In light of a lot of tragic events, both personal and national, I vote we just take a moment to recall all the good in the world (so I apologize for these photos not matching the mood). I've been pretty hung up on bad situations--one of my friend's dad suddenly passed away, another friend's dad is about to pass away, and with all of the bad things going on in our country, I can't just ignore writing about it here, even though I really want this blog to be a positive place. Sometimes bad things happen and we have to deal with them. Life is just so fleeting, and once again I have to come to terms with that. I try not to take the people I love for granted, from losing friends all throughout my life, I know just how short the time you have with people is. Sure, some of those people I know are still alive--I can only imagine the heartache if they disappeared forever. Please never take your relationships for granted and cherish each moment.
But specifically with yesterday's events, I just want us to take a moment to remember all of the good that's in the world, and how many good people there are.
"Here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. ... This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness.
But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago.
So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.” - Patton Oswalt
I think that speaks greater than what I could write. I know there's good in the world. There are so many wonderful people and the kindness I've seen fills my heart with hope for humanity. In these times of darkness, good people just have to shine their light extra brightly.
Happy Monday, you beautiful people! I hope you have a wonderful day today! Two more weeks ... just two little more weeks, then finals week, and then I'm home for the summer! I'm really excited for this summer, because I finally got my first real job! Well, I got a job as an unpaid intern, but I'm working for a local photographer and will most likely be doing a lot of office work and hopefully will be able to go with him to photoshoots and things like that. He is a really successful photographer and I am so excited to be mentored by him. It will be a full time thing, so hopefully I'll have time to take outfit pictures and do my own shoots with clients (if I actually get any, come on people, I want to take your picture!).
Plus I just love summer in general. Even though I love winter and all the snow, there's just something about the Alaskan summer that has captured my heart. The endless sun, the wild flowers, the perpetual smell of campfire in your hair, running around barefooted in the woods, climbing mountains, picking berries, walking along the beach, driving to the sea towns and exploring abandoned buildings, I could go on and on for hours. I live for the summer.
Also this summer, I'll actually be able to see Matt on a regular basis. No more long distance, hooray! We already have a list of movies that we want to watch together, and we are also planning on doing P90X together. I did it with my mom in 2010 and loved it, so I can't wait to do it again with him.
Speaking of Matt, I have some exciting news ... drum roll please ... Matt's transferring to my college next year! Hooray! He has been considering switching, so two weeks ago he came to visit me and look at the campus. I know it was a really hard decision and he's really sad to leave his friends, but I am also excited that he'll be a little bit closer. Our film program here has exactly what he wants to study, and even though it's not as developed as the program at his current school, I think he will really enjoy it. I'm friends with several film majors and they're all really cool, so I bet he will get along with them easily. We would have been okay if he decided to stay at his college, but hey, can you blame me for being excited? No more crying at the airport or saying goodbye!
It's been an exciting week. Coupled with last week, I've received several bits of exciting news. The first was that my photograph that made it into the Student Art Show at my college made it to the "second round," if you will, by being nominated by the professors for a Lippy Award, which is basically the highest honor at the Student Art Show. So students voted for the nominations and in a couple weeks the winners will be revealed at the awards ceremony. Cross your fingers! Another exciting bit of news is that my photography teacher "nominated" (not sure if that is the correct term, but it's the best one I got) me to submit a portfolio to the first annual photography awards at my school, where a panel of judges will look at everyone's portfolio and vote on the best one, which will also be revealed at the Student Art Awards. It's all very awesome and humbling and confidence boosting that my art is being recognized, especially when it's put in competition against people who are actually in advanced photography classes and who are older than me and who I really admire as photographers.
I've also been emailing my photography teacher about viewing photography as an art and what it means to be a photographer, and since we have been talking a lot about this recently, I just wanted to share some of the correspondence with you:
Up until very recently, I didn't consider snapshot shooters real photographers, and it wasn't until reading the words of Ansel Adams that I realized that even those candid photos have meaning, and sometimes greater meaning and emotion than the photographs that take hours to prepare for. For me, what it means to be a photographer, and really an artist in general, is to be able to adequately evoke an emotion from the viewer. If I can create an emotional response from the people who view my photographs, then I have succeeded as an artist. And the photograph in question shouldn't be confined to a fine art label, because simple senior portraits, fashion shots, and yes, even the snapshot can create deep emotions. Sure a photo can have perfect composition, perfect lighting, etc., but if it doesn't have that emotion, I would argue that it wasn't successful. So my argument is that it doesn't matter what label you give your photos, if they have that emotion, then they are art, and the person who created that art is a photographer and artist.
