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Waterfall self portraits
CAPTION FOR THE ABOVE VIDEO:
Hello! So this week I am sharing (oh, it’s very muddy in my yard) I’m sharing a couple of photosets that are self portraits that I took, probably a couple years ago honestly, it’s been a little bit, from when I was traveling by myself in the mountains of North Carolina. It was probably 2018 or 2019. I got a spiderweb on my phone! Also I just got this fancy stabilizer for my cell phone which is why it looks so good and I’m not bouncing you around everywhere! Yeah so, these photosets, I really like them, it’s just me spending time out near waterfalls in NC which is one of my favorite things to do! I’m rolling up my pants so I don’t get them wet, we’ve had a lot of rain here and the ground is still pretty wet.
For the First Look members I’m sharing the double exposure photoset that I took of Tiffany Helms on Bainbridge Island outside of Seattle Washington from my trip last summer. Let’s see what else? I’ve been doing a little bit more computer work the last couple of days which I’m kindof excited about because I’m getting closer to doing things that I want to do. Today I just posted (today is Thursday, I usually do these on Thursdays) I posted Energy Medicine/Energy Healing 101 to my instagram story and I saved it as a highlight so if you go to my instagram you can still find it even if it’s gone from my story. I think it’s pretty cool, I’m excited about doing these educational video things, well actually that wasn’t a video but, I have a lot of knowledge, I know a bunch of different things, I’ve been learning a lot of various healing things over the years and I’m excited to share them with more people. The healing things I’m probably most excited about, but I love photography and that kind of thing too, and witchy stuff. I’m looking forward to sharing a bunch of my knowledge with people and I feel like sharing that information for free through my instagram and youtube channel is beneficial to everyone so I’m looking forward to doing more of that. I feel like I’m starting to get kindof a plan of the things I want to do. The next thing I’m gonna go over is witchy things and rituals and stuff, after that I’m going over gender, and after that I’m going over ecosexuality more, even though I already have June and July every Monday on my youtube channel I’ll be going over ecosexuality and another topic, looking at the topic through the lens of ecosexuality such as sex, gender, attraction, consent, money, spirituality, so I have a bunch of those coming up in June and July on my youtube channel for my lives on Mondays. I’m really excited about those because I’m so obsessed with ecosexuality and I want to share it with everyone! I think that’s going to be a really good way to spread information about ecosexuality is through youtube.
So I feel like I’m starting to have a little bit more of a plan of things I want to do so that feels good. A lot of what I want to do is share information freely with people without having a paywall between them and the information that I have. But I also at the same time do need to make money so that I can live. Literally the money I make from my website is how I pay my bills. I really enjoy spending time with yall on Thursdays and I think that’s a big benefit to being a patron/member, is you get to support me and we get to hang out every week! Which, I really love that. I’ve been enjoying that. I feel like the last several weeks I’ve just had us hang out and talk and not had a topic or thing to do or activity. I might start having planned activities or specific topics to talk about so it’s not just chit chatting the whole time. I don’t know, I really like hanging out and talking to yall so I might just stick to that, but I don’t know if yall are maybe getting not necessarily bored, but you might want more out of those Thursday hangouts than what we’re doing so far. I know we talked several weeks ago or more like a month or so ago, about different things that I could do for the Thursday chats and I do really like the idea of planning out what I’m going to do but at the same time I don’t want to hold myself to this really rigid schedule either. Especially since it’s with yall and you might not always want to talk about the topic that I have or whatever. I like that they’ve been really organic and whatever comes up we talk about, but I’m also open to having more structure at the same time.
I just noticed that there’s a Magnolia flower starting to bloom on the Magnolia tree and that makes me really excited and happy. It’s really muggy and hot out here, it’s been raining for about a week and a half, just about every day, it’s not raining today which is why I’m outside and I’m very excited about it but I expect that it’s going to be raining some more over the next couple of days because that’s what the forecast has said. Maybe that tropical storm is still at the coast of NC, I don’t know, I know that it’s been there for a while but I don’t know how fast it’s moving.
