It’s a new year and a new me? As cliche as that sounds, if I’m really honest with myself it’s true.

Last year I made the difficult decision to leave my job and take some time to reset and refocus on my goals. It wasn’t an easy decision for me, and I miss many of my coworkers as I admire the great things they continue to accomplish from a distance.

In the next couple of months after leaving my job, I focused on finding myself again by setting new routines. I cut down drastically on my social media use, set exercise and diet goals, and took time for hobbies and art.

The best decision I’ve made is to go back to school to learn how to code. It’s been something I’ve thought about for a long time ever since I got a taste for learning programming languages in some Java development classes I took a few years back. After some preliminary tests and classes to prepare me for the full program, I’ve joined the Springboard Software Engineering track!

I’m aiming to use my blog to share what I learn, and here’s my first “app”, a simple memory game: Memory Game!

I created Cascadia Burner with the intention of using this blog as a soundboard for Burner events but I’ve decided this isn’t what I want to do so I’m taking another direction.

Blogging for me is and always has been a way for me to figure out what I believe and what I understand about the world. A few wise people have reminded me that you don’t know what you know until you write it out and this is true for me on so many levels.

I’m not limiting my thoughts to one subject anymore, and I’ll use this blog for figuring out what I know.

I don’t really watch horror movies or read horror novels, mostly because I don’t like how they make me feel and I’m not interested in gore or violence, but I enjoy scaring people. There’s something primal about scaring and being scared that I think has roots in the fact that we are all animals with no real predators. I have the opportunity to scare with the Georgetown Morgue this season thanks to some friends and had my first scare last night which still has me pumped up from the rush this morning. I enjoy scaring because it gives me the rush of the hunt, and I think a lot of people come to the Morgue to feel the adrenaline rush of feeling hunted. Continue Reading Why do we like feeling afraid?

I’ve been off the playa for almost a week, and I’ve had a few people ask me things like: What was your favorite thing you saw? Favorite experience? I’m struggling with how to answer that and felt obligated (in the moment) to give some kind of response.

It’s hard to sum up the total collection of thoughts and feelings I experienced on the playa into one moment in time. How do you measure a journey as a moment in time? How do you measure a rollercoaster of thoughts, energy, and emotion? I don’t have a simple answer because there isn’t a simple answer, all I have are a collection of learning lessons:

Continue Reading Decompression lessons from a virgin burner

I have a confession to make. I love music and festivals (that’s a given) so I finally spent a stupid amount of money purchasing a Lotus Bell tent to up my festival glamping game. I’ve been eyeing the lotus “Bud” tent for a while and finally made the plunge.

Part of my contribution to my camp this year is I am bringing my little tent has a hangout space and tea house (I’ll be serving teas as my mad hatter alias) for camp visitors. Here’s a teaser of the setup, I’ll make sure to post more photos of the final setup at the burn: Continue Reading Glamping. It’s like camping but with really expensive unpractical shit.

The Washington Fire Collective (of 2017) had their first kickoff meeting towards the end of January of this year. Since then the group met together twice a month to dance, practice, learn, play, and grow together. Led by our awesome Shins JPeace LoveCircus and Kim Lewis!

This looked like two large group practices per month and once we split into our chosen themed dance pods, we added two group practices minimum with our pods (in between the large group practices). As the year went on our work ramped up to 7 hour practices in year June to film our video for our final performance submission.

Continue Reading Washington Fire Collective is performing at burning man!

This year was the year I decided to go to burning man, and I told myself a long time ago that I wasn’t going to burning man until I was prepared to contribute to something bigger than myself – no matter what it took.

The theme this year is radical ritual. Fire is spiritual to me, and fire dancing is admittedly my favorite hobby because fire feels so primal, its my own personal ritual and I knew there was no better offering for me to give than dance.

It feels like something bigger than me is calling me – here goes!