The Ashlee Craft Show – Episode 010 – Books – “What Happens When You Choose to Live Authentically”

In the tenth episode of The Ashlee Craft Show, Ashlee reads her article, “This is What Happens When You Choose to Live Life Authentically”, which was originally p& discusses authenticity & loving yourself.

:: Read the original article here ::

The Ashlee Craft Show – Episode 006 – Books – 101 Ways to Love Yourself Introduction

Authenticity is hard. Happiness is hard. But when you start loving yourself, that’s when these things become easier.

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Buy Paperback on Amazon

START.

Happiness is hard. Authenticity is hard. I know this very, very well.

I’m not going to give you some fluffy sermon about how if you just take a bubble bath, smile three times a day at yourself in the mirror, & think happy thoughts constantly that your life will magically be better. These things might help you, but they also might not.

You’re probably reading this book because your life isn’t totally, 100% pure awesomeness. If it is, all the power to you! But it probably isn’t. You probably don’t feel like you love yourself as much as you could, or you feel depressed, or you really just feel you’re not living up to your potential. The best part is, whether you can believe this yet or not — you have all the power in the world to change & improve your life.

Hating yourself is boring. Feeling ugly & unloved is boring. Living someone else’s plans for you is boring. Being depressed & feeling hopeless about your future is boring.

Those feelings are all completely valid. They’re also sadly common. But when you really think about it, those aren’t very interesting things to feel. Break them down, & all those feelings relate to sadness. Society has romanticized the idea of sadness. It’s made personal sorrow seem alluring & mysterious & beautiful. Like that without it, you won’t be an interesting person for people to know. Like you will be shallow & one-sided if you’re always happy & you feel good about yourself. Like your art won’t be as good if you don’t have all this sadness as your muse.

Those feelings aren’t making your life any better. They’re not serving you in any way. They’re not even true.

You deserve better than that. Your body is made up of the remnants of stars that were born & died long ago. You are literally made of stardust. You can do anything you want to. Stars didn’t die so that you could loathe yourself & live an unspectacular existence. You can have better than that. You were born to live an awesome life. It’s your duty to yourself to pursue that, as vibrantly & lovingly as you can.

Why not give it a try? You have nothing to lose, & everything to gain.

Happiness is thrilling. Love is beautiful. Self-acceptance is rebellious. Success is triumphant. Hope is alluring. Peace of mind is interesting. Boldness is adventurous. Resilience & determination are courageous. Living a life you’ve created is compelling.

Sometimes, I ask myself why I should bother loving myself. Sometimes, the whole thing seems impossible, & even pointless. Sometimes, I don’t feel like I deserve it.

Why should you love yourself?

Because you’re vast & brilliant & awesome & kind & smart & filled with potential. Because you might as well. Because the only way you’re ever going to even KNOW what you’re capable of is if you try. Fear of missing out on what you could become should be the biggest FOMO of all.

You don’t want to be a product of a society which profits off promoting self-loathing & insecurity. You don’t just want to be another face in a crowd of mediocrity. You want more for yourself, even if you can’t admit that to yourself yet & don’t think you deserve it.

What do you have to lose in learning to love yourself? Or in trying to be happy, & starting to live a life that genuinely makes you feel good? There is nothing to lose.

Change is hard. Taking all the bullshit & the bad feelings you’ve been accumulating & shoving them out the door with their cardboard boxes of baggage isn’t easy. In fact, changing & creating the kind of life you always hoped you might be able to live & becoming the person you hoped you could become might just be one of the hardest things you’ve ever done.

There will be kicking & screaming & tears. There might even be days when you don’t even think you can get out of bed, much less move forward.

But the thing is, you will. You will get up. You will open the curtains, & the sunlight will stream in again. And you will feel better. You will make it through this.

On the other side of the dark stormy seas you’ve been sailing, there will be sunlight, & warmth, & a life better than you ever hoped you could have.

