Aug 31, 2017 | Art, Career, Dreams, Global, Healing, Love, Misc, painting, Photography, Post, Success, Travel
1: Attend a proper wine tasting
2: Eat a traditional Korean meal
3:Take a floral milk bath
4: Make a video of 28th year using: 1 Second Everyday
5: Prepare a five course meal. or go eat one out
6: Go to an archery range or gun range
7: Go to a drive in movie theater, because my love has never been
8: Purchase a new camera
9: Take photos in a photo booth with my love
10: Have a fancy cheese night where I try cheeses I have never heard of
11: Get in-design
12: Own our very own house… dwelling… abode… home…
13: Find myself in a spontaneous adventure I couldn’t have imagined
14: Make Artifact Uprising vacation book
15: Buy plants/grow herbs again
16: Focus on living healthier together
17: Write a Florida adventure post for people living in Jacksonville
18: Take pups to see snow
19: Plan a Christmas cabin getaway. Wear plaid and make fires
20: Visit Savannah
21: Drink a Florida Mule from Ice Plant Bar
22: Hike with the pups
23: Visit Harry Potter World. Try every butter beer
24: Purchase sage/Incense
25: Purchase a book by the artist Peter Beard
26: Try an amaretto sour
27: Learn to make my father-in-laws famous oyster stuffing
28: Begin dreaming more, because this list was so fucking hard to write this year
Sep 1, 2016 | Art, Career, Dreams, Global, Healing, Love, Misc, Photography, Post, Travel
*I have heard this soooo much recently, I have to admit I hated it at first. I winced every time someone told it to me.
But the truth was the people whom were saying this were successful people. The type of people I look up too and well, want to be.
I couldn’t ignore advice of intelligent, creative, successful entrepreneurs.
Let me tell you why I hated this phrase: Simply because the word fake is in the sentence.
Yep, that’s the only reason.
I felt like a liar “faking it.” It felt inauthentic. It felt disrespectful.
I don’t want to fake it, I want to be perfect at it and then show everybody.
I have perpetual compulsions to be 100% transparent, making me awful at faking anything.
In essence taking the phrase “fake it till you make it” at face value is a key reason a lot of us feel other people have the secret to success.
Because it quite literally looks like they do!
We look at them with their perfect Instagram photos, book deals, friend count and chronically compare.
Not considering the long messy hours of hard work and countless years of connecting, dreaming that has led them up to that moment.
Their secret sauce isn’t that they have it all figured out.
Their secret sauce isn’t that they have no fear.
Their secret sauce isn’t that they are perfect.
Their secret sauce isn’t that they have some extra human talent.
Their secret sauce is they “fake it till they make it.”
They do the work… no matter what… Without being perfect.
What I translate this phrase to mean is this:
“What if you just feel the fear. Feel the doubt. Feel the whatever. Then my dear soul, Do It Anyway!”
THIS feels better! This feels authentic. This is what I hear them saying now and I love it!
You just have to do it, dive in, figure it out, overcome and keep going.
“Do it anyway. Fake it till you make it.”
Melody Ross told me, while I was sharing some fears of mine with her, “Do it anyway.”
It is a phrase she uses in her work often including in this gorgeous video.
(After hearing this I wrote the above thoughts. She has a gorgeous article called “Be Patient with life important things take time” have a read.
Xo much love to you Melody for the constant inspiration you are to us all!
P.s. Last photo taken of Erin Faith Allen at Call of the Wild Soul
Jul 5, 2016 | Art, Global, Healing, Love, Misc, Photography, Post, Travel
For years I struggled on the creative path. Going between bursts of creativity to droughts.
Feeling impassioned about my future work, to feeling like I will never make a living doing what I love.
I concluded; I didn’t have enough passion.
Passion is all you need, I heard people say… if your passionate enough they continued.
What I am starting to realize: Passion is a huge piece of the puzzle; but it is not the only piece.
Passion isn’t meant to be a constant state of “being” in love with (Said work). It isn’t supposed to be the answer, the fix all, the magic pill.
Passion will disappoint you with this kind of pressure.
Now I’m not saying you don’t need passion… Hell yes you need passion to follow your dreams.
Passion is what lights you up. Passion is a catalyst. Passion motivates. Its what gets you intrigued, gets you going and gets you coming back to your dreams over and over again.
Though if your like me, you have felt passion wane. You have felt boredom creep in, discouragement take over. It’s 100% normal.
