• 2022 Recap!

    January 9, 2023 /

    I did a 2021 recap last year and was really encouraged by it, so I’m doing another one this year! I have issues with object permanence and it’s easy for me to feel like I’ve done NOTHING, so looking back and writing up the major things that happened and the things that I accomplished is really helpful for me to realize that I did, in fact, DO THINGS!

    I created this to help myself realize that I am accomplishing things all the time even though I feel like I haven’t. I did NOT create this to make you feel like you need to compete with me or for you to compare yourself to me. The last thing I want is to make someone else feel bad about themself. Everyone’s life and journey is different, and we are ALL VALID whether or not we accomplished ANYTHING AT ALL. ♥

    This post contains affiliate links. This means I may earn a commission should you choose to make a purchase using my link (at no extra cost to you!). I only recommend things I have personally used + love!

    • Journaled every day (I started this Jan 20th 2020 – almost on year 3!)
    • Energy practices (almost) every day
    • Took many walks outside + at parks
    • Spent time w friends
    • 8 tattoo appointments – so much closer to being done with this massive project!
    • Went to Floyd Yoga Jam
    • Visited a friend in Boone
    • Got covid in August for the first (and hopefully only) time
    • Visited AD in DC x2
    • Solo van camping trip to Shenandoah
    • Solo van camping in Hocking Hills
    • Got STI tested in Feb, May, + Dec
    • Went to an Art Walk in my hometown
    • Went to friends + familys bday parties
    • Went to a family reunion in VA for my dad’s side of the family
    • Got a new passport with my name change and X gender marker!
    • Volunteered at the VAPA Center
    • Dyed my pubic hair blue x2
    • Spent over $2500 on van repairs (oil changes, inspection, window motor, fuel line, tires…)
    • Mountain trip with Abe at airbnb +  mushroom experience
    • 3x mushroom trips + microdosed several times
    • Helped set up and break down Sol Harmony Fest, my first time seeing behind the scenes of how a festival comes to life!
    • Housesit for my aunt while she’s out of town x2
    • Asheville trip w Abe (surprise trip that last minute changed but was still super fun)
    • Mountainpalooza with 15 of my high school friends! (year 4 and counting!)
    • Stayed w Granny for a week to help her out after she was in the hospital w pneumonia
    • Hosted a model + her partner, first time hosting in several years – since 2017/18?
    • Van camped w friends 5 different times
    • First group van camping experience! 13 people and 4 dogs in a mountain forest
    • Went to 2 bonfires with friends
    • Abe and I made a Duct Tape Dummy of myself

    Let me know what you’d like to see from me in 2023 by responding to my survey!

    • AD tied + suspended me for the first time in years, my first suspension since my rope injury in 2016, first time at The Crucible
    • Got back into the local kink scene + started going to play parties
    • Got myself a doggie crate for my bedroom, for claustrophilia reasons, also for putting myself in time out reasons, and kink reasons lol
    • Did my first self suspension in rope
    • Went to PUSH – a fetish party in Durham
    • Went to 4 kink parties
    • Went to 5 rope labs
    • Had 3 rope mentoring sessions (so far)

    I was only able to accomplish these things because of the support from members of my patreon, thank you so much!

    • Anti-planning Workshop w Elizabeth Goddard
    • Yoni Massage Workshop w Lior Allay
    • Nude Yoga (virtual) w Lior Allay
    • Feelings 101 w Dawn Serra
    • Advanced Master Program on the Treatment of Trauma from NICABM (5 part master class)
    • How to Build Your Business Without Social Media w Becca Tracey
    • Thai Massage Workshop w Ann Marie
    • Balls + Yoga w Ann Marie
    • Glow Yoga w Meridith Young
    • Laughter Yoga w Carolyn Keller Sells
    • Plant ID Walk – Know Your Weeds w I-TAL Acres
    • Psychedelic Breathwork w Monica McGee + Kendall Selfe
    • Ecstatic Dance w Katie Wells + Beatfarm3r
    • Howdy! Partner Yoga w Shawn + Marie Nuthall
    • Energy Medicine Yoga w Nicole Lafon
    • Nature Walk – Plants, Food, + Fire w Johnny Stowe
    • Defying Gravity: Acroyoga FUNdamentals w Kaelyn Rogers
    • Intuitive Movement w Claire Nagy-Kato
    • Teas Tonics + Tinctures w Willow Luna (my mom!)
    • Psychedelic Integration w Anjali Valea
    • Chakti Yoga w Lauren Nixon
    • Rhythm + Flow Yoga w Amber + Jimi Nedoff
    • Learned a suspendable futomomo and uplines (thanks AD)
    • Found a local rope mentor + started recurring meetings to learn rope bondage
    • Aftercare is a “bad word” w Zir Oya aka @mount.saintoya via Shibari Study
    • Rope Has an Image Problem w Christian Red via Shibari Study

    Check out the organized list of HUNDREDS of books I want to read!

