Origins

Origins. The place where it all begins.
The reason we are who we are.
Look the way we do.
See life the way we see it.
Our traditions vary from others.
We do not see our lives as unordinary, but the way others live theres is unordinary.
We know who we are from the people who came before us.
And they know who they are from the people before them.
And so forth.
We are who we are from who we originated from.

Joy Castro

I had the pleasure of being able to listen to Joy Castro read her work last night thanks to the Brazos Valley Reads. Going into it I had no idea what to expect, but once I was leaving I found myself on Amazon buying two of her books. The way this woman writes keeps you not only completely captivated the entire time, but also give you chills just thinking about every word she uses to depict what is happening in her stories. In he book "Island of Bones", all of her stories in that book are all based off of true events that have happened in her life. She speaks of life, death, gods, love, and so much more. She makes you reflect on your life and really feel in your heart what she was feeling when writing this. All of her stories are no more than a few pages long per chapter. Just long enough to keep you zoned in on what is happening the entire time, but short enough to where readers won't lose interest. If you want to be swept off your feet and experience a wide range of emotion along with being consumed by beautiful writings then this is the author for you. She is an incredible author.

Patterns

Patterns exist in art, society, friendships, and even food. Our whole lives we have been run by patterns. From the way we drive to school to the way we make mac and cheese, so on and so fourth. Patterns are the basis of our lives and when we break pattern we break out into rebels ( or what we would imagine ourselves as rebellious in our own way). I personally enjoy having a pattern and so does my mom. Every year for Christmas we would attempt to make beautiful Christmas cookies from store bought cookie dough and every year they come out as little holiday blobs with lots of icing so you can make them out of what the desired shape would have been. This past Christmas I got my mom and I passes to a cookie baking class so we could break our pattern. 

As you could see the class was pretty successful despite a few minor set backs like I forgot to check which class I signed up for and it ended up being a Spanish speaking class instead of English. That made for a difficult learning curve, but lots of laughter and funny moments that we will get to have for the rest of our lives. Will we break the pattern again next year? Who knows! As great as patterns are sometimes its a lot of fun to break them and then continue them again. 

Everything Is a Story, Especially Photos

Stories are the foundations of our lives. There is a story in every picture, whether its obvious or not is besides that point. A picture can tell a thousand words and contain amazing stories all at the same time. It could be something as simple as a picture of a tree or an envelope, but little does the world know you grew up reading in that tree or that envelope is what your college acceptance letter came in. Whatever it may be, everything in life tells a story especially through a photo because it is frozen in time. I love to take pictures and document what is going on in my life. I also, love being able to look at other peoples photos and imagine what was happening when they took that photo. Are they one of those peoples that go on crazy adventures all the time or are they the people that are actually sitting at home board doing nothing wanting some love, or are they even the people that barely ever share their photos, but when they do it gives you a little more insight of what kind of things happen to them. Stories are important, they are what keep our history remembered. A lot of people find documenting stories super annoying, but I find it to be a great way to reflect on how you got to  the particular spot in life that you are in. I would rather be annoying and have too many photos and stories that go with them than not have any documentation at all. Letting a good memory  or story fall into the abyss of forgotten memories is a crime in my book.

In this picture, a story that has since changed my life happened and from the photo you would have no idea. Can you guess what happened at this very moment when this photo was taken?
I was at a party with friends my Junior year of college and having a horrible night that I didn't think could get worse, until I was trapped in a bathroom stall and tried to punch my way out of it. In doing so, stupid little me managed to punch through the stall and destroy my hand in the process. This photo was taken exactly five minutes before I broke my hand in three places and just for the hell of it I attached the photo of the aftermath to show too. Though this photo takes me back to a painful and idiotic memory in my life that literally makes my hand hurt when thinking about it. It was the night that I met my boyfriend (now going on a year) and also learned that telling your parents you fell in church goes over much better than telling them the actual story.  Forever these pictures will mark the night that I met the most incredible person in my life and will forever mark the day that alcohol somehow gave me the strength of the hulk. So if there is anything I can encourage you to take from this post, it is that you should never underestimate the power of a photos ability to tell a story. Don't be afraid of reliving your stories, remember that good or bad they help create any amazing foundation of life in general.
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