baby bangs

Watching Amelie has got me longing to dye my hair a mixture of jet black and mousy brown and cut my hair into a super short bob with baby bangs like these. Alas, knowing my face shape will not take to this hairstyle very well, I will just resort to a series of inspiration pictures for now and call it a day.

The Impossible

I've been on a serious movie spree as of late and watched The Impossible today.

I borrowed it on a whim at Redbox after having read the brief synopsis of it being about a family of five who survived the tsunami of 2004 in Thailand. Maybe my lack of expectations helped but the movie turned out to be an incredibly poignant and beautifully filmed story. I especially loved the orchestral soundtrack which you would normally only hear in wartime films and thought it really emphasized the brevity of the disaster. Maybe I'm just ignorant, but when I read about the tsunami during the time it occurred, I remember just gasping a couple times, being horrifically fascinated by how all the animals sensed danger and ran away before it hit, and then forgetting about it after a day or so. This movie however, made me aware of how devastating a natural disaster like this can really be and even if it's not a manmade occurrence like a bombing, the loss and pain is still there, if not more present. This movie also reminded me of this book I've been meaning to read for the longest time. Guess it'll be next on my book list!

What does it mean to lose someone?

Losing someone doesn't necessarily equate physical death.
Losing someone could mean a faded friendship.
Losing someone can mean not talking to him or her for months and then reconnecting but knowing you'll never be close to that person like you were before. It'll be awkward and like trying to ride a bicycle again but not really. The muscle memory will be there but you'll have outgrown that bike, the training wheels and handle streamers.
Losing someone means mourning the loss of that person but have you ever thought about being mourned and not the mourner?
Would you even know if you were the "lost person"? Or would you go about your daily life never knowing and obliviously not caring?
Have you ever deliberately "lost" someone?
Do you know what it means to leave everyone behind and lose yourself?
Isn't that kind of selfish?
But we've all done that. We've ignored texts, looked at but not replied to Facebook messages, forgotten to say hi how have you been, forgotten that they still exist in life, maybe just not in your life.
How can you forget about someone????
It's so cruel but we've all done it.
I have.

It's Officially Summer

90 degree weather in March has gotten me in a closet cleaning frenzy of clearing out any kind of clothing that goes past my limbs and in an inspiration frenzy of scanning tumblr pictures of patterns and tank tops instead of trapper hats and coats with cropped pants.
So, here's to the beginning of an early summer! One filled with joy rides, waves, popsicles, pink, orange, and yellow.

do what you love

"Books are smart and brilliant and wise. Love what you do and do what you love. Don't listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it. You do what you want, what you love. Imagination should be the center of your life." - Ray Bradbury

I've been on this weirdly intense creative overload which has consisted of me foraging for anything related to letting your imagination run wild, putting pen to paper, and doing what I love.

But how can I do what I love when I love too many things?

I recently took a Skillshare class on Adobe Lightroom and it's inspired me to rummage through my iPhoto albums and play around with tints and shadows and also go out shooting more, which I have yet to do...

I love experiencing new creative art forms and want to stretch my limits but deep down, I'm scared. My perfectionist self is keeping me from splattering paint and being okay with making mistakes.

How can I overcome this? 

How can I be bold?

humility and discernment

It's funny how you think you'll never be "that person" or be in "that situation" and somehow, just somehow, you manage to become that person, in that situation.
i had dinner with a friend a couple weeks ago and during our meal, she explained to me about how she was decided on leaving her church for various reasons. the whole time i was listening, i had such a strong urge to shake her and tell her, "wake up!! leaving your church isn't going to solve anything!" I did no such thing however, and chose to listen in the most understanding way that was possible for me at the time. i look back on this conversation that happened not so long ago and i wonder in surprise, awe, and amazement at how God works so perfectly in our lives. in all of our lives.
a couple days after we'd met up, i was browsing through a christian website i frequent and happened upon an article about leaving church and reasons to do so or not. i facebooked her the article link and hoped that she'd read it and really taken it into consideration regarding her decision. who would have that I would be frantically searching for that link (it didn't show up in my facebook message thread with her for some reason) and carefully reading each reason and trying to relate it to my own church life.
isn't it funny how God humbles us? that girl who wanted to shake her friend awake, as though she had profoundly sound judgment in telling others if they should really leave their churches or not, found herself struggling to discern whether to leave her own church and fighting with the desire to leave when she knew she shouldn't.
so thank you God. thank you for the humility you bestow upon us and for striking down my pride through such encounters.

"I am so calm I could host an NPR show."

-Up All Night episode 2