Chapter 1

Process is something I have been thinking a lot about lately. Since the inception of our idea to travel the Netherlands and France, Bret and I have been planning on doing a lot of filming. We decided to get the most out of this experience and the people we encounter, we have to look legit, which means being professionals - not just two bachelors cruising around Europe to work on their hobby. In any great undertaking in life, you need a strategy.

The plan hatched over an email about a month or two back. He was in Japan at the time and I shot him an email that simply read, “Europe in July?” As it turned out, after a brief trip back to the east coast, he was going to be living in an apartment in Amsterdam from July to August.

Most of our plans were made over email, however we finally spoke by phone the other night. We had a brief conversation and decided the goal of this trip was access; this means access to people, what they do for a living, what they think and dream about, who they want to be, what kind of freaky fetishes they have, etc. It could also mean getting a free meal or lodging here or there in exchange for “publicity.” Who knows...it will be a trip – that’s for sure.

Our first order of business was a business name. We shot a bunch if ideas back and forth over the phone and simultaneously checked to see if the URL was available, but all of the names we came up with were taken. We decided we needed to take a break and think about it on our own, which meant hanging up the phone and calling each other back in two hours. As I was about to hang up, Bret said, “Wait, what are you going to do? What is your process?”

We hung up the phone and all I could think about was process, and in turn, I wondered what his was. So after a few minutes of pacing the kitchen, I called him back and we began discussing process. The conversation organically came back to the business and business names. We wanted something that was youthful and curious, fun and adventurous, but at the same time really didn’t say too much about what we were doing because we really didn’t have the idea nailed down yet. Somehow, and I wish I had a recording of how we came to this name, but we landed at Jack Will Travel Productions.

The weekend before I had met a graphic designer at a wedding in Leavenworth, WA, a bizarre Bavarian village in the middle of the Cascades filled with lederhosen wearing people and shops with just about every nick-knack you would never have any reason to buy. I told her about our idea and she was on board so I hired her to create a logo and business cards. Meanwhile, Bret was creating the framework for a Web site and I was hammering out content. Mind you - all of this unfolded in the last week.

Essentially, what we are doing is stepping into a work of fiction that we have created, acting out the roles of these characters that have just received money from a major network to shoot the pilot episode of a new travel show. On the Jack Will Travel Web site, under the Jacklog tab, you can learn about this story. It is a cross between truth and fiction. Don’t worry – I’m keeping the blog entries very short! The Jack Will Travel Web site is the fictional story, and this blog will serve as a more detailed behind-the-scenes story of what is really going on.

“Trust the process” is what Bret and I agreed upon as we hung up the phone that night the plan was hatched. It is very much a metaphor for life. I realized the other night when thinking about and reading over some of the things I have written in this blog, how strange some of my thoughts will sound to some people. I think in the analysis of life, when life is boiled down to its most raw elements, there are two schools of thought; either you believe we exist for a reason, that we are moving towards something and life has a purpose, or you believe that existence is happenstance, a random event, the offspring of the right moment in time when the right elements and conditions of the universe came together to form life. Perhaps the truth it is a combo of the two. Either way, there is definitely teleology to my thoughts and view of life, meaning that I believe the human experience is filled with purpose and that we are moving and evolving towards something. Implied in process is a movement towards something and an unfolding. Trust the process.

Well, tonight I am going to see The National at Nuemos and tomorrow morning I will be on a plane heading to Amsterdam. As the great psychotherapist turned actor, Tobias Funke said, “Let the great experiment begin!”

Chapter 2: Seven Colors