Welcome to the Thwack Life!

How did we get here?

#thwacklife #archeryaddiction #archery

Tim Valentino at the Vegas Shoot

Welcome to the Thwack Life!

You are the reason we are here! I have no clue where to start or how to express what it means to me that you would even bothering to read this. I'd been a freelance photographer for more than fifteen years and a single dad for a great portion of that time. It was never easy, but it allowed me the flexibility to experience a life with my children that I wouldn't have been able to do any other way. Now they are grown and onto their adult lives and I found the person who encourages me to be me, so when she said she had a job offer in Tampa, I was all in.

Timing is so much of life, including arriving in a city where we sort of knew only two people two weeks prior to the first lockdown of a global pandemic. This, of course, eliminated most of my opportunities to make a living by doing what I had been doing for the past decade and a half. COVID not only took my way of making a living, but kept me separated from my children and, in short order, took the man who raised me. So, I regrouped and started focusing on real estate photography, which eventually lead me to a salaried role with a national company. Why am I telling you this? Time.

That's what this journey gave me, was time. I was encouraged to take up a new hobby, since I wasn't working 24/7, wasn't raising children, and didn't know anyone, so the internet search was on. What was there to do in early 2022? I had put on some additional pounds and thought something active would be the right way to go and having lived way longer than I ever expected, I was now old enough to check out the Senior Games website. Curious as to what activities were included, I started scrolling through the list and came across archery. I thought to myself, "I can do that!"

When I was a kid I played in the yard with my dad's old longbow from when he was a child. It was just a smooth bow with no rest and I couldn't keep the arrow where it needed to be, so Dad cut a piece of vinyl floor molding and fixed it to the bow just above the grip with electrical tape. When I was about 14, he bought me a second hand Bear Polar LTD and it was on! My cousin Jimmy, who lived down the road had also just gotten a bow and that Summer we killed more than our bag limit of hay bales with paper plate vital areas. We didn't know what we were doing. We were just having fun.

I even tried deer hunting with my bow a few times, but never quite got the hang of it. I had been around guns and had hunted my entire life, but this was different. We never had lessons or knew anyone else who really bow hunted, so it was just something we played at. Then other things took the place of shooting my bow, I eventually went to college for a couple of years and then joined the Army. When I returned, my bow was gone and I hadn't touched one since.

Over the years of moving around to different parts of the country, I had gotten away from hunting, and with age, the intense physical aspects of it became less appealing. I was living in Louisville, KY for 20+ years and for some reason, in 2019 I bought a cheap no-name knockoff bow kit from Amazon and took it to the range 3 times to try to get it sighted in, then it ended up in the closet. Cut to February 2022 in front of my computer in Florida thinking, "I can do that." I dug the case containing that Amazon bow out of the closet.

Little did I know how much nearly EVERYTHING related to archery had changed in the previous 38 years! The more I learned, the less I knew. Google and YouTube became my constants. I was too self-conscious to just go to a range or pro shop. The thing I found was that target archery was my primary interest, but most of the resources I was finding were hunting focused with a bit of target archery thrown in. And the big thing was that I didn't really know the differences.

Since the early days of social media, I had dabbled with the various platforms, and my latest interest had been in Instagram. I had started an IG profile called Tim's Tampa Times to keep an archive of my time here in this new place, but I was never really that active with it and only had a handful of followers, so when I started this archery journey I thought I'd rename it something archery like and document what I was doing on there. I think I called it something super creative like "Tim's Archery Journey."

At this point I had checked out the few places I could find in the area where I could actually go to shoot a bow and decided to take my gear out to Lake Park, north of Tampa to give it a go. I talked to a few people in shops along the way and somehow felt most comfortable with the folks at Adventures Archery Tampa. They freely shared knowledge and information and applied no pressure at all. After shooting a few times, I joined their range and decided that I needed a "real" target bow and bought a used Diamond Medalist 38. The folks there helped me get it accessorized and put together it all together and it was Game On! That was it. I was addicted. There was/is no turning back.

