Runyon Sunset

Hello friends~ I’ve heard it’s getting pretty cold across the US but it still feels the same in sunny SoCal. My friend Greg bought a patch off Etsy and hand stitched it onto a jean moto jacket. The patch is from a scene in the show Twin Peaks. He wanted to photograph the outfit, so we hiked up Runyon Canyon to take advantage of the dramatic Los Angeles backdrop.

You can view more patches from the Etsy seller here. His jacket is from F21 Men.

Leather Quilt Jacket // Forever21
Leather Jeggings // HM
Black Boots // Dr. Martens
Arrowhead Stone Necklace // Handmade Navajo Jewelry
I hope it’s not too cold where you live yet! And if it is, I hope you get some beautiful snow to make it worthwhile. I love the snow!
xoxo,
Passion
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SHADES of GRAY

The chilly air is settling all around the Northern Hemisphere. It’s becoming winter again. Layers are the best to wear on unpredictable days; I think it’s interesting to layer textures while sticking to a simple color theme. I’m wearing a fluffy faux fur jacket with a metallic crop tee-shirt over a pair of high waisted jeans.

1. Gray Fur Jacket // HM
2. High Waisted Jeans // NastyGal
3. Metallic Silver Crop Tee // Forever21
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Genuine before Perfection

Hello beautiful~ I always feel stylish when I’m organized. I finally unpacked my entire wardrobe from moving. It took forevvveeerrrr. I was able to marathon through all of Reign while folding mountains of tees and mini skirts. PHEW. Glad to be done. 

Garnet Tube Skirt // Forever21
Blue Jean Button Down // PacSun Outlets
Black Boots // Dr. Martens
Black Clutch // Thrifted
I like to always have elements of grunginess to my style. Clothes are meant to be worn down and loved, right? I’m very active so I like my clothes to reflect that. Lately I’ve been living in my docs. They’re so comfy and easy to be spontaneous in 😉
xoxo,
Passion
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Road Trip Pt. 1

Our road trip started in Baltimore, MD and took us through 10 states as we headed West for California.
Our first stop was in Indiana. James wanted to see the Cleo Rogers Memorial Library, designed by I.M. Pei. The library was dedicated to the county’s loyal librarian, Cleo Rogers. It is a unique example of modern architecture. The illusion of seamless brick was made possible by combing red brick and concrete to use as mortar. 

 

On the second level of the library, there was a small courtyard with a garden and skylights. The mixture of concrete, brick, and greenery enhanced quiet ambiance of the library. I could sit and read for hours on one of their little brick benches.

We also wanted to see the interior of the Irwin Conference Center, a neoclassical building designed bEero Saarinen in 1954. Unfortunately they were hosting some sort of bikers rally, so the interior was closed. We snapped this shot of the exterior before we left.

The next leg of the trip took us through Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas. We saw fields of wind turbines in Kansas. I read that Kansas is the second leading state in Wind Power and can generate amounts of power that rival our oil reserves. The silhouettes of turbines on the horizon were absolutely surreal. It would look so much better to have thousands of wind turbines compared to even dozens of oil rigs, right? They look like giant mechanical flowers, spinning in the wind and generating clean energy.

Our next stop was Colorado as we cruise to the West Coast. I’ll have that post up next week.

Until then xoxo,
Passion

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G-Ma Style

We went out for some shopping. I wore an oversized granny sweater and a leatherette pink skirt. It’s still hot in California during the day. It barely feels like fall, until the sun sets and an evening chill rolls in.

1. Sweater // Asos.com
2. Leatherette Pink Skirt // Forever21
3. Metallic Wedges // Shoedazzle.com
3. Backpack // Shoedazzle.com
4. Watch // Thrifted

I hope you’re having a lovely October!

xoxo,
Passion

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Higher Ed


I’ve been reading quite a bit online about the ridiculously large amount of debt students have found themselves in. Right now, over 1 trillion dollars are owed by our generation of young adults who happened to want to put time and effort into obtaining an advanced degree. People are so discouraged by the price tag of education that they venture to say an advanced degree is not worth it. It’s hard to argue with them when you look at the nature of hiring right now and the job market. I’m not writing another blog entry about how ridiculous this is, or about how terribly it’s affecting our youth, because I feel like there’s enough information out there on this already. I want to focus on how our mindset on education needs to change for a better future.


