We Are Groop

rather than stream my consciousness. i want to poise my words like models with slender flesh and velvet threads finely tucked and buttoned. a vocab that clicks its heels on your tongue. how gracefully vain and yet- see how i buffer? ... i need intention. dont overthink it. swallow that 1080p pill and save the tension.

So a couple interesting conversations went down on this day trip that I thought you might be interested in hearing... this is going to be less of a documentation on what I actually did and more about my thoughts in regards to different conversations I had today. Maybe I'll write more travel-y type posts in the future - if you're interested...  Didn't expect it but I got a little bit of a reality check on my way to Chianti. We stopped at a burial ground and memorial for American soldiers that died in World War II. I've always had a weird internal relationship with war - it (obviously) is an extremely foreign subject to me. I was never super close to anyone who participated in a war, and like most people I was always questioning their purpose. Why is dying and suffering necessary for peace? How is this even equivalent? When I look at these memorials - I wish they weren't there, I wish they didn't have to exist, I wish that my freedom wasn't at the expen...

I'm always relearning things when I make art... probably because I haven't fully learned it in the first place.  I know that you aren't supposed to compare your work to other work, and yet I do it anyway.  I know I need to stop having a preconceived notion of how I want a painting or drawing to look and yet I do it anyway.  These are probably the hardest things to learn in the art world...and also the hardest things to learn in life as well. Take preconceived notions for example, a lot of the times there's things I expect out of an experience, things I expect out of my future, my choices, my desires, my day to day life... time and time again the world will yield something different from what I expected - of course it isn't always a bad thing. Just like how I would expect a work of art to turn out one way and maybe see it turn out better than I hoped... or worse than I hoped. The problem is when I waste a lot of energy trying to pin down what I want fr...

(forgive me for generalizing, we = our generation) I feel like we are all at the age where we don't know what the fuck we're doing, but we want to do it all.  We make plans one day, then the next they change or disappear.  For the longest time, I viewed this as not ok.   I viewed it as giving up.   The way I was raised, I was taught that once you picked something--you stuck to it until that goal was achieved.  "Mitchell's aren't quitters" they would always say.  I am not a quitter. Just because what I thought was the best path changed as I grew, and my plans changed as my needs and wants evolved, this does not qualify as quitting.   My point in all of this, is being fickle is ok... We're 20.  We don't need to have our lives figured out and know what road we're taking to the end.   Even while driving, I take different routes just to see what happens, even if the destination is one I've visit...

hello. i know this will drive some (if not all) of you crazy, but bear with me. i have reasoning behind why "i" is no longer "I". you'd think, as an english major, i would rigidly follow the rules of language and grammar. and, of course, when writing academically, i do. college requires formalities. however, when it comes to my personal expression on social media, i've been using capital letters less and less. why, you ask? well, it's just one of the many ways my spiritual life has bled into my writing. basically, i believe capital letters should be reserved for the most important or sacred concepts/feelings/beings (Love, Spirit, God, etc.) (that being said, there are always exceptions, even to this belief - usually for the sake of aesthetic when presenting my work to others, as i mentioned.) to me, "i" is an ego statement, something that this body and brain says in this life. it's a lower level of consciousness, one that's li...

I've been sitting here with a blank post open for a few days, trying to think of a story to tell to make my life sound interesting.  I mean, here I am, 3,000 miles away from my hometown. In the last month, I've been through 3 national parks, like 10 states (? I can't even keep track anymore), 4 different time zones.... It's insane. And yet, I try to write something about what I'm up to, and all that comes to mind is how snuggly my cat is.   I'm ridiculous, I know. Anyway, you've all heard plenty about my trek west and seen all the pictures. That's not so much what my life is about these days although that would be ideal in the future.  Right now, life is a hot cup of ginger tea and video games. It's overcast skies, with crows swooping past my windows. It's endless rainstorms, with the cat purring in my lap. It's watching the leaves change to vibrant oranges and reds, and fall from the trees, floating gently to the ground like raindro...

Y'all know how I love to think a shit ton... so basically you already know where this is going. I have previously talked about in a video how much I fail at blogging... how writing isn't my strong suit, and especially when I try to do it online I have way too many opportunities to go back and edit what I've said. And so, I feel like it is hardest for me to be authentic in this scenario - which is exactly what I want to talk about... authenticity. Seems like I'm not setting myself up very well - but just because I don't find this area my strong suit doesn't mean I shouldn't practice more. So I'm going to write...and I'm going to avoid trying to carefully articulate each word. To my understanding there's multiple layers to this.. there's being authentic with yourself, with the multiple aspects of ourselves, with others; there's the many ways that it can be inhibited... All of this kind of mixes together and can actually get prett...