Deep within the woods in Vanderbilt lies a retreat center known as Song of the Morning. I first heard of it from Paula, one of my coworkers, & have longed to visit it for several years. This past weekend they hosted a retreat called “Happiness Is” which seemed like a …

“We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.”

Hermann Hesse

In some important ways, my life has unexpectedly taken a path that leaves me with a sensation that I’ve traveled full circle. I don’t view this as …

Hi, I’m Jessa, certified organizer, interior designer, & the founder of Serentopia!

Deep inhale…& deep exhale. Attempting to create & maintain your ideal home environment can sometimes feel lonely & stressful. With the demands of modern day life, it’s highly unlikely that you have hour upon free hour to devote …

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This website is intended to be a safe place. Please feel free to utilize this space to provide advice, support, personal antidotes, words of affirmation, as well as compassion for fellow users. Positive Vibes Only, is intended to be used to empower not just those searching for words of affirmation …

August: Bronchitis in Bolivia

Oh August, thank you for welcoming me into this month with a nice dose of Bronchitis. What I thought was just a small cough and sore throat at the start of the month quickly developed into what I later found out was some intense bronchitis. Although …

Bolivia has a lot of different holidays that we usually get work off for. One of these such holidays was on the 17th of July and had the day off. Because of this, my gringa coworkers thought it would be fun to take all of Sunday the 16th to visit …

This month has been an amazing and exciting time of learning, adjusting, and exploring. I’ve felt so cared for by my new coworkers and fast friends I’ve made here already. I’m still in shock that this gets to be my life; living and working in a new and exciting country …

My fundraising profile is now up and ready to view! I will have it linked below and there is more information there about what the money will be used for and what I will be doing for my job in Bolivia. Please leave comments or contact me via email or …

Hello and welcome to the beginning of my adventure of blogging about my life for the next year! As many of you may know (since you are most likely family and friends wanting to follow my journey), in July I will be moving to La Paz, Bolivia to become the …

Something creepy I wrote for Halloween and totally forgot to post! Since I’m between writing projects now, I may explore some new stuff for a minute. That is, if Diana’s As-Yet-Unnamed Fantasy Novel Volume Deux doesn’t forcibly crawl out of my head. _________________________________________

I jam the key in the lock …

On November 30th, 2015, I finished the first draft of my book.

It was a hot fucking mess.

On January 2nd, 2016, I finished my first run of edits on aforementioned book. That run of edits included a near-total re-write of the first half of the manuscript, roughly 200 pages …

It’s gotten to the point where my work neighbor asks me how my book is coming along on Monday mornings. Because she knows that I’ve spent hours of my weekend staring at a screen and resisting the urge to scream and tear my hair out editing the damn thing.

Today …

Looking back at the first draft like…

I want to say I’m moving at a snail’s pace with this book editing, but I have to give myself some credit. I’ve completely rewritten the beginning, up through Chapter 13. Being that I started sometime in January, that’s a little less than …

My cells will always remember summer as it was, before summer vacations vanished. The freedom, unadulterated time to write, and play, and reminisce, and look forward. Because of the interruption of daily life, they stand out as so much more special than any other season. Even in California, where the …

Well, the semester has come and gone, and with that has brought some different changes to my digital footprint.

For the most part, my social media has stayed the same. I mostly contribute to Facebook and Instagram. I’ve really focused on putting more out there on my Twitter page, and …

When I was younger, I would get the urge to write poems when I had particularly strong feelings about things.

I’m proud to say that I can now successfully suppress that urge.

Believe me, nobody wants to read the poetry I crank out when I’m actually feeling bad enough to …

Working on the A-R-M module has been pretty cool! I’ve had fun expanding my knowledge on remixes and mashups, and making my own!

Although I had worked with the two a decent amount during my DS106 class last semester, there was still a bit to learn. I mainly focused on …

As I mentioned in a post before, I took DS106 last semester. We focused on remixes and mashups a lot. I had worked on one particular project, mashing two songs together. I chose “Follow Me” by Uncle Kracker, which has a steady calm beat. Then, I chose “Where Is The …

Here’s some of the research I’ve found on both remixes and mashups!

Remixes: a piece of media which has been altered from its original state by adding, removing, and/or changing pieces of the item.

only characteristic of a remix is that it appropriates and changes other materials to create something…

I was definitely pretty interested when I saw this module was available. Last semester, I took DS106, and in this class we did a lot of hands on experiments with remixes and mashups. Every time I worked with one I always started pretty stressed out, but eventually ended up having …

Nothing is more humbling than crashing through the bushes late on a Thursday night because you have to rescue your cat from certain doom.

We’ve discussed Koji before. He’s not super bright. God love him, he’s got all sorts of other fabulous qualities, like his crazy soft baby fur and …

So. . . I don’t really post here much anymore. Not because I don’t *want* to, but because every ounce of writing energy I have has been going into finishing my book.

Bearing that in mind, I’ve been doing a lot of ruminating on why I have a blog at …

While reading Neuromancer, I found myself interested in the direction that Gibson took the concept of “self”. In general, I’ve always thought the idea of a sense of self is what you do with the life that is given to you, and ultimately what you want it to be through …