Deep Thoughts

Existential Crisis Of The Week: Am I Living My Values?? That's the question on my mind these days. Last week I went to a lecture on Climate Change + The Local Economy by one of my favorite Utah humans, Rocky Anderson. He provided a brief and up-to-date lecture on climate change and it's impacts on Utah's economy. At the very end, as I'm thoughtfully pleading for more reminders of what I can do to help reverse the damage to our planet, he says, "Utahn's need to start living their values." And I've been internalizing that question all week. The urgency of climate action is staring us in the face. My memories of past winters do not match this year's. The storm this week was another wake up call. The warmth in my mountainous city is clearly not a phase. It's climate changing in front of us. I felt called to check myself and make it a goal to continue to check myself here on Deep Thoughts on a more consistent basis. As I adjust to life ...

It's Sunday night and I'm already late on my next blog post deadline. I just got my computer back from the Apple store after EIGHT DAYS of not having it. Before that I had written a great "Luperon: Part 1" blog post and was moving onto Part 2 until I realized that Part 1 never published and I actually lost the entire thing! That same day I parking ticket, bc never got my registration stickers and have to go to the DMV to get a friggin STICKER. Also need to take the guitar into the shop. Still calling Apple to get my laptop back. And then, because I said there was a theme, my car got towed out of my girlfriend's parking lot in the middle of the night. I spent yesterday morning in an all-time GRUMPY level as we retrieved my car from the tow-yard and threw some money down the drain. And if you think this blog post just looks like a paragraph of me complaining - that's because it is!!!!  I can't go around acting like my life is so pretty and perfect all the ti...

This page once had a great story about a girl and a girl who went on an incredible adventure through the Dominican Republic. That story was lost in the great abyss that is the world wide web. The author is currently working on bringing that story back to life. Stay tuned. Jane.

It is time to explore my love/hate for Sundance. It's been happening my entire life. Once a year the whole town/mountain range put on their best for the Sundance Film Festival. One of the biggest, most-attended, best-known film festivals in the world. Right here in my hometown slash Park City. It's great for tourism, it's great for the local economy, great for local talent to get their big breaks, the list goes on. And each year it happens, I've observed as my opinions of the festival wane and wax. I literally have no inspiration for my writing this week so I thought I would explore my opinions here. I'll start with what really sparked this need to form an opinion: my need to form an opinion on the Women's March that happened in Park City last year. Something so historic that so many women and men in the world got to be a part of, and how I feel no personal connection to it. The Women's March that happened in Park City is talked about mostly by cele...

A few years ago, back when I still donned dreadlocks and had yet to officially begin my spiritual journey, I met a Green Witch. She was at my house for a backyard summer party and she began to tell me how she believes herself to be a Green Witch, with the power to read energies and how they affect each other. "In your case, for example," she said to me, "Your energy is touching almost every person in this backyard. Some more than others. Very unique, you should be aware of that." I looked around at the different groups of friends and strangers mingling, trying to conceptualize what she said. I remember thinking, "if this is real, I need to be more careful at how I interact with others." That was the first time I started to become aware of my influence on others and their effects on me.   This week in my meditation group at the youth homeless shelter, the concept came up again. O ne of my students asked me about how negative energy can be spread from...

Photo credit: @TibetanPortaits on IG. Follow! I've got some thoughts on my mind so let me get right to it, my biggest new years goal of 2018 is to write a blog post every week. That means I will have written 52 blogs by the time we ring in 2019. That means every week I've got to find the time to sit down and write something worthy of being published. Because I can tell you right now, that my daily journal would bore the hell out of you. And the journalistic work that I publish is worked on for months, usually an assignment and always highly edited and constructed. These posts are just me, my thoughts and my laptop. So, I'll probably be writing mostly about life and experience because, well that is where writers draw from. Hopefully here and there I can manifest some deeper philosophical thoughts to share. I'd like to open up more about my experience as a woman, who is buddhist, who is 23, who is queer, who is living in Salt Lake City. But you see, even those are ...

Right now is a really special time for those my age who are living the post-graduate life. Maybe we've got a salary-paying job with benefits,  finally enjoying the fruit of our labor with a little extra cash flow. Probably putting a lot of that into student loans. I write a lot about millennials and society's opinions on us and here is one of my favorites: "Your generation wants to go to work to make a difference." - some old guy.  Yep, that's us. The generation of compassionate giving-a-fuck. I think that our generation, for starters is more accepting of others, thanks to the internet showing us that there are tons of awesome people in this world and we need not be afraid of them. I also think that we witnessed the loss of material wealth in 2008 when the economy crumbled. A lot of people my age experienced impermanence of material goods first-hand. Some had to move into smaller homes, switch schools or stop taking dance classes. A lot of the things w...