Start Journeys
After several weeks away, I’m excited to share some pictures and catch everyone up with some of the journeys I’ve been on over the last month!
Celebrating Love
My wife and I have a longstanding rule, we prioritize important moments and celebrations even if that means traveling long distances. This has taken us to many cities as friends across the country have gotten married. It has also made the last 15 years very meaningful for us as we’ve watched those relationships grow.
Two of our best friends wanted to share one of their favorite places with their family and close friends. So we headed to Utah at the beginning of the month to celebrate their wedding in Moab. The wedding did a perfect job of reflecting the couple, their journey, and highlighting how they make each other better.
They are both artists and we’re constantly inspired by their caring and creativity. The wedding was largely handmade by both of them with special gift bags, invitations, clay shot glasses, and table arrangements set against a backdrop of natural southwest beauty. It was incredibly special to take a moment to celebrate their love and commitment to each other. It also gave everyone an excuse to take vacation we didn’t realize we needed and find a moment to breathe amongst a landscape of canyons and arches.
Explore!
We have always tried to use these trips to explore the country and go to places we wouldn’t normally go. We had a lot more weddings to go to in our 20’s but that has made the ones in our 30’s even more special.
This trip, we took an extra week to explore some of the National Parks in Utah and Colorado. The National Park Service is a gift to present and future generations and gives us a chance to experience places that feel out of this world. It’s hard for any pictures to do these places justice and without our friends creating a reason to go, we’d still be looking at pictures.
We explored Arches, Canyonlands, Goblin Valley, Capitol Reef, the Great Sand Dunes, Colorado National Monument, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Rocky Mountain National Park, and the Garden of the Gods. Each one was unique in color and scope, and each deserves way more time than we were able to dedicate to exploring this trip. I’m excited to go back, and continue to explore our national parks across other states.
We even saw a wall of dinosaur bones. They have been preserved so future generations can see how these fossils were found at the bottom of an age-old river bed. Layers of bones have been excavated and shipped to museums across the country where they can be viewed and experienced. Maintaining this experience can spark curiosity and encourage the next generation of paleontologists.
Celebrating Accomplishments
We capped this incredible 2 week journey with another celebration, a retirement party for CivicPlus’ Chief Transformation Officer Bob Sydnor. Just like the other celebrations, this brought many friends and coworkers together to share drinks and stories. Capping this experience at ArchiveSocial and CivicPlus has been quite a journey and it was awesome to reflect on everything this group had been through together.
The end of one journey is always the start of another. We used the wedding celebration to kick off an adventure through canyons, deserts, mountains and more. I’m equally excited to hear about the next steps of Bob’s journey, he deserves the break and the exploration to come.
New Opportunities
Finally, I have one more journey I’m about to start. Over the past couple months I have been taking steps to set up a small consulting business. I have established Clarkitect Solutions, LLC to make it easier to provide practical solutions using emerging technology. I’m thrilled to announce I’ll be working with Level Equity as an Operating Consultant for AI.
I’m looking forward to working across their portfolio of companies as we explore this new and emerging space. As I’ve said before, the technologies that are being developed might be new, but the problems we will be facing are not. I’m excited about this next step and looking forward to the ones to follow.
