Name: Justin “Tennessee” Muse
City of residence: Loveland
Occupation: Downtown ambassador for the Loveland Downtown Development Authority
Where do you live? What brought you here?
I live just up the road here in Loveland. I’ve been here since 2010, but I’ve been in Colorado since 2009. I had a friend of mine living out here; I was in a pretty bad spot, and he gave me a second chance on things. He told me, “I’ve got a house for you and a car to drive, and when you’re ready, you can get back on your feet.” I was living in the Big Thompson Canyon and loved the seclusion for a while. Then I decided to come back down to civilization and started hanging out at the Pourhouse in Loveland and eventually got a job there.
How would you describe your job?
I can tell you a lot of things that I do, but it’s mainly helping out the community and keeping it clean. I help with the homeless community and try to get them to go where they need to go instead of just sitting in limbo. We have a mental health team from Homeward Alliance and SummitStone that helps with all of that. In layman’s terms, I guess you could say I’m the janitor/hall monitor and liaison of forestry.
What do you love most about living in Northern Colorado?
That’s a long list. Mountains, camping, hunting, fishing. I love it all. I needed a change. I lived in California for about nine months—I call that a very “extended vacation”—and I found out that’s not where I was meant to be. I was always meant to come back here because that’s where I met my wife, got married and had a couple of kids. When I moved here, everyone said, “How do you like living in Loveland?” and I was like, “Well, I’ve never lived in a big city.” They said, “This isn’t a big city,” and I was like, “I come from a town of 2,000 people. This is a big city to me.” I started hanging out downtown, and it had that small-town feel. Everybody knew everybody. Everybody was really friendly and kind and got along and helped each other out. I was like, “I think this is where I want to be.”
If you were showing someone around Northern Colorado for a weekend, what would you do?
First and foremost, I would take them to Red Rocks. That’s one of my favorite places. I would take them up to Rocky Mountain National Park and show them Estes. I’d take them to Lyons; that’s such a great little town that a lot of people don’t know about. I’d take them to as many places as I could because it’s just really great around here. As far as businesses go, I’d definitely bring them downtown and let them shop down here. There’s so much to do. I think that’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed; where I come from, there’s just not a whole lot. You kind of have to search for things there, and here, it’s like, “Hey, you’ve got this and this and this.”
Do you have a New Year’s resolution?
I try not to do New Year’s resolutions anymore; I’m trying to better myself throughout the year. When you come across a problem, don’t let it ruin your whole day. Don’t let it ruin your whole week. A problem is a problem, and they’re going to come whether you like it or not. You’ve just got to take a breath, put your chin up, put your shoulders back, put one foot in front of the other and keep going.
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