"living is like tearing through a museum. not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once."

-audrey hepburn

dreaming

i'm dreaming i
can't help it.
it's lavender, my skirt
blooms in riverside park
gold strands in my hair gold
flecks in your eyes gold
shines and rosebud smiles
gold
it's precious i
can't have it
i'm dreaming

wishing i could stop
myself
from turning silly, twittering
it's dangerous, i
have a penchant
of missing things while
they're still here.
and you
have a penchant, love
saying goodbye while
i'm still near.

let's start to begin, this time
towards orange leaf houses in vermont
towards tail-feathers, leather libraries,
soul willows swaying
in glowing cities
kitchen ballet in watercolor
rain rachmaninoff in
cream sauce my pink
lips on your
jawline.
i'm dreaming.

and every time i have, of you,
they don't come true.

to be known

i crave being known. being seen. having all those parts of me, those layered colors and dusty corners of virtues and vices, acknowledged. to be known as a whole, a verity of being and not an image of a part.

and maybe why i want this so much is because even i don't know everything about who i am. to myself i am one giant contradiction, guided by honestly only one consistency: i have love. otherwise, self definition eludes me. i'm stubborn and softhearted. devoted and fiercely independent. i love cities but i need space. i preach loving before judging but one of my biggest hypocrisies is that i judge those who don't. i'm an introvert with ten best friends. i'm snarky and i'm kind. i'm lazy and ambitious. i'm a mormon and a feminist.

and perhaps the biggest contradiction seems to be this: that faith, and doubt, and light and dark, and happiness and sadness are all within me, all at once. i passed through a year where i was at my most critical and faithless. but still, it was the happiest year of my life. the most blessed year of my life. a year where i often felt like a smile on two feet. it still is, and i don't know how that's possible. i was aware that i was going through a cycle of pride. there was no need to smack me awake. i looked at my heart from the outside and i saw it clear as day, but i felt no urge to change. i prayed relatively little this year, but every time i did i was praying for a desire, please, give me some sort of desire to be better. and even now, it's just starting to grow. i'm only on a tinge of an upswing.

this year has been an absolute wonder for my level of confidence. i have never felt so capable or beautiful, in body or in mind. but as a latter-day saint i have never felt so inadequate, so inferior to the spirituality that even i used to hold. at sixteen i was a far more worthy disciple.

but, in recent moments of clarity, i've realized that i am things that i don't see in me. that divinity and potential are what define me. that my identity does not have to be all wrapped up in who i am at this moment. thank goodness for that grace. that there is a god, and that he sees me, all of me, but not even all of me as i am. all of me as i was. and all of me as i can become.

and even in the thick, muddy, stifling silt of it, of it i'm grateful for this doubt. there are things i know, and things i will know, only made possible by the grief of questions.

lithuanian retrospective

as always, my retrospective image of lithuania is romantic in my head. the soggy puddles have turned to dew and the soviet domes started glowing purple, and i know there is still not an inch of me that can claim lithuanian culture. it's just simply beyond me. freelanding, bravehoming american me, ignorant of occupation, unaware of the struggle to thrive in a newborn economy. but what i do know is beauty, and i know how to notice it.

in just one square of the city the age of stones range from medieval to renaissance to baroque to contemporary. i can walk down any street in old town, fingers brushing the plastered pink walls, knowing that I am touching something that is the far-off ancestor of my own great country. older than the soviet union, yes, but still many more years older than america.

on our last weekend in vilnius, the five of us took a new trolleybus route to the cemetery. hilly and wooded, the memorials and crosses rise organically out of the green earth of the cemetery. it is the resting place of heroes: lithuania's thinkers and movers, soldiers, symbolic and beloved figures like m. k. ciurlionis. in tombs or beneath simple wooden markers, all seem noble to me.

for me, this cemetery seems to mirror what i've seen of lithuania: chipped and tired but emanating beauty and rooted in what seems like history that is as old as time itself. that history is complex, and the country has been an independent state for about as long as i have been living. though i can't say who was in the right and who was in the wrong throughout the country's many decades of occupations and revolutions, i can say that lithuania inspires me with its resilience. 

maybe there's too much said for "bouncing back". resilience isn't immediate and energetic recovery. resilience requires time, and grace, and hope. it's steeped in dreams and vision and innovation and yes, it often happens slowly. it's also grounded. for the resilient, for lithuania, and for me, identity is inextricable from the journey. i have learned and grown so much while living there, and i will always have a special love for this complicated, beautiful land of rain.

