Generosity in all sizes… inspiring me as much as I am them.

As I was sure would be the case, it is proving true that journey toward my dreams will be an excellent one. I have said many times that the people along the way will be one of the most memorable parts of my project. And at the risk of sounding cliché my “trip” has already begun.

So far, I have had a 13 year old girl, collect dollars from all of her friends at school and hand me 22 one dollar bills. I have had a donation for $1000.00 come with no note attached, just the cash. Today I had a guy in the UK contact me as he is doing something similar to my project. He survived a one year long self-inflicted drug induced coma and now is returning to a childhood dream of going to space, just like me. He told me in plain English that I was an inspiration to him and that he was more determined because of it. I had an $18 donation from the players on a lacrosse team in Monterey California. On the flip side, I have had some interesting “nay sayers”, they comment on Facebook, but typically they have cast a superficial judgment and have not looked deep enough to see the good I am trying to do. When I correct their misjudgments, they don’t come back to offer a rebuttal. I hope they do read it though and learn that we are really trying to do something pure and good.

I have been taking time to write thank you cards, I have been more organized than ever and am always motivated to work away at little bits here and there as my health and time allows. It is interesting though; it is the people that are motivating me as much as I might motivate them or as the ultimate goal serves as inspiration.

I’ll be in touch again soon,
JM

Finding my LEGO spirit from childhood

Jennifer and I were at the mall yesterday and we wandered into the LEGO Store. I wanted to see what the new school of space LEGO looked like. In many ways it had changed, there were logos and cross branding and new types and styles, but its heart and soul was still the same.

The store was awesome, it was bright and filled with colors, there was tons of LEGO for kids to play with. They had high tech video stations were you could scan a box and it would play a video and show what could be done with the blocks inside. I was really very inspired and my heart was filled with memories from my childhood. It seems that I am returning to the inner nerd that was creative, and playful, loved computers and learning. (when I use the term “nerd” know that I mean nothing negative, I was in an advanced learning program as a child and I affectionately referred to us as NERDS)

The greatest part of the Lego store was when I turned around and my son was elbow deep in two tubs of LEGO blocks and was so engrossed I struggled to get his attention. It reminded me so much of myself and how LEGO made me feel as a kid. I spoke with the store manager, a guy named Matt, and he was super nice, spent some time with me, helped me look for some classic LEGO kits, and then gave me a card with the information for the LEGO charity where they support projects just like mine.


Here is the Lego Vision (taken directly from their website www.lego.com)

LEGO’s Vision

The purpose and vision of the LEGO Group is to inspire children to explore and challenge their own creative potential.

• We strive to accomplish this by offering a range of high quality and fun products centered around our building systems.

• In the hands of children, the products inspire the unique form of LEGO play that is fun, creative, engaging, challenging - all at the same time.

• This activity supports the child, giving it the special pride of accomplishment. In the process it "automatically" or playfully develops a set of future, highly-relevant capabilities: Creative and structured problem-solving, curiosity and imagination, interpersonal skills and physical motor skills - building with LEGO bricks is thus about "learning through play".

I found certain elements of this to be perfect metaphors for what I am trying to accomplish. LEGO lets you dream and create and actually build those little creations. It gives you directions that you can follow and earn a sense of accomplishment, but you can also take the pieces and build something totally abstract as well. There are so many great lessons for kids of all ages.

I am going to approach LEGO with a request for corporate partnership for the Dream Cadets, the non profit aspect of my project. It will surely prove to be interesting working with these big corporations and seeing what they have to offer, what interest I can generate and how big we can make this project.

Like the little penny stop motion movie that I made, LEGO offers a great lesson for me to return to as well;

Question: How do you complete your LEGO projects, both big and small?
Answer: One block at a time and follow your plan.

Until next time,

Jim Moss
The Panhandling Spaceman

A note about inspiration and having dreams...

A quick honest chat about the project…

Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of great questions come up and ensuing banter about the project and the intentions of it. I know that there will be people who don’t take the time to understand what I am doing, or who judge it with whatever opinion they have from the little they know about me or will take the time to understand the project. Truthfully, I don’t mind. I need those people. I need to be questioned and put to the test and reminded that I believe in this. I don’t have it all figured out yet, and I don’t want to. I really am betting that the journey will be most enjoyed through the life changes, the newly developed relationships and the side projects – it will be enjoyed by the lessons I learn about myself. As I set out this course for space, I’ll get a whole lifetime of experience in return.

