sometimes it seems like quitting my corporate job, moving out to la la land, and then deciding to be a model has made many of my friends and internet followers look at me as some kind of example of "how to pursue your dreams"...
i know, it looks like i'm brave. and maybe i am. depending on how you look at it. honestly, i did it because i'm a bit mad. i was scared out of my mind. but when i put them side-by-side, being absolutely off my head and happy looked better than being absolutely off my head and sad. so i picked up my life and i moved it 3,000 miles to the left. withno money saved and no idea what life would look like in any other moment but the present.
so if you want my advice on where to start or how to "do it", here it is:
you just have to go. it is really hard to be somewhere else and try to make it happen. you have to go to where you wanna go and be so blatantly set on succeeding that you cannot be ignored.
over the last few months, i've received emails, facebook messages, tweets, and random comments in passing from friends and observers alike, telling me that because of what I decided to do with my life 8 months ago, i inspire them. that my decision to uproot my life and pursue my dream and then blog/tweet/facebook update relentlessly about it has caused them to feel inclined to do something, to live for themselves, to seize the day (and yes, as i type that i'm thinking seize the day like christian bale in newsies). that my journey has made them feel like they weren't alone or hopeless in theirs...
so I felt led to say this:
i am overwhelmed. your feedback means the world to me. i don't have all of the answers and i don't know what's coming next, but just know that the fact that you are rooting for me and the fact that you are striving for dreams of your own inspires me. you pour a teaspoonful of love and courage into my cup every time you send me a message and every time you offer a sincere congratulation. know that just as you are watching me, someone else is watching you--inspired by your courage and motivated by your progress.
when i go to sleep at night and when i wake up, this is what i dream about [because dreaming doesn't stop when the sandman evacuates the premises and the sun rises, you know].
i want the editorials, the magazine covers, the runway shows, the fashion weeks, the brand campaigns, the dresses, the accessories, the [sky-high] shoes, the fabulous personal wardrobe, the street-style photographer hoping for a glimpse of me, the renowned photographers shooting me, the everlasting marriage [to a rocker?], love, success, wealth, vogue, elle, paris, milan, japan, karl lagerfeld, christopher bailey, alexander wang, valentino, alexander mcqueen, christophe decarnin, nicolas ghesquiere, kate&laura mulleavy, terry richardson, gilles bensimon, patrick demarchelier, steven meisel, mario testino, peter lindbergh, annie leibovitz, solve sundsbo, ... the list goes on.
when i go to sleep at night and when i wake up, this is what i dream about. because the real dream happens when your eyes are open, and if i get to choose what happens--since i get to choose what happens--this is what i choose:
Word to the wise: it probably isn't the best idea in the world to watch a documentary on food when you're three days into the master cleanse and so delirious with hunger that just about everything seems appetizing to you. But bearing that in mind, I settled in to watch a documentary I'd been hearing about for months: Food, Inc.
Hungry or not, I was completely appalled by the things I saw in that film.
We live in a society where demand drives supply, yet we are too ignorant about the quality and origins of our food to make better demands about what is being supplied. We don't know where that steak comes from, who makes that peanut butter, or what state that plump and juicy piece of chicken breast we are munching on was in before it landed in our grocery store. And we don't seem to care to know, because ignorance is bliss right?
Bliss... Until your two year old son dies from eating an E. coli infected hamburger that you were unaware was about to be recalled by a notoriously contaminated meat plant...
Did you know that the majority of the beef you eat is, if not organic and farm raised, corn-fed and living ankle deep in its own manure and the manure of the tons of other cows its crammed together to live with? And did you know that cows are not meant to have corn diets, and since their bodies do not properly digest it, they are prone to E. coli infection?
Why are we so complacent with eating genetically modified foods? Chickens are mass-produced-- grown in half the time but at twice the normal size. We have moved from thousands of slaughterhouses in the 70's to only THIRTEEN slaughterhouses today, because all of our meat is originating from the same corporate giants, whether you are eating a McDonalds hamburger or a piece of steak bought from Ralph's. 1 in 3 Americans born after 2000 will contract early onset diabetes, and in minority communities that ratio is 1 in 2. There is a monopoly on soybeans, forcing farmers to buy GMO seeds at risk of being sued for not complying. Seed recycling is against the law and certified soybeans are slowly being depleted and contaminated as genetically modified seeds take over.
You're probably being bombarded with fearful facts right now, I know. That isn't the point of this post. Yes, I do want to raise awareness about what is going on in the food industry, but like the film states in it's conclusion, we have the power to change the terrible things going on. And if you're thinking about how expensive organic and farm fresh is versus big corporate and fastfoods, consider this: while we now only spend a very low 9% of our income on food, we've consequently also increased from spending 5% to spending 18% of our income on medicine. Pardon my redundancy, but we live in a Supply-and-Demand society. If we demand healthier, organic, non-genetically modified, humanely raised food stuffs, they will be supplied. Furthermore, our demand for better food whose origins we are aware of and comfortable with will drive the prices of those foods down.
So shop smarter. Cook at home. Support locally grown food. Plant a garden (both frugal in the long-term and environmentally sound). Be wary of the soybean (that's for all you vegans/vegetarians who think this doesn't apply to you). And sidestep that meat selling for $0.99/lb. It's not worth the risk.
"A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. Never leave that till tomorrow, he said, which you can do today. This is the man who discovered electricity. You think more people would listen to what he had to say.
I don't know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I'd have to say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, sometimes the fear is just of making a decision, because what if you're wrong? What if you're making a mistake you can't undo?
The early bird catches the worm. A stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can't pretend we hadn't been told. We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day.
Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore. Until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin really meant: that knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worst, beats the hell out of never trying."
Tuesday, May 25, 2010 at 2:48PM 
