This is Gilda Radner performing one of my all time favorite sketches from Saturday Night Live. It’s called The Judy Miller Show and it is something that excites me and makes me happy. I think it relates really well to what we have been talking about for the past week. It is about imagination, creativity, and childhood.

https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/the-judy-miller-show/n8654

Recently I went to an open mic event at Godfrey Daniels, a music bar on 4th street in Bethlehem. The atmosphere of the venue was so welcoming, and I could immediately perceive the sense of community there. I watched from the few chairs and rows of pews set up in the back as people took turns playing their music onstage. I had zero expectations walking in, but I was so pleasantly surprised. To see people with the courage and vulnerability to play original music in front of strangers was so inspiring. These individuals were so passionate, and everyone there was extremely kind and supportive. One performer mentioned that he had been a member of the community for 37 years. It inspired me to stay committed to things I enjoy doing, even if they seem small/unimportant. I really recommend going to check it out because everybody there was so talented and enjoyable to watch/listen to (it’s also a 2 minute walk from Farrington Square so it’s not far).

I’ve had an amazing opportunity over the winter to visit San Francisco with the Lehigh Silicon Valley program. Whether it was software giants like Adobe or fast-growing FinTech companies like Square, the companies that I got to meet were gleaming with innovative ideas and drive to create. One thing that I learned from my time in San Francisco is that healthy competition really brings out creativity. Given similar circumstances and resources, competitors must turn to creative solutions in order to gain an advantage and succeed. Having a rival brings out the creative plays from an athlete and critical acclaim motivates innovative filmmaking. What challenges you to be more creative? Who is your biggest critic?

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/what-the-term-creator-says-about-online-platforms.html#_ga=2.45838692.1317796555.1550597990-80731991.1496001274

It seems like nowadays all we talk about is burnout, and younger people now more than ever are experiencing it. I thought this piece from NY Mag’s Daily Intelligencer was a very interesting write-up about the topic. I also wonder how serious this topic is. How many of us experience it, and is the quarter life crisis a real thing?

Last year I fell in a pretty big slump that I was not sure I could get out of.  I felt depressed, lonely and unsure.  I put a lot of efforts into my sport and school.  I spent most of my time only doing that and managing my relationships so that they were functional.  Then one of my friends asked me to come over to paint.  This seems like a simple request, but I was slightly shocked.  Paint?  Why would I paint, I am not good at that?  I have not painted since high school art, and I was terrible.  When I tried to explain this to them, their reply was, “You don’t have to be good at everything.”  What a concept.

So I painted, I picked up my pencil more and wrote, I baked and bought new cookbooks.  I sang and danced even though I have no rhythm.  I started doing all the things I was bad at, or just not in my normal arsenal of activities.  The most important part was that I was not doing them to get better at them, and I was not practicing.  I was simply doing with no end goal in mind.  And somehow, my slump passed.  Days did not feel as hard and there was not as much pressure to be perfect in all aspects.  I started having fun with my life again.  I propose everyone starts to do more things they are bad at, and see how much better you get at everything else.

Something that stimulates my creative mind often would be musicals. Though I have only been able to see one broadway musical (Avenue Q), I listen to a lot of different songs from different musicals and each song affects me in different ways. When I listen to these musicals, I build worlds in my head that are idependent from the actual productions. It lets my mind wander to different ways the songs will play out and who I’d see in the roles of the characters. The songs also change my mood and can motivate me to write because I can mimic the feeling I have with the feeling of a character in my story to get inside of their head and push the story forward. I feel like musicals are a big part of me and they give me a way to escape from the world and clear my head from things weighing me down.

This is a video that was shown to me during my internship over the summer. I think since then I have watched it about 10 times. Its an incredible speech that motivates, inspires and shows that no task is impossible. I think its one of if not the best commencement speeches ever made and it something that everyone should see at least once in their life. It has really made me rethink about all the challenges that I come to face each and every day. Enjoy.

No matter the day I am having, there is always a piece of music that can relate to the way I am feeling. Even as I write this post, I have headphones in, with a playlist of mine playing. Sometimes I believe that for someone to really understand who I am as a person, then they should scroll through some of my playlists. Each playlist has a title, which is a feeling or mood I may be in, a destination I am in, the season I am in, or the activity I am doing. I put very detailed attention into each playlist I make, for they are everything I feel they are. For instance, I have a playlist strictly for the morning. These “morning” songs are how I feel towards the mornings I most often have, with songs that are softer letting me ease myself into the day ahead of me, no matter what I may be doing. I have another playlist titled “singing in the shower,” which is composed of songs that I can not help but burst out singing to whenever they come on. For me, categorizing these various songs is a way I express myself creatively, and I will continue to do so for the rest of my life.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, known primarily as the writer of the profound American musical Hamilton, is quite active on Twitter. He tweets words of positivity in the morning for the joy and inspiration of his followers. Many of the tweets regard provoking our creative minds, being ourselves, and being grateful for living in such a beautiful world.

[Side story] My cousin who is fifteen years older than me attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City after her undergraduate experience at Marist College. There was a small diner she and many AMDA students attended right near their classes, and who other than the amazing artist Lin-Manuel Miranda had his apartment right down the street from this diner? Often, she and her friends would see him spending hours in the diner booths working on his next piece. This one day, my cousin walked over to hello, and actually discovered that what he had been working on was a play about Alexander Hamilton. There were history books and papers sprawled about the diner table. A decade later, she says it is funny thinking back to that encounter.

I look forward to these tweets coming from such a talented and creative artist.

Source: twitter @Lin_Manuel

This is very long, but it is a movie I watched that inspired me to become a vegan. I have been vegetarian for 6 years now, but this is what turned me vegan… Why does this excite me? This excites me because I love talking about why I am vegan and answering all of the other questions that people ask.

Why I am vegan: It is a mental choice that I make. I do not like the idea of eating anything that came from an animal. It is environmentally friendly to be vegan: the amount of water that is used and the gases that are omitted into the air when killing and preparing an animal is extremely dangerous to the earth. There are many more reasons and that is why this excites me, I believe that if more people were vegan, the environment would benefit. People would also benefit because of the positive health aspects that one gets from eliminating animal products. All of these ideas are laid out in the documentary COWSPIRACY.

If you are interested, this DOCUMENTARY is very inspiring and informational on this subject.