To be completely honest, I’m not there yet. But I’m on my way. I make my progress in great leaps & strides. Sometimes, I fall down. Sometimes I stumble & slide back on the hill I’m climbing. Then I get back up & brush the sand off my clothes, & I keep climbing. Someday, not long from now, I will get to where I’m heading. And then I will find somewhere else to travel to.

I am on my way.

So are you.

Change is hard. But the ability to adapt is the thing which separates the winners from the losers. You are trying to make your life better. That puts you in the category of the winners, right now. You’re strong enough, & smart enough, & determined enough to win.

Think about this. You have made it through everything that’s happened to you in your life so far. You have made it. If you can do that, you can do this. You can do anything.

You can love yourself. You can feel better. You can be happy.

You can start living any super-awesome amazing life of your choosing.

And you can start today. Right now.

The key to having all this starts when you start loving yourself. Self-love is the backbone to everything else available to you. It’s the ship that you’re sailing on, & the wind that fills your sails & your lungs. It’s the star you see up ahead in the dark of night. It’s the start of everything else. The first brick on the yellow brick road.

When you start loving yourself, everything else falls into place. You become stronger & more resilient. You start respecting yourself & knowing your worth & only accepting the things you deserve. You start realizing that you can create whatever life you want for yourself, & start empowering yourself to go out there, & go get it.

Happiness is hard. Authenticity is hard.

But when you start loving yourself, that’s when these things become easy.

Here’s how…

Buy the Book on Kindle
Buy Paperback on Amazon

Here’s What Happens When You Choose to Live Life Authentically

When you live authentically, loving yourself becomes a whole lot easier.

Here's What Happens When You Choose to Live Life Authentically

Previously published by Thought Catalog at www.thoughtcatalog.com.

Living an authentic life, or at least really trying to, is probably one of the most challenging things that I have done. To me, authenticity is living a life that makes you feel good about the person you are becoming.

It’s when you feel like it is both okay and beautiful to be the exact person that you genuinely are and always wanted to be, and when you get closer to a place of acceptance and love towards yourself.

To me, this isn’t a specific end result or level that you one day reach, but an ongoing process of continually reinventing yourself and making adjustments to your life to match your authentic self. In the process of figuring out who I want to be and working on becoming that, I’ve noticed some wonderful changes.

When you start fearlessly reinventing yourself, you will finally feel happier. When you start living authentically, happiness will start coming more naturally to you, and you’ll feel surprisingly good about the person you are. At first, living authentically can feel scary. You may feel guilt that you’re not living the life others think you should, or be afraid that no one will like or understand the new you.

Changing the way other people see you is probably one of the hardest parts of really becoming yourself, but it’s more than worth it. You might find yourself wanting to try new things that you didn’t have the confidence to do before, and life will probably start becoming a hell of a lot more fun.

For a good portion of my teenage years, I felt strongly dissatisfied and unhappy with my life. I couldn’t do anything that I wanted to do without being plagued by the fear that others wouldn’t like my choices, and even the smallest of frowns or negative comment would dissuade me from doing what I really wanted to do.

I felt like everyone’s expectations of who I was supposed to be were things that I had to listen to, no matter how much they conflicted with who I really was.

One day, I came to the realization that most of the things that made me feel overwhelmed were related to me trying to be what others wanted me to be. I also realized that living my life based on what other people wanted was fruitless and would never allow me to be satisfied or at peace with myself.

Immediately, I began making a list of things I needed to do to start feeling more like myself, the version of myself that I was yet to fully embrace. I worked on incorporating goals and changes into my life that felt good to me and matched up with the kind of person I was excited to start being while ruthlessly editing out the things that didn’t make me happy. When I look at my life since then, it feels predominately good, and a whole lot lighter and brighter than before. The best part is, it keeps getting better all the time, and I know that the more I work on becoming more myself, the better my life will feel.