So, if you have any topics of conversation that you want to discuss on Thursdays let me know. I probably might do a self portrait session during one of them at some point. I’m not sure if I’m quite ready for self portraits again yet, just because maybe I’ve stressed myself out about it enough that I haven’t been doing it, and like oohh I need to do it.
Not this weekend but next weekend I’m taking the whole weekend to myself, the 5-7th, the first weekend of June. It’s kinda a big weekend for me emotionally so I’m being extra gentle with myself. Plus I think there’s a full moon eclipse that Friday, I’m pretty sure, I need to look it up again but I think that Friday is a full moon eclipse. So I feel like energetically and emotionally it’s going to be a big deal for me and I’m looking forward to not doing any work and just focusing on self care and doing things that feel good to me. I also have planned to do a bunch of mushrooms! Because I fucking love mushrooms and I learn more about myself every time and I feel like I get a deeper connection with myself and the universe and the Earth and nature and my understanding of the world every time I do them and I just… fucking love mushrooms. I’ve never taken a really big dose, I’ve always just microdosed, which has worked really well for me. I’ve had, every single trip I’ve had has been really good spiritually, emotionally, and physically enlightening and positive for me. My sister however has had more bad trips than good trips but I think she’s had bigger doses than I have and that might have contributed. The worst I’ve ever felt when I’ve taken mushrooms was a little bit of a belly ache because sometimes the psilocybin in the mushrooms doesn’t do super well in your stomach, but for me that hasn’t been anything really negative at all. The benefits very far outweigh the negatives for me. Yeah I love mushrooms! I might make some content when I’m doing that self care weekend, I haven’t decided yet. Just depends on how I feel, I don’t want to pressure myself. I don’t do well with expectations or pressure so I don’t want to do that to myself, it’s not nice. That’s another reason why I super appreciate the people in my life that don’t put expectations or pressure on me because they know how much I despise it and how much it makes me want to do the opposite of whatever it is I’m “supposed to do” so I really appreciate everyone who doesn’t put expectations or assumptions on me because that’s like the worst thing ever for me.
So how do you like this smooth video? I really love this stabilizer so far. It is a little heavy to hold, but I won’t be doing 30 minute videos with it or anything. Plus it came with a mini tripod, it’s really adorable, so I could just put it on a tripod. Since I have this stabilizer I’ll be making more dynamic videos and more videos that aren’t just static and are actually moving around and stuff. Combining videos to make more artistic short videos that have some movement and some static video in it. I’m not really looking forward to the computer work that it will require, but I think once I finish my backlog of videos, I think I only have 4 or 5 left, then I wont be as stressed about making video content because it’ll be like well I just made this one thing and it’s the only thing I have to edit instead of I made this thing that is piling on top of all of the other things that I already still have to edit.
This is a long video already and I want to get started on prepping the post for this weekend and I’ve said basically all the things I want to say. I love you so much, thank you for being here. I appreciate that you support me even when I don’t know what I’m doing. It means a whole lot to me that you’re along for the ride. I love you so much! I’ll talk to you next week!
Video members:
click here to view the full self portrait photoset in the NC mountains (Shadowed Falls)
click here to view the full self portrait photoset in the NC mountains (Bright Waterfall)
click here to view the Earth connection meditation video
click here to watch the 13 random videosFirst Look members:
click here to view the double exposure photoset of Tiffany Helms on Bainbridge Island
click here to view the BTS video -
Maya Tihtiyas
CAPTION FOR VIDEO ABOVE:
Hi friends! This week I’m sharing 2 photosets, one that I took of Maya Tihtiyas (I apologize Maya if I’m saying your last name wrong!), she visited NC and came and hung out with me at my house for a little bit and we photographed each other, so there’s a photoset that I took of her and a photoset she took of me. This was probably OVER a year ago for sure, I could look up the exact date but it isn’t super accessible to me at the moment, so it’s not that big of a deal for me to know exactly when these were taken. I have a habit of hoarding photos for a really long time and not sharing them, so yeah… I don’t really know why I do that. BUT these photos I really like. I think the set I have scheduled to share is the double exposure set I took of her and I really like them they’re really cool.