For the longest time I didn't consider myself a photographer or an artist, just someone who took pictures every day, due to the fact that I was constantly comparing myself to popular photographers while I was still a beginner. And while I think it's necessary to compare your work to others', especially within the business of photography, you should never be discouraged by their success. When people started taking note of my work and asking me to shoot them, that was when I began to consider myself a photographer. But now that I have been doing it for a while and I can look back on my journey so far, I think the moment I became a photographer was the moment I picked up a camera and began my first 365 project. That was the moment I took pictures seriously. Whether or not I was a good photographer was a different question, but in that act of creating that I began to undertake, that was the moment I put on the title of photographer, just like when a great painter picks up his brush for the very first time. It is that potential for greatness that labels us.
Well, this post has turned into a photography post again. Sorry about that, haha. In other news, the rest of my week (as revealed by my intagram), was filled with helping my friend Jenna with an assignment for her film class. I got to channel my inner Oklahoma girl (I used to live there) and be a cowgirl on the wild west. It was really cold and really fun.
A film photo taken and developed by me for my photo class.
Here is the short story I wrote to go along with the photo:
Funny how one object can hold the weight of the entire world—whether that weight be of the world changing or of the world falling apart—in the memory of one’s mind. It was a quiet sunny day, a cold, fall evening, a misting night with the stars beginning to twinkle into existence; it was a million different days and nights for the little wooden bench at the back of the park, with its rusting nails and chipping paint hanging on for dear life and weathering bark showing more of its skin than the paint that was fighting a losing battle.
A quiet, sunny day found the bench gazing upon two people, a man and a woman, walking up to it hand in hand. Her hair was curled and she wore a white dress with lace and flowers, and he wore glasses, a newsboy cap, a button down shirt, and a nervous smile. They sat down on the bench close to each other, the land silent save for the light wisps of wind giving hints about the future. The man stood up suddenly, that wind twirling the tuft of hair underneath his cap flirtatiously. He held onto his girl’s hand and led her a short distance from the bench. He spoke softly. The bench felt the same tickle from the wind and heard a bit of that future insight, and just like it heard, it watched as the man knelt down on one knee and pulled out a small, light pink box from inside his coat pocket. The girl gasped and started crying, but the bench knew from its lifetime of observations that these weren't sad tears. After several moments of the man talking and the girl wiping away tears, they sat again on the happy bench, she resting her head on his shoulder and him resting his head on hers. The three watched as the sun began to set on the gleaming city lights before them.
The sun was beginning to set on a cold, fall evening and the bench saw a girl walking towards it from the right, chatting away loudly on a cell phone in some language the bench didn’t understand. She had a bag over her shoulder and wore high heels and her feet jumped quickly one in front of the other as if in a race to a finish line. The bench felt its wood aching, wanting to let her rest on it. The view of the city was beautiful that day, with hues of red and orange and yellow glittering through the fog, and the bench knew, for it was wise and saw many people, that the girl needed a glimpse of those city lights and needed to be held within their aura. She needed just a moment to be reminded of the ground she came from and of the beauty of that ground. But as it was thinking about this the girl came and went. It saw her shadow leaving and then she was gone and only little stars began to twinkle from her trail.
The stars twinkled into existence as faint clouds cried over a darkening world. An old woman sat crying on the old bench, her tears mingling with raindrops dampening her graying hair. The bench too felt the weight of her sorrow caving in on it, and wished, as it had a million times before to a million different people, it could tell the woman to just look at the beautiful city, with its raindrop races sliding down every window and the stars being spotlights for every person who looked towards the hill where the bench stayed. It longed to pick up its stools and wrap around the woman, shield her from the rain and comfort her. But she just held her face in her hands, never looking at a city that held a lifetime of memories for her. If only she knew how many lifetimes the bench had seen and how life was still beautiful. She didn't notice the rain whispering thoughts of the morning.
No one knew quite like how the bench knew. It knew the city. It knew the people in it. It saw forever stretched out like it did not know time. And it knew that despite the good and the bad that people thought would change their lives forever, those things were only a progression to another day and another night, another year, another lifetime of memories, another lifetime of chances taken and chances missed.
Funny how one object can hold the weight of the entire world—and yet, that weight did not sag its beams. It only left dents and scratches and paint chips and the bench knew that the city would continue, even if it—though it could stretch out the timelines of generations of people it knew—knew it would one day too lose the battle.
A couple weekends ago, some of my friends and I went for a picnic. It was the perfect sunny weekend day to make peanut butter sandwiches, listen to music, play frisbee, and sketch.
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!
