Last year my motto for the year was Share Your Truth, and this year my motto is Share Your Story…

Where does my motto come from?

I have been following the tracks of a vision, a creative pilgrimage of sorts, for several years which I am now chronicling on one of my project sites I launched in 2009 called The Turning – A Serial.

This journey continues through 2015, with various periods of time marked-out and notated in different ways… and each year has a motto.

Why a motto?

Because it simply condenses the massive amount of ideas I’m working with into a single phrase, which helps me stay on track throughout the year. When I forget why I’m doing  everything I can always come back to my motto and find the tracks of the vision.

The overall piece that The Turning is a part of is something called The Book of Days and has taken over a significant part of my life since it began in 2008.

This vision began with one tiny little spark of an idea…

One Human, Being

A Very Short Story About My Name

In late October 2007 I had a funny little thought one day, “I’m just one human, being…” which, for me, embodied the idea of just one human in the act of being and also the idea of what is possible from just one human being. What difference can one human being really make?

And then I thought, “I wonder if the domain name ‘onehumanbeing.com’ is available?” – I checked, it was available, and I ordered it immediately.

the onehumanbeing logo

In that instant, a whole new journey was launched and Jon, onehumanbeing became part my identity and my new working name.

For over twenty years I had been doing all of my work under my name Jon Christopher, which is just part of my full name, but expressed my identity and my mission – “Gift of God, Christ Bearer.”

Ever since I was very young I thought of names as more than just random labels we put on people, but as a statement of identity, and I had changed what I wanted to be called every few years – lengthening or shortening my name – to fit my image of myself or to make a statement about who I was going to be next.

Around the time I turned 21 I choose to become Jon Christopher and started off on a new path that led to Tania and the life which I now live; and then, 22 years later, a new metamorphosis had begun.

After a few months of use one human, being smoothed out and morphed into Jon, onehumanbeing, which made it easy to give people my name and my web address – onehumanbeing.com – in one easy to remember phrase (at least it seems that way to me, but mostly people just get really confused when I tell them my name is Jon, onehumanbeing.)

It was around this time that my dreadlocks got started and our two dogs, Moseley and Suki, joined our lives.

It’s taken all of 2008 and 2009 for theses changes to do their work and strip away old material and habits, and for new ideas and possibilities to solidify.

But now a certain part of the process has finished and a new year and a new decade has begun and I continue on my journey.

Other Peoples Stories

Our friends, Russ and Laura, got on their bikes and hit the road this last year…

They recently stayed at Slab City near the Salton Sea and in the spirit of sharing stories I wanted to share an excerpt from their blog – you can go to their blog to read the whole story.

The Slabs – Russ Roca on The Path Less Pedaled

…While we are having our coffee, a steady stream of characters come and go. One pear-shaped old man comes and talks with us. He tells us how he use to volunteer at free clinics, how he has been on the road the last fifteen years and has lived year round at the Slab for five years, how he lost contact with his brother and family but reconnected with them recently through Facebook.

Every sun burned, dust covered face has their own story, their own unique tragedy or tale of escape that has brought them to the Slabs. We hear snippets and loose threads that make up the strange patchwork tapestry of the place but we have to keep moving…

Read the whole story here… The Slabs

You can read about their project, and follow their story on their blog The Path Less Pedaled and about Laura art work on Tangerine Treehouse.

Until later, best of health,
Jon, onehumanbeing

Related posts: