writing

This morning, I looked in my closet. Many of you have asked "how do you choose what you're going to wear on Wednesday's?" Every Wednesday, I wake up, walk to my closet, and decide what I'm going to wear. It happens the morning of, raw and uncut. Mistakes happen. This morning, I looked in my closet and realized something: "I'm really going to miss this." Last week, I wrote about the blog and how it has lost its priority-ness over the years. (If you missed it, take a look: http://emliv.blogspot.com/2013/03/advantage.html) My passion for the blog has been lessening as time has gone on. But, as I looked in my closet this morning, I realized my passion for dressing up on Wednesday's has not dwindled. I realized that I really like the creative challenge of creating a new never-before-worn-by-Morgan outfit out of clothes I have owned for a long long time. I really like the creative challenge of creating unique color palettes, pushing the boundaries, mixing pattern/color combos. I realized I don't do this for attention, I don't do this to get a rise out of friends, family, coworkers, fellow academics, or you, the faithful blog reader. I realized I do this because it's a creative outlet that only works within the school context. Once I graduate, I will likely stop dressing up on Wednesday's, not because I'm done and sick with it, but because there will be no venue for the artwork. I won't have the consistency to promote the continuation of this 6 year long habit.

Another aspect is the people surrounding me. I feel 100% comfortable wearing anything and everything on Wednesday's around campus, it doesn't phase me. Throw me in a working context when I'm right out of college? Eh, drop that 100% down a few percentages. I'd love to be transparent and transfer my comfortability into any working context that's thrown my way, but, honestly, that is going to be incredibly difficult to do. We'll have to see what happens.

All that to say, I am going to really miss dressing up all crazy and stuff. I've been doing this for 6 years, it's become a habit, it's consistent. I have taken 162 pictures of Wednesday garb. One hundred sixty-two. If you're interested, peruse them ALL here:

college: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.143439557753.137074.714162753&type=3

high school: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.34414107753.57636.714162753&type=3

Looking through these pictures is fantastic. Every single one of them is tied to a memory or a group of memories. Every single one is tied to a specific blog post that has these memories recorded for years to come. This fact is legitimately fantastic. Can't wait to show my grandkids this stuff.





In other news, last Friday, March 22, Ms. Morgan McGannon and I hit the town. If you recall from last week (Once again, ff you missed it, take a look: http://emliv.blogspot.com/2013/03/advantage.html), she and I babysat three balls of energy for an evening. Not only was it a crazy evening and will be remembered for quite some time, we made a few bux. We decided we wanted to do something fun with, a date of sorts. But what should we do? After we did some fantastic brainstorming (we played off each other's ideas very nicely), we arrived upon the perfect thing: Universal CityWalk and we HAVE to spend all the money. CityWalk is one of those strange places where there is so so so much to buy, so so so much memorabilia, touristy items, random gifts, but do we ever buy it? Hardly. So what if we went to CityWalk with the challenge to spend all the money we had? Sounds like a date night to me.

After we watched my sister Lacey absolutely kill it in her jazz choir performance at Fullerton College, we headed to CityWalk, used our earnings to pay for parking (boo) and then headed inside. We decided to get some food from the food court. Ms. Morgan McGannon picked up some Flame Broiler which proved to be a great choice. I, however, chose to go with Pink's Hot Dogs. Now, I have had only good experiences at Pink's, but this time was different. I order the "New York Hotdog." On the menu, it said "hotdog with spicy red onions." Sounded decent and safe, I like onions. Turns out I had no idea what spicy red onions were. This hot dog was quite possibly the worst food item I have ever purchased. I couldn't even stomach it, I tried. I tried to eat it, I really did. I couldn't do it. Ms. Morgan McGannon was kind enough to share some of her meal with me, bless her heart.

We continued on our way. Here are some pictures documenting our journey.

Super fun. And we got some super fun memorabilia out of it. And some super fun pictures. This girl is one of a kind. She rocks my world time and time again.



In other news, this week has been wild. SO much going on. Here's a review in tweets.