When you live authentically, loving yourself becomes a whole lot easier.

Loving something encourages you to take better care of it, so the more you love yourself, the more you will value whatever self-care activities are important to you. You will look forward to the things you do that make you feel good. I strongly believe that living an authentic life is the best choice you can make for yourself, and the more expressive form of self-care there is. Whether self-care for you means making sure to drink a cup of hot tea every morning, eat better, spend time with your family, pets, or friends, wear an outfit that makes you feel amazing, go out to socialize more, spend time alone, work more, work less, or get enough sleep, you will become more intuitive about what self-care rituals work best when you start figuring out who you are.

Things will connect and come together in beautiful ways that you may never have expected, and you may find sudden clarity regarding situations or things that you previously felt divided about.

The biggest part of becoming your authentic self is being, owning, and loving the person that you are, regardless of how conventional or unconventional a person that may be.

Your confidence will soar when you start making choices that you really connect with. and this confidence will propel you to take the next steps in reinventing yourself. You’ll find that you aren’t so afraid of what others think of you, and when you start living with honesty, you will inspire others to do the same.

That is perhaps the best and more awe-inspiring part about truly being yourself of all — the fact that you will possess the electric power to empower others to take steps to become who they are. When you start to work on living an authentic life, you will realize how much beauty there is in the unique, amazing, one-of-a-kind person that you were born to be.

Why I Feel So Much Compassion for My 18-Year-Old Self

Why I Feel So Much Compassion for 18-Year-Old-Me

I was looking through my old diaries from when I was a very sad, very lonely teenager. It was 2013 & I was 18 years old. Back when I was always changing my name. Trying to find some type of identity for myself. I filled out multiple questionnaires that I wrote myself. About what I believed in. What I liked & didn’t like. I wrote little stories about the things I wished I was doing instead.

There was a lot of me talking about how sad I was. How much I wanted to move out. I felt like moving out was the only way I would be able to throw off the (self-imposed) chains that made me feel so heavy I couldn’t move. I wished so desperately that I had real friends. I was in a prison of my own making. Digging myself out of it wouldn’t be for another couple of years.

I realized I actually did a pretty lot of cool things back then. I forgot how many I had done. I didn’t have a car or know how to drive, so I couldn’t really go anywhere & do anything. But I still somehow found things to do. I read a huge number of books, watched numerous films, spent all my time working on the books, music, videos, etc.

All my projects could be my main priorities. I learned a lot by reading libraries worth of books & the entire Internet (or so it sometimes felt). Back when I was both very free, very chained, very lonely, & very empowered to choose & do whatever I wanted, within the bounds that were set. How much difference is there between freedom & loneliness, sometimes?

Sometime else though stood out the most. I felt an overwhelming sense of compassion for my younger self as I read what I’d written. Some of the hopes & fears that I had back then were the same ones I still had now. The fear that maybe I was really a lame person. The eternal question of who I really was. The eternal hope that I really was going to end up where I wanted to, eventually. Some of the fears & hopes that were very important to me back then look pale, & sometimes almost ridiculous, looking at them now. But I still felt immense love & admiration for me, four years ago, here & now in the future. We were still the same person, existing on different planes of time simultaneously.

In one of the notebooks, I found the letter I had written to my 10-year-old self. The letter was only one page, but summed it up pretty well. It was 18-year-old me telling 10-year-old me how much she loved her. How great sorrows & great joys were all on their way.

That no matter what happened, I shouldn’t be afraid. That I shouldn’t lose hope. Because this is 18-year-old me telling 10-year-old me that she survived everything that was yet to happen. It was powerful hope being showered back into the past, a golden light put in the hands of a frightened, lonely 10-year-old. A message from the future that she made it.

More importantly, it was 22-year-old me being able to look back on 18-year-old me (who was looking back at 10) & realize the same messages, the same love, the same hope applied equally to myself at 10 as it did at 18.