when i think of vilnius, a flurry of images spring up in my mind. indulge me with them, will you? red and white rickety trolleybusses with windows stamped with "made in czechoslovakia", the old man who perpetually bummed cigarettes of people at the bus stop, the stomach dropping fear of seeing the transport control police step onto the bus when i hadn't tapped on. laser lights transforming the presidential palace on culture night, plates of fries ordered from cute late night bartenders, dancing the ymca at buddha. the undulating edges of baroque cathedrals, sitting on the wooden swing with imantas, or laying on the grass underneath the sprawling trees of bernadine park and feeling the river breeze and little kids' fountain squeals. the glowing milka-purple chocolate aisle at maxima, green floaties around our waists, the supermoon and our skinnydipping bodies at the lake. the dandelion fountain, the taco guy's dreads, hot air balloons over gediminas tower, my pirate cat wallpaper. kitchen table evenings killing bugs as we talked, schemes of how to get rid of endless bowls of soup, and the agony of waking up at 9:30 for breakfast. and, most importantly, 20 something different sets of arms around my neck. "teacher". teary eyes listening to the students singing "count on me". and the rewarding, beautiful drudgery of walking up taikos programnizija's concrete steps every day. 

i miss it for everything it was, but mostly for everything i was when i was there. it was beautiful. i felt beautiful. i was a certain me there that i will never be again. and that's what makes experiences like this so hard to leave.

from there to here

i'm sitting in my bedroom in justiniskes. i'm cross legged on my hollow children's mattress, surrounded by the infamous cat pirate wallpaper, the words on the cabinet above my door still encouraging me: "wish it. dream it..... do it." precisely 5 ellipses. my phone and i are singing budapest together, a song i first heard in a little restaurant in italy, titled after my homeland, i place i was just about two weeks ago.

i'm watching a china video. i'm watching what was once my present, me surrounded by my sweet sweet students, fielding kisses and i love yous. a shot of phillip's hands comes up, when he had me draw him and i on each of his palms the day before i left. tears sting the corners of my eyes when i remember saying goodbye to him on the steps outside of the cafeteria and how he kept turning to look at me as he walked away. then i giggle a bit when i remember how tear-drenched we all were, red faced, eating kfc on the bus to the airport in our panda hats. despite it all, i'm watching myself at my best. the happiest, purest, most confident self i've ever been.

i read the alchemist when i first got here to lithuania and this quote runs through my mind often. it keeps me grateful and amazed:
he still had some doubts about the decision, but was able to understand one thing: making a decision was only the beginning of things. when someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.

everything i've done since china happened because of china. sometimes i'm amazed that i even decided to go in the first place, but i suppose my streaks of spontaneity and courage have always been active. i remember when i made my final decision, behind the steering wheel of my little blue acura on a drive home. i was at a stoplight in front of mack's house with my basket full of laundry in the passenger seat and i said out loud, that's it, i'm going, it's yes. and i can't even believe what's happened since then.

going to china opened me up. i had all these qualities, all these capabilities before i went, but it wasn't until i made that decision that i started to really become myself. all this restless bravery, all this boundless love, all this self-awarded freedom unwound in china. that decision took me to buddhist temples high above clouds, to the ancient stones of the great wall, to the dumpling filled kitchens of families i now love. it brought reed running to me down the hall when i returned to school from beijing, when i first felt that pang of calling, a passion for education and for children. it brought the independence and sense of adventure that motivated me to create meaning wherever i was, which in turn made up my mind about my career path, which pushed me along to things like watching brian kershisnik paint a new canvas which i had hung on the gallery wall, to internship coordinators who told me i was actually really good at this, and recommended me to every museum in washington dc. that decision brought me to work the first day in the united states national archives, it helped me climb out the window of the museum's learning center to stand in that forest of neoclassical columns and feel like i was in the center of the world. and, in turn, it brought me here. to this complicated, nuanced country that has taught me so much about how blurry lines can be when it comes to history and politics. it brought me to this european dream where my days are filled with things like praying in pink cathedrals and waking up in renaissance abbeys and kissing austrian boys in front of baroque fountains. in this country i have gained more confidence and gratitude for my body, a new awe for sunsets, and four dear friends to laugh around the tiny kitchen table with at night.

