Franklin Taggart's Unconventional Life Blog

I listened to a podcast the other day in which two women were talking about their success online, which apparently had something to do with something called content. In the course of the 50 or so minutes they were talking, the word "content" was spoken between 5 and ten times a minute. Content, content, content. Creating content, content marketing, content, content, content, more content. This generic term has come to mean less and less, and it leaves a taste in my mouth comparable to that brought about by the generic beer I tried after the high school football game all those years ago. I can still bring the taste to mind, and it isn't a fond memory. It used to be that people wrote articles, or stories, or songs, or screenplays, or they made films, or wore out their dad's Super 8mm camera, spending their hard earned lawn mowing cash on getting those films developed, then splicing their masterpieces together on the kitchen table with a pair of scissors and Scotch

Many astronauts have talked about the experience of looking at Earth from space, and a cognitive shift that has been called the Overview Effect. There is a great video that highlights this effect. It features one of my childhood heroes, Edgar Mitchell who died a few months ago. If you have 19 minutes to enrich your life, please take the time now, and enjoy!(full screen viewing recommended) OVERVIEW from Planetary Collective on Vimeo . This Wikipedia article has more information. There is one being. Our sense of separation from everything else is a thought created illusion. It doesn't exist. Our experiences of individuality, with a personal mind, personal awareness, personal thinking, identification with the body, and sense of self importance all fall away. They're sentient. Life itself is held within a greater context of being. That context shows us the folly of our quests to dominate, manipulate and control nature.

Long's Peak and Mount Meeker in the distance Yesterday I gave a talk at Unity of Fort Collins on the common thread that is shared by creativity, service, and thriving. I'll post the talk another time, but for now I want to share a parable that flew in as I was preparing. Before the Western U.S. was settled, an explorer made his way across the plains and found himself approaching the Rocky Mountains. He'd run out of water the day before, and he was looking for a water source. As he walked he met a trapper whose canvas water bag was full to almost bursting. He asked the trapper if he wouldn't mind filling his canteen. The trapper agreed. The explorer took a long drink of water, and he'd never tasted anything so fresh in his life. He immediately felt restored, and he asked the trapper where to find the source of the water. The trapper pointed at a faraway peak and said, "At the bottom of the highest peak there is a lake. That is the source." The explorer expr

We have a rule in our house that whoever doesn't cook the meal does the dishes. While it seems fair on the surface, I'm not so sure. I'm a one pot kind of guy, and I tend to clean as I go most of the time, so that by the time I serve, there won't be a sink full of dishes other than the ones we eat from. My wife is a chef. The table is her canvas, and the kitchen her palette. We own three generations worth of cooking utensils of every variety, and I'm pretty sure that she uses most of them whenever she cooks. Now the bellywaddin' that I cook is comforting and filling. It won't show up on any Food Network shows, but for a hungry family it'll do just fine. Monica's meals are much more of a craft. She never uses recipes, except to bake, and she follows her whims and inspiration until there is a hearty, world class meal on the table. She's Italian, so most of the time it's Mangia! time around our house, which means that when she cooks, I do the di

I spent years trying to find myself, know myself, be myself, realize my best self...self, self, self. It almost feels like I spent my growing up years trying on clothes, and forgetting to take the suits off that didn't fit until I was left with a walking closet of layer upon layer of who I thought I was. The weight was unbearable, and carrying all the layers for the years that I did created problems to solve, situations to figure out, relationships to control, dominate or avoid, and the more I thought I knew, the more lost I really felt. The peeling began in 1998. It wasn't external circumstances that demanded the change, it was completely internal. I had good things, good friends, good work...all the stuff that I thought would make me happy, and I felt miserable and empty. I had carried a deep belief for many years that finding a mate was going to fix the emptiness, so I had been on a quest to find such a one. I felt such an urgency and pressure, and ultimately a lot of pain a

In 1993 I went through a divorce. I was 30, restless, scared, and clueless. All of the crutches I'd leaned on - relationships, friendships, church, work - were one by one being removed, some by my doing, others by fate. In the midst of all the instability I rediscovered my love of music. One Sunday I went to CT Pepper's in Broadripple and signed up to play in the blues jam. That was the night I met Phil. Phil was the bass player in the house band for the jam. He was a tall, charismatic guy who made me laugh, and he was also instantly encouraging me to play the guitar like I meant it. I played a set, and had a blast. It was the first time that I had played in public in several years. Since there were a handful of bass players there that night, Phil didn't have to play much, so we hung out, had beers and talked. We became fast friends. It's impossible not to love a guy who hands down had the best Harry Caray impression. One of the things we found in common was that we

No one knows your whole story. What people know about you is usually limited to knowing the role that they've seen you in, or that they've heard about you. For the students at my kid's school and their parents, I'm known as Bodhi's dad. At Unity I'm known as the music director and occasional speaker. People who have seen me play music at breweries and bars know me as a singer who covers other people's music. People who have seen me play in concert settings know me as a songwriter. Some people know me as a guitar teacher, and some people know me as a coach. One challenge I see frequently for the clients I work with is that it's hard for people who already know them in another context to see them in a different way. It's almost easier to start building a new audience from scratch than to attempt to get people who already know you to see you in a new light. Sometimes we're passed over for opportunities that would be a great fit for us only becau