There are many things about that era that resonate with me now. The same hopes & fears. & I have been reminded how I felt them, loved them, feared them, wanted them, even back then. That if I could feel a sense of freedom even back then, that I could feel it again. I am both the same person I was in that time span, & an entirely different person, rolled into someone new who is everything & undefined, fluid, at the same time. I reach back through the folds of space & fill my hands & arms with all the things I want to incorporate & reuse. I had more wisdom back then than I thought I did.

18-year-old me expressed her love for 10-year-old me in the letter. If I could go back in my past, to me any point in time, I would tell her the same thing. She too has a lot of fears, sorrows, & joys ahead of her, more than she knows.

But I would still tell her this:

You are going to be okay.

And:

You make it.

That’s what I want her to know, because she didn’t know it well enough back then. I want her to know I love her, & I always will.

101 Ways to Love Yourself: How to Feel Better, Be Happier, & Start Living a Super-Awesome Life Now

Cover for self-help book 101 Ways to Love Yourself: How to Feel Better, Be Happier, & Start Living a Super-Awesome Life Now by Ashlee Craft

Happiness is hard. Authenticity is hard. I know this very, very well.

I’m not going to give you some fluffy sermon about how if you just take a bubble bath, smile three times a day at yourself in the mirror, & think happy thoughts constantly that your life will magically be better. These things might help you, but they also might not.

But the thing is, you have all the power in the world to change your life.

Hating yourself is boring. Feeling ugly & unloved is boring. Living someone else’s plans for you is boring. Being depressed & feeling hopeless about your future is boring.

You deserve better than that. You were born to live an awesome life. It’s your duty to yourself to pursue that, as vibrantly & lovingly as you can.

What do you have to lose in learning to love yourself? Or in trying to be happy, & starting to live a life that genuinely makes you feel good? There is nothing to lose.

Change is hard. But the ability to adapt is the thing which separates the winners from the losers. You are trying to make your life better. That puts you in the category of the winners, right now. You’re strong enough, & smart enough, & determined enough to win.

Think about this. You have made it through everything that’s happened to you in your life so far. You have made it. If you can do that, you can do this. You can do anything.

You can love yourself. You can feel better. You can be happy.

You can start living any super-awesome amazing life of your choosing.

And you can start today. Right now.

The key to having all this starts when you start loving yourself. Self-love is the backbone to everything else available to you. It’s the ship that you’re sailing on, & the wind that fills your sails & your lungs. It’s the star you see up ahead in the dark of night. It’s the start of everything else. The first brick on the yellow brick road.

When you start loving yourself, everything else falls into place. You become stronger & more resilient. You start respecting yourself & knowing your worth & only accepting the things you deserve. You start realizing that you can create whatever life you want for yourself, & start empowering yourself to go out there, & go get it.

Happiness is hard. Authenticity is hard.

But when you start loving yourself, that’s when these things become easy.