And that is the end of this edition of "It's Wednesday!" Lots of writing, lots of reading. That hasn't happened in a while. Writing is such an interesting concept: recording things, whether that be words, numbers, drawings, images, from your head onto another surface that can either be temporary or permanent. This writing I am doing right now will likely last until the end of the world. It's being permanently embedded into the recesses of the internet. It's like an engraving. Incredible. I'm writing about writing and as I write about writing, the writing is being written onto the written history of the world. Incredible.

Write something this week. Grab a piece of paper and a pen and just start writing. Go into it with an open mind. Let your mind wander, explore, investigate. Write it down. Seriously.

Dress it up

Take a look at the picture above. What do you notice? You might notice nothing. Mr. Scott Gamelson noticed something though: "What? That's not fancy enough for a Wednesday." It's not. Or is it? What's fancy? What's dressing up? This is the topic of conversation.

"Dressing up" is an interesting action. When do we dress up? Well, for me, I dress up every Wednesday and whenever I feel like it's appropriate, which, honestly, is most situations. I personally enjoy dressing up, I enjoy a suit and tie, I enjoy getting fancy. Other people don't. Other people do not enjoy dressing up, enjoy a t-shirt and sweats, and don't ever want to get fancy. There's nothing wrong with this, I enjoy a t-shirt and sweats an incredible amount, but there's something beautiful about the act of dressing up because of the situation deserving the respect. For example, back in the day (I think), when people went out for a social event, when people went to town for the evening, they took the time to prepare themselves for a nice time. They dressed to the occasion and treated social events with importance.  It might just be me, but it's not quite like that anymore.  In general, it doesn't seem like people care about social interaction the way they used to.  I feel like, especially for gentleman, the art of dressing up is taking a hike in the backwards direction. I can't tell you how many times guys have asked me if I could tie their tie for the them. I feel embarrassed for them.  It's time to learn how to tie ties, gentleman. Speaking of tying ties, the "real" bow tie is almost completely extinct. Well, maybe. The trend of the "hipster" is toying with the idea of getting "into" bow ties again.  I guess we'll see what happens.

All this to say, I enjoy dressing up and I feel like our generation is on the downhill, dressing up isn't near as important and perhaps fun as it used to be. And just a disclaimer, everything written on this blog is opinion written in the moment. It's not meant to offend, it's not meant to prove, it's merely meant to express my random thoughts with a virtual audience.

And all THAT to say, I dressed "down" on purpose today, to speak to this issue. I guess that's a whole nother issue entirely: getting used to me dressing up on Wednesdays. There's an expectation that I dress up every Wednesday, an expectation that in no way shape or form NEEDS to happen, it just has happened, well, for the last 3+ years. And it's been a great 3+ years.




So, two Thursday's ago, the 29th of September, I was given the opportunity to film and photograph the madness we know as SWAGTACULAR. Hungry Mind Entertainment partnered up with House of Blues to throw this party full of swag and boy, was it an experience. I'm not going to get to detailed, but I learned a ton about myself that night, in all sorts of different ways, and in the end, it was well worth it and a spectacular learning experience.  As I was working on the video, I was absolutely amazed to see my Hume Lake influence show up. I can honestly attribute most, if not all, my video editing skills to Hume Lake Christian Camps and the immense amount of practice I was blessed with during the summer of 2010.  Seriously. Every stylistic decision that was made throughout this video somehow stemmed from something I learned and tried a Hume two summers ago. It got me PUMPED and I am so so grateful for that summer two short years ago.  Here's the video, for your enjoyment:


SWAGTACULAR // The Chaos from Morgan Lott on Vimeo.






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Four months ago, my roommate Mr. Joel Limbauan began training for a half-marathon. As far as I know, there was no major major cause for this, it was simple curiosity, perseverance, and drive.  Four months later, last Sunday rolled around, and entire apartment: Mr. Joel Limbuan, Mr. Ben Jacuk, Mr. Michael Warnecke, and myself, took off in the wee hours of the morning to go support our friend and housemate.  Here is the videographic proof:




WHAT. A. DAY! Joel's the man, the straight up man. Telling yourself you want to run a half-marathon and then actually doing it? That's WILD.








And that, my friends, is the end. I hope you enjoyed it. If not, it's just Wednesday.



Drink a fruit smoothie relatively soon. Try something you've never tried before.