Today is a weird day for me, I don’t know, I emotionally don’t feel like super here, and my period is LATE and I’m trying to not be too annoyed or like freaked out by it, but I think that’s maybe part of why my emotions are feeling weird right now. Also a friend of mine that’s barely more than an acquaintance, like we’ve hung out twice and we used to go to the same yoga studio before lockdown, reached out to me because she has some similar relationship experience to me in terms of polyamory. She’s going through a rough time right now and wanted support and I am not in a place emotionally or time wise to be able to give her the support that she needs. We’re taught through our culture and through movies/tv shows/songs/peoples expectations that we’re supposed to abandon ourselves in order to help out our friends or the people we love or our partners or whatever, and I did that for years and years, and I’m not doing that anymore. So it was hard to set a boundary but I did it, I said “I appreciate that you trust me to hold space for you, but today I don’t have the time or emotional capacity to do justice to the kind of support that you need. Do you have someone else you can reach out to for support?” I don’t know if I’ve really ever done this before because I’m the kind of person, or I have been in the past, that has always felt like if I’m a good friend then I need to support people or help them out in their time of need. So it’s hard to set boundaries and say “hey, I know myself well enough to know that I’m not capable of doing a good job of supporting my friend right now” so I’m going to be honest with them and say “hey I don’t have it in me to be able to do this today.” And this is something new that I’ve just started being able to do. It’s not easy and it’s like… it goes against what a lot of our culture teaches us is expected from us. It sucks because it makes it really hard. And I’m not the kind of person to beat around the bush. I like to be direct and be like “this is what’s going on and this is what I need and this is the thing” and this conversation was through text so I was worried that she would take it the wrong way or be mad at me for not being able to “be a good friend” but I can’t abandon myself for anyone anymore. I’ve done that a lot throughout a lot of my life and I’m not doing it anymore. And I hope you don’t do it to yourself either, because it sucks. A lot. It hurts.
It’s been raining for 4 days straight and I’m glad that I just took a walk because it wasn’t raining when I was taking a walk and now it’s raining again. I took a walk in the rain yesterday. I just… feel gloomy today and the weather/rain is totally matching my mood. Or I’m matching the weather, what came first, the chicken or the egg? My mood or the weather? I don’t know if I’ve told yall before but I am capable of weather magick so I don’t always know if my mood came first or if the weather came first because I’m very connected to the weather. If you don’t believe me that’s okay. But I can tell you that there have been at least 5 times in the last couple of years that it has been about to start storming, like very obviously storming is about to happen, and I have calmly and gently and politely asked the weather to please wait until I’m inside with all of my things before it starts raining and… guess what happened? I get inside with all of my things, even if I have a delay, and then as soon as I close the door it starts POURING. This has happened at least 5 times in my life. I have a relationship to the Earth and the weather and I know that I am capable of weather magick. Whether or not the atmosphere/nature wants to listen to me is a different story, but it’s like a… what’s the word I’m looking for? Uhm, I have a relationship with the Earth and the weather.
I don’t know, I don’t have much else to say, I don’t want to be gloom and doom and make yall feel sad, because I want to be a source of inspiration and happiness and joy and education and love for everyone that I meet online so I don’t want to talk too much about my sad feelings. I know it’s really needed sometimes but I feel like since the pandemic I’ve had more gloomy/sad things to talk about than happy things to talk about so I don’t want to tip the scale in the sad direction anymore than I already have. So… I love you! I hope you’re doing well! I hope it’s sunshiney and happy wherever you are. I love you forever. I appreciate you being here supporting me, and I’ll talk to you next week.