but it's not really those fluffy things that are significant about my experience here. what i've learned through it all is the level of capability i have and how crucial action is. how intentional you have to be about creating an authentic life and gathering meaningful experiences. the current of my decision to go to china certainly led me to all the wonderful experiences i just listed, but those things didn't happen to me. i had to seek them. i had to take them. my mother calls me lucky and my father calls me spoiled, but i adamantly insist that i am neither. what i am is ambitious and very, very blessed. opportunity doesn't fall into my lap and finances don't rain into my pockets. the reason i have done all of this is first, because i wanted to, and second, because i allowed myself what i wanted. and once something becomes a great enough priority, there is very little that can stop you from achieving it. i didn't always know what i wanted, and i still don't know what my life will look like in the next few years, but it all starts with a decision. an action. the bravery to make a change.

i sit here smiling to myself. big. because so many of my dreams aren't dreams anymore.

by grace

my name means grace. as a child my biggest aspiration was to be an olympic ice skater, a dream which had no hope of ever coming true due to my complete lack of physical grace. i thought the meaning of my name was a little bit funny because i thought of grace as the ability to balance books on one's head while walking in high heels or maybe even while doing triple axles. it wasn't until recently that i recognized that i could still be full of grace, a different kind, a more important kind. the kind that god is.

grace is my favorite thing about god. i can't tell you how impossible being a good, worthy, progressing person feels sometimes. i can feel so stuck, so inadequate of latter-day sainthood, so clumsily but also sort of beautifully flawed. the most important thing, and perhaps the only thing i know is that god exists, and that he will make up the difference between my potential and my often halfhearted and flailing attempts at discipleship.

so, clearly, i have doubts. i have questions. very serious ones that i'm not sure have answers.

and, should i dare to mention her name, so does kate kelly. i sat in a basement across from her a few months ago. she took off her boots, propped her feet up on the coffee table, and she answered our questions. regardless of right and wrong and questions and methods of asking, i think what we have been failing to do as a people is to recognize kate kelly and ordain women as representative instead of a fringe minority. while the easy road is to dismiss OW as a group of angry feminists who are bitter just for the sake of being bitter, it takes much more humility and compassion to see what this mormon feminist movement really means: that there are many women within this church, myself included, that feel hurt, limited, and undervalued. we can try to explain away this feeling with scriptural evidence and conference quotes that woman are equal in our institution, but all that jargon and frankly mental gymnastics doesn't change what it often feels like to be a female member of our church. it feels lonely, it feels constrained, and it can be heartbreaking.

still, at the end of the day, i feel god's familiar presence through the holy spirit. he reminds me of my worth. he comforts me with my divine potential. i feel it like a giant, fluffy, favorite blanket around my shoulders, mismatched patches of floral fabric woven through with a few gleaming golden threads, every inch of it symbolic, every mismatched part of me acknowledged, planned, usable, and wanted. this is why i am a saint: because god knows me. because he wants me, he opens up pathways for me to use my gifts, because he gave me power simply because i am his, and this power does not lie completely and solely within my physical/symbolic womb. i don't often get this from the church as an institution. i can talk a lot about the reasons why i feel this way, why i feel OW has merit, and how we can respond to these issues as a church, which i would be happy to do individually with anybody. but this is my space, one where i want to move past justifying the existence of feminism and do what i sat down to do: talk about grace.

i don't think god's grace is something he only uses at the very end of this world to save us or something only he holds. i think he is constantly filling in our gaps, forgiving us, and being compassionately patient with us as we fall short as his servants. i also think we have to capacity to do this for each other and that god expects us to. i think he expects us to forgive ourselves and others of shortcomings, to do what we can to make up for them, and to offer each other space for change and room for progression.

i wish we could act with more grace. when we mess up, when anger flames through us, when we suffer at the hands of each other, and when we fail, when we brilliantly and outrightly fail as saints, i wish we had more grace with each other. i wish we had the confidence in god and in our own faith to feel secure when it is challenged instead of placing blame and using big words to explain away doubt. i wish we had the capacity to forgive and the kindness to tenderly listen to each other before we pull out our defenses. i wish that we could admit when we are wrong and forgive ourselves with enough grace that we have room to grow again. i wish we could envelop each other with it, i wish we could truly mourn with those that mourn, i wish that we could fight for each other as sisters in zion. for us, grace and works go hand in hand. grace is action.

