my music and moves

I have discovered the trick to making me actually do things. Put them in my calendar! Who knew?! Is this an adult secret that I'm finally being let in on?? I found out that Lord Huron (one of my favorite bands) was playing in Salt Lake a few months ago and despite one specific hater who kept telling me that even though I was psyched about it that since I kept procrastinating buying tickets that it wasn't really going to happen, it did happen! And it was glorious. All because I put it in my calendar. (This had previously worked with me going to see Ira Glass which I can't believe I didn't tell you people about, but let's just say that it was a serious dream come true to get to see my future boss speak on stage like that. Hey Ira, if you are somehow reading this, please hire me to do something (anything). I think we could do great things together!)

(this wasn't at the concert, it was just last weekend. But I don't know, it just felt like it should be shared, right? And maybe it is sort of applicable? Photo by my dope friend Shane Pittson)

I love love love music (you know like many people do), but somehow I never really do get on top of things and go to concerts, so I haven't been to as many as most people expect I have. This is mostly because I usually hear about a concert, think "I should go to that!," and then never do anything about it. But, remember! Why not Wyoming. I'm not talking about doing things anymore, I am doing them.

Ok, so v brief concert recap. First of all, here is one of your new favorite artists, Leon Bridges. He opened the show, and he didn't tell much about himself, so I can only assume that he hoped in a time machine sometime during the late 50s and then popped out here in 2015 just to grace us with his soul music. Just listen and fall in love for yourself (don't just scroll past this and not click play like I know you want to, okay?):

Now, I have received some very difficult music news recently. One of my all time favorite bands, Noah and the Whale, has de-banded according to their FB page and Mumford and Sons has apparently decided to become an electronic band (what are you doing?! NO! stop that! make me more stuff like this please!). But, in a saving grace, Lord Huron has made a new album and it is beautiful and brilliant and has brought me so much joy. And hey, that also meant they were touring so that's of course cool with me. 

A very important thing when going to concerts is to never go with someone too much taller than you (cause when you are as short as me, you get to the first few rows or you look at a bunch of shoulders for the night) and to go with someone who is also in love with the band so that you aren't going hard by yourself. So thank you Zach Snow for being the absolute perfect concert buddy. I am embarrassed (and maybe proud of myself?) to report that I am that person at concerts that has a little bubble of space around her that she has created by wildly dancing around to the music. Sorry everyone! Hope you were having as much fan as I was!! But, Amy Poehler told me in her book Yes Please! that "if you can dance and be free and not embarrassed you can rule the world," and I don't know but I think that's pretty d*ng good advice. (Don't scroll past this music either! At least let it play in the background while you continue to jump around the internet. I just want you all to love all the things that I love!!)

Lord Huron, you put on a great show. Thanks for giving me tunes to dance to, and drive to, and work to, and whatnot, and for not crushing all of my hopes and dreams like some before mentioned bands have done. Now if only Lord Huron would let me be their Lady Huron, I think that would be really nice. What do you guys say? I promise I would be real fun on tour!

my one year mark

It's been about a year since I graduated from college, I just did my own taxes for the first time ever (ok, yeah my dad was on the phone for moral support), tomorrow I will have officially been at my "big girl job" for 6 months, and honestly I am still the most clueless human on the planet. I'm pretty sure I've been in at the very least a mild panic ever since about 3 weeks before I graduated, so if you have your cap and gown ready to go and you haven't turned into a future terrified creature who just wants to crawl in a hole and hide from all responsibility, congratulations, I am honestly so very proud of you.

To celebrate that I've been an "adult" for a year now, I did what all responsible adults do and dyed my hair green (but, just the ends of it cause I'm too scared to bleach all my hair). My boss never commented on it so he never noticed, he doesn't care, or he didn't have the heart to tell me that it isn't totally appropriate to show up at your big girl job with green hair. I'm just gunna roll with it and not worry.

I've been gearing myself up for a lot of changes recently and adding a little green to my hair wasn't even part of that. Let's be honest, I am not one of those girls that feels dramatic and changes up her hair. I've basically had the same haircut (aside from a brief adventure into fringe land) for almost my whole life now. But I am *fingers crossed that I can actually find a place* moving to Salt Lake at the end of the month and that has got me feeling all kinds of adult and nervous. If you know of an open place for me to live in Salt Lake please let me know, or if you live in Salt Lake, please prepare to be my friend because I am not going to have any.

(hi this is the best I could do at a image slideshow. please help me if you know how to make this more beautiful?)

Here's to making the rest of my time in Provo worth it, and to drinking all of the dc lav limes (diet coke with lavender and lime from Sodalicious, obviously), and to actually finding housing so that I don't tell everyone I'm leaving and end up just staying here at Bromont in good ole' P-Town for forever!!!!

my why not Wyoming?

