Dear dudes on the Buried Life...

Guys, my wife and I watch the show after we put the kids to bed and we love it. We are Canadians living in San Jose CA. I am 32 years old.
Last year I got very sick, spent 30 days in hospital after H1N1 and West Nile Virus I had to relearn how to walk. Funny thing was I am a Hall of Fame Lacrosse player, played for team Canada in two sports and have won a world championship. You can imagine walking with a cane is a tough pill to swallow.
I have stayed positive and am determined to make something good and much bigger than me out of this situation. I decided that what made me who I was before in life was that I pursued my dreams and I was very good at it. So I am getting back to that, something simple but it’s what makes childhood so incredible. Why shouldn't it make adult life just as fun?
I am going to space. I have dedicated myself to going to outer space on one of the Virgin Galactic flights and figure that it should prove inspiring to others to go from a hospital bed to outer space. The flights cost $200K, $20K is due as a deposit. I have called myself the Panhandling Spaceman and I am fund raising the entire amount $1 dollar at a time and trying to convince 200,000 people that I am a worthy recipient. The big project is to create a non- profit called the Dream Cadets that teaches children the importance of dreaming big dreams and empowers them to pursue those dreams, I think that's what will change the world in the future, Kids that feel empowered to do good in the world instead of just accepting how things are. You guys are a good example of that wouldn't you say?
So I'd love your help. It has been a tough year but I am overcoming adversity and am determined to make it the catalyst for something big and wonderful.
Check out the website http://www.iamgoingtospace.com or watch the videos http://www.youtube.com/jrmoss55
I hope you'll agree that my project is worthy and that Sweet ol' bus will come rolling up North on the 101 to help us out.
A little buried but diggin my way out,
The Panhandling Spaceman,
Jim Moss
PS Love your work

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

New Video Spot

Goals and Dreams and Inspiration - video blog

I'm coming right out and asking.... please donate a buck or two!

It is time to come right out and ask… Please donate a dollar or two for the cause.
I know there are a lot of friends and family reading this, and it goes to show that actually getting people to click and make a donation is difficult, even your friends and family don’t do it right away. There are many of you that have been meaning to and likely know that you have lots of time so you have just put it off. We all get inundated with so many commercials and suffer from marketing overload, and so we actually consciously act very infrequently. The premise of this whole project is to prove that I can get people to act, in good faith, and spend a minute of their time and a dollar of their hard earned, to help me achieve my goal. If you don’t want to do it, I totally appreciate that and I would love to hear why, but remember you could probably just donate a dollar in less time and be done with it? Think of all of the strangers that you have thrown a buck too and they likely just went got a bottle of booze with it. I promise that I will make your donation into something worthwhile.

So I am asking, can you please click on the link below and donate a couple of dollars?

Quick Update

Can you believe its 2010? Upgrading the website and the hardware to run it.

Well not only is it 2010 but it is already the end of the first week! I hope you all had a great and safe holiday season. I haven’t posted much lately because I am working on the back side of the website and the blog. I have built a new computer that should enable me to integrate some great elements into the web experience and I have installed an HD webcam to begin the video blogging process.

I have received about $150.00 in donations so far, not bad considering Facebook is the only place I have made any post links. The success of this project will rely heavily on clear effective communication and interesting pertinent content. That is the reason for upgrading to video blogging. I am looking for people, people, websites and blogs to link up with so we can increase traffic flow once I get into full swing.

Do you have a blog or website to suggest? (Click here to email me your suggestions)

Are you on Facebook? Click here to follow us via the “I am going to space” page on Facebook

Chat soon

The "I am going to space" guy

What I might see while looking down at Earth

This is a similar view to what I will see when looking down at Earth from Outer Space. Have any of you ever traveled to Florida? Well this is what the Pan handle looks like from one of the lowest or closest Earth orbits. The greatest part in my mind is the that you are high enough to actually see where the blue becomes black and the Horizon of the Earth begins and the fact that you can see the curve of the horizon line. I have inserted two features to help you to help me do that. The first is to have you share it on Facebook or Twitter if you use either of those social Networks (see the "share" link on the right). The next is to email this to at least one or two people that you think might find this interesting. You can do this at the bottom of the posts where the little envelope is. 

The only way I am going to raise the 200K is for me to really reach out to a lot of people. If I can get 1/10 people who learn about me to donate a buck, then I need 2,000,000 readers! So for Christmas, do me a favor and help me to promote my blog. I'll have some other tools coming soon to help promote the project, and thank you very much for your help in spreading the word.

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 9 – Please put your own oxygen mask on first

You know when you are on the airplane and the flight attendants are doing their spiel before takeoff and they mention that "in the case that the cabin loses pressure, oxygen masks will come down from overhead, please place your own mask on first and then proceed to assist children and other passengers". That is what I am attempting to do with this project. If I am going to provide advice to others on how to accomplish things in their lives, I am going to start something big, from scratch and take my own medicine in the process. Then I can proceed to assist others who might be interested.

Lead and motivate by example – that was always where I excelled in my sports career and now it is time to take that skill and translate it into real life. In recent years, playing professional lacrosse, I felt myself losing some ground and I stopped to analyze where I was going wrong. What I came up with was that I was leading but not always in the right direction. And, when I was allowing others to lead instead of me, which is fine, I was sometimes allowing myself to be misled. That was my responsibility, no one else's. So, I will take from that lesson that a requirement of leading is to make a positive example of yourself and to speak your mind when things get off track. It is your responsibility. Please let me know if I start to get off track. I openly invite all opinions for discussion through this process. Safe, open communication is going to be key in making this project successful and so that must be a cornerstone for this project as well. That makes three solid cornerstones so far 1) altruistic right minded intention 2) open honest communication 3) Be a leader.