Thats right… this doesn’t mean your not passionate about your dreams, which is what I used to think. You may be assuming passion will do a lot more of the work than it’s intended purpose. Somewhere in me believed “if I just had enough passion I would always enjoy what I was doing.” “If I just had enough passion I would already be successful.”
Successful people get bored. Successful people tackle mundane tasks. Sometimes with wind in their sails, sometimes without.
Either way they keep going… Day by day they put in the work, with or without passion.
I didn’t really understand… it’s too simple, I thought. They have too possess something I don’t. The veil between why they were successful and I wasn’t, tore when I began to met successful people.
I made excuses of why I couldn’t achieve my dreams. They didn’t. I gave up or settled when it got too hard. They kept going. I thought it was taking too long. They were in it for the long haul.
The answer wasn’t that they had more passion than I, it’s that they were committed to the WHOLE process. That my friends is amazing news.
You don’t have to feel euphoric about your dreams all the time. Say what?! This is so damn relieving… seriously!
Take the pressure off your passion… when it wanes, and it will, don’t take it personally… stay committed…
Passion + Commitment = Dreams Coming True! The magic answer. Okay, maybe not but it’s pretty close.
Jun 28, 2016 | Art, Global, Love, Misc, Photography, Post, Travel
Jacksonville Florida takes some getting used too.
But one thing is for sure, like any other place, you can still excavate beauty.
It may take some commitment. Some exploring. Some digging. Some driving. But it is there.
One of my favorite places thus far in Jacksonville is Driftwood beach.
*At sunset it’s crawling with photographers, but for good reason, IT IS STUNNING!
The glowing light dappling throughout the driftwood laden sand. Ahhh!
Every time we go it looks a little bit different, depending on the erosion, tide and storms.
Driftwood beach mysteriously shape-shifts. A tree graveyard.
Holiness. I am in love with it’s land.
Take a picnic, bring your ENO hammock with a good book. It’s all you will need here to feel like your on vacation!
Jun 14, 2016 | Art, Global, Healing, Love, Misc, Photography, Post, Travel
There were Indian chai’s shared with the best men and blue hued mountains to be hiked.
There were silhouettes of people I love against backdrops of adventure.
There were hours of uninterrupted time to create… collage… pour…
There were beaches of powdered sand and mountains of crystalline snow.
There were many times in the last six months where I missed home endlessly.
There were times when I was so full of the moment I lacked for nothing.
These were the moments in between.
Jan 9, 2016 | Art, Global, Healing, Love, Main, Misc, Photography, Post, Travel
Chicago was the first place I ever paid to travel too alone. After a messy break up I bought a ticket and went.
She was the city of many firsts. The first place I got drunk in. The first place I roamed aimlessly photographing for no reason other than the need to do it. The first place I tested my boundaries. I bought a kimono and cow boy boots and felt alive. Somehow in those streets I found a piece of me that I didn’t know was there. Bravery…
Many years later I am here with my love beginning a chapter in our lives I thought I would never be taking. But I am, oh so glad we are!
This place always buzzes with an energy I cannot explain, but I know others feel it too. There is something inexplicably beautiful about Chicago. I feel a rush of creative bliss flow out of me each time I set foot on her soil. It seems only right to begin our lives as a Navy couple here. With her snow covered grounds and her towering buildings, we embarked on the biggest decision of our lives. Ok maybe marriage was the biggest decision, but this is a very, VERY close second!
I flew in on Christmas Eve due to the most delightful plane ticket gifted to me by a cousin. She and her husband wanted my love and I to be able to spend Christmas day together! Which was the sort of magical day that words do not really capsulate, so I won’t begin to try. The next few days flew by in bursted blurs. Some moments being wildly fun and others inching by as we grew close to graduation… I sat waiting eagerly. Sight seeing, taxidermy and the most amazing food punctuated my days. Until, of course I was with him again. Because being with him usually trumps everything else. 10 days in this wintery city flew by faster than I thought possible. It already feels like the distant past.
“I was in love with the place
In my mind, in my mind
I made a lot of mistakes
In my mind, in my mind
You came to take us
All things go, all things go
To recreate us
All things grow, all things grow
We had our mindset
All things know, all things know
You had to find it
All things go, all things go
If I was crying
In the van with my friend
It was for freedom
From myself and from the land”
– Sufjan Stevens