Video members:
click here to view the full photoset of me taken by Maya Tihtiyas
click here to view the full double exposure photoset I took of Maya Tihtiyas
click here to view the video of me getting into my body
click here to view the video of me lounging nude in the sunFirst Look members:
click here to view the self portrait photoset on a desert rock in Utah from my cross country road trip last summer
click here to view the BTS video
click here to view the self portrait photoset of formations at dusk in Utah from my cross country road trip last summer
click here to view the BTS video -
Nude Beach Gathering – images from Jake & Kayla
CAPTION FOR VIDEO ABOVE:
Hi friends! This week I’m sharing a photoset with you that was taken by Jacob Webster and edited by his now wife Kayla Webster during the nude beach gathering I facilitated outside of Portland Oregon during my cross country road trip last summer. I think this is the last photoset that I have from that event that I’m sharing with you so, yeah I think this is the end of that. I really love the photos that they took, these include the photos that were taken by the drone. Jake had the drone and used it at the end of the shoot for the big cuddle pile that was really wonderful and super fun. These are some of my favorites from that day, I love all of them but these are probably some of my favorites. A giant cuddle pile and you could see all of us from above? Yeah definitely.
I… I keep going back and forth in terms of how I feel about the things that I’m doing and I’m kinda concerned about how I probably only have a month or two left of content backlog to share with you and after that I don’t really know because I haven’t really been making anything other than videos. In the future, after the next couple months once I get through the backlog, I might not be sharing as much as frequently in terms of photosets, because I just have not been inspired to take photos since like, last fall basically. I kinda totally burnt myself out doing a LOT last summer. Then with my realization that I’m trans, and the realization that like… I don’t know. This isn’t the only thing I want to do with my life and I still am kinda struggling to figure out what the rest of that is. I don’t know… I feel like I need to have an answer about who I am and what I’m about and the message that I want to spread but the overall thing that I have is like “lets love each other and make everyone equal.” The light here is really bright, let’s see if I can get… that’s better. I think it’s important to point out the injustices that exist in our society because we can’t make any positive change unless we acknowledge that there’s a problem. I feel…. I feel like I should have it figured out and I totally don’t and I’m trying to be gentle with myself in the process. It’s kinda scary because my website is basically my only source of income and if I don’t continue what I’ve always been doing is anyone going to be interested in what I’m doing? If I change too much is everybody gonna bail and I’m going to be without an income? I don’t know. I really want to be true to myself and I really don’t want to force myself to do things that don’t feel right, which is taking photos right now. I do at some point in the future want to start taking self portraits again, but that’s not anything that I’m going to but a day or time commitment on because that’s a surefire way to get me to not want to do it is if I feel like I have to. I’m such a Sagittarius! I don’t want to be nailed down to anything, I don’t want to commit! So.. I don’t know, everything is weird. Maybe part of it is that I’m still not bleeding and I’m supposed to start my period sometime and I always get weird emotionally before my period so maybe that’s part of it.
But something I’m looking forward to, is tomorrow, so today is Thursday, I always do these early, so by the time you watch this it’ll be yesterday, but TOMORROW is Friday and I am doing a livestream on IG with Lior and we’re going to be giving a little preview of the vulnerability talk that we’re doing jointly with Roarie on Monday as a full discussion, and that’s something I’m excited about. It’s been really wonderful to connect with the two of them and spend time brainstorming and creating this discussion that we have planned out for yall. We’ve really loved getting feedback from other people. All 3 of us asked questions about vulnerability on our IG stories and the feedback we’ve gotten from people has been really amazing. And also the place that we have everyone signing up for the vulnerability discussion, which is FREE you should totally sign up! If you’re available, join us on Monday for free! 7pm eastern, the 3 of us are doing a whole discussion on this. And I’ve already lost my train of thought, but… yeah if you want to join us we would totally love to have you. OH! The place you sign up for it is a google form and it has questions about vulnerability, they’re not required for you to sign up, the only thing that’s absolutely required in order to sign up is your email address, but so far the responses that we’ve gotten from people in that too have been really amazing. I love the different perspectives that people are bringing to the table and some of the things that people are saying about vulnerability and how it shows up in their lives are things I haven’t thought about at all yet and it’s really wonderful that there’s so much to say about it. So if you’re interested, its free! I think when I made this video last week we were still in the planning stages and were thinking about having it be a paid event, but we’re like “you know what? lets just provide this for free for people” because it’s stuff that we want more people to have access to and we don’t want the barrier of money to be there. I’m excited, I think it’s going to be really wonderful. I’ve already really enjoyed spending time with Lior and Roarie talking about this so I know that the discussion on Monday will go even more in depth and we will be able to have conversations with the people that come to the talk. I think it’ll be eye opening and connective and just really wonderful, so I’m looking forward to that.