The "I'm going to space guy"

Jim Moss

Day 3 – Rethinking you dreams as goals and knowing with certainty that you can accomplish them

My Dream is to spend my life helping others to be happier and healthier human beings. Something about the word dream, infers that it might not be attainable, that you could spend your whole life chasing it. Over the past few days, I have been spending some time analyzing the language that we / I use. I figured that at this important juncture on my new path, so freshly moving down a new fork in my road, I would look closely at the words that I use as I work towards defining more clearly, my renewed life plan.

Aspirations, Goals, Dreams, Aims, why do we accomplish some and not others. Asides from the obvious reasons, not working hard enough not committing to them etc, I am learning that a lot has to do with the way that we actually phrased it to ourselves in the first place. For instance, I have been tying in the word "crazy" in my description of this project, and I am realizing that is a genuine emotion I feel about it, only in a very small way, but I need to get to the point where it doesn't feel crazy at all, a point where it feels absolute. I promised that I would be totally honest along the journey. Right now, I want to be absolute, but part of me still feels like it is a little crazy, a little too lofty. I am working to eradicate that feeling and replace it with certainty. It seems like language might be the key to that. The more that I say " I am certain that I can accomplish my goal of raising 200K and go to space, so that I can use my experience to help others accomplish their goals and live happier and healthier lives" the more concrete that will become in my mind and then take roots in my life.

By allowing it to have less than certainty, it seems to be floating a little, taking shape, defining itself further, but floating a little still, not yet grounded and therefore unable to take root. I apologize for all of the metaphors but they are so appropriate right now and representative of how I am feeling. If this idea of mine were a tree, it is in the pot still, on the way home from the tree store and it needs to find a permanent spot in my mind where it can grow roots, become permanent and then I can make it grow. As long as it is in the pot, I can still return it, once I plant it, it will be there for a long time. Seems like some visualization might be in order.

Today's project, plant my tree. Eliminate the word crazy and communicate with certainty each time I discuss this topic. Say it outloud, write it down, type it, think it, see it happening in my future, not in my imagination but in my future.

Today I am firmly making my Dreams into my Goals.

GOAL –noun

1.	the result or achievement toward which effort is directed; aim; end.

Day 1 - I have decided I am going to space

I am going to space – yes, you heard me – I am going to space.

I decided that we can accomplish anything we set our mind to and with that realization, I decided a trip to outer space wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. Since coming down with Guillain Barre Syndrome, I have been blessed with a new view of my life. For whatever reason, throughout my hospital stay I was able to maintain a positive attitude. Even after a couple of minor setbacks, I stayed focused on my happiness and remained upbeat – finding the positives in most situations.  During this time of reflection, I reevaluated my life and identified what I do and don’t want to be doing with it. One of things that I’ve always been certain of is that I want to spend my life helping others to be as happy and fulfilled as they deserve to be. Ultimately, I want to help motivate others to pursue the happiness that they deserve.  What better way to accomplish that goal than to lead by example? With that in mind I have decided to change my life course and commit to becoming a life coach and a personal motivator.  I firmly believe that we as human beings can overcome any adversity and that we can achieve anything that we commit ourselves to. I am committing to a pretty lofty goal and I will utilize the experience to learn and prove that we can accomplish anything we set our minds to. At 11:23 on December the 7^th, 2009 I made the decision that I am going to space.

In less than five years, I plan to go from a view from my hospital bed to a view from the shuttle, orbiting earth. How am I going to accomplish this you ask? Here goes: For the first time in the history of the United States, Virgin Galactic, a spin-off of Virgin Airlines, will be offering commercial trips to outer space. The cost is $200,000 and you need to put $20,000 down as a deposit. I am going to raise the money, blog about it, document the experience on video, learn as much as I can about how to set goals and achieve them, write a book and aim to teach others as much as I can about this experience along the way. I plan to speak at schools and teach children about setting their sights high to achieve anything they hope for in life. I will speak with adults to prove to them that it is never too late to change your direction and accomplish your dreams. These thoughts I am certain of and so I will set out to prove them. After being affected with Guillain Barre Syndrome and fearing the worse – that I may not see the day where I could hold my newborn baby in my arms. Then relearning to stand, then walk, then run, and finally, being present at my daughter’s birth, I can say with all certainty, that I will raise $200,000 to take that journey into outer space. Most importantly, and the bigger reason for this trip, I will be able to show others that that they can achieve anything that they set their minds to.

To set this in stone – I pledge to:

Commit to do everything I can to accomplish this goal.

Commit to sharing my experience as openly and honestly as I can from this day forward.

Commit to having openness to learning and to finding new ways to define and accomplish goals.

Commit to document all of my experiences in a book and or documentary and to direct all of the proceeds to teaching humans how to live happier and more fulfilled lives and to accomplishing their goals.

To follow my adventure, I initiated a new blog – imgoingtospace.blogspot.com

It may sound crazy to some of you at first, but I challenge the non-believers to at least stop and check in on my progress and watch me make it happen.

The “I’m going to space guy”

Jim Moss