My Things.

A little bit about the things I use and/ or see everyday.

Camera: my newest/old film camera. I also have a Minolta that I have worked with way more. The camera strap is my favourite. I purchased it in Seal Beach, CA at a vintage shop.

Specs: Salt Optics are by far the best. I've been big on Ray Bans in the past but nothing competes with Salt [& they're handcrafted in my home state]. I sport the Yates.

Watch: This is definitely my go to watch. I have way too many watches for my own good...Vestal & Nixon are my favourite watches to wear. My brown wood Nixon Chalet was a gift to from my awesome coworker at Hurley, professional surfer Jodi Nelson. She's rad.

Create Mug: I have no idea where this was purchased...all I know is it was a thank you gift for shooting my friend from Hurley's mothers bday. Thanks Ri! I have used this every single day from the past 4 years.

iPhone4: this helps me run my business, stay connected & take amazing photos wherever I am in the world. Follow me on instagram.

Brown Leather Journal: I always have one of these by my side for thoughts or random doodles and ideas. This one is a brand new one that I just bought from Barnes & Noble...going to start a page a day with bullet points of major things that happened on that day.

1959 Bolex Paillard 8mm Movie Camera: This bad boy showed up on my doorstep from a childhood friend who used it as a paperweight. He thought I could get better use out of it. I am taking it to the local camera shop and am planning on using it for my roadtrip to South Carolina this summer. Thanks Kevin!!

Keep It Simple bracelet: Handcrafted by my talented friend at The Lazy Leatherworker. "Keep It Simple" is one of my favourite phrases...first heard it in Vermont. I bought a sticker for my guitar case while traveling there in the Fall of 2006. It's Vermont's state motto and a great reminder to me that less is more.

The paintbrush is...just a paintbrush without a story, but it is used to created my art and I love it.

Donald Miller & I | Dallas, TX.

So after all of this writing and recommending...I finally had the opportunity to meet Donald Miller [my favourite author]. I got to attend a private screening of Blue Like Jazz the Movie [view trailer HERE] and it was amazing. I read the book years ago and enjoyed it...but my all time favourites you can read about HERE.

Check out Through Painted Deserts and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.

Timing & Donald Miller.

I only recommend books every once in awhile. This one...really came into my life at the right time. It's been on my bookshelf for over a year now. One evening in 2009 I was dodging cars in Greenwich Village in New York heading to meet some friends for dinner at Benito One in Little Italy. I was on one of my "solo adventures"...exploring the city all alone. I loved these trips. They were dangerous. They were full of life. They are the ones that seem to stick out in my mind the most. My plan was to eat dinner, have a glass of wine then I was off to see new things. After dinner, I quickly ducked into Barnes & Noble and ran right to this book...I had been wanting to pick it up. I went to a local coffee shop and sat myself down for hours. Reading. When later my friend Andrew, whom I had met on my last trip to the city, met me and he talked about how he was thinking about studying abroad in Buenos Aires. It was only a spark in his eye then. I got back home (California at the time) and got busy. This happened for a reason. I needed that section of the book in November 2009...shortly after that, I quit my 9-5pm job and decided to start something new, to begin a new chapter in my story. Recently, I saw this book on my bookshelf...so much has changed. I am now living alone in Dallas, TX...doing work that I love, away from my family, but meeting amazing people and seeing new places everyday. I read the last half of the book last night and this morning. Over a year later and it's EXACTLY what I needed to hear when I needed to hear it. I went back to the city a few months ago and Andrew and I said our goodbyes, we barely caught each other...he was off to Beunos Aires to write more of his story. I admire that in people...it takes courage. I challenge myself daily to live a more meaningful story, and so should you....anyway that you can.

I really suggest getting "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" and reading it. I want to hear your story...I want to discuss this book with someone. I'll be reading it again soon. (click the image to buy)

What story are you telling? from Rhetorik Creative on Vimeo.

i like this.

"Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons."
- Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts

I read this book back in 2006. I let someone borrow it and i don't remember who...so i bought another copy last week. Funny how you read a book the 2nd time around and it resonates with you on a much deeper level than the 1st. I read it when i first had the itch to get out there and "see the world". So cliché, right? At least that's what i've been told. Pack up my stuff. leave the comfortable. the familiar. meet people. hear their stories. take my camera and guitar and just....you know, hit the road. I have found that this feeling inside of me just won't go away. I can suppress it...sometimes for years at a time and convince myself to be responsible, save money and be adultish...if you will. I've had just about enough. I feel it stirring inside of me...this time it's much more. An intense feeling that I have put aside for too long. We were made for more than a 9-5 job in a tiny cubicle. Ellen said it best...

"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it." -Ellen D.

i just can't do that anymore. but i'll tell you more about that later.

certifiably nuts.

"I was certifiably nuts. I was crazy in everyone's mind but my own. I knew nothing about Austin, other than it was the capital of Texas. . .I was 22 and had absolutely nothing tying me down. If I didn't move away at that moment, when I had the most energy and the strongest desire, I would be stuck wondering "what if" for the rest of my natural life. I would rather move away and fail miserably than live with that uncertainty hanging over my head for decades. . .It would be good for me to leave the security of my job, my family, and my friends in Nebraska in exchange for total ambiguity and isolation. I would just have to make the leap of faith and trust God to fill in the blanks." -jen austen

Already you see I have escaped from you.

a friend i recently met found her copy of leaves of grass in storage and began reading it again...as did i. after staring at the computer screen for hours and hours it's good to stare at something else for a change. this was soothing.

Whoever you are holding me now in hand,
Without one thing all will be useless,
I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different.

Who is he that would become my follower?
Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?

The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,
You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your
sole and exclusive standard,
Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives
around you would have to be abandon'd,
Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let
go your hand from my shoulders,
Put me down and depart on your way.

Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,
Or back of a rock in the open air,
(For in any roof'd room of a house I emerge not, nor in company,
And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)
But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any
person for miles around approach unawares,
Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or
some quiet island,
Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss or the new husband's kiss,
For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.

Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,
Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;
For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,
And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.

But these leaves conning you con at peril,
For these leaves and me you will not understand,
They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will
certainly elude you.
Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
Already you see I have escaped from you.

For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,
Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,
Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,
Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few)
prove victorious,
Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil,
perhaps more,
For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times
and not hit, that which I hinted at;
Therefore release me and depart on your way.

5 random morsels of goodness...

1. i love the way crushed tea looks in a bag...sometimes i study the flecks and think i might want to chew it. Sometimes I do the same with coffee grounds. best tea i ever had was in new york city at my friend's gelato shop.

2. sometimes little things get on my nerves. For instance, I take the same route to the coffee pot at work every morning, and every couple hours after that...i pass by a poster that has been up since february and the event is over. It bothered me everyday. I ripped it down today and threw it in the garbage.

3. i have one peacock feather in a vase on my desk at work.

4. i get bored with predictability and when i get bored i put on instant hand sanitizer. so predictable.

5. i look at magazines from back to front. i also smell them. i smell every book actually...they all smell different. I remember thinking in 3rd grade that Miss Frisby and the Rats of Nimh smelled like fresh sourdough bread...right out the oven and the Indian in the Cupboard smelled like hay.

The Picture of Dorian Gray...

by: Oscar Wilde

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself." -Basil Hallward

love this quote. love this book. i love ambiguity.