by grace we will be saved. with grace we will save each other.

littles

i adore lithuania. i adore the translucent green trees and the ubiquitous lakes and the baroque architecture and the breathtaking train rides. i adore lithuania's complications and contrasts and the spectacular 10 pm sunsets. i love my free sunny mornings, my evenings brushing through fields as tall as me and my nights on the swing set. i love touching little heads and holding little hands, and oh, how i crave those little hugs.

for some reason i'm resistant to saying i'm a kid person. it's some kind of feminist attempt to prove the point that women can be women regardless of how nurturing they are, but in all honestly i am 100% "a kid person". i love them. i'm not the kind of person that hits it off immediately with kids but i do have this pretty powerful ability to bond with them through quiet love. i am happiest when i have them in my life, and i think there are two reasons for that. one is their loyalty, trust, and their simple, straightforward, and bottomless love. the other is their wonder, spontaneity, imagination, spunk, and joy. the world is full of love with children, and it is also filled with beauty and adventure.

i'm starting to feel that completion again, that wholeness of self and purpose that came to me in china and that was so very hard to leave. i love who i am when i am a teacher. i sure as hell don't get it all right, but luckily i work with the most forgiving souls on this earth.

и это было все желтые

what is it about this place?
i am not shocked by unflushable toilets and malnourishing diets. i feel no discomfort, no rush of new.
so what is it, what am i supposed to learn here?

i walk outside and breathe in the wet air. this baltic sky still has a lightness to it at 11 pm. can only two stars make a constellation?

gravel crunches beneath my feet and the chains of the swing sigh under me. stretches of identical apartment buildings surround me, nine floors for miles and miles. the trees here are old. the willow looks the size of my apartment. it saw invasion, production, revolution, and stagnation. it must be wise.

there are so many things about the world that i don't understand. the complacency of rule. the hunger of occupation. or, could it be? a generosity of spirit? a trust in authority? the more i touch the world, the more gray it gets.

but, still. that moment of his tiny arms around my neck are a reminder of what love feels like and what love is: learning to let go.

a haiku map of my dc

this is my city as i know it.

dc surprised me. i didn't expect to love it as much as i do, but it will always hold a lot of significance for me. i became much more of an adult here, and i think more authentic. the city offered me a lot of opportunities to really invest in an interesting, ambitious, courageous version of me and i like who she is becoming. it was lovely for me to feel like i belonged in a place and within a few different groups of people. that feeling doesn't often come to me in provo.

my little map has red and green pins of all my favorite places to eat and to go. i wrote a little bit about them, but then i decided i'd rather remember the memories in all these places and i wasn't sure how to include that. so i made extra purple pins of all those street corners where my love is and wrote a little haiku about my memories. hi, i'm pretentious. we're going with it.

so here's my formal goodbye to dc: thank you. you were perfect. and i can't wait to return to you.

love beginning

i'm here. i live in a baltic state. in a little soviet apartment. in the land of rain. 

i'm teaching english again, this time as the head teacher. my leadership abilities often feel questionable. it has been chaotic as the beginning always is. i think about china all the time and i miss those sweet children that hold so much of my heart. i can already feel it here, though. i can see love beginning. 

i've said it a zillion times but that love i felt in china changed my life and my soul. living in a different country, especially countries like china and lithuania, is challenging. the other teachers don't see it yet because they haven't lived it, but i am already anticipating those heart bursting goodbyes and the way it feels to miss a life and a self that you cannot go back to. 

missing is something i am getting very good at. it feels like a gift now. i want to feel it, that sinking soaring feeling of loving something so much that it hurts, or just that simple and deep appreciation for people and places that have offered you growth. missing is terrifying and precious. i have spent too much time numb. 

i've loved and lost, and the world still spins on. love and attachment have never broken me. i would rather continue to give it without requirement for reciprocation than protect myself. not to say that i don't have fears or pause. i can give love and accept love, but the idea of needing, of dependence, that still seems suffocating. i am probably still afraid of it, but now i would rather be brave.

i met a mormon latvian national volleyball player named matiss this weekend, and his name sounds exactly like matisse, and i am so happy about that. eastern europe is treating me well.

