Tag: documenting life

Witness the Small Life – Long Journey Home

Mia Lambert Leave a comment

I’M FREE!!! Classes done, critiques finished, dorm packed! Boy, what a semester it has been. A true rollercoaster of epic proportion with all the excitement a girl can handle on a day to day basis.

Firstly, I need to address my mistakes! My burnout brain was apparently so fried that I actually wrote the wrong date for last week’s post! I truly didn’t know what day it was (the prophecies fulfill themselves). Additionally, apologies for the late post! Between getting ready for moving out, actually moving out, and driving 11+ hours, there was a minuscule amount of time to get anything else done. Regardless, we are here! In my chaos of packing up my life into my blue storage bags, there’s been so much happening. From temporary goodbyes to friends to the difficult task of deciding whether or not to keep my various knickknacks or pass them off to others, I’ve been reminded of the multitude of ways we connect ourselves to the world. People, places, things, and memories all make up the different facets of what makes home home. Throughout my journey of intense homesickness and deep fear of change this past year, my relationship to each of these things in my life has shifted and transformed in ways that have been both gratifying and heart-breaking. There’s a duality to growing up and so much of that comes with how our relationship to home metamorphosizes. I feel like there’s never truly an end to this journey of change and that fact scares me while at the same time sparks a flame of excitement in my soul. Although we as people change throughout our lives and the spaces we inhabit will do the same, it helps to remember that there will always be love and support through the challenges of it all, even if it doesn’t feel like it. I find that as people we want to see the best for others, even if they’re just strangers, because we want to see and believe in the compassion and beauty of the world. People change and homes get moved but the existence of love always stays the same.

To take into our next week:

Ins: Limes, the smell of bug spray, remembering to take breaks instead of just giving up, being the early bird that gets the worm, biking, daydreaming on roadtrips.

Outs: Hoarding to the extreme, letting the paranoia get to you, forgetting to patch up holes, taking on more than you can handle, caramel in coffee, not putting recycling in the recycling, cheap perfume.

This is my second to last post for the semester! To everyone wrapping up their semesters, planning their summers, and taking a second to breathe you all are amazing! Remember that even though life throws a bajillion crazy things our way, we will always be there for each other.

Witness the Small Life – Hydration Station

Mia Lambert Leave a comment

To burn out or not to burn out, that is the struggle! I feel like I’ve been straddling the line between hyper-extreme productivity and rotting-in-bed exhaustion for far too long and this battle has only continued its siege on my life! From forgetting the days of the week to leaving behind entire artworks in classrooms, my life has been a mess of unrelenting chaos.

In addition to the constant threat of my near-death, there’s been too many a small things piling up this week for me, both good and bad. Little chores and errands I have to run that I constantly forget about and decide to do all at once which, of course, forces me to dedicate an entire day to finish them all. Fleeting moments of catching people’s exciting conversations as I walk past them on State Street and feeling happy to have been able to share in their musings for just a second. Although these small things do in fact add to my increasing stress and awareness about everything around me, they also help to remind myself that it’s okay to just exist one second at a time. It’s a cheesy thing to say, as most everything is, but it truly is so important to live in the moment when you can. When we move so fast and the world needs you to do everything everywhere all at once, it can become so impossible to take care of yourself. By allowing yourself to just focus on the small necessities in your life, like needing mend a tear in your pants or needing to take out the trash, it helps so much in the long run of managing your stress. It’s a difficult thing to remind myself of this fact even though I preach it so much, but I do stand by its importance in living a good life.

To take into our next week:

Ins: A robust sticker collection, student film festivals, taking things one step at a time, mosh pits (always), outdoor music, the first 8 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, mixed metal jewelry, being able to let go.

Outs: Doomscrolling too early in the morning, cold feet (literally and idiomatically), playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes, not scheduling in time to eat, worrying too much about a future too far away, sleeping with wet hair.

I keep saying that we’re in the homestretch, but this time it’s really true! Many of us (including myself) will be finishing up finals and heading back home for the summer in these next few weeks so here’s to us and all of our hard work! May we all have a happy and healthy end of the semester (and don’t burn out too much!)

Off The Screen [A Vlogumentary]

Justin & Ersun Leave a comment

For my final blog post of the semester, I am posting a vlog post. The art lies in the videography documenting the mundane components of daily life and how they are affected by exponentially growing hours before a screen. The documentation of the “off screen” hours is both contradictory and necessary for furthered understanding of human activities.

As we become increasingly more absorbed in technology and social media, the time we spend before screens becomes disproportionate to the time we spend IRL (in real life). We do not document our daily activities that exist off the screen and these, although commonplace, can be the most important. We may live a screen lyfe, but we should not let the book of life gather dust. In this vlogumentary, a shortened attention span is mirrored and the cinematic flow (or lack thereof) plays a significant role in the overall piece–flowing with the “off screen” activities and jumping with a lack of focus over the “on screen” insights.

Watch the vlogumentary here:

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Off The Screen

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