Life – Page 5 – Travelcraft Journal

January 16, 2017January 11, 2017

Photos of 2016

Near the end of 2015, I posted the collage of Instagram photos the Best Nine app considered my best nine. (I think they’re just the most liked.)

Looking at the collage, it didn’t feel very representative of my year, though.

So, with encouragement from Traci and others, I decided to choose one of my Instagram photos every month that felt significant or like it just fit, and then compare it to my Best Nine at the end of the year.

The photos at the top are my “best nine”, and here are the ones I chose for each month…

They don’t really overlap, except for that weather-beaten tree. I remember almost choosing some of the same ones the app did – some months had a couple photos that seemed like a good fit for that month.

I’m still on the fence about whether I want to do this again, but it is really cool to look back and see snapshots of the past year this way.

Locations of Best Nine photos (l-r, from top):

Boyce Thompson Arboretum, Superior, AZ
Seven Magic Mountains, near Las Vegas, NV
Our Airbnb rental [referral discount] in Tucson, AZ
Red Rock Canyon, Las Vegas, NV
Kehinde Wiley exhibition at Phoenix Art Museum, AZ
Nothing, AZ
Downtown Las Vegas, NV
Barrick Museum at UNLV, NV
Phoenix Chile Pepper Festival, Phoenix, AZ

My monthly photos from 2016: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December.

January 2, 2017January 1, 2017

2017 Wishes

Sunset in Tucson

Dear Travelcraft Journal community,

What I wish for you – this year and always – is to feel peace in the midst of life’s storms.

I wish for niches in your schedule to be creative, to explore, to experiment, to play.

I wish that whatever life brings you, you’ll be able to find something beautiful there, and that wherever you are, you can take a moment to enjoy the view.

Thanks for being here,

Stephanie

December 5, 2016December 5, 2016

November Photo: Tree

We saw this fabulous weather-beaten tree at Red Rock Canyon Conservation Area in Nevada.

I changed my Twitter cover image to this when the yellow brittlebush flowers I had previously chosen seemed too sunny. It looked wild and windswept, and it somehow fit my mood better.

Another day, I didn’t start out thinking about the tree. I was thinking about how I tend to feel my life needs to conform to a certain pattern, like I’m not valid if I’m not checking off a set of boxes, when – in reality – we are all writing our own stories as we go.

Life is not lined up and orderly. It is organic, unpredictable, wild.

The thoughts found their way into a short poem, and one of the images in my mind as I wrote it was that tree in Nevada.

Not a fence post

but a tree,

rough and irregular,

both warped by

the elements and

strengthened by them.

Each meandering ring,

a storyteller.

July 21, 2016July 6, 2016

What’s in your browser?

I can be kind of a browser tab pack rat, keeping things open I want to get back to, accumulating tabs with various sites throughout the day.

Melissa of Stirrup Queens posted about her tendency to do this one Microblog Monday and asked everyone to share what they had open. I started typing what turned out to be a pretty lengthy comment about what was stacked up in my browser that day.

Then the page refreshed and erased it all.

So I decided that it was probably better as a post than a comment anyway and started over. Since it’s been awhile, there are updates in brackets.

—

I’m writing this March 7 just before noon [see what I mean? been awhile!], and here are the tabs I have open on my iPad browser:

1. Local news article about Souhwest Maker Fest, which I’ll be presenting at. [And did.]

2. BlogHer 16 conference info, because I’m going and wanted to post about it. [I’m now also going to be speaking.]

3. Hotel I was thinking of staying at, but it looks like it’s permanently closed. [It’s actually not open yet.]

4. Alternate hotel that maybe I would stay at instead if they’re done with renovations in time. [Nope. No end in sight!]

5. Draft of a review of markers. [Done!]

6. Coffee shop I was checking the hours of.

7. tumblr.com/register because my friend Anne recommended moving my other site to Tumblr. [I still might.]

8. tumblr.com/docs/en/blog_management, because I still have so many questions about tumblr. [Yep.]

9. devoutfashion.com, a tumblr site with a nice layout.

10. themestation.co, the site where devoutfashion.com’s nice theme came from.

11. Mesa Arts Center calendar to see what outdoor movies they had coming up.

12. ScotteVest, because my friend Lori and I were discussing whether you could actually do all your packing in a jacket with a lot of pockets. [Maybe.]