw my dad work hard, I mean real hard. He never said he hated it, but you could tell it wore him out. But because of him we had clothes, food, and shelter. He instilled a work ethic in me which made me an essential part of the work force. It is a good feeling when employers seek you out. It happens a lot to me and Aj, who was given the same ethic for hard work by his family. We greatly appreciate every job offer, especially since we live in times with such high unemployment rates.

Several years ago, Aj and I started painting signs. It allowed us to work together and helped us pay bills in the winter when work was slow. Our friend, Frank, shared his knowledge of hand lettering with us in an effort to help us help ourselves. This is something I wish I could teach everyone, how to learn from everything and everyone around you and how to make those lessons work for you. I still do some sign work, but even that job was getting to me. Aj has seen it stress me out. Sure I was getting to be artistic, but there are only a handful of jobs I was being offered that I genuinely wanted to do. It's hard to feel like an artist when someone hands you their idea of art and asks you to recreate it. AJ is really good at this. He is still currently being awesome at it. I am still working with a couple of my favorite sign clients, but for the first time in my life I can say no to jobs that I don't want to do. If you know me at all, you know how hard of a time I have saying no. (If you know me, but didn't know that please make a mental note.)

Now, I am 35 years young and for the first time in my life I feel like I am doing something I love to create a means of living for myself. Not just a job, but a career. A career is defined as "an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life and with opportunities for progress". I finally feel like I found my niche in the career world. I have been given the opportunity and tools to use skills that no one usually looks for in me because there's no degree for these things on my resumé. They are talents that I have always used for my personal life, things that I didn't think others noticed. But they were noticed. It is truly an amazing feeling to have someone recognize the quality of something I am doing. Especially when that person does hold those degrees. Now my goal is to remain humble and grateful as I share these talents with others.

With all that being said, many of you know that this places me in the middle of the quickly growing industry of craft beer. I am aware that there has been some concern from friends and family who know that my family has a history of alcoholism. My mother was an alcoholic and used beer as a means of self-medication for quite sometime. I have not decided to leave my sense of strong morals to take this job. I am lucky to feel free from such a problem. I am free to taste and learn what my palate likes. I am free to enjoy a beer with friends who share this freedom. I am also free to lay this freedom down when I am around others who don't have the freedom to stop at one.....or ten.

So, yes, I do love a good creamy stout. In the summer, I do enjoy a cold one on the lake. But my hopes are that my enjoyments are not someone else's stumbling block. I am happy to be surrounded with people who love me and are concerned for me. People who can hold me accountable for my actions. So, with that being said, I will be posting pictures and articles of beer and brewery tours, because that is what I am doing now and I want to share it with you. Please know that fifteen pictures of beer does not mean I had fifteen beers. This letter is not a way of saying "shut up, I don't want to hear it", but quite the opposite. This letter is to say, "I know you love me and I want you to have peace of mind." I appreciate knowing that I am cared about.

I love you all. I am grateful for all I have been given. I can't wait to see what the coming years will bring. The excitement has been overwhelming.

On a side note, during our last beer fest there was a group of religious people standing on the corner yelling at us for being drunks, perverts, and abortionists and telling us we were going to hell. I can't tell you how happy I am that they knew the condition of our hearts (sarcasm). I did confront them on our way out. I told them I was happy to see them standing for their own beliefs, but I kindly asked if they were loving on these people as much as they were yelling at them? Were they offering a means of recovery or just screaming scare tactics? Were they offering hope and peace for these people like Christ did? Were they sending those who did need help to the proper facilities? Were they inviting us to church? These are the questions I asked. Ready for the answer I got? The guy said, "No. We're just quoting scripture." I told this gentleman that a better way to share Christ's love with people was to get down in the mud with them, not to stand on a dry grassy hill and point out their faults. Enjoy the picture that Joe took as I placed my hand on his arm to tell him I loved him.

Holding strong. Caring on. Working hard. Unchanged.

Love you guys.