Hello little bird! It’s a little Carolina Wren right over there. I don’t know if you can see it. It’s over there. That kinda bird, we have a covered area over by the house and it has little troughs inside of it that have lights in them and these little, it’s usually 2 little Carolina Wrens will nestle up in the corners and sleep at night. They don’t have a nest or anything they just come and sit in the corner and sleep and it’s so cute! I haven’t seen them in a few days but they come and go randomly, it’s really adorable.
Okay, now that my neighbor is mowing their grass. I don’t have much else to share with you at the moment, but I just wanted to say thank you and I love you and I appreciate you going on this weird journey with me! I don’t know where I’m going so how could I expect yall to know where I’m going?! I appreciate that yall support me and that you’re along for the ride, because I don’t even know where this is going. I know that it’s going somewhere cool, and somewhere that fits me, even though I don’t know what that is, but I appreciate that you’re here and doing this with me. I love you!
Video members:
click here to view the full photoset taken by Jacob Webster and edited by Kayla Webster during the nude beach gathering I facilitated outside of Portland Oregon during my cross country road trip last summer
click here to view the BTS video
click here to view the nude yoga videoFirst Look members:
click here to view the self portrait photoset during desert dusk in Utah
click here to view the BTS video -
Quinn Sanguine & Megan Ayn
CAPTION FOR VIDEO ABOVE:
Hello! So this week I am sharing a photoset that I took of my friends Quinn and Megan when I was in Tacoma Washington. It’s funny because I’ve been friends with Quinn for a long time and I’ve met them a few times prior to my trip out there. Quinn used to live in the Boston area and did a couple of trips along the east coast and I was able to hang out with them during that time. Then they moved across the country, they did a cross country tour at the same time they were moving across the country. They moved to Tacoma a year or two ago, no longer than that, a couple years ago now. Wow, time is wild yall! Quinn moved to Tacoma and offered to host me while I was in the area so I stayed with them for I think it was close to a week, it was like at least 4 or 5 days. I had been talking to Megan about shooting with her because we’ve followed each other on IG for a while. Come to find out, Quinn and Megan lived like 5-10 minutes away from each other and they hadn’t met yet. It was awesome, Quinn and I went to Megan’s house and hung out and took photos of each other, it was a great time. That day when we were shooting I was feeling kinda weird, I think I wasn’t quite as inspired because we were indoors instead of outside, and I didn’t think I had the film that I needed in order to get the proper exposure inside the house. I had a lot of fast film/lower ISO film, and it wasn’t going to be enough light for me to take photos, but then I found ONE roll of film that was 1600 ISO that I had, and that was just enough to take photos. I was really excited that I was actually able to take photos, because I thought I wasn’t going to be able to because I didn’t have the right film for the space that we were in. I found that one roll and that was was very helpful and I’m thankful that I was able to photograph them when I was there. I already shared the photos that Megan took of me and Quinn, and these are the photos that I took of Quinn and Megan.
What’s going on with me this week… today’s Thursday, I usually do my prep for the weekend on Thursdays, and today is the full moon. I’m not feeling as energetically and emotionally effected by this moon as I usually do, and it’s kinda odd to me because I remember having a Scorpio moon, I think it was last year, and that was really intense for me, and this Scorpio moon isn’t really? Which I find pretty interesting. I don’t know, I’m feeling a little bit less stuck, I know I’ve been talking about feeling stuck the last couple of weeks. I’m feeling a little less stuck in terms of creative and goals and life stuff. I’ve started to plan some online opportunities with a couple of other artists and I’m really excited to share that with you coming up soon.
