Please note: There's some cursing in this video, if that's not your thing.
I've been trying to play this video every morning before I start my day, because it's really encouraging and inspiring. I would write paragraphs on every little thing he says, but we will let the video speak for itself.
Today in chapel, the speaker spoke about living a simplistic life, and it really struck a beautiful chord with me. While he was in college, he figured he could live off of $300 a month, which equates to working a part time job, and then he would have more time to be able to do the things he wanted to do. In such a consumptive world as this one, it's hard to feel the need to be satisfied with what we have, especially in America. On our college's "overheard" page, someone posted this: "There are two types of money: no money and not enough money." While there is some incorrectness in that statement, it does pay heed to the thought that when you are pursuing money, you will never have enough of it. Compared to the rest of the world, we are some of the richest people, so complaining about not having enough money or stuff really is invalid. I would love for my life to be simplistic, where I don't have to worry about buying a lot of things because I don't need a lot of things. And it's really really true. I don't need a lot of things. I think especially we personal style bloggers think we need to constantly purchase new clothes to style or we will eventually run out of outfits or lose readers or whatever, but do we really need that many clothes? The fact is we don't. There's a lot of things I don't really have to buy, and maybe if I didn't buy those things, I would have more money to spend on doing the things that I really love to do. I am perfectly content living simplistically and not buying that extra hot chocolate or ahem, bags of macaroni and cheese packages. And then when I do have extra money to spare to buy those things, it will feel like a luxury and I won't take it for granted.
Perhaps this is also just a part of getting older. I've started taking care of myself better, trying to maintain a balanced diet, flossing my teeth every night (I know I know, I should have been doing it sooner), washing my face in the mornings. Matt and I are even talking about doing P90X over the summer to get into shape. I guess I'm finally becoming more responsible with my own body. Maybe that's what living away from your parents does, it makes you have to care for yourself instead of them doing it for you. In just a few years I'll be living in my own place with a real job, and that's a scary thought. But then again, I also thought college was going to be so scary, but we know I got into it pretty nicely. Millions of other people have become adults, so I guess I can do it to. There's nothing to worry about.
Have a great day you guys! Also thank you so much for your kind words on this post. I have yet to reply because I've been wanting to soak everything in, but I am so thankful that you guys are in my life and that we can talk about this stuff together. You are the best!
Hey guys! The other day Amber nominated me for a Liebster Award, and one of the rules is that I have to write eleven random facts about myself. I'd like to think that I'm pretty transparent here on Introvert's Introduction, so it might be hard to come up with eleven things, but I'll try.
1. I love cheese. Haha how's that for kicking off this fact list? But I do. It's delicious.
2. I listen to every genre of music, save for a lot of country and heavy metal. But I love rap, indie stuff, and dubstep, among others. I'm currently listening to a lot of Matthew and the Atlas, Peter Bradley Adams, Radical Face, and M83, but my itunes is constantly shuffling through all kinds of music.
3. When I picture myself as an old lady, the picture is this: me with bright purple hair, sunglasses, driving a black huge ford truck, with a cat sitting in the passenger seat, while I'm thugging down the street, dropping a hard beat. Fo sho.
4. Poker is an awesome game. So is monopoly. My friends and I love monopoly so much, we added extra rules, like bank accounts and jobs being able to rob the bank. It's so complex and it's the best thing ever.
5. I play Age of Empires. II, mind you. It's a great game.
6. My favorite video game ever is Legend of Zelda. Some of them are kind of dumb, but some are fantastic and I am basically in love with it.
7. I love the ocean and feel a huge connection to it. Being in nature is one of the best things to me.
8. Despite painting my nails every week, I hardly ever paint my toes. I think the last time I painted them was Christmastime.
9. Nine is my least favorite number. Just look at it. So menacing. Seven is my favorite, if I were to choose one.
10. The two games I play the most on my phone are sudoku and phase 10.
11. At the start of the next school year, I'm going to dye my hair purple.
Amber's questions:
1. Where is your favorite place to shop?
I love shopping at thrift stores. You never know what you'll find. It's like a treasure hunt.
2. If you had to explain your style in one word what would it be?
Colorful.
3. Do you think in pictures or in words?
This is hard, as I love both pictures and words, but I think I am a visual learner, if that is what this question is getting at.
4. What is the best book you've read lately? And why?
I'm currently on the tale end of reading Quiet by Susan Cain and it is one of the best books ever because it deals with introverts vs. extroverts and the world that we live in today. Everyone should read it.
5. What is your biggest pet peeve?
Incorrect grammar. Cease the nonsense.
6. Book or movie?
Book. You get to create everything yourself, so to speak.
7. Who is your favorite villain from Disney?
Maybe Hades from Hercules. He's like that sassy gay friend.
8. What's at the top of your bucket list?
The first thing on my bucket list is actually to go into space, haha. We will see how that works out.
9. If you could move anywhere in the world where would it be?
New Zealand or Iceland.
10. What was your favorite thing to do when you were a child?
I loved playing outside.
11. What do you collect?
Oh gosh. I collect rocks and bottles, for starters. Really I love collecting little trinkets from places so I can have a memento to spark a memory.
