Statement of Purpose

This post and the next few are cross-posts from my old blog on Vox. I switched over to this site in the hopes of increasing my readership, but also because unforunately, only Vox members can post comments on that site. It was a pretty snazzy site though, but not fully suited to my needs! This is from March 4, 2009:

Of all the hundreds of things I learned at Powershift ’09 this weekend, this is one of the comments that stuck with me the most: “98% of people who blog just want to be heard.” This seems like a really obvious statement and though I’m sure that the ‘98%’ was just pulled out of the air, it speaks volumes. ‘Why am I starting a blog?’ it made me wonder. What is it that I want from this? For me, it’s not just about being heard, it’s also about listening. I don’t just want to rant, I want to teach, educate, and above all, I want to share. Now more than ever we have access to so much information. We have so much to learn from each other and we can now communicate those things to each other in ways we would have never even imagined using only a few decades ago.

What’s my angle though? There are three things I want to blog about, and this has been made obvious by my blog’s title and my first post: Eat Dance Live. In other words: Feed your body. Know your body. And just live.

Eat: Organic. Healthy. Unprocessed. Sustainable. These are the key things I stand by. These words encompass the diet that will best feed your mind and ultimately your soul. Our society has totally lost touch with food, not just how to eat it, but especially how it’s made and where it comes from. It's not that much more expensive to care about your food (hey, I'm a student) and the benefits are huge.

That aside, I’ve got to admit, I’m notorious for my baking. I’ve baked cookies for a campground of 500 people every morning for a week. I’ve concocted crazy vegan cakes and brownies for my parents whom I’ve quickly convinced that you can eat indulgently without feeling guilty or being unhealthy (thank you to all my fellow bloggers for their decadent vegan dessert recipes to help me with that!).

Now, I’m hoping to post exciting, healthy and absurdly delicious recipes and food creations for you to try out. I also guarantee that I’ll probably be ranting about food and agricultural policies that have to be improved. I know I’ll share my most recent finds on food and everything about it whether its through other blogs, new culinary hideouts I’ve found around town, or petitions I think we have to sign to improve the quality of our food system.

Dance: By dance, in the largest sense, I simply mean you should celebrate your body. To me, dance is one of the ultimate artistic expressions of the self. Some find themselves through painting, meditation, music; I think dance encompasses all those things. It’s meditative in that you have to go deep inside yourself and know yourself to truly create something. It forces you to be in tune with the rhythms of the earth, with the emotions conveyed by the musicians who play for you to express the way you feel. And similarly to painting or drawing in which you express yourself through your hands, you only have your body to show the world how you experience it.

We’ve lost touch with our bodies, especially women. We fight them instead of embracing them. We complain about them as if we had no control over them. Paired with diet you have to exercise, dance, or find some way to reclaim yourself from your toes to the crown of your head. Amongst many other ways, I do this through dance. It’s my mental therapy and I’m striving to make it a bigger part of my life.

Live: Ah living, the culmination of all things. The ultimate expression of having found your center, the balance between you heart, your mind, and your body. If you eat well, if your mind is quiet and happy and balanced, you’ll feel yourself click back into place with both the universe and within yourself.

I know this entry hasn’t given away a lot about me in the way of ‘facts’. I could have told you where I’m from, how tall I am, what my favorite color is, but what does that achieve? The things I’ve said are who I am. They tell you this more than any list of facts could have done.

I promise that what will follow will not always be as philosophically indulgent, but this is my statement of purpose. This is the groundwork I’m laying down to join those 98% of people who feel like that they have something valuable to share.