One month ago I, along with my wife (Dawn) and two young children (Elijah and Abigail), stepped off the plane in Chiang Mai and began the new adventure of living overseas (relative to America). Dawn and I agreed to write down ten lessons we've learned in the first month and share them on our respective blogs. A list of 100 lessons, or more, would come closer to covering everything, but that would probably be a bit overwhelming for everyone involved.

Last week I watched a PBS special called Art & Copy, an excellent documentary that provides a deeper look at the advertising industry and the visionaries who radically changed the course of advertising over the past 50 years. "Think Different", "Got Milk", "I Want My MTV", "Think Small", "Just Do It" — familiar with these phrases? They were created by individuals such as George Lois, Mary Wells, Jeff Goodby, Dan Wieden and David Kennedy. I was impressed by the amazingly creative people who exercise so much influence in American culture.

I recently attended, at a local church, a gathering of artists that come together monthly to encourage one another and discuss art. The topic for this particular gathering was "Sacred Space." I am interested in the intersection of art and religion, and I looked forward to hearing the speaker and engaging the topic. It was a valuable discussion and encouraged me to continue thinking about what sacred space looks like in my life.

At the end of 2010, after further considering some of my goals for 2011, I realized that I had developed a number of action items without having a strong sense of the values and motivations behind them. It was easy to say I wanted to read one book per week, write one blog post per week, complete one photo shoot per month for my personal portfolio, etc. Why? Why do I want to accomplish these tasks/projects? What is my motivation? I decided to take a step back and consider some of my values that were driving my goals for the new year. In that process I developed a number of themes that will guide my goals, tasks, projects, and the kind of jobs that I am willing to take on. Here is the quick list: Generosity, Collaboration, Relationship, Courage, Remarkability, Non-Conformance.

2011 is off to a great start, and I am off and running with new (renewed) vision, goals, and projects for the upcoming year! I'm not normally one to pursue new years resolutions, but I do appreciate the changing of the years as opportunities to refocus and grow on the previous year's work, both personal and professional.

I am honored to be a guest blogger on my husband's blog as I share what it looks like from my view to have Shun-Luoi begin to travel more extensively to pursue cultural and humanitarian photography.

This past weekend my brother flew in from Iowa to join me and our brother-in-law on a hiking trip that we hoped would see us to the top of five Colorado 14ers. Mt. Democrat, Mt. Lincoln, and Mt. Bross, a close triangle of peaks in the Mosquito Range, were our goals on Friday. Mt. Harvard and Mt. Columbia, two peaks in the Sawatch Range, were our destinations on Saturday. An ambitious two-day hiking trip to be sure, but my brother competes in triathalons, so I didn’t think his lack of acclimatization to the altitude would be an issue. My brother-in-law is a regular runner and biker, and he lives at higher altitude, so I knew he would have no problems. And despite my athletic background, I figured somebody had to be the weak link, so I rounded out the trio of climbers set to tackle the 14ers.

When I began the redesign process for my new website I wrestled with the idea of reincorporating a blog as a core part of my web presence. In a past life of my website I had started a blog and I thought it was pretty good. I would post photos from personal projects I was doing (I didn’t have any paying clients at the time) and write down a few thoughts to complement the photos. I would post regularly, sometimes even daily. And I would rejoice whenever someone left a comment, even if that someone was my wife cheering me on. Everything was going well.