Today I Believe...

That a handwritten letter is always the way to go.

That if you come across a song you love, one you can't get out of your head, then you should consider it your personal responsibility to share it with everyone you know.

 That it's important to have the conversations that scare you.

That a new month calls for new CDs! (I've got my eye on Brendan James's new EP, The Howl.)

And that every person you know or meet has something to teach you--and it's your job to find out what that something is and learn from them. 

Cheers to a new week!

Bri

What Matters Is That You Go

The more I travel, the more I am coming to terms with the fact that I don’t truly care about how many countries or continents I go to anymore. I don’t care where I go next year or five years from now. 

What I care about is that I go.

 And it’s that that I care about for others. It doesn’t matter where you go, how you get there, and what you do when you arrive. What matters is that you go. Because no matter where I travel to, I always come back a better person than who I left as.

 Spending a month in South Africa only continued to reaffirm that, as that was easily one of my top five favorite travel adventures, and it really had so little to do with the destination itself – the beaches, landmarks, restaurants, and so on – but rather the people and unique, personal experiences that were involved with it from the time I walked out of my house to the time I walked back in.

Cheers,
Bri

Anticipation

Sometimes, the anticipation of something wonderful is even better than the thing itself. Sometimes, the anticipation is everything, the only thing, and when you arrive to whatever you've been awaiting, it's a bit of a letdown...not quite what you'd had in mind, not quite what you'd expected or imagined it would be.

This California trip, though? It was exactly what I'd wished for.

See, I'd hoped for something sort of remarkable, something bordering...if only slightly...on magic. And that's what I got, what I'm still in the midst of. (I thank Disneyland for the magic part. They don't call it the happiest place on Earth for nothing!)

The days were long, sunny and filled to the brim with indulgences: laughs that made our stomachs hurt, decadent meals, long and lingering afternoons spent at the pool.

It's what I live for, really. Time to step out of myself, out of my world, to play the observer to a place different from where I come from. Some people are uncomfortable when they're on the outside looking in, but not me. I find it absolutely freeing and inspiring.

All of this is to say that I apologize in advance for the inevitable gushing I'll be doing for a while. It's just that February was a bit gloomy. And that melancholy, it lingered for a while when March rolled around, threatening to last straight through to April. But this lovely little recess from it all has saved me, leaving me absolutely smitten.

Free To Create

We all have our own little worlds. The ones that we live in everyday. We know the weather, the people, the food, the smells, and we know how to interact with it. But sometimes we step out of these words, and into another. Different weather, people, food, smells, having no idea how to get anywhere (thank you iphone!) or what’s behind the next turn. We see that the world is a much bigger place- that it doesn’t revolve around us at all. And that is liberating.

 If you've been following my Instagram posts this past week, you probably already know that I've just returned home from a little road trip to Montana. Those five, blissful days in the mountains reminded me how freeing I feel during and after traveling. Free to create, free to mess up, free to live my life with passion. It’s so important, especially as a creative, to get out of our comfort zones and surround ourselves with the unfamiliar.

 I’m so thankful for this little trip of mine. 

Have a great week! Go explore this great big world we live in. 

Feelings Aren't Meant To Be Fixed

Recently I was talking to a friend who said something along the lines of: "I know I shouldn't feel this way." And all I could think was, 'Should?' At what point should we feel anything at all? Aren't feelings the one thing in our lives we shouldn't have to control?

Of course, there is a point when our feelings can spiral into something destructive and some certainly have an appropriate time and place... But to what end are we supposed to hold them in? And why do we always feel this impulse to apologize for anything short of the brightest of outlooks? Don't the worst, most complicated feelings teach us something important about ourselves?

To me, feelings aren't meant to be fixed. They're meant to be wallowed in, reveled in, indulged to their fullest--both the good and the bad. Feelings don't ask for a solution; they ask for understanding. Empathy. Acceptance.

This is simple. And yet, of course, it's not.

Still, I say: Feel. We owe ourselves that much, don't we?