Day 10: Kindness is Contagious

#YourTurnChallenge was a 7-day blogging challenge started by Seth Godin's Special Projects Lead Winnie, which I was honored to take part in. And I'm gonna keep going!!! I've decided to extend the challenge to 30 days. I will blog everyday from Jan 19th until Feb 17th. Wish me luck and happy reading.

Los Angeles can be such a beautiful city. Especially downtown with historic buildings and a bunch of decent sized sky scrapers. Tonight when I was riding my bike through the city lights it looked a bit like New York to me. I found myself searching for spots that would transcend me back to one of the fundamental parts of my past. “Burritos, Water, Candy.” Oh yeah…okay…stay on point Casey. “Would you care for a burrito?” I ask a middle aged Latino man, he nodded yes. Once he took the gifts from my hands I jumped back on the bike and we rolled. It’s getting easier to see them now. After spending years of my life trying to ignore them and their simple pleads I was now seeking them out. I was seeking out the homeless on skid row. Not the skid row from Little Shop of Horrors and defiantly not the skid row who adorned luscious hair band lockets but the Skid Row that (un)houses one of the largest stable populations of homeless people in the US. 

Every other week for the past year and a half a band of good hearted Angelinos voluntarily gather to cook and prepare over 200 burritos to hand out to the homeless people of downtown LA. This project is funded completely by donations and also includes water and a new treat, chocolate and candy. Preparation involves about 2 industrial sized rice cookers, four or so crock pots of beans, blowing of breakers numerous times, a group of bikes, a bike trailer, coolers, a small army and usually Shaggy. Once all the food is made and packed into coolers it’s delivered on bikes with the help of a lead car. Rule is, to stay together. This is the Burrito Project.

No matter your views on why people are homeless: drugs, abuse, mental illness or just down and out, homeless is homeless, no judgment. And someone in need is someone in need. This is what I told myself when we rolled out. I was nervous and a bit scared but if someone’s in need or if a burrito would make their day or week, I’m in. Plus by the end of the year, in a way, I will become homeless with a life on the road and I wanted to see how people lived little to nothing, sometimes with just the shirt on their back and would we have anything in common?

Things started out slow, which I welcomed. I had no idea what to expect. As we rode through the dark ridden night we passed closed up shops…wow…downtown was like a ghost town. “Would you like a burrito?” my friend Sylva would ask a flattened cardboard box, I thought, what the hell? Very gracefully a single hand reached out from the box only far enough to fetch a burrito and water then it returned beneath the piles. Someone was living under there?  How? Heads started popping out of tarps, hands reached out from tents and people would just appear. It was like people were literally coming out of the cracks when they heard the sweet sounds of salvation.

We also handed out a van full of donated blankets, pillows, jackets and socks. I jokingly called out to a very manly man that the satin pastel comforter was a wise choice for him, he chuckled and said yeah, my wife is going to love it, then crawled bear foot back into his tent. The night was filled with many stories to trump or fold this one.

I wasn’t surprised to see people high, drunk or even some addicts or the mentally ill. That’s just like half my family. What I didn’t expect was for them to be like the other half. Fathers, Mothers, Sisters, Brothers. I found myself relaxing and enjoying myself. I was having conversations and just doing what people do. I was starting to see ‘these’ people as people not homeless or needy.

This isn’t what you’d typically think of when you think community but it is. This was an amazing experience that I hope to take part in again. I am grateful for the love and compassion of my friends who give their precious time, energy and effort to this project and thank them for allowing me to tag along to help. All the thank you’s, god bless you’s and so glad you are here comments from Skid Row were pretty damn rad too.  

So did I find something in common with ‘these’ people? Yes, we are all but mere humans.

It costs about $150+ a week to buy rice, beans, tortillas, veggies, water and chocolate for the Burrito Project and since it’s donation funded they and I would appreciate any amount of donation to keep this project going.  And if you live in Los Angeles and would like to volunteer please contact me. Thank you.

Donations accepted on Paypal at: missgdesigns@gmail.com

*I'd love to hear from you, have questions? Comments? Please contact me at casey [at] caseyshepparddesigns [dot] com Thank you again for reading*  

Day: 9 Testing Limits

#YourTurnChallenge was a 7-day blogging challenge started by Seth Godin's Special Projects Lead Winnie, which I was honored to take part in. And I'm gonna keep going!!! I've decided to extend the challenge to 30 days. I will blog everyday from Jan 19th until Feb 17th. Wish me luck and happy reading.

