This week I traveled 3,000 miles, the farthest away I’ve been from home, diagonally across the country from the east coast of Florida to the west coast of Washington. I am writing this post from Seattle.

It is beautiful here. Everywhere I turn, the view looks like a postcard. Pictures don’t do it justice.

I was expecting to come to a city and be overwhelmed with infrastructure, the lack of nature, and the accompanying impatience of its inhabitants. Luckily, my expectations have been thrown for a loop.

From sending out the post I last wrote, Community Events, I got a response from a meditation teacher, and learned some hard lessons.

I was making assumptions about how many people were attending events just from the number of RSVPs on Facebook or Meetup. But as the practitioner who responded to me pointed it out–this is often not the case. While looking at an event online where attendance appears to be low, in person there are a lot of regular attendees that simply don’t bother using the online system. He has popular events that sell out every month with 20-50 people, but you wouldn’t know that by looking online.

I was making assumptions based in ignorance and not in experience. This is a youthful habit that has burned me before, and I want to break it. I want to stop assuming that I know more than I do, and instead be more receptive to learning. I want to stop being so judgemental and instead live more from a place of appreciation and in the moment.

Coincidental Cynicism

It was interesting getting his response later in a day when I was so inspired by the animator who made this video.

The suburban Florida county I live in is at the awkward middle between a rural community and a bustling city.

Close to the beach and yet affordable, the most common resident is retired, and the most common private profession is real estate.

It’s a county that is slow and likes it that way. This culture makes the youth and innovators of the area feel restless. Most young adults and interesting leaders leave, and when the change-makers leave, this further perpetuates the status-quo that this is an area that does not change.

I keep getting ideas for interesting events that have so much potential to be big successes. I see the need for social variety here—a need that is not being satisfied within myself.

Ever since graduating high school and my decision to not attend art school, I’ve felt like I was trapped in an artistic desert. I kept going to networking events, and even hosting my own, in hopes of meeting an artist that I could truly connect with.

It wasn’t until I finally let go of my need to collaborate, and I instead focused on my own growth–on making myself a person skilled enough so that I’d become a desirable collaboration partner-that the door was finally opened for me to meet such a person.

Meeting Brandon was like coming home. After meeting at a figure drawing session, we talked for hours at a cafe. It was nice connecting with somebody that was so open to my alternative viewpoints and had the same creative lens through which he viewed the world. His obsession with bears is charming.

It’s interesting how the most valuable people in your life seem to present themselves when you least expect it.

For the list of challenges see part one.

Using see-through tracing paper for back-to-back fast gesture poses was educational in terms of movement. I’m glad with this one in particular because I did well sculpting the model out of the page with the aid of surface lines and I can feel her continued movement. It’s not static.

Caricature

Here’s a combination of caricature and relocation from my challenge list.

Once I got the model’s basic form down, I couldn’t shake the feeling how aristocratic the pose felt.