Letterboxing...again.

So I mentioned letterboxing.

Every time I mention it on Facebook, I get a slew of questions from people who have no idea what that is.  And that's kind of by design -- letterboxing is kind of a secretive activity.  Not because it's illicit or anything, but because secrecy is required to keep the boxes safe from prying eyes.  

Essentially, if you know what Geocaching is, this predates it, and is generally geocaching for Luddites.

Instead of needing a GPS or a fancy phone, you use clues.  Written clues.  Maybe a compass, if a box-planter is feeling cheeky.

A whole rash of people involved in this activity have made boxes, which they then hide in secret, secure places, usually out in nature.  (Though not always.  Some are inside.  But they're in the minority.)  They write clues to where the box is located, and the finders use those clues to go find the box.

When they find one, inside is a stamp and a small logbook.  None of that trinkety stuff you find in geocaches -- just a simple stamp and a logbook.  Sometimes those are hand-carved/handmade, sometimes they're store-bought.  The stamp isn't really the focus, just a bonus -- the hike is the real star of the show.

A finder carries with him/her a personal stamp to represent himself, and a journal.  S/he stamps HER stamp in the logbook, and the box's stamp in her journal.  It's like proof s/he found it.  S/he then boxes everything back up securely, and replaces it where she found it, hidden from view and as safe as possible from wildlife or accidental finding by random humans, so that it can be found by the next person with clues.

Clues are generally on one of two sites.  I prefer AtlasQuest, though LBNA was the first site online.  (I find AQ to be easier to navigate, with better updates on a box's condition.  LBNA was once the *only* place to find clues, and they're not always that great at updating boxes that are missing.  And since I am nothing if not profoundly lazy, I really hate putting on pants for nothing.)

I've been letterboxing since 2000.

Yep.  You read that right.

Nearly 17 years, at the time of this writing.  My first actual find was in 2001 (the first box I looked for was gone.), and once I had that first win?  Totally addicted.  The Pacific Northwest had some of the most prolific boxers at the time, and I was in love with stamp carving, so placing boxes was fun, too.

I kind of got away from it when I moved to the rural midwest, because there simply weren't enough people (at the time) who knew about it.  There weren't many boxes, and placing them was just kind of sad, since nobody wanted to drive five hours off the nearest interstate to come find my plants, even if they were awesome stamps.  (I can't blame anyone for that.)  Plus, the hikes were so much less exciting in the middle of a cornfield than they were in the middle of a forest.

I tried again when I was in Omaha, then again when we moved to North Carolina.  There were more boxes in NC, but our living situation wasn't ideal, and getting away to box wasn't a priority.

So moving back out here got me all kinds of excited.

(For a lot of reasons, but letterboxing was among the reasons. :D)

Now that we're settled in, I've been hunting and placing boxes again all over this area.  I have a thousand ideas for series (multiple boxes along one larger hike), and  my list of printed clues is about a billion miles deep.

Most of the time,  I won't walk to the fridge unless there's a compelling reason to do so, but you dangle a stamp and a "find" in front of me like a particularly awesome scavenger hunt, and I AM SO THERE.

Over this summer, I'm trying to find another 30+ boxes and place another 20+ boxes.  I'm finding that I'm much more excited about placing them than finding them right now, but that flips around from time to time.  I'll probably end up showing some of the stuff I'm working on, in fact.

FAIR WARNING TO OTHER LOCAL BOXERS.
If you don't want to be spoilered on the stamps in my boxes, you may not want to look this summer. :)  (Or you could just enjoy the hike and getting the F, too.  There's that.)

Do check out AtlasQuest if this sounds fun.  There are probably at least a few boxes in your area, and there's a whoooole lot more info about how the game's played there, too.

It's really, really fun. 

Summer's Approaching, so Goals

you have arrived | thewandersociety.com

I kind of hate the word "goals".

