Here we go with my portion of the Stratejoy Season 6 questionnaire:
How has your perspective shifted over the past five months? How have you grown?
Over the past five months, I think I’ve slowly been shifting back to my roots and realizing that I can’t take life too seriously. It’s not worth spending hours stressing over thousands of miniscule and medium things when I could be harnessing that energy to create real change in the world and in myself. Living in the East Coast, I think, automatically makes me more antsy whereas coming from the West I know that sometimes I just need to go with the flow of life in order to really enjoy it. I can’t control everything, and that’s okay.
What do you wish you’d known before you started your QLC journey?
I wish I’d known that it existed and that it’s a perfectly normal thing to fall into crisis “I-don’t-know-what-the-hell-I’m-doing-with-my -life” mode in this age range.
What are you going to continue to work on after Season 6?
I’m going to continue working on the organization front. I’m still a somewhat disorganized procrastinator and I recognize this as one of my major flaws. It’s something that I will continue working on because I need to for my own mental health. I also would like to continue to write, though rather than blogging I would like to write more creatively.
What little things in life right now make your toes curl with happiness? Big things?
Little things that are making my toes curl with happiness are: billowing clouds, blue skies, and the moon.
Big things that are making me smile are: being back in the West, almost being married, and traveling without having to be anywhere at a specific time.
In the movie of your life, who would you want to play YOU? Dalia Hernandez. I hear she looks like me.
What goodies (books/music/travel/quotes/ideas…) have you found over the past few months that are helping your inspiration and creativity?
Conversations with friends, traveling through a beautiful landscape and reading about female shamanism. They have inspired poetry and encouraged me to return to my eternal desire of becoming a natural healer at some point in life.
If you were able to start over and start blogging for Stratejoy right now, what would your “Goals” post look like? What do you hope to accomplish by the end of 2012? How is it the same/different from your “Goals” post from earlier this year?
I would continue with organization and creative writing but would also add 1) Find a job I love and 2) Settle down into some semblance of a routine I enjoy.
Name 5 things you absolutely positively could not live without.
1) Tea.
2) Books- delicious delicious books.
3) Contacts- I like to be able to see and with contacts I can also swim.
4) A notebook and a writing utensil.
5) Family and friends.
Who are your top 3 celebrity crushes of the moment?
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rob Thomas, Heath Ledger (yes, I know he’s dead but he’s Heath Ledger). As for the ladies: Drew Barrymore, Kate Winslet, and Aishwarya Rai.
If you had to dedicate your life to one cause for your life, what would it be? Why?
I would dedicate myself to human rights, to ensure that people are being treated with dignity, that they have the opportunity to live healthy happy lives, and to inform others that injustice continues to exist. I particularly am interested in issues of violence against women and would love to help alleviate this violence in the world.
What is one of your favorite memories?
Being back in the Colorado/New Mexico area, I’m taken back to my times at the ranch. When I was really young my brother, cousins and I would have raft building contests. I would team up with one cousin and my brother would team up with the other. Usually our rafts came out kind of shoddy and would quickly sink (we would test them before getting on them). Then, one summer, my dad decided to help us build a raft and it came out beautifully. All summer we would take that out onto the irrigation ponds and float for hours using large sticks to move ourselves along.
What’s your hidden talent?
I can speak backwards. I’m also really good a hoola-hooping.
What was the last book you read that made an impact on you, and what effect did it have?
Zahra’s Paradise is the last heart-wrenching book I read that made me cry. I would recommend it to everyone. It’s a graphic novel by about the Green Revolution in Iran and a young man’s quest to find his brother amidst the killing and imprisonment of thousands of Iranians. It’s beautiful and tragic and based on true events. It’s gotten me thinking more about human rights and how I need to go back and continue working for them after my hiatus of doing basically nothing.
What quote best represents you or motivates you in your current place in life?
Ubuntu: I am because you are.
What are three things that you are totally obsessed with right now?
1) City Museum in St. Louis, MO. It’s a giant jungle gym for children AND adults! Gahhhhhhhh. It’s awesome.
2) Being able to be where I want when I want/Exploring. Geoffrey and I are in NM/CO preparing for our wedding next week and it’s AWESOME! This next month we don’t have to worry about getting to a job on time thus we can be wherever we want for however long we want and just explore.
3) Swimming.
What is one thing you’d like to change about the world? I wish people made more of an effort to get to know their fellow citizens of humanity. We walk through this world every day, each person with their own thoughts, ambitions, pasts and more often than not, we don’t know anything about those that pass us by.
If there is one gift you could give to a stranger, what would it be? A smile or a kind word.
If super heroes are real (and they are), what super power would you have? Teleportation. This would be so convenient- I could visit all the people I love, attend cool events, and consistently travel. It’d be spectacular.
What do you see when you look into your own eyes?
My ancestors, galaxies, the color brown.
What songs are you loving right now?
Anything by Andrea Gibson always (though they are poems and not songs) and “Objects of My Affection” by Peter, Bjorn, and John.
What 3 lessons will you take with you from over the last 5 months?
1) That I seriously need to get organized and get my act together. I haven’t been as punctual with my Stratejoy posts as I would have liked to have been nor do I have as much of my wedding worked out as I would like. I would change that by doing as I did at work and starting things waaaaaaay before I think they should be done.
2) There are hundreds upon hundreds of other young women who also don’t know what they’re doing, are having QLCs and are living beautiful lives.
3) I need time for introspection. During my time writing for Stratejoy I’ve had time to write out and disentangle some of my fears as well as become more fully aware of who I am.
What’s turning you on right now?
The fact that I don’t know where I’ll be and what I’ll be doing in a month. I feel free and I love it.
