i was in the salt lake tribune today...

how awesome is this!?! the blog i have been writing for (which gets between 8-10 thousand views a month!!) was featured in today's salt lake tribune.

if anyone feels so inclined, please save me a copy! i read the online version and i got these pics from that. check out the article here. 

happy news!

i just wrote an article for the SIGNPOST (Weber State's newspaper) on Ogden's Historic 25th Street. it was a review of all things awesome on 25th...everything from the businesses offered to the summer festivals. Check it out here, if you'd like.
After writing the article, I discovered I love all things Ogden, & subsequently, so does Indie Ogden, a publication dedicated to embracing all local awesomeness in my little town. I now get to write not only for the Signpost and Fox 13, but I am now a features pro, & get to write for the Indie Ogden website as well!
I'm super excited about this new opportunity. So far all I've written is a fun DIY which you can read here. Not much for writing, but still super fun for me to do! I just finished up another article on local band The Old World, so check back often to see all my work! I'm very excited about this.

Cheers to new opportunities!!

the climb.

There’s something so beautiful about the sharp rocks jutting up towards the sky. I always stop to marvel at its beauty before I attempt to face the rock in a battle of strength.
It smiles at me menacingly and I know that I am up to the challenge. I squeeze my bare feet into shoes; shoes that have molded to fit me. I adjust the belts, hear thewhooosh of the ropes and turn to face the mountain.
“On belay,” Soren says with a smile, and I grip the rock with clammy hands.
Rock climbing has always spoken to me in a way no other outdoor sport has. It requires the upmost dedication, perseverance, and is not to be taken lightly. One false move by you or your partner…it’s over. Or at least the ground will break your fall.
It’s a very focused sport, requiring an energy and state of mind unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.
Soren taught me; he holds the ropes with firm hands and smiles up at me, coaching me on where to go next.
It’s terrifying, invigorating, satisfying, and beautiful. All at once.
My arms ache and my legs shake with each effort to hoist myself higher and higher.
I want to be at the top.
Very rarely do I actually make it. In truth I am a novice at the art of rock climbing, yet I always strive to make it.
Occasionally I will stretch my hand out to the top of the jutted rock. My fingers may be numb and my knees may be bleeding, but I do it. I reach the top.
To turn and see the whole world smiling back. 

because everyone needs to vent sometimes.

liquid hot tears.
the burning in my cheeks.
breath stolen from my chest.
the way you've made me feel is like fire.
shaky hands, unsteady emotions
constantly on the verge of explosion
bite my lip until it bleeds.

my head is constantly spinning
like the earth on its axis;
funny how it keeps going and going
even if my world has stopped.
dizzy, unsure, and trusting no one
i put on this mask, and i hide.

day by day, night by night
in the back of my mind, you're there.

when will i regain control?
i will not let this defeat me;
i will not let this define me.
it's just a matter of time until you're just
a figment of my imagination;
a part of my past. the part i don't remember.
the part i'll never forget.

the incomplete manifesto for growth.

 i am obsessed with bruce mau's website and works...including the Incomplete Manifesto.

click here for everything..and fall in love. here's a bit from his writings...i have decided i'm going to live my life based off of these:

1. Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to
be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study.
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas
to applications.

12. Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ____________________.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas
of others.

18. Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24. Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.

25. Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

27. Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."

28. Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

29. Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30. Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'

31. Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

32. Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea – I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

36. Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces – what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference – the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals – but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

40. Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

42. Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

43. Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.

just looking back...

sometimes i enjoy going through my older blog and looking at my writing. i used to be a much more descriptive and open writer. now i'm too scared to see what people will think of me if i say what's truly on my mind!!
so my goal is to be a bit better at just writing. and just being me. this morning while looking through my writing pieces, i found this piece i called hesitation. i wrote it two weeks before i graduated from high school when i was having a really hard time with... (what else?) boys. 

It was like we knew our time was limited. Life was so bittersweet. I enjoyed every moment with him, but I was too scared to let go of the other one. When your future hangs above your head like fog, you tend to hold on to those you love. Even if it is well past time to let them go. And so I held onto them both. I held onto one for safety. He was my backup plan in case the future went horribly wrong. And I couldn't break it to him that I had fallen in love with someone else. He is good to me. He loves me.  And yet I could not love him back.
This other person...it was like we knew our time was limited. Driving through the canyon with the windows down, listening to Turbulence. "You have to be careful with my heart...& I'll  be someone else for you." And I was. I was happy, I was content, I was comfortable. As we lay in the grass one spring morning, sluffing school, he scratched my back and I told him my deepest concerns...about religion, life, the future. I will never forget the words he told me under the May sun. "Sometimes you just have to push blindly through uncertainty. If you dip your toes in the water and try 2 or 3 different paths, you're bound to get lost. Sometimes you just have to go, and not look back. If things go wrong, so what? At least you tried something new and different, and at least you gained the experience." He was there for me more than anyone. I could not believe how easy it was to tell him what was on my mind. He is my shoulder; my life; my other half; my better half.
We were attached at the hip up until the day I broke his heart. It was a late summer night, and it was drizzling rain. And I told him... I am too happy with you. I am too comfortable with you. There is something wrong with me; I am not happy being happy. I run around picking up the pieces of things I've broken, things I've lost. I want to be strong for someone else; I don't mind being hurt. I prefer it. I physically don't know how to lean on another person, & trust them as much as I trusted him. It scared me. "Why are you doing this?" he asked. "Because I am happy," I said. "It's something I'm not used to and I don't know what to do with it."
Now that he is gone, he writes every so often. And I realize just what I have done. I have let go of the one person who pushed me to be better. I have hurt the one boy who would never hurt me. When the future hangs above my head like fog, I will not do this again. I can only hope that time will heal his wounds, and when I see him again, it will be a happy reunion.
"My mom asked me the other day who I was talking to before I left. I told her you. She said 'Oh.' And then she said, 'You love her, don't you?' I told her yes, and she said, 'I knew it.'"
When the day comes & he finally gets home, I am going to make a choice. I am going to push blindly into the future, through the fog, & not look back. Because hesitation is my biggest regret.

this piece is about 2 1/2 years old, and it brings back every memory of this boy in a rush. i miss him so much and i can't wait to see him very, very soon.

life is so crazy. who knows what the future holds?