Boundary, a line that marks a limit. Even though boundaries can keep us safe they sometimes can be hard to establish or maintain. The recourse of someone or something crossing that line is usually filled with lessons to be learned. I remember when I was a kid I had to sit in the front of the school bus for two reasons: I got into trouble a lot and the bus driver was trying to keep me safe from the older kids. He obviously hadn’t met a 5 year old like me before. I was forced to sit next to a highschooler named Andy. Andy knew I had a crush on him so he acted like every other childish boy and tortured me for it. He also knew I was always up for a challenge and won’t back down. To try and keep ourselves out of utter boredom during the hour long bus ride to school we would battle each other at bloody knuckles. We’d finally arrive, me with my swollen red knuckles and a smile of pride on my face for surviving and even holding my own. Andy with a devilish smirk plotting his next attempt to bring down the stubborn little blonde haired shit.

On days that smashing fleshed bone against bone seemed childish we’d bid our time with a more sophisticated game, which I hated. Andy would start by taking the eraser side of his pencil and he would draw an even vertical line on our vinyl bus seat. This would divide us into two separate spaces and set our boundaries. If I crossed the line into his space he was allowed to hit me as hard as he could and vice versa if he crossed my line. Of course I had to tempt fate over and over again. So that meant Andy was really good at this game and given that he was about 10 years older than me and I was a scrawny kindergartner, let’s just say he beat the shit out of me. In secret I liked this game because he never treated me like a weak little toothpick of a girl that would break with the slightest touch. He found that I was a tough kid and could take it. I knew he didn’t hit me as hard as he could but he made me think he did. I also knew Andy was a good guy. He sometimes had a look of shock or sympathy, thinking that I might actually be hurt but this vanished once he saw my almost embarrassed look for him taking pity on me. He’d then come back with an even harder blow. That’s when I knew he was indulging a little tomboy’s desires to be his equal and help prove to her that she was indeed tough.

This was my first instant action reaction to the crossing of boundaries and guarding them. I’m starting to learn that this never changes. Life is a constant of setting our own limits and testing each others boundaries. That means if someone crosses or even tip toes around them it’s up to ourselves to reset the boundary and if need be, punch back.   

*I'd love to hear from you, have questions? Comments? Please contact me at casey [at] caseyshepparddesigns [dot] com Thank you again for reading*  

 

Day 8: And The Beat Goes On

#YourTurnChallenge was a 7-day blogging challenge started by Seth Godin's Special Projects Lead Winnie, which I was honored to take part in. And I'm gonna keep going!!! I've decided to extend the challenge to 30 days. I will blog everyday from Jan 19th until Feb 17th. Wish me luck and happy reading.
 

7 days, 7 posts, 7 chances to expose myself to the cyberworld. Gotta say this challenge kicked my ass. I thought the challenge of the challenge would be to try and impress my readers everyday. Get y’all hooked into my cleverness. Ah….yeah. That went out the window, almost literally, bout the second day in.

The Challenge just happened to coincide with a blog post I was working on. Since the challenge started on the Monday I was to post I thought that’s pretty cool, let’s do it. I had been working on that post for a couple of days and I had it very much thought out. Almost too thought out. I found as the days went on there would be no way I could post the way I had in the past, which was spending many days thinking about what to write, working slowly to make it as perfect as possible. I didn’t have enough time for perfect. I decided to give myself 30 minutes to write a rough draft for each day. I’d then leave it and come back later. Right now the clock is ticking. 26 minutes. After I get off work tonight, around 1am, I’ll sit down at my laptop with a glass of wine, edit the best I can, add my finishing touches then send it out into the world. By this time it will be about 3am. Perfect, the East and everything in the middle will just be waking up. After a few hours of dream filled sleep I’ll sluggishly awake about 9am…ish. After I splash away the deadness of my wake with cool crisp water, the thoughts start. The neverending always evolving “to do list” starts. Let’s go tackle it, first some coffee.

16 minutes. In the end this challenge has taught me to just say what I want to say. That it doesn’t have to be perfect or over thought out. Just take out the middleman and write. Kind of like when riding bikes, first time you hit a new trail it takes a few rides til things just flow. Or with metal smithing, takes a bit to learn a new technique but once you’ve figure it out you’ll be riveting faster than Santa’s Elves. I’m just excited about how much I’m learning through writing and I think I’m getting better. And most importantly I’ve had the support of my family and friends cheering me on and giving me great advice to help me with the little things. Thank you, I couldn’t have done this alone and actually, I didn’t want to.

