I feel great about exploring this experience of taking a break from skydiving, AS an experience of my long-term career and life-long participation in the sport.In essence, taking a break from anything we do long-term… a reinvention of self… a re-creation of life in a new way, RICH with new experiences by the simple extraction of one thing that previously occupied so much time and attention.
Blue Skies Magazine, Oct 2015 Life Coaching Column #62 Issue #69 “A Redneck Baby Jesus” By Melanie Curtis
Ok, so who here knows Chris Talbert?
To me, he’s Talbie. Yeah, Talbie! You may also know him as Talbert or C-Tal. I sometimes call him Chris to keep things interesting. Or maybe you know him as the dude who works at Sun Path. Or the dude that might describe something as better than a redneck baby Jesus wearing a sparkly top hat. Yeah, that’s me trying to come up with a Talbert-ism, but really that’s only something you can experience with man himself. When you do, you’ll know. It’s awesome. Funny, in the turnover our sport sees, many of you may not know that Chris Talbert is also a highly accomplished skydiver. Like, seriously, he’s done a LOT. He’s achieved what many people dream of competitively being a part of the Golden Knights and Arizona Airspeed, and becoming a world champion. Yeah, that guy you see in the Sun Path shirt helping people with their gear, he’s been on the proverbial skydiving road a lot longer than a lot of us. Myself included. Chris also has already taken a big break from jumping in the long-term trajectory of his skydiving career. A couple actually. Two years one time, three years another. So not only has he had the intense, jump-jump-jump, train-train-train, go-go-go experience, he’s also had the experience of extended time on the ground. I’m in my first extended break on the ground as I come up on 20 years in the sport with over half of those as a professional. Cool. In it, I’m reflecting. Cool. I’m dancing around the topic of skydiving and how I want it to look in my future. Cool.We reach out to those trusted people in our network who know more than we do when we don’t have all our own answers yet.
We ask questions. We inquire inside ourselves while seeking insight outside too. I was excited to talk with Chris, someone who has walked a similar path and has come out on the other side in the ways I think I’d like to too. In this case, it’s skydiving again after a great rest… after a lot of golf… with my long-term relationships oddly fortified in that time down. It’s skydiving again with a pure heart, reconnected to the simple love of flying and flying with our life-long friends. And that was a big piece of the insight Chris shared with me when we talked… that in a sense he found his way back to jumping for the simple purity of it… that deciding to jump didn’t require a grand plan or greater goal. That he could, moment-by-moment decide to jump, or not. Now… when he wants to jump… he jumps. Simple. Pure.Sometimes it’s time for intensity… sometimes it’s time for ease.
Both are awesome. And we all get to decide for ourselves which is right for us at every point, whether it’s about our jumping or anything else in our lives. I’m grateful to Chris for his insight and willingness to share his personal skydiving experience with me, and with you too through me here. That’s great sh*t. That makes me feel so grateful for and supported by our community. For every unique road each of us is on… sometimes diverging, sometimes intersecting, and because we’re all skydivers… always running parallel in the big picture. Thank you for walking a little bit of mine with me. Not much tops a redneck baby Jesus in a sparkly top hat, but I’d say that does it. Thanks again, Talbie. Tizzle 2.0, out.The VSC: The Virtual Skydiving Center.
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