A Nomad’s Pacific Northwest Travelogue, Part I
You’re reading this because I’m not a professional YouTuber. Also I didn’t take this photograph of Mt. Hood. (Wish I did!)
Jared White
Expressively publishing on the open web since 1996.
Entranced by Portland, Oregon since 2017.
Hello and Welcome!
I’m Jared, an award-winning essayist, Rubyist, and podcaster who’s been commenting on and building for the web since Mosaic was a thing. (Yup, it’s true! 😆)
In my spare time I travel around Portland 🌲 and the Pacific Northwest and shoot cinematic-yet-quirky vlogs. 📹 📺 In addition, I compose and produce 80s-flavored retro electronica. 🎹 🎶
This is my home base on the internet. I hope you enjoy browsing around! 📍
P.S. What am I doing now? That’s what the Now Page is for! ⏱
P.P.S. What’s my favorite (fill-in-the-blank)? Find out in About Me. 😃
Things I Do
It would seem I’m always but one step away from reaching for an endeavor to occupy my time with at any given moment. Besides what’s obviously available on this website…from Bridgetown, a Ruby-powered site generator, to Yarred, my musical alter-ego, there’s something for…well…somebody.
Newest Posts
We should have listened to Stevie Nicks.
Last year, she released this powerful call to action. We should have listened to her. We should have fought harder.
I just pray it’s not too late.
The Lighthouse (excerpt)
I have my scars, you have yours
Don’t let them take your power
Don’t leave it alone in the final hours
They’ll take your soul, they’ll take your power
Unless you stand up and take it back
Try to see the future and get mad
It’s slipping through your fingers, you don’t have what you had
You don’t have much time to get it back
In the midnight hour, they’ll slam the door
Make you forget what you were fighting for
Put you back in your place, they’ll shut you down
You better learn how to fight, you better say it out loud
What Even is a Trave(b)logue?
I’m in the midst of #writing my first travelogue installment to publish here on the blog since I embarked on the #NomadLifestyle, and I’m quickly realizing I don’t really have any template, any “grid” to follow. I’m generally so used to consuming (and occasionally making!) travel vlogs, and let’s face it, video is a very good medium to show off travel & adventure.
Yet there’s a longstanding tradition of people spending time on the road and then writing about it. Unfortunately I can’t say I am sophisticated enough to have read much of it.
I suppose I could search the web for what other people have written, and copy that. However I worry that in doing so, I’ll end up simply trying to sound like those other people. I’m very protective of my own voice in this matter. There’s a reason I haven’t been filming any travel vlogs in this season. I did think about it a lot. In the end, I decided it would diminish my experience—and add a great deal of stress to the situation—if I were swallowed up in the need to focus on how to film my travels…and how people would receive it.
I have no interest in becoming “a professional YouTuber”—and in fact I have a bit of a critique lurking in my brain somewhere with regard to the class dynamics between attractive Millennials showing off a glamorous world-traveling lifestyle vs. the very real fact that sometimes you’re sharing space in a parking lot or a public restroom with people who are very much down on their luck and by no means feeling glam.
Hence my travelogue will be frank, honest, raw, and hopefully enjoyable for the most part. I make no guarantees. This isn’t a performance for me, nor is it a career. This is my actual life I’m living. You’ll get a taste of the bad and the good alike. Make of it what you will! 😅
Oh Calm Down, It's Just a…
I have always had the greatest respect for people who are deeply passionate about something esoteric.
I don’t even personally need to care about what they care about. I’ll admire them anyway just for their passion. I once knew someone who was passionate about the fine art of making reeds for bagpipes. He didn’t even play bagpipes very well, but he was a hell of a reed maker. It had never occurred to me there could be a person out there who doesn’t really play the bagpipes yet cares about how to make bagpipe reeds.
What a strange passion to have right? And yet I would never dream of wading into a heated conversation about the best way to make a bagpipe reed, or how to form the shape of a bellows, or what type of leather to use for a strap, and say “calm down, it’s only just a…”
How disrespectful. How rude. How ignorant.
My rule of thumb: never walk up to a master of their craft and tell them what they should or should not be concerned about when it relates to their craft. It only serves to illustrate the poverty of your own mind.
A very close second to this is when people come along and say, in so many words, nobody cares how the sausage is made. This comes up in programming circles all the time for some odd reason. “No user cares” how XYZ language/tool/framework/library/technique was employed in the production of this app, supposedly. They just care if it works to meet their perceived end goal.
I once recorded a whole podcast episode thoroughly rejecting this sad and misguided notion.
People will care about your craft because it’s your job to make them care.
Me, I care deeply about how other people make the things that I use. I may not understand much of what they say about how they build what they build, how they design what they design. It doesn’t matter! The point is that I respect their craft. I respect their ingenuity and unique #creativity.
I care about what they care about because I admire how much they care about it.
Stay in the Loop
Look, I get it. You already subscribe to too many newsletters. So much to keep up with. But guess what? I only send out a newsletter once a week. And if you‘re feeling curious, peruse the Creator Class archive. You might find something that resonates with you! It’s a great way to stay current with what I’m publishing, and newsletter recipients always get some extra insight just for them. So what are you waiting for? Let’s roll!
Podcast
A weekly show where we discuss the business, the art, the ethics of content creation on the open web. Hosted by Jared White.
Uh, We Already Live in Gilead, So…
We need better stories. The Hero's Journey isn't going to help us. No plucky band of rebels is going to land a blow and take the fascists out in one punch.
Photos
Not every day of #NomadLifestyle can be this glamorous, but when you DO wake up to this… 😍
#OregonExplored #NikonZfc
“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” –Ernest Hemingway
#NomadLifestyle #Bend #OregonExplored #NikonZfc
While its immediate surroundings are less visually impressive, I’ve long thought it pretty cool that Oregon has its own “Matterhorn”, Mt. Washington.
#OregonExplored
Videos
Rejuvenation After a Hard Year
It's become a tradition for me to spend time over the holidays on a trip up the Columbia River Gorge. No matter what the weather conditions may be (and I sure got lucky this time!), there's a stillness and a calm I feel whenever I'm here which is truly rejuvenating.
Midsummer Adventures at Mt. Hood
You can rarely go wrong visiting the tallest mountain in Oregon and a true jewel of the Cascades: Mt. Hood. This time, I visited in August 2023, taking the ski lifts up the slope from Timberline Lodge and then hiking back down while enjoying the epic views. Then I dropped by Trillium Lake for the first time. Wow! This location was definitely worth the hype. Gotta go back…
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