Actually I’ll go ahead and tell you, Lior Allay and Roarie Yum and I are doing live videos on IG next week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, talking about vulnerability. On Monday the 18th we’ll be hosting an online event/discussion between us and the people who are a part of the event. We’re going to do a live video chat type of thing. We haven’t quite, as of today, come up with a specific name/wording about what we’re going to do but I know that we’re going to go more in depth about vulnerability in art and speak to what that means for us, if nudity is a part of that for us and why, and how to create spaces where we allow other people to be vulnerable. I’m very excited about that, so keep an eye out on mine, Lior’s, and Roarie’s IGs for more info about that coming up soon. I’ll send info to my mailing list when we have more promotional materials ready. I’m pretty excited about it, I’ve been feeling like not really ready or willing to do a lot of creative stuff recently, and I’ve tried really hard to not beat myself up about it because it’s expected of me from myself and my community. I feel thankful that I have the opportunities that I do in order to not have to constantly create in order to make a living. I have a backlog of all of the things I’ve created last summer to get me through this slump time, but now that I’m in collaboration with Roarie and Lior, I’m starting to get more excited about art again. Even if I’m not actively creating right now, which I still haven’t been creating, just having the conversations around art has been really wonderful for me and healing in a way, just thinking about it more and being in a mindset where I’m more receptive to creativity and art has felt really nice. I’m excited to go through these discussions with them over the next couple of weeks and share our knowledge with yall. I’ll link to my instagram, Lior’s instagram, and Roarie’s instagram in the caption of this video to make it easy for you to click and see what kind of things we’re doing online. (Click here for my IG, click here for Roarie’s IG, click here for Lior’s IG)
Do you hear that hawk?! *looking around above me* I think it’s pretty wonderful and magickal that when I’m out here making videos for yall there’s some kind of bird that is talking to me. Last week it was hummingbirds and this week it’s a hawk. Hawks are really magickal and powerful and I connect with them a lot already just because I know that there are some that have nests somewhere around my neighborhood, somewhere near my house. They’re here a lot, I see them a lot and hear them a lot. I think that’s pretty magickal. I’m trying to not be too distracted.
So… that’s pretty much the only thing that’s new with me, the vulnerability in art talks that I’ll be doing with Lior and Roarie. Keep an eye out if you want to participate, we’re going to do a really affordable online discussion through video chat. I also just heard an owl! But it’s like… noon! Anyway! The discussion we’ll be hosting, the instagram lives will be free. There’s that owl again! So those will be Monday Wednesday Friday next week for free, and then the online video discussion group video thing we’re doing will be on Monday the 18th and that will be donation based with a $5 minimum. Donate whatever you’re able based on the value you get out of our talk. We’re going to be splitting the funds from that between the 3 of us. I’m really excited, I think it’ll be a really great discussion. I think vulnerability is something that most people skirt around or avoid when they’re creating art. They focus on making things that are beautiful or aesthetically pleasing, but not necessarily have any emotion or vulnerability behind them. I think it’s going to be a really wonderful discussion to bring vulnerability to light and emphasize the importance of it in art. I mean, I personally get the most out of art when there’s some kind of message behind it, or I can tell that someone has a lot of emotion and is sharing that with us through their art, that’s really vulnerable to me, being your true self and not thinking or worrying about what other people think about you or what their expectations are. I invite you to join us for that. I’ll share links whenever I have them, we’re still gathering info and working together to figure out how to make it the best event possible. I’m really excited, I love working with them, they’re amazing humans. I look up to them both, and I’ve been lucky enough to create with both of them more than once and I love it!
Thank you so much for following my journey of… whatever this is. I just want to be the person that past me needed, and hopefully that person is someone that you need too, or someone that you at least get some kind of value out of. I don’t want to just have empty, pretty things. I want to share with yall deeply and in meaningful ways, and I want to help educate people and I want to help heal people and I can’t do that without being vulnerable myself. I appreciate yall being a part of this with me. I love you so much, thank you for loving me!
Video members:
click here to view the full photoset of Quinn Sanguine and Megan Ayn in Tacoma Washington
click here to view the BTS videoFirst Look members:
click here to view the photoset of me in a Nashville TN park taken by Bashing Bagpipes