So where do I go from here? I’ve decided to extend my challenge. I will blog everyday for a month. I feel like I’ve progressed so much in just a few days I wanna see where 30 takes me. 10 minutes. I hope you will follow me along this journey. Thank you for reading.

 

*I'd love to hear from you, have questions? Comments? Please contact me at casey [at] caseyshepparddesigns [dot] com Thank you again for reading*  

 

Day 7: To Abandon, To Discard, To Leave.

#YourTurnChallenge is a 7-day blogging challenge inspired by the Your Turn book by Seth Godin. I will be taking part in the challenge which starts Monday Jan 19th and ends Sunday Jan 26th. Wish me luck and happy reading


Waking up more tired then when I fell asleep the night before. Peel myself out of bed, the world awaits and it’s sitting by the door, tail wagging, panting. She would have had her leash clipped and ready to go but she’s lacking one thing, opposable thumbs. After the walk, I sit to type. My brain is muffled with thoughts, ideas, words, stories. It’s a jumbled mess. Maybe I should make sure my bike tires are ready to go. As I tinker with my tires I can’t find my tools, I search and search for them. They should be right here. It’s as if the functional part of my brain and my tools ran away together. Or worse, they’re playing hide and seek, giggling each time I get close and running further away. Today’s not a day for games, my brain is mush. This continues for most of the day so I decide to take a break plus India’s at the door again must be afternoon pee time. She pollutes the lawn in her normal spot which has killed a small patch, looks like a desert island among a sea of lush green grass. And for today’s irony, I pick up her dog poop to protect the lawn and the gardeners put down fertilizer with manure in it to bring back the dead grass from her pee. Got it. Moving on. We then sit side by side on the stoop. At the same time we both sign and take it in. It’s a pristine LA day. I enjoy this city the most when she’s quiet, calm and her air is filled with warm rays of sunshine. How can I go back inside now? It’s like a damn ice box in my dark dungeon of a room. I walk in; as I sit at my computer I can’t type so I decide I should work in my studio. Fuck it! I slam the laptop closed, grab the dog and keys. We’re outta here, as I am opening the door India is practically in the car, head out the window.

I work my ass off and I enjoy it, I thrive for it actually and I’m focused on my goals. I’m also driven and damn stubborn to achieve them.  But some days ya gotta ditch it all and just drive into the sunshine.

  

 *I'd love to hear from you, have questions? Comments? Please contact me at casey [at] caseyshepparddesigns [dot] com Thank you again for reading*  

Day 6: Thinking Through My Fingers

 

 #YourTurnChallenge is a 7-day blogging challenge inspired by the Your Turn book by Seth Godin. I will be taking part in the challenge which starts Monday Jan 19th and ends Sunday Jan 26th. Wish me luck and happy reading

 

 

The ability to write has long been a wonder to me. I’ve always loved stories but at times I felt that only smart people wrote masterpieces which were usually filled with words that were completely foreign to me. I became glazed over in boredom with my attempt to read as a child....at times, I still do. Every once in a while I’d have my attention grabbed and I could actually make it past the first couple of pages and that’s all it took, I knew I could finish the book. It once took me six months to read a book and at the end I was so attached to Trudy, the main character, that I cried. What was I going to do without her? We had spent six month together, everyday, now it was all gone. I still can feel a little heart ache and longing. So how did a slow reader with an attention span of a gnat who failed English class become a published writer?

A few years back I started a blog to share information and show a bit of my life as an artist. Which was constantly changing and evolving, still is. At one point I shared how I created my work. Giving back I guess or maybe I didn’t know what to write about. This caught the eye of an editor from Art Jewelry Magazine. I had contacted her months back about helping me post information about a kickstarter I was doing. She was so helpful and great by posting what she could online. Now she was contacting me to write about a technique she saw on my blog. About a year ago I was paid for my first published article and am still at it. So again, I’m still a slow reader, yes I failed English, I’m super ADD and I don’t understand most words in the current book I’m reading. So how did I become a published writer, a paid writer? By not knowing any better.

The Current Issue of Art Jewelry Magazine which is available Feb 2. Please check out my 3, yes, 3 page spread about last years bodaciously tantalizing SNAG Conference!!! Holy ballz. Thank you to my Art Jewelry Magazine Family, thanks for believing in this lil punk, yall rock!!!!