It's too formal.  It makes me think that things are set in stone, which makes my inner Rebel go all I don't THINK so.  I haven't come up with a better word yet.  Intentions, maybe.  (Though that word's loaded for me, too.)

Regardless, I have Stuffs I Wanna Do This Summer, and "goals" is about the only way to put it, so...there we are.

So without further ado:

Stuffs I Wanna Do This Summer

(with "summer" being defined as "until the rain is below about 55 degrees-ish", since summer in the PNW can be...unpredictable.)

1. Two camping trips minimum.
   I have a powerful need for some tent and tree time this year.  In the past two summers I've been here, logistics have been an issue.  This year, not so much.  So I'm taking the dog and heading out to somewhere green at LEAST twice.  In fact, I'll need to set those dates here very soon, just so I can post about them for some accountability.
2. PNW 101 List.
   While I haven't been actively working the list since I made it (again, logistics of having an elderdog that can't be left alone for very long and can't go with me, etc.), I have been checking things off of it.  This summer, I want to tackle it like a linebacker, and maybe place a few letterboxes (or find existing ones!) while I'm out there exploring.
3. Blog more regularly.  (1x week minimum)
   This is largely for me and, obviously, has already started.  I keep a paper journal, but I like being able to put my pictures somewhere with my witty observations about life and local travel.  (Ha! Ahem.)  Plus, I feel like writing in public has more accountability.  So there, writer's block.  Chew on that. :)
4. WONDER/WANDER (zine)
   This is secondary to the actual wandering (as defined by the wander society, see the link above), but with the Every Day Everyday thing, I've kind of fallen in love with layouts of sketching and writing together.  I want to document my summer wanders and put them together into some kind of publication.  Probably a zine, definitely called WONDER.  I'm aiming for a Septemberish completion date.
5. Bind all the Things 
   I've been working on binding all the books that I had stuff for, largely to use up the materials I'd been hoarding during my Weirdo Prepper-Adjacent Moments after the tornado.  I've got most of them cut and assembled, and most just need either a cover design and/or stitching.  I'd like to get all those done in the coming weeks, and throw them on etsy.  I need the space. :)
6. Finish Outstanding Writing Projects
   There are a few.  Plus, I'm in a competition that I'll talk more about once I've got a few challenges under my belt.  But my list of Things To Write is longer than my compiled Time In Which To Write Them at this point, and the balance throws off my mojo.  Time to buck up and just finish some things that have been started.
7. Letterboxing!
   I will totally be writing entries about this at some point.  Now that I'm back out here where hiking's an actual Thing, (and the logistics stuff is cleared up, natch) I've been 'boxing like a mad fiend.  I love that it gets me out of the house and walking, and enjoying the amazing PNW wildlands.  I'm aiming for a P(lace) count of 75 (I'm at 53 now), and a F(ind) count of 150 (I'm at 130 now).  Those goals are more than doable.  I may need to adjust them upward, even.
8. Start Using My Stuff.
   I have a bag of stuff here that I wanted to use for particular projects (and, to be honest, some of it just because it was shiny).  Once I'm done with my paintings (another entry, coming soon), I want to dive into the Bag o' Awesome and do what I can with it.  I may love making All The Things; I may not.  But I want to try it so I know for sure.  (It's stitching-related, for the record.)
9. Bike 100 miles.
   Jezebel and me....we've got a date.  I'm getting her tuned up as we speak, and then it's on.  100 miles doesn't sound like a lot to a "real" cyclist, but for me, who can get winded walking to the fridge to get another ice cream sandwich, it's a lofty goal, but a reachable one.  Again, I might adjust that up if I blow it out of the water too soon.

So there we go.  Nine things while the sun shines.

(Of course, the sun shining thing is kind of malleable up here in the trees, but you get my drift.)

I have some other stuff that's kind of minor -- reading a certain amount, establishing routines, finishing challenges.  But for the most part, my biggun's are there.