Here’s how…

Check it out on Kindle

airplane, bright magic tree : a manifesto for newness

Airplane + Bright Magic Tree

  1. I am thinking about all the things I want to create for myself. It tingles at the ends of my fingers. Power. I am excited for it. All the things I want to bring into existence. That car. That mode of living (away from the fear). I think about my goal list & all the things that are tingling there too, vibrating & waiting with electric levitated energy to be brought out of thought & into my life. Finally traveling. The way I don’t have to wait any longer, to make things real, because all of it is mine, pick & choose, & I realize that I lack nothing that I need.
  2. Bright red-orange hair. I think about his face & then I think about the hair. First I feel a twinge of sadness, missing it – & then it makes me excited because I am soaring & it is freeing, to become all the things I couldn’t be before. I associate the hair with the separation of that person & this person. A tangible symbol that I have moved on. Reinvention, once more. 
  3. I am excited about the upcoming weeks & months. The electricity of it is happy. Thinking about the way it all flowed so damn easily last year, now & before. Keeping it rolling. Flowing, it makes so much sense now. Continual motion.
  4. I don’t even know her name.
  5. The gold-embossed owl plate sitting under the Christmas tree on top a wooden Tarot card box, reflecting the lights. Mirth incense.
  6. Looking with melancholy out the window at the full moon. Selectively brooding.
  7. I illuminated the room & nothing bad happened.
  8. Honey-dew melon colored water after painting.
  9. I am watching it finally becoming a reality. The birth of a dream, finally. I sent off the words today, & then I will be at the helm of the ship, with the ability to make magic happen, & mold the sand upwards to make mountains & sky-high pines. Outer space, to touch the stars like so many before me have done.
  10. Now that it doesn’t have to be you, it can be anyone.
  11. Email minimalism. Cutting out everything that doesn’t bring me joy. Goodbye, newsletters subscribed to from past selves.
  12. Nautical clothing. Five things I need to add to my wardrobe soon. Things to make nautical outfits out of. Suspenders, to wear with bright-toned skater skirts. White t-shirts & sleeveless shirts. Bright yellow. Combat boots.
  13. The moment I realized it isn’t worth obsessing over the Fictions told by others or seen on TV or read in magazines; to spend more time worrying about keeping up appearances than working on making magic in your own life.
  14. It is pointless trying to read things cutting them down in order to justify your opinion of them. You are entitled to what you like & don’t like. Hate & annoyance is a waste of time. Spend more time loving things.
  15. Love is light. Feel the light coming out the ends of your fingers. Feel it in your chest. Stars died & were reborn & universes were created, just so that you could feel. Spend more time leaving behind $5 bills places with messages of good vibrations & send ripples out there so people can feel them. Leave behind messages in books. Write letters to people who you may never know, wishing them good things in their lives. Make it all feel loved. Become your own personal version of Love.
  16. His music. I listened to it, lying on my back staring up at the ceiling; it was melancholy, it was hopeful, it was electric, it was truly beautiful, & it spoke to my soul in a way that I hadn’t felt in a long time. They were the anthems for the new person I had become in the time that had passed.
  17. Stop wasting your time trying to follow the comings & goings of everyone, & keeping up with what all the Joneses are doing. Focus on your own shit. You’re better off that way.
  18. How To Be Happy Single. Realize that it isn’t that important. There are better things.
  19. I will order her book soon. & the hair dye, & everything else. Phoenix. Names. I am beginning to write a new narrative for myself.

A Few Goals for 2016

Hanabii in Adachi-ku2

I am in the process of writing & perfecting my New Year’s goals. Every year, the idea of this – the process – excites me, because although I make changes to who I am & what I want constantly throughout the year, New Year’s (or at least the beginning of the year) seems like a good blank slate in which to make new decisions about where I’m heading.

I must note that in my New Year’s goal list that I make every year, the list is a running list. It is never “complete”, & it isn’t supposed to be. I add to it constantly. The list doesn’t JUST contain goals which I intend on completing in that given year – a good portion of them are things I want to do this year, but there’s also lots of long-term goals I put on there to remind myself to work towards the goals so in a future year they can be achieved.

I then break this master list down & choose specific things to work towards each week, which I write down in a notebook & highlight with a highlighter as I accomplish the tasks. Once a goal is completed, I put the date of completion after it on my master list & place it in a separate list at the bottom of my goal list document. At the end of the year, I remove the list of accomplished goals from the document & place it in a new document. I then rewrite the goal list for the new year, so that each list reflects that year alone. There’s no point in leaving the things on my 2015 list, for example, that I didn’t accomplish, so I just move them on to the next year!

The thing is, I like the basic concept of my list, but I decided that this year I wanted to make the goal list more personalized & specific. Sometimes in years prior, I haven’t changed or edited the list very much aside from adding new things to it, so I found quite a few things on the list that I was no longer interested in accomplishing.