I appreciate that people will have their opinions and I appreciate that they will take the time to voice them. I also appreciate the people, who come to the defense of the whole thing and the chatter that ensues, the fact that people are taking positions and defending their views, getting in the mix, that is a great thing. Our lives are easily drummed to sleep by the fast paced beating of the economic machine. We don’t take enough time to sit and think, talk, argue about what we believe in and in turn, it seems we eventually concede to someone else’s views. It feels like less frequently we take a new view point or allow ourselves to be convinced of something good and true.

There are many sub-goals for this project of mine, and this increase in awareness, is a personal priority. When Obama was inaugurated, I felt this wonderful tingling inside of me. It was hope and inspiration and it was a feeling I’d been longing for that I hadn’t felt in sometime. I loved it and I want to feel it more often – it was motivating me to be a better person. I want everyone to feel like that.

To inspire others, I’m realizing you have to be out there – sharing your message, hence the blog and the speaking engagements and of course, the mission to outer space. I’m also realizing that it is in these grand gestures that people seem to pay attention. My first speaking engagement will be this week. My niece, Nicole is going to do a project for school that focuses on the mission and my drive to be a leader through my own project. We plan to do some video interviews and have a lot of fun. The exciting part – is our ability to work with new technology to reach so many people in different parts of the world. Her class in Cambridge, Ontario in Canada and I will be Skypeing in from San Jose, California! I am pumped that I can be an inspiration to my niece and I hope that she can be an inspiration to other kids. Inspiration can be very contagious. What was exciting was that she approached me with the idea and I was already brainstorming mini-curriculums to present to other classrooms. This will be a great test-pilot to see how we can increase the awareness aspect of my project. I intend to “Skype” into classrooms to get the discussion going with kids and teens and get them thinking about their dreams and goals. I want to give them advice on how to stay on track and not underestimate their abilities.

Like I said - inspiration is contagious and what a great feeling to spread around! I love that people are passionate; it is one of the defining characteristics that make us human. When we lose that and subsequently drone away at life, stop pursuing our goals and dreams, our lives turn into the movie Groundhog Day. The days just keep repeating themselves until we figure out the meaning and the important stuff. It might be cliché but life is too short; people are dying around us, text messaging drivers running over babies, earthquakes in Haiti, 9/11, airplane underwear bombs. If there was ever a time to support the people who are trying to do more with their life, people who are trying to lead us into change, it is now. That might sound self-serving but I really believe it.

In earthquake lingo, I had a minor tremor last September, when the Guillain Barre hit. In fact, as I sit here right now, the bottoms of my feet are still tingling and my big toe is completely numb. One day my 7.2 quake will hit and if I am trapped under the rubble of my own life, when all of the construct collapses down on me, I hope as I lay there and wait for help, I can say that I was awake, I breathed in life, I took chances, I got people talking and thinking, I inspired people. If I can do that, when my time comes, I’ll have done something right.

Thanks for your continued interest and support in my journey through Guillain Barre, life, and my trip to space.

The "I'm Going to Space Guy"
Jim Moss

The importance of making time for yourself

I have learned that from a healing perspective, my body does much better with routine. However from a mental perspective, I have a hard time being creative inside of a fixed paradigm. Obviously, right now, getting my body healthier is the priority and Christmas, as it is every year, is like a bomb blast going off in whatever your normal routine was. This year was no different. Since the 15th of December, the healthy routine that I had going slowly started to fall victim to the events calendar and the shopping that comes with the holidays; granted we also have a 5 week old baby so I am sure that she has thrown a couple of wrenches into “routine life” as well. Don’t get me wrong, because I don’t beg for routine and so I am not being negative, but I seem to need it now more than ever. From a psychological standpoint, I do enjoy less routine to more but I am learning more about that as well. Structure seems to help our bodies and minds run on auto pilot which can be a good thing for doing routine activities, however, the chipset that is our brain can get deep grooves of thought patterns that result from that repetitive life. When we introduce new things regularly or randomly, our brains seem to set aside some “CPU time” for the just in case. Just in case it has to do something new, and as a result, we are better able to adapt and think sideways when we need to. Without the challenges that new situations create, our brains deepen the grooves of patterned thinking and I derive that it must make it harder to get out of those deep grooves when we need to. We all know that our brain is this incredible tool that is capable of far more than any of us request from it, but like a leg that you sit on for too long, it too will go to sleep, and when you want to get up and run with it, you might find yourself flat on your face. That is what happened to me.

