Too true

I love this.

Jasper

Jasper doing his thing
(white shirt, center)

My sister and I visited St. Louis last month, and during our short trip there we visited the Gateway Arch, an upside-down silver U that towers over six hundred feet into the air. We were kind of bummed that we didn’t get to take a ride to the top because all the tickets were sold out, but at the same time, after seeing how staggeringly high the thing was, we weren’t so sure we could stomach it.

After perusing the underground museum (full of strange animatronic people that winked), we went back outside, where we saw this guy performing at the south end of the Arch, surrounded by lots of people who were cheering him on. I couldn’t tell what he was doing. It looked almost like some kind of dance, only he remained in one place. He ended his show and then started to leave, but his exit route took him right past us. He zeroed in on me and stopped at the bench where Hannah and I sat to ask if we had seen him. I said yes, and asked what he had done.

He proceeded to sit down right next to me, introduce himself as Jasper, tell me there were seven billion people of all ethnicities on the planet (for a solid five minutes), and then launch into a beatboxing session. I wasn’t sure how his beatboxing and hand motions were supposed to be connected to unity and the earth. (But as Hannah said, “he was a really good beatboxer.”)

I sat there half-watching him and half-watching my pockets to make sure he didn’t take my wallet. I was pretty sure I smelled alcohol on his breath. His right eyebrow was shaved through a quarter of the way from the edge, and he had hazel eyes that shone against dark skin. But he didn’t try anything weird. After he finished, he just walked off. That was it. Over. Done. Hannah and I looked at each other in puzzlement and then turned to watch him disappear down the path into the sunset, “before the cops” stopped him (apparently he has a history with the police department there, but we didn’t see him get caught that day). We ultimately concluded that he was probably under the influence of something (or else just very…creative) and then made our way into a crowd where we felt somewhat safer.

In a way, it kind of reminds me of that story of the country mouse going to the city. I don’t know…maybe it’s common for random guys to approach people and beatbox for them in national parks? (and did I just refer to myself as a mouse? ugh.)

Meh

It’s June…

I got that lame e-card from myself…

I’m going to go crawl into a hole and wait for inspiration to strike.

Goals, are you there?

It’s one of those nights where I know I need to sleep, but I can’t. My eyes are going to drop out of my head if I don’t close them soon. But hey, that’s why I took Mavis Beacon, I don’t really need to see the screen.

I guess so much — and simultaneously, nothing at all — has been going on lately (reminds me of the quote from MST3K that goes, “it is everything…and nothing!” to which one of the riffers asks, “could you be a little more specific?”…yeah, I’m getting off-track already) that I feel like my mind has either been overloaded or completely devoid of anything to say. So right now I’m staring at a dim screen, listening to the rain tap the ground outside, and wondering what to put here, bcause I haven’t posted anything in a while and the last few posts have been pretty uninspired. I haven’t done much writing lately (aside from journaling of course). So there goes another goal sheet to the trash can. At the prompting of a writing book that I once worked with every day, I sent myself an e-card about a month and a half ago and scheduled it to arrive on June 1 to congratulate me on the completion of my novel. *cough* Come June 1, I won’t be anywhere near my inbox…

I can’t figure out what it is that keeps me from reaching my goals. Yet at the same time, it seems totally obvious: it’s me. I’ve read so many books that deal with writing and creativity and what have you, but ultimately, it’s my choice as to whether I actually sit down and press the words from my mind. A while back I wondered if I was afraid of succeeding. Maybe I am. I don’t know. I think I expect every writing session to go really well and for me to love what I write, and when that doesn’t happen, well, forget that story. (I literally have boxes of unfinished stories, and a slew of their digital cousins on my hard drive.) So it makes me wonder, is getting published really a goal of mine? Because wouldn’t I work harder if it were?

Maybe I should come up with some seemingly unreachable goal and post it here instead of on a piece of paper clipped to a magnet above my desk.

Maybe I’ll go to sleep first.

Please don’t do this.

I just looked out my window and saw this. I can tell my mom drove my car today.


Does it bother anyone else when someone doesn’t stop the wipers before they turn the car off, or is it just me?

Go listen…

Rhapsody is streaming Mat Kearney’s new album. I can’t wait to get the CD…

Sweet

So Kevin, Matt and I recently found out we got an honorable mention for this ad campaign we created last year as part of a class project. Woohoo! All those hours spent reading the impossibly long manual and videoconferencing for maps didn’t go to waste! Since I’m sure you would love to see the creative process, I present to you the Ad Journey.


Behold my lowly first sketches, created after our teacher handed us the twenty-plus-page competition guide (no kidding — these people are serious about their ads). Since the target demographic was young to middle-age women (at least, I think it was), we went for the “have too much stuff? need a bigger closet?” approach, which meant I didn’t really use any of my first drawings.



This was one of three comps I came up with after the sketches proved useless. We chose to go with this approach, and revamped it dramatically to get the following…



Kevin worked long and hard to create some nice maps (no Google Map stealing here), and Matt drew our carefully-targeted woman-in-need-of-a-gigantic-closet. I worked on the layout and copy. This is the full-page ad.


And in case you couldn’t tell…this is the half-page ad.

Last (and probably least) is the Internet banner, which was created near the end after everything else so it didn’t get as much work…thus the semi-confusing tagline. I really like the dots though…