“And I think that’s what our world is desperately in need of – lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about.” – Shane Claiborne
Illustrating my past would help define some key attributes of who I am and how this transformative process of life has shaped me, but I’d like to share passions, convictions, questions I struggle to answer, dreams, and virtues I hold dear. I believe that’s the best way for you to discover who I am; not by relaying the climate and culture of my past, the piece of paper giving me authority in a particular field of study from university, or temporal societal accomplishments.
Quotes move my soul. They are strokes from a brush that color an idea of those concepts of beauty, life, and love that elude us, fortunately and vicariously across vast mediums, in which we all get to contribute to the picture of. We get to take the gifted in expression and poetic lyricism, tasking them with helping a generation understand and grasp these ideas that have baffled mankind for centuries. Claiborne helps remove the compartmentalization of a defined career path or goal, tending in addition to my soulscape as I blanket life with loving and instilling self-worth in those around me with what I do.
Creativity. Community. Conservation. These have become areas I want to become a vocational lover in – a reckless lover that doesn’t treat it as a commodity. Amarillo is the community, maybe in immature loyalty and self-preservation, I’ve given myself to, striving to humbly be a part of a culture shift and restoring brokenness. I primarily focus on this in areas of food production, sustainable building principles, and eradicating a food desert within our city. Frustration, fear of failure, and disenfranchised with lack of support I often question my ties to here. At the same time, the struggle keeps me committed and determined; it keeps apathy, indifference, and complacency from setting in. I desire to lay a foundation, not lay another’s with ease. Music, as a form of expression and creativity feeds and restores me as well to keep me in a state of gratitude towards others and my surroundings, attentiveness to the beauty around me, and awakened to my subconscious churnings and promptings; in the form of just listening or creating.
Lofty idealism misguides me at times, but also keeps me alive. I don’t believe in passive consumerism on any front. Craft coffee is my vice. I throw myself at every opportunity that presents itself and falls within my convictions and ideals. The underlying purpose has to hold merit in everything I do. I read symbolism into way too much. Coffee and my love of it needs to be noted again. I get irritated concerning myself with the future or trying to orchestrate results and the past doesn’t hold any relevance to me. I can’t make decisions out of good judgment or fact-based data. I’m a diva when it comes to what I eat. Why wait for tomorrow? Developing a legacy of relationships is the most important and thrilling life task to me, along with experiential moments with Him. I wish I had the capacity to laugh more and live in joy. Contentedness in my surroundings and self-worth are my greatest struggles.
I’m enthralled to be able to call you friends and link arms in restorative, redemptive work.