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  • Resources for Artists: How to Find Opportunities as an Artist

    February 26, 2022 /

    Click here to watch video in another window

    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hey friends. Thanks for coming here again to my website. So happy you’re here! Excuse me. Hi. So, in my last Vlog, I talked a little bit about this residency that I’m applying for, by the time this video comes out. I will have already applied, but as I’m recording this I haven’t submitted it yet. I wanted to follow up about it because I think that, or, I’m pretty sure that a lot of people would like to put themselves out there in that way, for opportunities as an artist, but they don’t know where to freakin start at all. And don’t even know how to find these opportunities. So I wanted to share with you where I find them and how you can do it too.

    So there’s this amazing website called CaFE or call for entry. I believe it’s call for entry dot org. And what this website does, is it connects artists with a bunch of opportunities, things like residencies, things like workshops, public art, exhibits, grants, awards. All kinds of opportunities that are geared toward artists. So if you’re an artist and you are like, I really want to put my stuff in the gallery show, but I don’t know where to start you go to this call for entry website and sign up as an artist and then it’ll… you can search through all of the calls and you can search for certain kinds of calls, and if you only want to look for exhibits or if you only want to look for residencies, or if you want to look for anything at all that is potentially available to you. They have all kinds of stuff on there and there’s, it’s constantly being updated. That’s where I found both of the residencies that I’ve applied for. I applied for residency last year that I did not receive, which I was sad that I didn’t get it, but I also can’t expect myself to get everything that I want always. Especially if it was like my first time applying for a residency ever. But that experience applying for residency last year really helped me with applying for one this year because I already had my artist resume created. I already had a lot of like generic kind of responses written out for the kind of questions they would ask for residency. So this one they did have more questions and different questions, but it didn’t take me as long to complete this application than it did for the one that I did last year because I already had a lot of stuff already figured out and put together and I already had kind of figured out a system of how to like figure out what I’m going to even say. So that helped me a lot, just doing it last year, even if I didn’t get the residency, that really helped me to be able to do it this year a lot quicker and easier, and with less stress and less time.

    So back to call for entry. If you sign up as an artist, you can search. And you can also sign up for their email list, which is really helpful because they’ll send out like new opportunities to your email that they think might work for you. And they also, I think it’s the… it’s either the most recent things or the things that are about to be due, like expire in terms of like you have until this date to apply but they’ll send out a whole list of like, here’s a whole bunch of potential things that you could apply for that are due in the next two weeks, or month, or so. Or here’s a whole bunch of stuff that is brand new that you might want to apply for. So you can get emails sent to you of all these potential opportunities and then you can just scroll through your email be like, oh, this one sounds cool and click through and do your thing.

    Another cool thing about the call for entry website is the applications to all of these things like the residencies gallery shows, exhibitions, like workshops all the things, you apply through the website. So not only does it help you find the opportunities, but it also helps you like put yourself in the running for those opportunities. When you apply and say you submit images or something for your portfolio, it’ll have those images in this website already so you can just reuse them for different applications. If you want to use the same photos. So it’s helpful because everything is all in one place. Yeah. It’s been really helpful for me. I think it would be harder to find the opportunities if I was just searching randomly and I probably wouldn’t be able to see as many all in one place if I was just on the internet somewhere else.

    So this website is call for entry dot org, that’s spelled C-A-L-L-F-O-R-E-N-T-R-Y-(dot)-O-R-G. This is not a sponsored post or anything. I don’t think they do affiliates, but I just the site has helped me as an artist do I just wanted to share it with you. Yeah, I hope I get the residency we’ll see! And if not, I’ll take another failure because each failure gets me closer to a success and I learn with each one.

    So, yeah. Hopefully this helps you as an artist. If you’re wanting to get yourself out there. If you have any questions comment below or send me an e-mail, or you can like submit stuff through my survey. I’ll link that below and yeah. I hope you have a wonderful day! I’ll talk to you soon! Bye!

    Click here to check out the Call For Entry website!

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  • My Personal + Business Goals for 2022

    January 15, 2022 /

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hey friends! Last week I talked about making goals and this week I want to share with you what goals I’ve come up with for myself. These will probably change over time and I will probably add to them and change them and things like that. So this is like a working list and it doesn’t include everything but it’s a start. So I wanted to share with you and it’s okay if I don’t have everything figured out because it’s only January and we have a whole year and things change and that’s like a part of life and that’s okay and there’s nothing wrong with that. So I feel like it’s better to have some goals than to not have any at all and even if they change that’s okay because like everyone changes and learns and grows over time, so starting off with some goals whether or not they’re like permanent forever goals, at least there’s a start and that’s something to work off of.

    So, here are some of the goals that I came up with for myself. So, some personal goals that I have. I already talked to y’all about some of these, but I’m just going to go over all of them. So, personal goals. I want to journal every day. I want to do energy every day. I want to take a walk outside once a week or more. I really want to complete my tattoo or get closer to finishing it. I don’t know if that will be completed this year in 2022 just because of how much we have left. But at least continue that process to get closer to completing it. I want to connect more with friends. I want to like text my friends more, see them in person more, hang out with friends. Make more friends. I feel kind of lonely, so friend things, please yes.

