pocket vision board

One of my aunts recently decided to pursue a career in creativity coaching. Wise, because she has always been the center of motivation and support.

Through my childhood, she worked at a flower shop while running a gift basket company with my mom. As her kids and i entered middle school, her yellow house (complete with white picket fence) quickly became the epicenter for teenagers who ran in our respective circles. The basement constantly boomed with alternative rock band practice and my aunt made several trips a week to the store to replenish the refrigerator with soda and the candy box with sugary sweets. Even when she was diagnosed with lukemia in 1996, she opted for at-home chemotherapy and still managed to take care of everyone who charged through her home.

In 2001 she divorced her husband, andleft nearly all of her belongings except those which fit into her tiny 10x10 foot room and started fresh, withjust $3.52 in her bank account. She nowlives in a black hills castle with leopard print carpet in her bedroom, an upstairs studio stocked with art supplies and a newly-built garage with her very own welding workshop. She has created a successful company where she sells her one of a kind lanterns made from raw hyde and sticks and devotes most of her time to her two grandsons. She is proof that if you follow your gut and dream big, you end up happily where you knew you always belonged. Thank god she wants to share this gift as a mentor.

Today, she motivated me by pulling me up to her art studio for some tea and the beginnings of a pocket visual board. This starts with a beautiful piece of oragami made from thick card stock that expands grandly onto a table, but on the go, folds neatly into a 2x2" square. All of this is tied neatly into a pretty ribbon, of course.

We spent the afternoon pulling inspired pieces from magazine to help piece together those things we wish to manifest and achieve in 2011. Add in some watercolor, words of wisdom and positive thinking and you have a recipe for sucess that folds neatly into your pocket.

Given all the things Ive pulled today, and where I intend to go with this board, 2011 is sure to be one for the books. Like my aunt, I encourage you to do some manifesting of your own. 2010 has been tough. Wish it well on its way out and make room for the accomplishments you wish to see flourish in the.coming year.

pleasssseeee dont come back and bite me in the butt...

i finally wrote a letter to my landlord about the noisy neighbors. i figure if it invades my dreams and causes me to passive aggressively slam cupboards and stomp around angrily just to make excessive 'yell back' noise as a punishment to the neighbors, i should probably ask her help. after all, ive made efforts to fix the situation (terrible backfire) and i love my place. i.e. i dont want to move... (yet).

sooo you know, i guess if it goes terribly or there is no solution, i satisfy my deal ive made to myself to stick it out through grad school and then leave. but hell, if it can be better now, why not? i just want to live in a quiet, sound-proof cloud. why is that so impossible!? im not even AT home and im annoyed. haha

on a lighter note... getting up at 7:30 tmrw to drive mom to work, then head off to the badlands with maddi. also... my favorite uncle was apparently a roadie for aerosmith a few nights during the beginning of their career and was at woodstock, citing, "the people who say 'i remember woodstock' are lieing through their teeth. i dont remember shit, 'cept mud up to HERE (knees).'" god love the man.

christmas

this year, count 56 relatives in attendance at our yearly christmas gathering at my grandparents house.

sitting at the dining room table, i started taking note that everyone in my age group is married, in a serious relationship, or like emma jemma, newly engaged (so awesome, btw). me, however? not. and i'm fine with that. however, later in the evening we did our mass $10 gift exchange and out of the fifty six presents on the table, i picked a bag containing two books:

do you know your bride?
do you know your groom?

i paused, then asked the room, "is this a hint?"

someone chimed in... "well, do you know him?"

".....*crickets*...."

not awkward at all! lucky for me, i got to trade for a homemade knitted cap and a pallette of 32 eyeshadows. i feel these contribute to finding a nice man, or just keeping my head warm and eyes pretty while skiing :)

Eclipse

GBQ. I stood in the yard and stared into the moon until it turned orange, right through a small opening through the trees. I wished for three things. Did you?

Grouchmonster

For no particular reason at all, i've been wearing my grouch face all week. I'm pretty sure I've been walking around with a Charlie Brown grey cloud of misery hanging above my head. Lame, since there are no causes. Everything's good, but I'm sure finding reasons to act sour.

Yesterday morning, I got a phone call with some amazing news that should have thrown me out of the funk, but come Thursday afternoon, I was still growling up a storm. I thought I'd roll out of bed this morning all sun and smiles, but someone who' I've pushed out of my mind for the last seven months felt the need to insert himself into ALL eight hours of my dream-filled sleep to remind me that he still exists. He wasn't very nice, either. You can imagine now, that on top of crabby, I'm also walking around with a bit of sad-bastard heartbreak. god dammit.

this crap attitude needs to end. now. it's not condusive to my lifestyle.

This is AMAZING...

From NPR: How to Listen to Music by Jacob Ganz: December 13, 2010
(find other analysis here)


I read a lot of music criticism. It's one of the things I like best — and take most for granted — about the Internet. But today I'm a little obsessed with a brand new feature on a six-month-old Tumblr called How To Listen To Music that I found via our buddy Maura Johnston's blog. Over the last four days, the site has been posting real-time reviews of popular songs via home made YouTube videos.

Each HTLTM review is basically a Power Point presentation set to a familiar soundtrack. The visuals: a blank white slate divided into three panels, one each to grade (from left to right) the instrumental, lyrical and vocal sections of the song on a scale of 1 (fail) to 6 (epic). The format is simple, but the number of moving parts is the first sign of the effort and thought that goes into not only the construction of the songs, but criticism itself.


And though it's not thrillingly dynamic, the method makes sense quickly. Each element is taken explicitly at face value and HTLTM is incredibly clear about aesthetic judgments. It can sometimes feel like like an exercise in listing musical pet peeves, but the close attention makes each review compelling from moment to moment, and provokes intense disagreement with the unnamed reviewer as you watch multiple reviews.

That's the best thing about them so far — across nine hyper-critical deconstructions, that reviewer has managed to communicate a precise set of personal preferences. From what I can gather, HTLTM likes: straightforward beats, effortlessly soaring vocals, and elegantly underwritten lyrics. HTLTM seems really bugged by: any kind of dissonance, unnecessary information in the lyrics (the line "I'm dancing a lot" in Christina Aguilera's "Not Myself Tonight" gets dinged for being "unnatural," even if it's true, and "filler" is a common criticism), and meandering sections that don't develop musical or lyrical themes.

HTLTM's blind spots can be infuriating; I've yelled at a small line of typewritten text on my computer screen more times today than I'd like to admit. But if it can sometimes seem like HTLTM is scoring songs based on a songwriting rule book to which nobody else has access, the videos are also a reminder that every critic builds up his or her own set of personal preferences from close to the ground. Even when we agree on a score, there's usually something worth arguing about.

i think my chips are in...

Love, career opportunities, home, health, family, friends. Somehow incredible fortune is raining down on this girl this month. I don't know where it came from, but I feel insanely lucky. And happy. Happier than ever....

monnnnster!