tin

i read a short story once, and in it it described how every age you've ever been is like a tiny tin can inside another tin can, and on and on, like russian nesting dolls, and all the while all your ages are rattling inside you. i was thinking about it on my walk to school, and i thought that maybe love is like that, too. maybe all the people we meet and love make our hearts grow, but our hearts grow layer by layer, person by person. so the reason our hearts can be so big is because we've loved and been loved by so many, and the influence of those people rattle inside us as we move along. 

but maybe not, maybe that's not what love is at all. who really knows?

but i do know that i can still feel certain things rattling inside me. certain people rattle inside my heart, making noise and reminding me. i wonder how much of me i really am, and how much if me is a conglomeration of all the people i've met and all the love i've felt.

i wonder if my determination is jenoa rattling inside of me, or if jackson's tin can is what makes me so still or if trevor's drives me to be kind, and maybe julia and whitney are where my laughter comes from and the way i squeeze people's hands comes from mikelle's place in my chest, and maybe mack gave me two aspiring green thumbs.

when i gracefully concede in arguments, parker taught me how. michelle painted me lavender, and the wrinkles in my nose when i laugh are steve's. i think my generosity originated all the way from the sands of weihai's international beach, where mei first handed me an orange and a can of coconut milk.perhaps all future lifts of my right eyebrow will have a bit of ben in them; perhaps my blinks will be sydnee's. all my sunshine came from allie's light, and colin is in the way i dance.

i ask emily's questions and listen with ari's ears,
or at least all that is what i'm trying to do.

and i could go on and on,
and on and on,
but if you're ever around and you hear rattling,
it's my heart making room for your's, too.




originally written 8/25/12
*i often find that things i wrote on the diaries of a fly on the wall keep teaching me lessons i need to learn. i would like to relearn them, add to them, and collect them again. anything posted with a date at the bottom like this is a repeat of something already written.

Open Window, or: My Insides Look Like A Matisse

this is my favorite painting.

when i was fifteen i visited the national gallery, which happened to be showing a lot of matisse. his colors struck me first. without much thought, i bought a postcard of open window.

a few weeks later my parents separated. walls fell. oh, they immediately tumbled. what was left was the core of me, this very vulnerable but very authentic self that i hadn't ever met before. my internal demolition also knocked the words out of me. i found myself struggling to verbalize, struggling to feel understood. the little postcard hung on my wall.

i went to park city a few months later. in a tiny art gallery on main street, i found myself in front of a picasso sketch. i remember this feeling vividly. i remember feeling bright blue like a mylar balloon. my mind was clear.

so it was then that i noticed the connection i had with art. paintings and i, we both couldn't speak. we were made up of colors. i carefully collected postcards and hung them on my bedroom wall. i laid on my bed for hours just looking at them. we understood each other. they still decorate the walls inside of me.

we often talk about tearing walls down like its winning, like a person belongs to you if you can get past theirs. but walls are valuable. protection is important. walls are meant to make homes. the danger comes when we create our own cages.

it was one of those days, those silent afternoons studying brush strokes, that i began construction.

and here i am. i have walls. they are a gallery. they are malleable. they are the color of roses and emeralds. they are frescoed lavender. and they frame many, many open windows.

kind of blue

i stood in front of this rothko and i was filled
to the brim with missing even though it was right in front of me.
there's something about me: i miss things
and i miss them hard before they're gone.

as i rode the bus to work today i missed the city mornings,
that soft warm light filtering between gray stone and the way
the day
feels full of possibility.
i miss the tiny brick jagged sidewalks cerulean front doors black shutters
trader joe's
and i really miss cookie butter

miss how i look different,
how everyone looks different, so much that we're all the same
and how the standard of  beauty here is so inclusive
that i don't feel like i have to measure up,
taller, blonder, thinner.
here: me, short, curvy, mismatched eyebrows, more me,
i don't even own running shoes, more me.
the cookie butter helps.

i miss west end cinema and independent films
tuesday  night open-mic poetry at busboy's and
how he looks at me when we're dancing.
i miss saturday brunches and having a to-do list
full of experiences yet to be had

i miss being at the center of the world,
meeting harry reid nancy pelosi jeff flake
i miss swimming in this alphabet soup

above all
i miss being in a dim room late at night and looking around
at people that i love and more people
that i'm starting to love
and feeling like i belong.

i miss this familiarity.

smart trips

sun shines through and warms my left foot.

