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

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

New Video Spot

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?

Now we are starting to have some fun! hahaha

Pics of the interior of the shuttle that goes into space!

So here are some pics I have been collecting about the aircraft that Virgin Galactic will be sending into space. Pretty Cool - this project is certainly bringing out the little boy in me.

I'll add some more as I come across them.

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.

$2.00 down... $199,998.00 to go!!!

$2.00 down... $199,998.00 to go!

My Father Ron was the first to donate $1.00 into the send Jim to space fund and now an old and special friend, who just found me on Facebook after 8 years, donated the 2nd dollar. I wouldn't say we have reached the tipping point, but we have started down what is sure to be an incredible path. I am positive it will prove very interesting the trend of the donations and the hopeful viral spread of my project. It also points out another excellent and organic aspect of this project and that is finding old friends and / or being found by old friends. Hopefully some old pals will get in touch and see that I am still the same old Jim from wherever they new me from.

I also wrangled up the first official "Space Trip Piggy Bank" (see photo). It is a classic, disney collectors item from the 90's featuring Marvin the Martian. This will serve to hold the cash until I get enough going to justify something a little more technologically sound! On that note the plan is to create a formal ESCROW account that will hold the funds for the space flight and a second Escrow obviously for the funds to form the non profit. My 2 year old son Wyatt was quick to donate some of his pennies and quarters to put a little jingle in Marvin the Martian

Thanks for getting me started, I'll be keeping track of who makes the first donations and you will all have front row seats to the Documentary on opening night.

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.

  

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 14 Fundraising my trip to Outer Space

1 - Raise the cash to send me to space.



Yes, I am asking you to click that little button on the right and make a donation that will help send me to Outer Space. I have a feeling that this is going to be a hot topic for discussion on this project. My hope is that you will take the time to express your thoughts and questions in an open forum so that I can answer them. If you will do that, we can get our opinions out in the open and ensure that everyone understands the motivations behind this project. A good friend, Melina, hit me with a bunch of questions and I greatly appreciate that she took the time because it allowed me to not only answer them for her, but practice defending my ideas as well. I promise that this is a truly altruistic endeavor and those of you who know me well, would only expect that from me. Ideally, the new friends that I'll meet along the way will learn that about me as we go.

It sounds pretty wild that I am planning on fundraising two-hundred thousand dollars so that I can take a trip to Outer Space. I admit that. In fact, that is one of the key concepts because it raises the questions that need to be asked. It sounds even more absurd if you can imagine that there are some people doing some fundraising for me as we speak, to help us out the financial hole that 30 days in hospital can create in your life. So, this begs the question, "How is it, that I can ask for you to donate this amount of money, only to spend it on something as frivolous as a space flight - couldn't you do so much else with that money?" The answer is, "I intend to do so."

First of all, let me reiterate that I am planning on raising the money entirely through this blog, a website, and events connected to them. Small donations from private citizens and revenue from the ads that you see placed on it. Hopefully I get 200 000 one dollar donations so that we have reached out to that many individuals. I am not planning on accepting any corporate donations, and there is no tax receipt that you will get from chipping a couple of bucks into my virtual guitar case. To reassure donors that the money fundraised is going to my goal; I set up a special account that only allows me to purchase the ticket and nothing else. In truth, the point of the fundraising is to demonstrate that my desire, my perseverance towards this goal can act as an inspiration to others to get back on track and work towards their dreams. Additionally, I am hoping that through dedication and devotion towards this project, I can stimulate corporate sponsorships that will be used to create a nonprofit that will assist others on their own journey.

2 - The Non Profit

I've thought a lot about doing personal and life coaching and in those contemplations I started to evaluate who my clients might be. I kept coming back to them having to have the money to afford it as private coaching is valuable and in response, costly. I'd always planned to offer some pro bono cases, but it is often those folks who need it the most, who would be unable to afford it. As I thought further on the concept, I couldn't get past thinking about so many people whose dreams have been pushed aside because of financial hardship and so spending money on chasing their dreams sounded ridiculous. That is where the idea for the nonprofit was born. I could raise money to create a resource for people to do amazing things with their lives. I would even wager that some of those successful people become key contributors as alumni of the program I create. I will create online resources, virtual coaching and advice, case studies and whatever else people need to get back on track towards their dreams. It sounds a little crazy and little lofty to put these two ideas together into one big project, but that's exactly what I plan on doing.

So to be clear, yes I am fundraising to send myself to space, but not just to go and come home and forget about all of the donations. I fully commit to growing those donations into much larger commitments that will help as many people as I can with my trip to space as the inspiration point. Hopefully I can inspire people to return to their childhoods, when their parents would turn out the lights and just before they fell asleep, they dreamed wonderful, childish dreams that should never die.

"The I'm going to space guy"

Jim Moss

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.

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