Beautiful Bits

It's been a year since I've visited this blog to post my work. It's been not quite a year since my life shifted. I've been a private person online. I only share what I feel is worth sharing, refraining from names, stories, and over all the reality of my life. I share the beautiful bits, the short heavily edited moments of life, moments I've stolen for me to keep forever and in turn share with the world. However, how do you share hurt without it being personal?

You don't. So I haven't.

Now I'm on the tail end of my whirlwind and feel comfortable sharing with the world the beautiful bits that I've had in the madness that I've been marinating in.

This one's for happiness, wherever it's hiding.

Family

The only thing that would make me hesitate about pursuing my career is my family. I've always been extremely family oriented and more recently I've begun to be fully aware what that meant. Being family oriented means to go out of your way just so that you can see, talk to, or hear your family not because they need you but because you recognize that you need them. 

I've always tried to resist the temptation of relying on outside sources, sources that were out of my control and for a time that included my family. However, I've come to realize that my own fear was leading me into decisions where no one was around to be accountable, no one was around to care, and more importantly no one was around to tell me I was wrong. 

This one's for my family that I am missing terribly.

Hawaii

This past summer I've been travelling a lot but honestly not enough. One of my trips was to Hawaii with my parents and my lola. Collectively it's one of our favourite places to visit. It's not difficult to explain why.

Badlands

Badlands will be closing by the end of May to tourists due to extensive erosion. My family and I decided to visit the attraction while we had the opportunity. 

Taken with my a7s

C L Y D E

A Brooks Brother

I finally got to play with my new camera after a painful two month wait. Here are the results from 

C L Y D E

the Sony A7s

Special thanks to my brother for always being down for a photo shoot.

Nebraska Jones

I've been labelled many things in my life. I've been dissected and picked apart and put in narrow categories. They focus on the parts they want to and they toss the irrelevant qualities in me so that I fit snug into what they perceive me to be. Along with everyone else. 

The process, although irritating and biased, happens to everyone and I'm sure by most people. It cannot be helped for it is in the natural function of humans to define things that are unknown. 

But take caution to this process because it is cowardly and lazy.

Stereotyping is the wikipedia of human judgement. It's often wrong or over simplified but it is a great starting point. Unfortunately and fortunately we are too complex for our character to be condensed into a summary. We are meant to be analyzed over and over again. Sometimes we do not have a pattern, we are not consistent, we are not simple, we are not concise in who we are, and we are not meant to be known in only a few conversations. We do not have a formula.

We are just as beautifully abstract as much as we are cultivated physical echoes of who we really are. 

We do not know people, they do not know us, and we can never say that we ever will. But if we are given permission, we can find the hidden words that fall in between the cracks of another's lips, of things still waiting to be said. We can dance in their day dreams and play with their realities. And we can even live in their lives and them in ours.

We are all beautiful.

Vibrance