Additionally, it wasn’t organized as well as I hoped it could be, so I decided to assign the goals to specific categories : GENERAL, ADVENTURES, BOOKS & WRITING, CREATIVITY & ART, EDUCATION, FASHION, FINANCES, FITNESS & HEALTH, HABITS, HAPPINESS, HOBBIES & RELAXATION, HOME, MUSIC, PETS & FAMILY, & RELATIONSHIPS. This way, it will be easy to find the goals for each week’s goal lists, & easy to keep my ideas organized.

Personally, 2015 ended up being a surprisingly amazing year for me – I could never have guessed how interesting & great it would end up at the start of the year (for more details, read about my New Year’s Day reflections) – & I plan on making 2016 even betterTo accomplish this, I need to have a solid plan, which I feel like I have now thanks to my reorganized goal list.

A few goals of mine for 2016 …

Organize my entire garage utilizing plastic storage bins. This means cleaning out ALL the clutter, downsizing it, & making sure I only keep things I actually need. I’m tired of having a garage filled with cardboard boxes full of things I haven’t used or thought about in years, & for the most part, if it’s not inside my house, I probably don’t need it. Goal : have a very clean, organized garage that makes it super easy to find holiday decorations & has room for impromptu disco parties.

Dye all my hair/part of my hair copper, rose gold, or red-orange. I really love my natural hair color, but in the past year I’ve really taken an interest to experimenting with my hair. I read this article & it provided additional inspiration to take the leap. I might do dip-dyed hair like I did with red hair over the summer, or I might dye all my hair if the effect is more subtle.

Learn & become somewhat decent at fencing / kickboxing / archery.

Improve at skateboarding. I want to learn how to do some basic jumps, & improve at my skateboarding in general. Time for some more practice, & YouTube!

Become at least somewhat fluent in Spanish.

Read more. Read through books I own. I own so many books that I have never read. Most of them are collected from the free or $0.25 book bins at the library or thrift stores) that I have never read. This means that I have a lot of hidden gems that I don’t even KNOW that I have, & this year, I want to find them!

See & interact with sloths & owls in real life. Sloths are one of my top favorite animals, & owls ARE my favorite. I want to be able to experience these animals in real life, as opposed to just seeing pictures or videos online.

★ Buy a Nutribullet so I can make healthy smoothies & up my intake of fruits & veggies.

★ Do more acts of love for myself. Buy myself fresh flowers at least once a month. Make my bed every day. Make time to read & listen to music more. Take more time for myself. Distance myself from negativity. Drink more tea. Honor & respect & do my best to love my body & myself unconditionally. Start living my life the way I want to, & becoming the person I feel like being. Nourish myself with healthy, wholesome foods, but also eat things less healthy & wholesome when I feel inclined to. Open the windows. Do yoga. Let myself be happy. Realize that I don’t need someone else to make my life complete, or to make my happiness complete or “legitimate”.

What are some of your goals for this year? 2016 is the year for you to finally do all those things you’ve been afraid to. 2016 is the year to start loving yourself, or increase the level of happiness in your life as much as you can, so that your life feels so good & illuminated. I hope you plan it or let it happen or both, so that this year is your most radiant year ever.

2015, How You Changed Me For the Better

Sparkler

As 2015 comes to a close, & a brand new unwritten year begins, I am thinking back on everything which occurred in the past year & to be honest, I am so amazed & impressed by all that has happened, & all that I have become. I have evolved. It was the type of year that started out somewhat rocky, but ended with a more beautiful & gentle sense of closure than I ever expected to find. The kind of year that makes me feel like maybe I need therapy or a long vacation or mere time to deal with all the phases & changes I went through, but simultaneously the kind of year that makes me feel like I have been deeply, vividly healed. It was the kind of year filled such with influential growth & complete reinvention & beautiful epiphanies & gentle, nurturing, startling, surprising change & rebirth, that I can only hope that 2016 will offer similar (or better, even more beautiful & ebullient) opportunities for happiness & becoming myself that this year has.