I was lying in bed on Saturday morning preparing myself to actually get up and start my day when I thought to myself, I could do what I'm supposed to do and get up, go to my yoga class, go to the grocery store, get my laundry done, and do whatever chores and errands I needed to do, and maybe have a semi okay day, or I could do something completely spontaneous and new. Obviously, I chose the second because why not drive to Wyoming?

I figured it was one of those get in your car and go now before you realize this is an insane thing to do moments, so I left pretty fast once I decided. And then I drove. I drove the almost 8 hours (there and back) to Green River, Wyoming by myself. I drove in silence while thinking, and I drove while listening to my favorite podcasts, I drove while listening to music, and for a while I drove and just listened to this song on repeat because it just fit everything that I was thinking and feeling and the fact that this song applied to me so perfectly means that at one point Marcus Mumford felt the same things I was feeling, and I don't know that's kind of comforting, don't ya think?

On my drive I decided three things: 

1. I need to write more. As great as it is getting to write for work every day, I should be writing for myself too.

2. It really is time to leave Provo. Provo is growing old, and I am growing wild, and we just don't fit into each other anymore.

3. I need to stop talking and start doing. Why not Wyoming? Time to stop thinking about the things I want to do and just do them, right?

"2090 called. You're dead and you wasted your time on earth."

–Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

DON'T LET 2090 CALL AND TELL YOU THAT!

peace. love. and Wyoming.

my Cincinnati weekend

When the going gets tough, the tough get going all the way to Cincinnati to hide out with their sister and baby nephew for the weekend. That's how the saying goes, right? Because that's what I did. Sorry Swift, but occasionally I say screw it to shaking it off, and it's okay to just run away instead.
Sometimes a week of drinking too much diet coke and spending too much on flowers for yourself isn't enough, and even the mountains don't feel far enough away from your everyday life, so you call your sister, buy a ticket, and show up at her house less than 24 hours later. I know this all might sound very dramatic, but I just need you to trust me and my decisions and accept me for the dramatic human that I am.

But I mean, come on?!?! Isn't the only thing you really want when you are feeling down is to walk downstairs from a sunshine nap and have your two year old nephew scream AUNT DANIELLE and start squealing and jump off of the couch even though he JUST saw you an hour ago. Seriously, that made you feel good just reading it, didn't it?

So I spent my weekend at the zoo with my nephew, and at the movies with my sister, and eating ice cream with her cute family and everything wasn't fixed when I got back to Provo, and I didn't magically feel like everything was perfect when my plane landed back in Salt Lake, but I did feel a little brighter, and a little more peaceful, and a little more like maybe this week won't be quite as bad as the one before.

Now that I'm back in Provo/Salt Lake and it IS time to shake it off, let's dance. Cause what better way is there to forget about everything else and just enjoy life?

peace. love. and getaways.

my last few months

I refuse to apologize for not blogging for the past few months because: 1. You probably didn't really mind and 2. I don't really feel that bad. Turns out that shoving everything you want to do, and all the people you want to see, and the errands you have to get done into your day when 9–5 (plus travel time) is taken from you on a daily basis is actually pretty difficult to do.

So what might you ask has happened to me in the past 2 1/2 months? Well stuff made me happy, and stuff made me sad, and a few more things have made me feel anxious (just kidding, that's just my perpetual state of being), and something made me really happy (but also kinda anxious, obviously), and that's enough about me and my feelings, huh?

But, in case you still feel like that just wasn't quite enough information (but I've already given you so much!), I'll walk you through a few more things that honestly you probably already know about because of social media:

I got to be there for my best friend when she got sealed to her other best friend in the LDS San Diego Temple, and it was magical and wonderful and made me feel all jittery and excited and happy for her. I was all kinds of worried that I was going to feel bummed and alone at the wedding, but honestly I felt nothing but the best vibes because I think I was just too dang happy for my Hily to think about anything else.

I checked out some fish with my guppy KatieMac, and I just wandered around looking at fish and feeling like the most blessed human alive to have a best friend (it's a tier not a title, yeah I have a few) who understands me so well and who is willing to make fishy faces at fish with me and understands when I send her crazy long vents one day and gushes about how perfect everything is the next day and never complains about it.

I made a great escape from Provo and headed down to St. George, and I just didn't really take many pictures, because sometimes I'm just feeling so good that I don't want to look at the world through a lens, but I just want to be wherever I am fully and completely and without having to think about lighting and looking good. This was one of those trips and I liked that a lot about it thanks to the people around me and good ole' mother nature. Feeling happy is nice, don't ya think?