 

*I'd love to hear from you, have questions? Comments? Please contact me at casey [at] caseyshepparddesigns [dot] com Thank you again for reading* 

Day 5: Metal Metal Land

#YourTurnChallenge is a 7-day blogging challenge inspired by the Your Turn book by Seth Godin. I will be taking part in the challenge which starts Monday Jan 19th and ends Sunday Jan 26th. Wish me luck and happy reading

Hammering, metal flying, flames burning. I’m not talking bout a Gwar show, I wish, I’m talking bout metal smithing. There is something about tools and metal that just makes sense to me. Like mountain biking I taught myself how to work with metal. I grew up around tools and I’ve always been drawn to metal and mechanics, couldn’t tell ya why. Maybe it’s a mix of my curiosity of how things are built and how things work? Plus when I was growing up most things were made out of metal which looked damn badass. My moms gardening tools looked like she was bout to battle RoboCop, our ‘corn knife’ which we used to cut thistles was actually a small machete (no mechanics here but still badass) and don’t even get me started on our ice cream scoop *drool*.

When I’m playing with my tools and metal in my studio I get lost in my work. Something comes over me and all of a sudden a flat piece of copper becomes a functional 3D adornment that would make Mad Max gitty as a school girl. Now that’s something, I’m talking bout making some cool work not Max(y) pissin himself. That sense of accomplishment of creating something using your two hands. It’s intoxicating.

 

*I'd love to hear from you, have questions? Comments? Please contact me at casey [at] caseyshepparddesigns [dot] com Thank you again for reading* 

Day 4:Fear is Loathing

#YourTurnChallenge is a 7-day blogging challenge inspired by the Your Turn book by Seth Godin. I will be taking part in the challenge which starts Monday Jan 19th and ends Sunday Jan 26th. Wish me luck and happy reading

When I think about being alone on the road I have a sense of fear. I enjoy solitude. I actually welcome it. Aloneness is something I’ve learned to enjoy after spending miles in the middle of no where with only me, my bike and gravel roads or dirt trails. But this is different from living on the road for a year. The world is full of creepers, will I be able to avoid them? Am I tough enough to handle not only the things I can think of going wrong but the things I can’t? That’s why I’m doing this, right, to see what I’m made of?!?!

I felt these same fears the first year I got into mountain biking and I eventually kicked those feeling to the side and become a full on addict. Could I do the same on the road? How did I ‘kick’ my fears aside? I guess I just sort of dove in.

The High Board

June of 2011 marked the end of my 20 some years of bike hiatus. I had no idea what I was doing or how to start but eager to learn. I was terrified, pretty scared and completely embarrassed to ride with anyone let alone ask, at the prime age of 32, how to mountain bike. So I taught myself.

My school was Wilderness Park, a great beginner bike trail in Lincoln. I started off by picking a loop. Then I just rode it over and over again, learning how to (and not) take each turn, root, dip and burm going faster and faster each time. This is how I still learn new trails 4 years later. Once I figured out the basics of just how to ride I started to go on group rides with other mountain bikers. Nebraska has some of the most experienced, veteran riders. I had no idea what I was getting into and I am thankful that they took me under their wing. These guys made me a tough chick that’s not afraid to try new terrifying things (mostly). And taught me: fail, success, doesn’t matter just as long as you get out and ride.

Tell Me Where It Hurts

How does one become tough? Well crashing a bunch is a good start. It’s also an essential part and fact about this sport. I spent the first 4 month with a brutal hazing. During this time I gotta say my mom was concerned, every time I saw her I had an ice pack (or two, sometimes three) and some new gnarly bruise that was every color a bruise shouldn’t be. I reassured her that everything was okay. But I wasn’t sure it was. I wasn’t even sure if it would ever stop. My community of bike friends said it would, there’s just a learning curve but was I gonna survive it? Was I tough enough? Right when I didn’t think I could handle another ass beating on the trail something started to change, it clicked, I was getting it. Guess after flying over your handle bars a gazillion times you learn damn quick what not to do. Eating shit happens less for me now but I am still known for it, that’s what happens when you push yourself past your abilities and out of your comfort zone. Rad.

So if I can survive the brutality of the bike academy I could surely survive the road. How different or more difficult could it be?  Just dive in and embrace the terrifying new ride. I’m sure there will be a learning curve and I welcome it. I look forward to seeing what I’m made of. Not to see how tough I can be but how open I can be, how willing I can be and how free I can be. There will be times of fear, doubt and regret. That comes along with all new uncertainties. But the best part of it all, good or bad, is knowing my community will be there. In times of doubt, failure, laughter, tears and success I can count on them to not only be there at the end of the day but to join me for a beer where they will for sure drink the last one.

*I'd love to hear from you, have questions? Comments? Please contact me at casey [at] caseyshepparddesigns [dot] com Thank you again for reading*