A brief overview of some highlights from 2015 //

★ Completed my A Thousand Cranes series by publishing the 10th book in the series, & therefore the 1000th poem in the series

★ Published 4 books (Panorama Novelty; Document Your Life : A Journal; Elephants [Wonderful Wildlife, Book 6]; & the aforementioned A Thousand Cranes, Volume 10)

★ Started my awesome zine, Ashlee Craft / Assemblage, & published 8 issues of it ★ Released my 2nd album, Confusion is Over, on YouTube

★ Launched this blog (!!!)

★ Completed many goals that I deemed made me successful, in my eyes

★ I learned an indescribable amount about myself : who I wanted to be, where I wanted to go in life, what I really wanted & really didn’t want, what my goals really were, & that I shouldn’t sacrifice my dreams in order to do all the things I was “supposed” to do. It was a year of stripping away the bullshit until what I was left with was a polished gem glittering with the authentic truth : the reveal was that all along, I’d had what I needed.

★ I finally started feeling comfortable being open with people & letting them see who I really was : ceasing to participate in boring small talk as a form of friendship or present a watered-down version of my personality just to conform to what others expect me to be or what I perceive will make me more similar (therefore “likable”) to them. A refusal to build a wall around myself, hiding in a way so that I am never vulnerable but also never loved or known. Finally becoming myself, & having the courage to do so.

★ Learning to love myself more. Learning to accept & see the greatness (& truth) in all the things that I previously found to be faults in myself. Finally being able to see myself as being good enough : always worthy of love & respect – knowing my thoughts & opinions matter, & that my choices are perfectly okay. Being able to see when I deserve better, & being brave enough to go after Better.

★ Happiness. Learning that happiness isn’t a weird elusive thing meant for someone other than me. Finally being able to say that in the past year, I have almost entirely overcome the depression & anxiety that used to be a constant shroud (although the process of overcoming has been going on for much, much longer); achieving a sort of healing happiness; finally feeling like things really will be okay, & that I am capable of feeling good about myself & my life, long term & so deeply & authentically.

2016, I am looking forward to all the magic you have to offer me; all the good things & bright spunky ebullience awaiting me. Here’s to us all, making this the best year of our lives so far.

★★★

 

 

My Favorite Things : October 27, 2015

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links to products that I recommend. When you click on an affiliate link to a product on an external website, I will receive compensation if you buy something. Thank you for your support.

LISTEN

★ Walk On – U2I love this song for so many reasons, but probably my favorite line in the song? “What you got, they can’t steal it. No they can’t even feel it.” They can’t take anything away from you. They cannot confine you. You can leave them behind. You are not trapped.

★ Sweet Thing – Van MorrisonA beautiful epiphany in a song. The multi-layered instrumentation is phenomenal & magical & perfect. Soaring flutes. The tender melody & lyrics. Ebullient guitar. One of my all time favorite songs.

★ You Still Believe In Me – The Beach BoysThe comforting knowledge that even after everything that has happened or will happen, that there is a constant person who has your back & will believe in you, no matter what.

★ Crowded House. I started listening to more Crowded House recently. The song that made me start loving their music was Archer’s Arrows (which is a phenomenal & fantastic song). Then I heard Don’t Dream It’s Over (see below), & fell in love with that too. I haven’t heard that many songs of theirs yet, but I’ve liked what I’ve heard so far. Their songs are very aesthetically pleasing, & very atmospheric. They’re the kind of songs I would like to work into a variety of playlists.

In A Sentimental Mood – John Coltrane & Duke EllingtonI like this song because it’s evocative in a somewhat melancholy way, & John Coltrane expresses this mood perfectly.