And then this weekend my parents came to visit me in Utah, and we skied and snowmobiled, and it was really amazing. Not just because we had fun, but because it's always nice to be reminded that I don't just love my parents, but I actually really like them. Plus, sometimes I convince them to take selfies with me, which is cool.

Well, I feel like that is all the information that the internet is privy to. I've had people tell me before that they know more about me from my blog than actually interacting with me, and that kind of made me sad. So, I've been trying so hard recently to be a more open human in real life and to every once in a while talk about my feelings and tell people nice things, and it's hard, but I'm trying, and I really think I'm getting better and maybe that's also why I have been so absent on my blog and social media for the past little bit. So maybe I'll blog again tomorrow and maybe I'll never blog again (but probably not cause I actually am now remembering how much I enjoy this), but until them I hope to see you in the non-internet world too.

peace. love. and catching up.

my new year

2014 was good. Really good. If you don't remember, and you probably don't, 2013 was a bad year for me. At the beginning of 2014, I had a very good riddance attitude, and when I really started to think about it, I started to realize that might of been what made 2013 so sour for me. So in 2014, my goal was to look for the blessings in my life. And when you start looking, they can be pretty easy to find.

It might have been made a little easier for me this year since I graduated from college, spent a summer doing nothing but playing, and got my first "big girl" job, but I'd be lying to myself if I didn't think that I went through some really hard things this year. Really hard. All of those great things happened but I also faced the uncertainty of finishing school, had my heart broken, had a hard time finding a job that I was truly excited about, had bad spikes of anxiety, and struggled to figure out what I was trying to do with my life. 

It seems like when I look back, the positives were easily balanced out by negatives, but I didn't want to have another 2013 (seriously I guess 13 is an unlucky number). I didn't want to end another year feeling angry that a whole 365 days of my life had passed, and I couldn't find any redeeming qualities, and this is when I decided to swap out the word lucky for blessed. This has made all the difference. Nothing in my life that is good happens because I was lucky, it is all because I am blessed, and nothing in my life that is bad happens because I deserve it, but because I need to learn from it. 

2014 was wonderful, and I know that I haven't peaked yet, so here's to 2015 and all it has in store. Here's hoping that I am not doomed to a bad year, good year, bad year pattern, and it just keeps getting better instead.

May your year be not lucky, but blessed.
peace. love. and 2015.

my lost communication

I'm not sure anyone loses things as often as I do, but usually, it's just around my apartment, like my keys (every single time I try to leave home), or my phone which will later be found hiding under a blanket on the couch. No big deal, right? Well then you lose your phone on FrontRunner (the train I ride to Salt Lake every day for work) and problems start to happen, because apparently whoever finds your phone, kind soul that they are for turning it in, will wait almost a week before handing it over to UTA (Utah Transit Authority). Seriously though, was my phone just chilling in your pocket for a week? You didn't think I would want that back?

Luckily, I can text (at least to iPhones) from my computer so I wasn't completely off the grid, but that also meant unless I was at home sitting on my computer or at work, I was in the dark. But, not having a phone wasn't always bad. Here are the pros/cons that I found:

Cons

What do people without smart phones do when they are waiting in line. Seriously. What do they do. Stare at the other people in line? Cause that felt like my only option

I also lost my watch last week, so I never knew what time it was

I had to print out directions from GoogleMaps. What is this 1999? If you make a wrong turn, those puppies do not reroute so you better pay attention

Completely irrationally afraid that something completely horrible was going to happen while I was out and no one would be able to contact me

I had to listen to the radio when I was in my car. (The reunion between Spotify and me was ever so sweet)

That whole potentially having to buy a v spency new phone thing

If you forget to bring your camera on a beautiful camping trip (which I did), you don't even have a phone to take pics on

Pros

I couldn't obsessively stalk boy(s) I like (and/or his suspected girlfriend) and well everyone else on social media. (Stop judging me! You do it too!)

Once I went out for the night, there was no worry of "better plans" coming along. I was unreachable once I left my house

Coming home to text messages that I missed!

None of this group of people sitting around on their phones business

Not having my phone available to fill every second of dead space and being able to just think instead

I was happy that my phone showed up.....but that iPhone 6 was sounding pretty nice too

GETTING TO SEE THE GOOD IN HUMANITY. THANK YOU PERSON WHO TURNED IN MY PHONE. YOU ARE HONEST AND KIND!

In short, I need to stop being on my stupid phone all the time.

Here are pics (from Katie) of the before mentioned camping trip. I know they have nothing to do with this post, but I wanted to share them.....so sorry I guess

peace. love. and telephones.