My Instagram profile changed to "Grizzled Gator Archery," which I thought was a cool name that personified me being who I am in Florida, but after a while it just didn't seem right. Every day, archery was on my brain. Reading, watching video, shooting, learning to work on and just thinking about archery. It became a huge part of my life. Archery Life! No. Not quite. Then one day I was at the range just soaking it all in thinking how amazing it was that each bow made unique sounds. The sound of the release, the flight of the arrow, and the sound of impact. No matter what else your bow sounded like, we all loved that sound created when the arrow impacts the target. What is that sound? THWACK! That was it! The obsession of my life had become the pursuit of that sound.

Thwack Life!

I changed the name of my Instagram profile. After a while, my creative side had me trying out some different designs and applying them to some of the products from my Valentino Unlimited clothing brand. Eventually, I got to a design I really liked and started putting it everywhere I could think of. I began to participate in archery competitions and learn more about archery and collect more equipment, and my person also got involved.

The more people I met involved in this endeavor, the more I loved it and the more I wanted other people to love it. I just wanted to do whatever I could to promote archery given my limited resources, knowledge and network. I started sharing other people's posts on my IG stories and labeling them #thwacklife when I saw them as an illustration of what that means to me. People started responding. They thanked me for sharing their content and my following continued to grow.

There was still something missing. Whenever I wanted to find information to help me with a specific archery related issue, I had to do more and more extensive searches as my interests became more specific. A great deal of my time was sifting through hunting specific perspectives to find the sport and recreational type information that I really wanted. I started building my own libraries of the information I wanted and of the people who were best at providing that.

At some point, I thought to myself that I can't be the only person dealing with these issues. I should share! How? So many thoughts on that went through my head over the course of the past several months. The more I thought on it, the bigger the idea became. The more intricate. The more complicated. My vision for this is just that. MY vision. But this is for you as much as it is for me. That makes my goal to get the framework for this launched and invite you all to participate in the actual building of what it is to become.

We all know that many people make their living, or some portion of it, through archery. I understand and respect that, and in no way want to detract from that. My thoughts are to promote as many of those individuals and businesses as possible, equally and free of charge. There is no way to keep that 100%, but we will do our best. By no means, does that mean that there won't be items and services for sale on here or that some companies or individuals won't get inadvertently left out, or our information about them won't be incorrect. If that happens, tell us! We will update what we have.

There will never be a charge for membership.

Given the spirit of all of what I've said, there will be content directed towards all levels and types of sport and recreational archery. At this time, I feel that archery hunting is already well represented. With that said, some of the content may be too basic to be of interest to more experienced archers and other content may be far over the heads of newer archers. Some of that may come in the form of questions or comments from our fellow thwackers. Constructive criticism is always welcome. Blatant negativity and aggression will not be tolerated.

Much of what will be shared here will be content created by other individuals and organizations. Undoubtedly, the greatest portion of what will be shared will be in English and North American oriented, because it's where we are and what we know. However, Thwack Life strives to be a global community tied together with the common thread of archery. In that vein, we will be all-inclusive. It pains me to even feel that I have to say this, but everyone of all races, religions, nationalities, gender identities, political affiliations, or anything else that may separate us or group us together is welcome here. Any and all of those topics are also not going to be point of discussion here. All Thwackers are orange, gender-neutral archers from Earth as far as our demeanor in communicating with one another goes.

What you see here today is just the seed. Let's all water it, provide nutrients and sunlight and see what we can grow. This initial launch is FAR from where I wanted it to be before I let everyone in, but at some point, you just have to let the arrow fly. I will continue working on this every day, and with your help, we will have plenty worth sharing. Honestly, you're going to find plenty of mistakes on here since I haven't even had any of this proofread yet. Please let me know when and where you find them, and we will get it as cleaned up as we can. In the meanwhile, start your member profiles, register to win some prizes, join some groups, answer and start some Forum discussions and see what we have started.

Keep on Thwackin',

Tim