What are you guys doing this summer?

Everyday Everyday: A Thing.

So, I'm kind of doing a Thing.

Like most Things I end up doing, I didn't really mean for it to be A Thing.  

I swear, all my best ideas end up coming about from offhanded stuff.  The stuff I plan meticulously?  Never happens, never catches on with me.  Stuff I come up with at three a.m. and think hey that might be cool, I'll just do it and think about it as I go along, always ends up being awesome.

There's a lesson in there for me, I think.

Anyway, the Thing.

I'm still trying to make sketching an every day habit.  And while I've been doing it quite regularly, I noticed I've been relying a lot on drawing from references.  

Now, there's no shame in that.  Every sketch makes you a better sketcher.  I truly believe that.

But my sketchbooks were starting to look a little, I dunno, sanitized maybe.  Like, "here is my pretty drawing of XYZ", instead of what I really LIKE to look back on, which is the stuff in my life.  When I look back at old sketchbooks, the entries that grab me aren't the well-rendered landscapes or detailed watercolors, even ones that come from my own imagination.

What grabs me are the stupid things.  The empty Dr. Pepper can on my desk in watercolor.  The sketches of my dogs sleeping, even though they look kind of like cookies that someone's only half-baked.  Studies of flowers I've brought in from outside, or drawn while I was out there.

I like to look back on the stuff that's my everyday life.

So I started on May 1st, drawing my everyday life, every day.

They're sketches, and I don't care if they look good, so there's no pressure.  It's just me, a pen, and my life.   Sometimes, that's collections of things.  Sometimes it's more than one drawing on a page.  Sometimes it's an actual story.

But it's all mundane, everyday life, examined closely and recorded.  It's becoming one of my most cherished daily practices.

I'm kind of loving it a little.

On Routines

Let me just say this right away:

I love routines.  I love being able to put things on autopilot and just do them as if by muscle memory.  I love knowing what's coming next so I don't forget important things.

Or, rather, I should say...I love the idea of routines.

In practice, however, I forget I have them.

I know.  It's some kind of Airhead Syndrome.  I've had it since birth.  If something's not right in my face, it no longer exists.  

(Sidenote:  Once, there was this article in some dog magazine about how you can test your dog's intelligence by showing him a treat in your palm, fisting up your hands and switching the hand the treat's in.  You then show your dog your fists and see how long it takes for him to find the treat.  The shorter the time, the smarter the dog, supposedly.

Were I a dog, I would forget we were playing a game and wander off to look at butterflies.  I'm just saying.)

So routines tend to be kind of hit-or-miss with me.

I love them.  I want to have them.  I just don't have the mental wherewithal to come up with them most of the time, since most of my IQ points are at the bottom of the third cup of coffee.

That said, I've been trying for the past year to come up with a morning routine that works.

And to fight my scatterbrain, I had to start writing it out, every day, in my bullet journal.  

Every. Blessed. Day.  For nearly a year.  (Partially because sometimes, I don't remember there's a bullet journal until the end of the third cup of coffee, too.  I know.)

It's not all that impressive, as far as routines go.

• Get up. (duh)
• Make coffee. (of course)
• Make J's lunch.
• Do any waiting dishes and/or laundry.
• Write until your brain wakes up.

That's it.  None of that fancy Miracle Morning junk with inspired reading or meditation or -- heaven forbid -- exercise.  I need to be awake for that stuff, or I'll end up running into a tree with my person.

It's even more sad that I have to write it out every day once you see how short and obvious the list is, I know.

That said, it's been the best thing I've done in the past year.

Because it's so short, it doesn't intimidate me.  I don't feel any resistance, which I totally WOULD if that list was any longer/more complicated.  And I give in to resistance all the time, so this is awesome.

I hate doing dishes to an almost pathological degree, so by doing them first thing in the morning, I get to feel all smug and accomplished for the rest of the day.  (The rest of my day, once the Smart comes back on in my eyes, is much more complicated than this, so, y'know, simple victories, et. al.)