The gift of my time in the hospital and at home, has been time – time to spend with my family and time to spend with myself. I’d love to say I’ve been hanging out with my friends a whole lot, but just because your life stops doesn’t mean that everyone else’s schedule opens up. I will say confidently however, that I have not been wasting the time, and although I likely take it for granted on some days, I have been trying my best at doing new things, and challenging myself mentally. This blog is a good example of that. Who would’ve known that I would enjoy writing so much and that it would prove to be such a healthy outlet for me – the professional athlete and perennial jock and salesman? I suppose that I need to be jarred loose from my grooved patterns of thinking to push me to try some new things, and it has been very positive. Getting back to the creative thinking aspect, I have found is that you can make time for creative thinking inside of a routine. Your life doesn’t need to be that of a mad scientist in order to be creative, you can set time aside to do or think about something new each day, and I dare say that you should. I have been doing a lot of meditation and now I can get very deep into thought and separate my mind from the body, and the spirit from the mind even, and I can do it fairly quickly now. Once I get to this place of free thinking and analysis of the present, It is like accessing a deep well of ideas and thoughts that you may have had briefly but never really looked at closely. The trick is to set the time aside to allow that bucket and rope to pull ideas up from your conscious and subconscious so that you can explore them. That requires setting aside some time for you and then to do it. Where does all the time come from? Do you need to be hospitalized to create this time and free yourself from the stresses of life? I don’t think so.

I can honestly say that there has been more stress in life since I became ill. There is more financial worry, and job concerns, etc, but I think my perspective has changed and now I look at things with a newly revived sense of priority. This seems to be the key factor in making time for yourself. You need to make yourself a priority in your life – whether you want to acknowledge it or not is your decision, but you need to be your best to make the people around you their best. You need to keep developing and you owe it to yourself to earn that mental and spiritual and physical health. To do this, you have to set aside time for yourself. When you want to improve your physical health, you get a gym membership and you get on the treadmill or lift weights – not because you have to, but because you make it a priority. When was the last time you put your brain on the treadmill? When was the last time your spirit lifted weights? You might answer that you do it at work, but that doesn’t count. Doing it for someone else’s benefit is not as selfish as it needs to be. You need to take time to identify, and pursue things that stimulate you. Have a hobby, read books on a new subject, take a class, write a list of things and start chipping away at them. Get back to the goals and dreams that you had when you were a kid. Then you need to set time aside for yourself. You’re worth it and it is a priority, and making time for personal health, staying out of ruts and bumping your brain out of its groove.

I’ll finish with this one last thing. The wonderful part of children, aside from snuggling and saying hilarious things, is their imagination and their dreams. We all cherish and admire it in them. They wake up in the morning and tell us about their crazy dreams and we pray that at night they lay awake and think about these wonderful places that they will travel to and incredible things that they will do. Don’t you deserve to do the same? At what point are we supposed to forget entirely what it is to dream big outrageous dreams and travel in our mind to wonderful places. The upside to being an adult is that we are better able to make our dreams come true! We can make the money, we can make our own decisions and we don’t have to listen to adults who might tell us we are crazy. Take some time and go somewhere wonderful in your mind, and do it regularly, do something crazy and don’t allow your mental groove to become a rut.

Jim Moss Bio

James Ronald Moss was born in Toronto, Ontario Canada on March 3rd, 1977. Raised in Brampton, Ontario, he spent most of his 32 years in Canada until his move to San Jose, California in 2003.

Jim, a professional lacrosse player with the Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League (NLL) learned to play both box and field lacrosse when he was only four years old. Since that time, his accolades include; winning the National Men's Lacrosse Championship in 2002, being honored with the Gold Medal for winning the World Championship in Field Lacrosse as a member of Team Canada in 2006, and joining other elite lacrosse players such as Paul and Gary Gait in the Brampton Sports Hall of Fame and the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame.

Jim not only had a love of lacrosse, but as a true Canadian, had an equally passionate love of ice hockey. Jim played college hockey for the University of Western Ontario where he captured a Bronze Medal with the Canadian National Hockey Program in the International University Sports Federation (FISU) World University Games and professionally for the Huntington Blizzard, of the East Coast Hockey League (ECHL). Through his experiences playing lacrosse and hockey, he had the fortune to visit Australia, Europe and Japan, giving him a thirst for travel and exploration.

Currently employed by STX Lacrosse in sales management, he enjoys working with others who are passionate about lacrosse. His previous experience includes sales management with Silicon Valley Sports and Entertainment, representing the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League. Jim achieved his post secondary education at the University of Western Ontario and at San Jose State University with continuing education at Stanford University. In July, 2007, he welcomed his son Wyatt Douglas Moss into the world and his daughter, Olivia James Moss arrived in November, 2009.

