Vida Colorado: State of the Union

Don’t worry folks, this isn’t a political post. I am not going to weigh in on the ripping up of speech transcripts, a refused handshake or any other shenanigans which you see tuning into the news these days. This State of the Union is about the small and obscure corner of the internet I have been working on for almost ten years now that I call Vida Colorado.

It all began as a diversion as I sat alone in my temporary home in Ken Caryl as a brand new Coloradan just after I moved here. Jobless and with few possessions, I was ready to start a new phase of life and had no idea where it was going to head. Ten years has aged me in ways I never could have known and brought me to places I would never have dreamed. I married my wife, started a career, moved to (and back from) Las Vegas, traveled to so many beautiful places, welcomed my son into the world, and maybe most significantly, saw Taylor Swift live in concert.

This blog has evolved over all that time along with me: in subject matter, in my writing style, in my use of SEO and digital marketing. Over the last 10 years over 35,000 visitors have stopped by… no, it’s no Buzzfeed, but not terrible engagement for a guy that doesn’t really know what he’s doing and is just having some fun. First of all: thank-you. I don’t keep this up for the page views or for any sort of popularity or recognition, but it is nice to know that some of you are reading and have stayed engaged. It’s humbling if nothing else to know that you want to keep reading. Midway through this whole thing I totally revamped this into a travel blog, and per the graph below, you have been much more engaged. Turns out you like hearing more about sunsets, road trips and good wine rather than my political rants. Message received.

But in addition to the totally different subject matter, I’ve tried to keep to some general theme. So in 2016 my blog began to become more of a single story than a random assortment of thoughts that popped into my head. Given my tendency towards ADD this served to both keep me engaged with consistently writing posts, and you engaged with actually caring and reading, or at least that’s what the data seem to show. But now that story is over (for now), what’s next?

More posts will follow that you could call a ‘preface’ and/or ‘introduction’ to this story, but I’ll provide a brief status update on where this stands. It’s one which exists mostly in my head right now and I am not rightly sure how it will end up. It’s the story of my grandpa, ‘Pop’. I first thought I had a good idea of what this would look like: a story of a World War II soldier, colored by some first hand accounts and some books that I’ve read on North Africa, Italy and the Western Front in 1944-1945. But the more I began to dig, the more to this story I found was there.

There were the letters. A whole shoebox full of love letters that he wrote to my grandma during his time away from her after having married her days before shipping out. The newspaper articles in the Brookville Democrat which captured how he and his neighbors may have felt as war began to rage thousands of miles away. The ‘morning reports’ from his unit commander that told what he did every day of the war during his three years in Africa, Italy and France. This hole was deep, but how incredible it has been to dive in. I thought I wanted to write about World War II. But now I know that it’s Pops story I want to tell.

So as I tumble down into this hole, know that I haven’t closed the doors on Vida Colorado. This next story I have to tell will be the most significant one I’ve ever told. And since I did not live it myself, I can’t just bang it out as if I were recounting sailing in Ha Long Bay, or crossing over the Tiber River at sunset, or finding a foxhole in Belgium 75 years after all of the shells fell quiet. Thank you for being engaged and going on this journey with me. I will always remember the chilly day in November 2009 when pop left us here on earth, but I hope I can help his story live on, if even in a small way.