this city is a forest

forest

of neoclassical columns.

bus rides begin with yamakas

zipped-up babies

and The White House.

the Constitution is my co-worker

and Pennsylvania Avenue is my chauffeur.

going home goes like this: 

she gets off and runs like

the wind, or forrest, 

Forrest!, he yells in front of the national gallery

private school kids call the suicide hotline

and neither are funny.

and there’s a young woman in a wheelchair who makes me feel 

sorry so sorry that i get off at

*ding* stop requested: L street...

a stop early and then the homeless man I helped feed

last Friday at Miriam’s Kitchen

shakes a cup full of change.

are we there yet? 

or have we been here all along?

i have memories of familiarities 

from before they ever were

and i have heart space for people

that existed long before we ever met.

thawing

life is so good here that sometimes it feels like my bones are glowing.

last thursday i went to the national gallery by myself and there was almost nobody else there. there is something that happens to me when i walk into a museum--especially alone. it feels like everything that has been living inside my rib cage is released. and i get to look at it and feel it and be in it. we have conversations, the gallery walls and i. its a heart distance thing, not something i can tell you about with words. but it feels like i belong. and it feels like i am a work of art as well.

i was riding the metro home with my friend the other night and we were sitting in front a glass panel by the doors. i kept looking at my reflection there and what i saw was joy. i almost didn't recognize it on myself. i smile a lot here, and i have never before been quite so aware of my cheeks.

it is good to be happy. i am feeling more myself. i am just now realizing that 2013 has made me too hard. that might sound silly, i have always been a softie. but i have also always been fiercely independent, and the two are hard to balance. i didn't let myself fall in love. i don't mean with people and plans and ideas, but with everyday living. i didn't let myself fall in love with the mundane things, and you've got to love those. you've got to always be noticing the details, or else you're always looking ahead and never living.

let freedom ring

i went on a road trip last weekend. charleston and savannah have me hooked. i never expected to be so smitten with the south, but i am. 

it was perfect. too perfect to articulate, but full of heavy food, car singing, sunshine, and the slowly but surely expanding limits of my comfort zone. redneck bars in statesboro can do that to ya. 

i feel so happy and grateful to be here. grateful to be growing and learning in a place that unselfishly offers me beauty and adventure without me even asking for it. i feel such pride for my country here. freedom is ringing inside of me.

there are freedoms that are given to us but there are also freedoms that we have to take. sometimes you simply cannot wait for permission. there is no one there who can give it. the lesson of my young adulthood has been the importance of utilizing my agency to choose growth. there are always growing pains but there is a certain beauty and serenity in dismantling my own walls, brick by brick, rather than waiting for them to be torn down. i'm still getting better. and i hope i always will.

new

i woke up to 2014 in a studio apartment on the upper west side of new york city. i had spent my last night of 2013 standing in times square which was honestly quite miserable and a poetic end to the most dreary year i've lived yet.
not to be pessimistic.
the last five years have been full of tremendous ups and downs but this one left me in a state of anxious monotony. i like change. i'm good at it. i can get so restless with routine.
2013 did not give me adventure but it did give me foundation. it gave me an endurance for solitude. it brought many many goodbyes but also brought me a few but very important new friendships. it gave me direction and forced me to make choices. it gave me a new love for my family. it pulled me together, on the outside at least, even though i'm positive my heartstrings will always be a little bit tangled.
what i need now, this year, is feeling. i need to love until my heart bursts. i need to dance. i need to argue and stand up for my beliefs. i need to have the sweet luxury of kneeling on the floor to weep.
most of all i need to be on better terms with god. my biggest goal and greatest resolution is to be closer to him.

a few others:
-learn my family history. i feel the spirit and influence of my ancestors with me daily and i want to get to know them better.
-curate an exhibition of student artwork.
-explore the idea of stories and oral histories--what kind of project can i do with this?
-journal consistently about both my musings and revelations but also my daily events, a balance i rarely reach.
-put people first. no matter what.
-become a better photographer.
-focus more on wellness. work towards all natural beauty products, simple food, etc. i'm a bit of a granola at heart. also, learn tai-chi.
-unplug more often.
-become an amateur floral designer.
-know the galleries of DC's art museums like the back of my hand.
-talk to strangers.
-share my faith.
-practice my sense of wonder and attention to detail. catalog it.
-say many, many hellos.