Do You Believe in Santa? Part 2 of Justin Gear's Interview

If you Still believe in a physical, magic, jolly Santa, look away, major spoilers ahead. This is part 2 of 3 of the JustinGear interviews, adventurer, writer, actor, pirate, and oh yeah, etsy member. I asked two questions that somehow came crashing back to this one question, childhood....so prepare to peak inside one tricky mind....

2. If you could relive any moment in your life, what would it be, and why?

This one's easy. The happiest and most exciting time in my life was getting presents from Santa Claus as a kid. Having some magical being secretly looking after me and then granting my material wishes at the end of each year absolutely blew my mind!

Here I was in a world where logic and science, (plus the First Baptist Church of Forest City, NC) had taught me everything I knew about how my world worked. And Santa Claus somehow by-passed all these laws of psychics; cause we had a wood stove, so I couldn't even begin to comprehend him squeezing his fat a** down through these tiny pipes and then somehow unlocking the door to the stove from the INSIDE and climbing out WITH PRESENTS. But by God, somehow, he did it. Every freakin year! But the one moment I would want to relive would be the first Christmas I wrote in my letter to Santa asking if he would wrap all my presents
individually so I could have fun opening them in random order without knowing everything I got all at once. And he did it. And it was awesome.

And he continued to do that until, what takes me to the one moment I would NOT want to relive in my life.

And that moment is stretched between 2 moments including me in the 6th grade cafeteria stating my case, at the top of my lungs, that Santa Claus WAS real because there's no way my parents would make something like that up and have me believe it just for fun. Because in my mind I had already pondered this conundrum for years and came to the conclusion that it made absolutely no sense that my parents would buy me presents, and then let someone else take the credit.

The other moment is me in the car with my mom when I asked her, after telling her the events of the day, if Santa was real. She then began to explain that it was the spirit of Santa Claus. I was devastated. I had never felt so betrayed and so confused in my life. I then had to challenge every mythical creature I believed to actually be real. It was a weird year.

Looks like I may have given you more than you asked for with that question:)

PS - I still get presents from "Santa" and they are individually wrapped:)

3. Write more about your childhood or your work, or your creative struggles.

My childhood was a total land of make-believe. And I'm still finding quite a few traces of it to this day. I think that keeps me younger. I spent a lot of my time up in trees as a kid. So much so that my dad finally built me a clubhouse. And he went all out. It was built on an embankment so that one side of it was held up by cut telephone poles. It featured built in bunk beds, a lockable door, 2 lockable windows, a fire pole, a zip line and a trap door escape route.

"I lived in that thing."

It was built right above a creek that led to the Broad River and an enormous train trestle, right in front of the local slaughterhouse, which I used to explore at night when the watch patrol was
at it's minimum (I'm talkin' security guards and surveillance cameras - in fact, I used to sneak up there and put huge butterfly magnets on the part of the building above the security tower only to return another day to find them gone - i just loved the fact that it was a mystery to them how these butterfly magnets kept appearing, hehehehe). It was a virtual playground and having drawn the map of the entire lay out of the land, I practically owned it.


It's funny now as I still find myself up in trees on a daily basis as I work for a lighting company in Atlanta that decorates the city with Christmas lights, which gives me about 8 months of work a year. Although I'm finding my increasing age, weight and perhaps my state of mind an increasing hindrance when it comes to climbing trees and decorating them with light. I sometimes wonder how much longer I'll be doing this, when, as far as me being artistic and expressing my creativity, it naturally comes out in the form of music.

I've been playing the piano since age 4 but have always been more interested in making up my own material rather t ha n learning the theory and playing other people's music, despite my 12 years of lessons. This is a constant creative struggle for as I'm surrounded by people influencing me to learn songs with the purpose of being able to take requests. Because at the moment, I can't take any requests. I can play you hours of music, but I can't take requests. And as much as I think I'd like to be able to do that, I don't want to put the effort behind it. Just something inside me doesn't want to do that. I like making my own music and finding the people who like it enough to be satisfied with what I create...

If you enjoyed this, tune in April 17, Friday, for the last part in this three part series. The last picture in this interview is from Songs from a Piano B for more information, click the images. Next time, join us for a travel adventure.