We often blame the students and ask them why they would have signed onto so much debt. But not everyone has educated parents to help them make those decisions, and not everyone’s parents understand how expensive education has become. How can we blame the uninformed for making uninformed decisions?




Earning a degree and having a job is not an a + b = c equation. Earning a degree does not entitle you to a job and it shouldn’t. Many people will probably have their degree, high GPA, and still work a retail job because there are so few job openings and so much competition in their geographic region. People earn bachelors degrees for the information about the world they live in; it is an inspiring and awakening experience. 

When we have groups of adults who can perform specialized tasks and know deep amounts of information, we have the opportunity to exchange and enrich existing ideas. The more intelligent discourse is in a society, the easier it is for ideas to take root and bring change because most people are on the same page. 

It’s more accurate to say that earning a degree is about creating a class of citizens who can make educated and informed decisions about how our globalized world runs. We need to stop encouraging the belief that college is a means of getting more money. 

We discourage our youth within our current system because they see friends, siblings, mentors with degrees that net them 0. And then they turn on their phone and see the newest story about another kid gone viral for nonsense. What message does that send really.

Why don’t we look at High School graduates and ask them to dump their pockets? Having a high school degree will earn you substantially more than someone who doesn’t earn one. We didn’t consider high school to be ‘normal’ until the turn of the last century. Why do the same to our young adults, to our middle age+ adults who seek to expand their minds?

The cost for a college education has risen in the past 30 years, but so has attendance. In the last decade, total college enrollment went up 32 percent and rates are expected to break records in the up-coming decade.  With the law of supply/demand, it makes perfect sense that the cost for college has to rise. 

The issue is that college should not be made into a commodity SO supply/demand should not apply; like it is a library or high school the cost shouldn’t be affected by attendance. It’s not a service that we package and market to people, but a right for our citizens to attend if they choose to. And if a college should charge a substantially higher rate, they should have to prove the worth and provide work post graduation for immediate relevant experience. 

The sooner we can work toward a change in the paradigm, the less debt our nation will be in. Institutions shouldn’t be able to take advantage of students and charge impossible interest rates on their loans for the right to learn.  


It boils down to what kind of future you envision. Is it a future about you? Your successes, your failures, eventually your death? In this future, who cares about what Sally got suckered into paying for her BA in English.

Or do you see a future about the human species? Their gains from the start of agriculture, their failures in the dark ages and through world wars, eventually their transcendence off of Earth to discover our much bigger -world- out there in the Universe? Now it matters how Sally’s being treated because when she’s held back so are you.


It’s our choice, so what’s next?
xoxo

Passion J





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3.4.14

Hello hello,

After some thought, I have decided to return to my original approach to blogging. When I first started this blog, my goal was to show people what I find beautiful in life and to help guide others on their pursuit of beauty + love. I put a lot of work into what I do, and I’m not satisfied unless I feel like the final product is worth it. I just don’t think I have the time to put myself into a project larger than this. At least for right now, I need to focus on other aspects of my life!

Moving on from here, you can follow me on twitter for frequent updates about my thoughts 😉 or on tumblr for motivation and inspo. I’ll periodically keep you entertained here, until I figure out where I’m going with all of this.

Anyway, maybe you’re interested in what I have been up to? I graduated college this winter (YAY!), which was an exciting experience. I felt SO ready to walk across that stage and get the hell out of school for good  for now. But even with feeling ready to run, I made sure to take in the moment.

While I had been anticipating this day for, idk, what has felt like my entire existence, the reality of the dream was anticlimatic. It was unorganized, with a million parents scrambling to see the next generation off right. And in the midst, I got to watch volunteers yell at graduates for not doing things right, shove graduates into lines and pull them out of other lines. I was expecting order, tranquility, assuredness, etc

And bam, thats when it sunk in that no one really knows anything. No one can be “sure” of anything because we are humans, our condition is a constant state of changing chaos that we try to make sense out of. Not that there isn’t “truth” out there, but that we are subjects to our own reality.

I feel like that’s okay because we’re all in it together. It’s a shared condition. As we share in the chaos, it looks more organized. As we perceive others separate from their reality, we see uniformity, we see patterns, and we connect.

AND THATS THE INTERNET RIGHT: billions of crazy humans connected on this little rock we call Earth 😉

until next time xoxo
Passion

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