    I have several online courses that I’ve signed up for that I want to complete. So those are some more personal goals when I complete those e-courses and I want to read at least 10 books. I think last year I read eight or nine books. I think I actually read more, but the ones that I wrote down were eight or nine. And I don’t know if I wrote all of the books down that I read. So. Yeah, I’m going to actually keep track of that this year. What books I’ve read. So I want to read more books. And those are the start of my personal goals list, at least.

    Business goals. So I like I said, I’ve kind of talked about some of this in the last video, but I’m going to review it a little bit. So business goals. I want to monetize my YouTube which means I need at least a thousand subscribers and at least 4,000 watch hours. So I’m going to plan to create one longer video a month. And at least one short every week in order to hopefully get closer to being able to monetize my YouTube channel.

    Click here to check out my YouTube channel!

    I want to continue doing these Vlogs every week for my website, for y’all because I love you. So a goal is to do a vlog every week. I would like to increase my total income. So I have a like a dollar amount goal to work towards. Right now I’m just like, I want to have a fifteen hundred dollar a month because most months I’m like hovering around a thousand bucks, so my goal is to increase that.

    I want to come up with one free thing to give to people every month. So whether that’s like a worksheet, a checklist, a video, like an online event, something just like one free thing for people every month because I feel like I don’t want to have everything behind a paywall. I want to be able to help people and I’m more able to help people if they have access to it for free. So, I want to make more free content.

    I have been dreaming about making a self-portrait online course, for probably three or four years now and I still haven’t done it. So that’s a goal, is to like work towards that this year, is launching an online course. I want to teach and facilitate more workshops, so that’s another goal is to do at least one or two or three workshops, whether online or in person, this year. I would really like to do that.

    I want to be on some people’s podcasts. I want to get my name out there that can be part of my, like, marketing strategy. Also podcasts are another way to get myself in front of more people. And also, a way to help more people if because, you know, hopefully the podcast that I’m on will be free. So another way to support people through what I know and the things that I can share. So I want to be on some podcasts. 

    Last year, I applied for I think two different residencies and I didn’t get either one, but I want to apply for more residencies because I would actually like to do a residency, an artist residency at some point. So I can only do that if I apply for them. So I have a goal of applying for residencies. And then I think I would really like to Mentor a queer artist like somebody who is just starting in the realm of art, photography, creativity. Since I’ve been doing this for over 10 years I have a lot of knowledge that I can share, so I would like to mentor a queer artist, so that will be another goal of mine.

    Yeah, okay. So those are some of my goals for 2022. I probably am going to update and change these overtime but that’s at least a start. And so, now that I have this list, I know what I can work towards and what things that I need to do on a more regular basis in order to meet those goals. 

    Yeah, goals are kind of hard and also awesome at the same time. I am the kind of person, I’m kind of a perfectionist and I… a lot of the time I struggle with not starting something because I want to do it perfectly, so I just don’t start it at all because I’m scared of failing. So I just don’t do it. And if I think about it, if I don’t start at all, that’s immediately a failure. So I’m like… I’m failing myself before I even start, so I want to not do that.

    And I want to actually, I want to fail. I want to fail some. I want to get some nos. I want to like… I want to apply for things and have people reject me because that’s the only way that I’m going to get over this, is if I actually do it and get rejected and be like, okay, I’ve learned something. Now I can work on something else and continue to get better. So yeah, maybe another goal is to fail some because I need practice with that, because it’s better to fail and learn something than to not try at all. 

    And I’m still learning this for myself, but I wanted to share with you a lot of these things that I share that are like, inspirational and helpful and things like that. It’s also for me because I need help too. And sometimes I need to just listen to my own videos so that I can help myself. So yeah, okay.

    Yeah, so thank you for listening to my goals and I hope that you can set some awesome goals for yourself. And, yeah, I love you so much! Thank you for being here! If you have anything you’d like to share with me, like, goals that you have set or questions that you have about my goals, you can comment below. I’m also going to put the link to my survey below. If there’s anything in particular you want to hear from me. That way I can make the content that you want to see! So link to the survey is down there. Okay. I love you so much! Thank you for being here! *mwah*

    Click here to respond to my survey + help me create content you want to see!

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  • 2021 Recap!

    December 25, 2021 /

    I enjoy looking back + seeing all the progress I’ve made over the year. It helps me realize that I did in fact actually do things + work toward my goals.

    Sometimes my brain likes to tell me that I’ve done NOTHING + gotten NOTHING accomplished, that I’ve wasted the whole year.

    Does your brain do that to you too?

    Maybe looking back through your year to see all that you’ve done will benefit you too!

    This post contains affiliate links. This means I may earn a commission should you choose to make a purchase using my link (at no extra cost to you!). I only recommend things I have personally used + love!

     

    Let me know what you’d like to see from me in 2022 by responding to my survey!

     

    I was only able to accomplish these things because of the support from members of my website, thank you so much!

     

    • Became an LLC
    • Got a business bank account
    • GBTL events: Jan, Feb x2, March x2, April x2, May x3, June x2, July, August, September (total of 15 events!!!)
    • GBTL met up in person to create + facilitate backstage pass
    • Many many meetings + video chats + text messages behind the scenes

    Click here to learn more about Going Beyond the Lens

     

     

    Check out the organized list of HUNDREDS of books I want to read!

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