The writing part is kind of like morning pages, but without the pretension.  I write in my paper journal for however long I want to.  Sometimes that's a page, sometimes that's fifteen pages.  But I tend to write about what I'm doing that day, which clarifies it and amps me up to do it, and on days when I don't write it out, I get way less done.  

There's something to be said for simplicity.

Sometimes, I think I want to add more to this list.  Walk the dog first thing,  or draw something.  Something less brain-dead.  

But the fact is: my tiny little routine is good for me.  I don't need more than that to launch off into my awesome days.  And I'd rather be too sparse with it than overly complicated.

Simple is best.

What do you guys do every day?  Do you have a routine, formally established or not?

A couple of book type things

When I hibernate, I read.

I'm also still trying to have Reading Retreats every four weeks, where I'm tackling the pile of books here, but I have to admit something about those:

Free (or really cheap) ebooks seem to be cheap for a reason.

I've found some really great books that way, but for a while there, I seem to have been downloading anything with a decent-sounding synopsis without bothering to read the "look inside" bit first, which resulted in a pretty long string of things that weren't my cup of tea.

(That said, I also bought and downloaded, or just bought, in paper form a whole lot of books that should never have come home with me.  Call it an overexuberance of delight in having so much entertainment so readily available.)

ANYWAY, that said:

I've uncovered some kind of fun stuff in my reading-for-volume weeks that I haven't updated or shared about here yet.  So here are a few that I really liked:

Driving Sideways

Jess Riley

Get it HERE.

A young woman who's just received an organ transplant decides that the best way to celebrate life is by taking an epic road trip -- partially to find her mother, partially to go find the family of her organ donor, partially just to do something crazy for once.  Things go sideways from the first rest stop, and what follows is the epic story of an epic trip.  

Startup

Doree Shafrir

Get it HERE.

If you've ever worked in tech, known someone who works in tech, or silently watched the tech world with a fair bit of fascination -- this book will feel kind of eerily close to startup culture for you.  It's funny, well-written, and engaging, right up to the very end.  (The ending is a little abrupt, but given how good the rest of it is, I'd still give it 4.5 stars.)  Most of the male characters will make you want to stab them in the face eventually, but the female friendships/relationships are worth the whole story.

The Mermaid's Sister

Carrie Anne Noble

Get it HERE.

I went through this spate of downloading a whole bunch of fiction kindle unlimited books with an audiobook included.  This is one of the ones that I listened to, and it was really fabulous.  It's a fairy tale, but not tedious or one of those rewritten ones that's become almost omnipresent lately.  It's original, fun, and totally readable.  Told from the perspective of the sister of a girl who's turning into a mermaid in front of her very eyes (inexorably slowly, though), the race to uncover how to save the sister is told alongside her own story.  Definitely one of my favorites so far this year.

I also signed up for the Book of the Month mailings for the next three months.

I used to be wary of those things where you didn't have much control over what arrived, but after two shipments (of which Startup was the first), I've been impressed by what they've picked.  And now that I'm down to almost only kindle editions in my library (I've only got a few fiction books left in my physical stacks, thanks to the legendary simplicity kick I've been on...), it's kind of nice to read page after page of fiction on paper once in a while. 

It feels a little decadent even.  I like that. :)

What are you reading?  Suggestions?

More/Less

No matter how well things are going, they can always go well-er.

So when today's prompt came up, I thought I'd get all listy with it for a bit, here.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO MORE/LESS OF THIS MONTH:

1. More mindless drawing/less mindless Facebooking
2. More shopping at farmer's markets/less shopping at McDonald's.
3. More wandering/less busy-ness.
4. More reading/less...well...facebooking.  
5. More snuggling with Bella while listening to good books/did I mention the Facebook thing?

So there may be a trend here.  Ahem.