Shortly before the birth of his second child, Olivia, one of Jim's biggest life-changing moments occurred and came in the form of an illness named Guillain Barre Syndrome. Guillain Barre is an auto immune disease that causes the body to attack its own peripheral nervous system. In late 2009, Jim fell ill with the H1N1 virus and as a result, he contracted Guillain Barre and was hospitalized for four weeks. Jim had to re-learn to stand, walk and handle basic daily functions before returning home. Upon returning to his home, Jim continued with ongoing physical and occupational therapy, writing about his experiences along the way. His blog about these experiences:  www.sidewaysisforward.blogspot.com, discusses the ups and downs of dealing with life's everyday challenges, thoughts on how to stay positive through stressful events, and realizing one's dreams and turning them into goals.

Jim is excited to embark on this journey into outer space and looks forward to writing about this his experience along the way. His wife Jennifer and children Wyatt and Olivia are rooting him on and he can't wait to give them a wave from his spot looking down on earth.

  

Day 10 - Better to have Loved and Lost

Life is full of clichés – simple or common phrases that metaphorically compare universal truths to everyday experiences. Better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved at all. It is better to have taken risks, understanding the potential of those risks, even if you fall short of reaching your goals as the true honor lays in the effort spent in the pursuit. Is it true that “dreams were never meant to be prudent but instead to have brought joy into our lives?” I sure hope it is.  When I was younger, I remember saying one time, and I wrote it down because it seemed oddly pertinent, “better to shoot for the stars and at least make it to the moon, I’d bet the view is still pretty good”. It seems particularly ironic now, given the dream I am working towards.

Since deciding to begin this project, I have had a few interesting conversations since I decided to begin my project of going to outer space. One of my good friends has just completed a lifelong dream of making a movie.  Just this weekend he celebrated at the wrap party to his first script that will see the big screen. I was speaking with him about his accomplishment and you could hear the euphoria in his voice. I found it so inspiring. These are the kind of people to keep around, people who are actively pursuing their goals. When you talk to your friends or family or co-workers, are you the person that beams with joy because you are on the right path, or are you the person who can’t seem to say anything positive because your life has been so unfulfilling lately?  I have a few examples of each in my life and I am finally learning the impact that those people have on how I feel. What I find the most frustrating is that you could want, with all of your heart, to help some people, but the likelihood is that they are not easily helped, that their language makes them always the victim and they are not quick to take responsibility for why they are failing. I am trying hard to be more like the first example, to take responsibility for my own happiness and health and to support anyone that is interested in the same. It’s not that I don’t want to hear about your problems, it’s that I really want to hear what the solution is, or the question that asks to help find the solution? Those are the people that want to make changes for the better, that really desire to find happiness. My new boss always says “bring me solutions, I can get behind solutions”. I guess I have been listening after all.

One of my fundamental premises in this project is that the pursuit of your goals is the pursuit of happiness. If your dreams are truly your dreams and they are well thought out and right-minded, they must represent a happy place. Therefore, the pursuit of those things must be the pursuit of happiness? I am sure that not every day will be filled with bliss, but even on the worst days, at least when you close your eyes before bed, you can find peace in still being on the path to your happy place.

To give you a quick idea of what my happy place looks like: “it looks down at the earth, all of the colors in pure sunlight, raw and vibrant. For the only time ever in my life, I can actually visually see all of the people that I love in my life at one time. It is deadly silent. I don’t want to blink because the time spent here will be so finite. It is nature. It is our place in the Universe. It is alive in every way and it is so much bigger than any one of us. I don’t want any pictures or movies.  I want to burn this image into my mind and the feeling into my heart. From this point forward, when I close my eyes, I want this image to drive me forward in helping others to live out their dreams. This is my motivation.

The “I’m going to space guy”

Jim Moss

Day 7 – Bullies are Roadblocks

Do you remember when you were little and you encountered bullies at school? They would pop out of the bushes or jump out from behind a corner and they took great pleasure in keeping you from school or taking your lunch money. Those people taught us some excellent lessons because we almost always found our way to school still and we very rarely went without any lunch all. The world is full of bullies, people or forces that are trying to keep us from what we want to accomplish. I will encounter some of these on my way to this accomplishment. There will be people that say I am stupid, or that this idea of mine is ridiculous, people who have failed at something in life and are determined to justify that failure by compounding it into the failure of others. I am committed to not letting any of these bullies keep me from my goal and I hope that my not being discouraged can motivate others to stand up to the bullies in their lives and to not allow them to be kept from their goals. The ultimate payback is when you accomplish your goal, and prove them wrong, and then go back to them and offer to help them out and forgive them. Maybe they will want to be more like you instead of emulating whatever it was that kept them from what they wanted. Breaking the cycle of bullying can create a new cycle of positivity and support.