So these are my eleven questions:
1. If you had to get rid of one of the five senses, which would it be?
2. Favorite drink?
3. What is something you wear now that you would never have thought you would wear?
4. Where do you see yourself in five years?
6. What is one thing you love about yourself?
7. If you could spend a day doing anything you wanted, what would you do?
8. What is one food you wish you could love but don't?
9. How would you describe your personal style?
10. Favorite childhood story?
11. If you could go back to any even in history, what would it be and why?
And the people I choose are: Katie, Elana, Hannah, Sara, Shay, and Bethany, but if you wish to do this, then I nominate you too!
+ photos from 2010-2011: when I was just starting out in photography
I have been writing this post over the course of several weeks, as I keep letting this idea smolder in my mind. This part was written from March:
This is brought to you by: the fact that this is mostly just my word vomit. Thank you, vomit.
Viewing photography as an art is something that I've been struggling with recently, brought on by the fact that I realized a couple months ago that I never really considered myself an artist, at least when it came to taking photos. And even more recently, I heard that a photographer who considers that subject their art doesn't say they "take" photos, but rather they make them. And it makes sense. Painters don't take paintings, sculptors don't take sculptures, so photographers don't take photos. I've been trying to say that I make photos in an effort to really see it as an art again.
It's kind of challenging when people say that Art isn't really a "real" major, and it's even harder when people say that photography isn't even a "real" art. Yeah, I've had people tell me that, or that photography is easy, like it's their excuse as to why I'm good, because it's easy and anyone can do that. I mean, a lot of it these days is computer programs. I spend most of my time on photoshop, and probably only one tenth of the time actually taking the picture. But I know that photography doesn't come easy for everyone and there are certainly people who just aren't good at it. I guess the other complex thing about it is that unlike painting or drawing, there's a whole industry around photography. There's commercial, portrait, wedding photographers and while I would consider all of those snapshots, I wouldn't necessarily consider them art.
Perhaps my problem is not in convincing myself that photography is art, but that my creative photography is actually art. But what really constitutes art in the first place? Is it the amount of time spent creating it? Is it the use of the elements and principles? Is it the concept and meaning behind it? While I think these are all true some of the time, I don't think they're true all of the time.
And now we come to today:
In doing an art project for class, I've been researching a lot about the great Ansel Adams, who was the most significant landscape photographer in America. The text above shows my previous feelings towards snapshots, but in since hearing what Ansel had to say about them, I've changed my mind. "The snapshot is not as simple a statement as some may believe. It represents something each of us has seen—more as human beings than as photographers … While to many the snapshot is a symbol of thoughtlessness and chance, it is a flash of recognition—something which for many reasons we wish to perpetuate. It may have real human and historic value. The more we look, the more we see, and the more we see, the more we respond. When we begin visualizing our responses to the world in terms of images, we become photographers in the most rewarding sense of the term."
I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that not every photo has to be some big endeavor in order to be art. Some of my most favorite photos are the ones that are simplistic, yet have something, maybe even one thing, that makes it surreal. My favorite photos are the ones that show the magic in life. I've been pulling a lot of inspiration from my favorite photographer ever, Greg Pths, as well as from Vilde Indrehus, Jack Batchelor, (among others), and artwork that I discover on tumblr. I'm no longer happy with this hyper realistic, expansion, photoshoppy look that a lot of photographers (including myself) have been doing (that's not to say I can't appreciate it, because some of those people are my friends and I admire them deeply), and while a lot of my photography has that style, when looking through my old photos, it does that have spark of what I really want my art to look like.
When I create a beautiful photograph, that makes me incredibly excited and passionate to shoot the next one and then the next one and the next. It's hard to push through when your pictures don't do that for you. I've talked with my photo professor about this too, that the 365 is really exhausting in that you keep having to outdo your previous photo, and when that doesn't happen, you get discouraged and start to feel like you're no good at all. It's a constant battle against yourself to be better and I suppose a lot of my thoughts about this whole photography thing have come from not only battling through myself for three consecutive years now, but also because now I'm no longer doing a project and now I'm just counting the casualties, to keep the metaphor going. Now I can be deliberate with my style and it's freeing and terrifying at the same time.
Basically, I'm deliberately changing my photographic, artistic style. Or, better yet, I am honing in on the glimmers of greatness that have been in my current style for the past three years of me doing photography. Phlearn did an awesome article about changing your photographic style right in the middle of all my struggles, which you should definitely read here. And my friend Sarah also wrote a great post that is similar to this discussion and came at the perfect time as well.
It's scary to change a style, especially when people have become so familiar with my work, and so naturally I'm afraid people won't like the things I will produce in the future. But it all goes back to creating art and me being happy with what I make and being confident that I can call it art. I always always go back to this video, which is so inspiring and exactly how I feel. My work right now isn't up to my ambition. I know there is a spark of something awesome in it, but now I am entering the stage where I am trying to take that spark and light something on fire. The photos in this post are some of the ones from 2010/2011, when I literally just started picking up a camera and feeling really passionate about photography, which I feel have that little spark (and even some stuff from 2012/2013 have that element, but since they are already all on my blog I figured it would just be redundant). I don't know how the next few months will look. I may be taking more photos than ever, or it may be weeks at a time where I don't release anything. We will see. But coming from being afraid that my photography "phase" was over to being really excited to produce new art that I'm proud of, I'm really happy how things are beginning to settle.