I'm really trying to cut back on the time I spend just mindlessly scrolling.  I mean, I love social media.  It's how I keep track of what's going on with my friends and family.  But when it starts to be a matter of just clickclickclick scrooooooollll get-angry-at-memes scroooooooollll click click click, I think I've reached the point of usefulness exhaustion.

(I don't, however, blame Facebook for this.  I see way too much of that.  My problem isn't Facebook, really, it's the desire to tune out of my own life and be entertained by the dopamine hit of external stimulation.  It's my own problem.)

I've got, like, a million things I want to do this summer.

Maybe I'll write about that next.  I have a list and all.  I always have lists.

I'm thinking a little non-screen time might be just what the doctor ordered.  (And yes, I see the irony of talking about it to a screen.  But you get my drift.)

On Flying Time, Loss, and Love

My sweet, drooly, lazy boy.

After Wilford passed so suddenly in December, I have to admit, I was pretty terrified.

Cash, our old guy, was...well...old.  We knew he was winding down.  His hips were hurting him more days than they weren't (he had hip dysplasia).  He had days where he was puppylike and full of energy, but they got more and more rare after Wilford died.  

We tried to prepare ourselves, emotionally, for the end we knew was coming.  We agreed that we wouldn't make any kind of final decisions, though, until we knew.  Until we knew that he was unhappy.  (We, of course, would rather have never been ready.)

On April 1st, we knew.

He didn't get up when we did, and while that wasn't totally unheard of, it was pretty unusual for him to not even change rooms when I came into the studio for longer than an hour.  He barely woke up when I went in to check on him and hold him for a little while.

But when he tried to get off the bed and collapsed, falling forward onto his face, and not able to get up once he landed...I knew.

I called J at work, and he came home.  We gave our boy a final cheeseburger (April 1 is when we celebrate his birthday -- he was sixteen on that very day), and drove him to our vet, trying to see the road through tears.  She took one look at him and told me things weren't good.  We could try surgery on his hips, but frankly, it'd be adding to his suffering -- which is the one thing we said we'd never do.

We held him and petted him and told him he was a good boy while they gave him the injections to help him sleep and, finally, to sleep forever.  (It's been over a month and I still can't even type this out without crying a hard, ugly cry.)

He thought he fit in this box.  My goofy boy did not know basic spatial dynamics, obviously.

He came to us for a weekend in 2004, and was a blessing every day since.

We were supposed to watch him for the weekend, but ended up keeping him.  He and Shenzi bonded almost immediately -- the two were peas in a pod.  They did everything together, from sleeping to hunting wild pizza in the dining room.  He charmed every person he ever met with his quiet soul.

He taught me about patience, that one.  About the power of naps and the power of protecting what's yours.  He loved by proximity.  If he loved you, he was near you, and would often spend his evenings just shuffling back and forth between my chair and John's, trying to remind us that he loved us both, and oh by the way, maybe you could grab one of those treats while you're standing near the jar...?

After he was gone, the house felt too big.  Too empty.

For the first time in more than a decade and a half, the house was without dogs.  I kept trying to get up and open up the back door for him, getting all the way to the kitchen before remembering that I didn't have to do that now.  Food that fell on the floor stayed there.  I vacuumed, and didn't have to stop every ten feet to empty the bag of dog hair.

I tried to look on the bright side, see.

And then Bella happened.

She's good at sleeping.

I might have gone to the humane society "just to look".

Ahem.

More about how she saved our broken hearts later.

Life is full of cycles and seasons, after all.

Storytime Tuesday: Why I Don't Sew.

When I was in college, in my very late teens or very early twenties, I tried to sew.  To quilt, actually.  I loved all the designs and the colors and the creativity involved, and I wanted to make those things.

What I forgot is that I can’t sew.  I injure myself and others when I attempt to sew.  I’m supremely bad at it to an almost ridiculous degree.