 

EAT

★ Vanilla Talenti Gelato. Seriously. Try this with rainbow sprinkles. It’s seriously THE BEST. Rainbow sprinkles make good things even better. Gelato somehow always manages to taste elegant & make you feel elegant while you’re eating it. I also love Talenti, because they keep their ingredients simple & to the point, & produce an awesome product. Fun fact : my father usually refers to my Gelato as “ice cream”, a term which I don’t think encompasses the awesomeness & quality of Gelato.

★ Ducktrap Smoked Salmon & Ducktrap Smoked Trout. I am a huge fan of smoked fish. A huge fan. Their smoked salmon with dill is AMAZING, & I am so in love right now with their smoked trout, which I just recently tried. The smoked trout tastes like a combination between fresh smoked herring fillets and smoked salmon. One thing I love about both the smoked trout & the smoked salmon is that the fillets of them are nice, thick, & wholesome, which is even better than the thin fillets more commonly found. Also, I want to put dill on everything now. I recently made homemade guacamole with dill in it, & it was great.

★ This awesome meal I made a while ago

 

READ

★ Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie PerkinsThis was a nice, heartwarming YA romance story. It made me feel all warm & fuzzy inside, & it’s just a sweet book in general.

★ 10 Really Easy Ways to Love Yourself More TodayAs always, Gala Darling has a lovely, illuminating, magical list. I especially like Point #8, about liking what you like & not liking things just because they’re popular.

This article about Street Dreams Magazine from The New York TimesI really, really like the idea of bringing the Internet into a more tangible, DIY form. Like a zine, of photographs.

 

WATCH

★ Jamming Baby Owls. BABY OWLS DANCING. Owls are the best thing ever.

★ John Owen-Jones Singing “Who Am I?” From Les Miserables. I love this song with a passion, & John Owen-Jones is the very best at singing it. He fills it with an emotion & evocative vulnerability that I haven’t heard in other renditions of the song. It is the most real, honest version, & because of this, a favorite.

 

WEAR

★ Colorful socks inside my awesome sparkly jelly shoes. Right now, I am especially loving my photo print strawberry socks, but since I bought the jelly shoes, I have bought a lot of cute, colorful novelty socks, just for wearing inside my jelly shoes.

My canvas medic bagI wear this bag in a lot of the fashion photos I take, & it’s my go-to bag for everyday usage. Ever since my Indiana Jones phase as a teen, I wanted a bag like this. I finally found one which appropriately matches the one in the films. I love it because it is sturdy, holds a lot of stuff, is comfortable & easy to wear, & just looks cool. Looking cool is the primary reason. It adds a ruggedness & uniqueness to any outfit I add it to.

★ Knee Socks with Jelly Shoes or Combat Boots. I will be posting photos of this combination soon, but it looks tough but feminine at the same time, & also allows me to include the edginess of combat boots while still showing off all my cool, patterned knee socks.

 

TO DO

★ Laying on the floor with my dog & playing fetch with him when I get home from work. He looks forward to this, & would seriously play for hours on end if I didn’t get tired of throwing his toys for him.

★ Learning how to drive. I didn’t learn when I was younger because I had no need to, but I’m learning now, & it’s going great!

★ Earning my GED & passing all the subjects the first time around. I got honors on Reasoning Through Language Arts and in Social Studies, & was one point away from honors in Science. This was something I’d wanted to do for a long time, & I’m so proud of myself for accomplishing this goal.

 

THINGS 

★ “When nothing is sure, everything is possible.” ― Margaret Drabble. Embrace the confusion. Now that you have nothing to lose & maybe nothing to prove, you can do anything. Now that you’re confused & uncertain & scared of the changes going on around you, you can turn this into anything. You have a blank canvas from which you can paint & create & shape into whatever feels best for you.

 

NEW AWESOME THINGS

★ My new album, Confusion is Over. 

New Book – Document Your Life : A Journal.

★ New Book – Panorama Novelty

★ New Book – Ashlee Craft / Assemblage Issue 5