The Social Porcupine

Do you ever feel you have dozens of dreams begging you to bring them all to life? And you would, if only they might co-operate and become one vision . This is what the Living Room Academy was for me: a culmination of a lifetime of thoughts and ideals. It started out as a flippant invitation that a woman I worked for said, "But why wouldn't you do this?"  Besides seeming initially impossible to undertake, I didn't want to commit to such a project as opening my home up to other young women for a summer... I love my summers and couldn't imagine forsaking all the things I would normally do to teach summer classes to strangers.   I won't go into why I decided to do this as I've already written on this in depth, but I do want to reiterate that I'm glad I didn't choose the convenient, lackluster path of complacency.  I hosted two courses this summer 2023. Six girls came to live with me, although only four of them were able to stay for the endurance of th...

It's sometimes hard to differentiate between what's wise and what's rash. It felt like a rash decision to apply for the work study at John C. Campbell at the end of last summer. I dreaded being accepted and felt sick as I left Montana to begin a five-month road trip.  I felt sick because I was doing something very hard, I was forcing myself to vomit illusions, and I was force feeding my dreams back into my heart, a shrunken scared dry thing for a beating box of visions. I was letting go of something I loved to pursue what I wanted: happiness and satisfaction. I let go of the soft hands of confusion and jumped into the wells of living waters, where many unknown, open arms awaited. Of course, I felt sick.  And of course, I healed. I'd been on the road two months before I received my acceptance email. I sat outside a bar on top of a picnic table, barefoot and playing my guitar when I happened to glance at my phone and saw the acceptance email.  I'd dreaded this... And ...