So, once, I was making a secret santa gift for someone at work.  I worked at MCI at the time, in a cubicle, like thousands of other corporate drones, and we’d drawn names for the holidays.  I got my supervisor’s name (but no pressure!), and thought I’d make this neat little quilted woven star ornament thing for which I had a kit.  I thought nothing would say “I’m thinking of you and how much you like kitschy little country things” than a hand-quilted calico star thingie.

Honestly, all was going well for a while.  I got the first nine-patch done, and went to go cut the strips for the upper part of the hearts, when the rotary cutter (a spinning wheel of razor-sharp death used by quilt wizards to cut through many layers of fabric at once) skipped up over the hard plastic ruler and through my middle finger.  Seriously.  Through it.  Finger, nail, and bone.  I almost cut it off.  As it was, there was a rather large fingertip-sized flap of was-finger hanging there.  The pain didn’t set in right away (probably because I severed the nerves in it, too, come to think of it), but the blood — oh, the blood, y’all.  There was more blood than I thought I had in my arm, much less my finger.  

I ran to the kitchen.  (About three steps.  My apartment then would make tiny house living look like residing in a mcMansion.)  I held the finger under the tap to make sure there wasn’t any fabric gunk caught in it.  Which is when the pain decided it was, in fact, coming to this party, along with a whole NEW rash of blood.

I went down.  It’s the first time I’ve ever passed out, that I can remember. It was brief, maybe a few seconds, but my eyelids slammed open to find that now, not only was I bleeding on my floor, but I was apparently bleeding everywhere else, too.  I grabbed a roll of paper towels and wrapped about half of them around my finger and then my hand.  I mummified that whole hand in towel.

About that time, my carpool friend arrived.  Apparently, she’d been honking downstairs and I’d missed it in that whole hacking-off-my-finger/bleeding-to-death thing.  I yelled for her to come in, and she stepped over puddles of semi-dried blood in the living room.  Are you okay? It looks like there’s blood on your….holy crap!

By this point, my kitchen looked like I’d taken up the hobby of filleting babies in my spare time.  I’d had to sit back down on the floor (in my own blood, by the way), because when I stood up, I was starting to see stars out the corners of my eyes.  I weakly told Pamela (my friend) that I thought maybe I shouldn’t go to work and should instead go to a doctor.  She agreed.  I didn’t have a phone (these were the olden days, before cell phones, and I didn’t want a land line until after the semester was over, because I’d planned to move closer to work then, and there was no point in paying the then-outrageous sum to move your number to another physical location…), so Pamela offered to run down the five-ish blocks to the local payphone to call in and tell our supervisor, Terri, what was going on.  I wrapped more towels around my hand, which by now had bled through the first batch and was dripping down my arm again, and nodded, still feeling like this was all some kind of surreal dream.

A few minutes later, Pamela came back.  She’d told Terri about the finger thing, but Terri was dubious that it was a missing-work-level injury.  (Note: I never missed a day before this, with the exception of one blizzard and one case of pneumonia.  But, y’know…suspicion of the supervisors.)  She said I could go to the doctor, but I’d get written up for the absence.

Sigh.

I didn’t bother to change clothes.  I was covered in drips and spatters, my hand still mummified in paper towels and one hand towel that I figured I could sacrifice.  Pam made me sit on a plastic bag,because I was still dripping, and, incidentally, getting paler and paler by the minute, feeling more and more like I might pass out.

We got there with barely a minute to spare before the shift started.  I walked into our bay of cubicles and proceeded to fall over on the floor, leaving a nice little blood pool next to my head.  I woke to Terri, elevating my arm while one of the guys in our pod pushed a rolling office chair with me in it toward the company nurse’s office.  She was apologizing over and over.  I thought when Pam said “cut her finger” she meant, like, a little cut or something and you were just being dramatic.  NOT THAT YOU HACKED OFF YOUR FINGER.

Way to bury the lead, Pamela.

Anyway, the apology made me feel slightly vindicated, and a whole lot like a badass.  Not even the threat of blood loss would keep me from my duties!  ::arms akimbo::

Long story short (heh, a thousand words later…which is probably still fairly concise for me, come to think of it…), I ended up with something like seventeen stitches in three layers.  The company nurse was all WHY ARE YOU HERE AT WORK OMFG and Terri explained that she told me I had to come in (which she probably admitted for liability reasons), and they took me to an urgent care on the company dime.  

And in a few weeks, I gave Terri her secret santa present, complete with bloodstains.  Because story, that’s why.  To be fair, she never questioned me again, so some good did come out of it.  

And this?  This is why I don’t sew, people.  It’s just one example.  There’s also the time I actually sewed through my index finger.  And the time I broke a needle, which flew off the machine and came maybe a quarter of an inch from J’s eye.  And the time I got my hair stuck in the bobbin.  (I still don’t know how it happened.)

Some people are cut out for things, and some people aren’t.  And when the universe chops off your finger and tries to blind your husband, it’s time to take the hint that maybe this particular thing isn’t for you.

I’m listening.

Goodbye, 2016

nothing says "surprise!" like a random pineapple.

In the words of Neil Gaiman:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

Happy 2017, everyone.

Go surprise yourself.

Also this.

more story

This.

Unexpected Discoveries

I'm doing my supposedly-annual digital clear-out right now.

This is where I go into my hard drive(s) and ditch anything that's been sitting there for so long waiting to be read/used that I barely remember where it came from or why I saved it to begin with.

Let us just say that this is a much lengthier process than I'd like it to be, since apparently, my hard drives are just waiting for Matt Paxton and the Hoarders team to show up and be appalled by my stacks of dead-mouse-ridden PDFs and .zip files.  

I hold on to stuff.

This is my takeaway from this so far today.

I hold on to stuff.

I shouldn't be surprised, considering what my closets looked like six months ago, but I'm still kind of shocked that I'm finding multiple copies of free online magazines and "reports" from opt-in mailing lists that I fully intended to look at when I had more time.  Someday, I'll remember that "when I have more time" is my mind's code word for "NEVER!  NEVER, I SAY! (maniacal laughter)".

The good bit is that I found some writing that was way more done than I remembered it was (yay!), and a couple old PDFs that *I* made that I'd forgotten about.  Stories that were waiting to be told.  Notes for other stories.

It's like discovering a forgotten country up in here.

The Power of Story: My Word for 2017

I'm an artist and a writer.

Which means, at heart, what I really am is a storyteller.

My family would tell you that I've always been a storyteller, in fact.  Sometimes, that meant I'd make everybody laugh at the communal dinner table (the good aspect of it), and sometimes, it meant I had elaborate excuses as to why I popped the screen out of my bedroom window and snuck out for the night (entertaining only in retrospect.)*

But those kinds of stories aren't the only ones that affect our lives.

We have so many myths that direct what we do that we're hardly even aware of them.

Societal stories.  Religious mythologies.  Family tales.  Our own stories, taken through our own lenses.  Stories we've read, stories we've watched or listened to, stories that are told around a campfire at night.

Some of them are true.  Some of them are cautionary tales.  Some of them are damaging and distracting and stop us from living.  And some of them raise us up through personal and societal inspiration, letting us live life more fully.

In 2017, I'm still exploring.  I'm just exploring Story.

I'm not completely sure how that's going to look yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing all the ways that Story manifests itself in my life, and harnessing some of the transformational power of Story for myself.

This guy, Donald Davis, nails it on the head in this talk.

Bring on 2017.  I'm stoking the campfire.

*For the record, that screen was totally damaged because one of my friends tried to light a wasp on fire with a lighter and some hairspray once.  Popping it out as a means of escape was totally just me trying to get it fixed before my parents noticed.

Also, there may have been boys out there in the night.  I admit nothing.