The 30x30 Project: Happy 30th Birthday to Me

i’m a huge advocate of relishing life + splurging on self. i tend to live life by the personal mantra that it’s short, let’s enjoy + have no regrets. so 30 loomed + i wanted to do it up big… not only celebrating a marker of three decades, but really celebrating a personal victory of having conquered some of my own demons. having finally made it as a photographer. as an artist. a self sufficient + somewhat accomplished adult. i was on the tail end of a brutal saturn return, + i wanted to celebrate my new found happiness in a million self serving ways... i wanted a kenyan safari, a week in tulum with all my besties, a three month south east asian sojourn, a roadtrip across america, some solitude in a cloister in the desert… the list went on + on. i let myself dream huge… no limits.+ then i had my eureka moment… for my birthday, all i really wanted was to give back…. for my 30th birthday, i took 3o days to travel to india + sri lanka to find women who were just like me, + tell their story.  i found + documented the stories of a few amazing ladies that had started + run businesses, as a result of micro lending.

i’m a huge believer in the idea of micro financing.  i’m often shocked at the amount of people i encounter that have never heard of it. micro lending that is. it’s so easy. it’s so affordable. it takes so little + helps so much. so i wanted to spread the word. one trip, 30 days,  women,  portraits, stories, an exhibit, a book.... one small movement by one small 30 year old me.  it's still a work in progress. one of those sort of life projects that may take years until it feels completed...  but what began as a gift in story telling, really only just gave back to me... the priceless gifts of some amazing + incredible stories... it was the best 30th birthday present i could have gotten...  + here's a few i get to share with you.  (click through the images to read these women's stories)[gallery link="file"]

Welcome!

It was a dark and stormy night—no really, it was.  Our boutique creative agency YOU + ME* was in need of a retreat/vision quest/mini sabbatical/whatever you want to call it and we decided the perfect location was Salt Lake City in January.  We weren’t there to seek inspiration at Sundance or on the slopes (though that would have been a solid plan following the storm that blew through town).  Instead, we flew three quarters of the way across the country to attend the Altitude Summit, lovingly referred to as Alt, a design and social media conference that attracts creative powerhouses from all over the country. If you think boondoggle when you hear conference, it might not be obvious why we expected to forge a bold new path for our business from the lobby of the Grand America Hotel.  But forge we did.  It was time to step away from the glare of our computer screens and into the warm glow of shiny notebooks and neon pencils.   We wanted to liberate our brains from practical matters like business taxes and invoicing systems and let our minds wander toward our biggest dreams and grandest plans.  Most importantly, we needed to meaningfully connect—with old pals, new friends, and each other.

Over the course of our four-day trip, we had a blast (um, as you can see), extended our wheelhouse with a few new tricks, and figured out the next step on our never-ending quest to create a business that reflects our values and leads to fulfilling personal and professional lives. We stayed up late into the night discussing the fact that our internet circles are closing, rather than widening, comparing our experiences of the world, and chatting about our desire to connect women to each other in ways that extend beyond what our houses and weddings look like, what we cook for our families, and how we conceive of and present our outer selves. We downed coffee after coffee contemplating the fact that the online world has been one in which women have been framed as tearing each other down rather than building each other up. We lamented the dearth of online content for women that acknowledges that we are more than our outfits, our homes, and our consumption habits.

From that, the Equals Project was born.

And it looks like others have been thinking along the same lines. From the growing "Things I'm Afraid to Tell You" movement among bloggers, to the focus on meaningful gatherings in Kinfolk magazine, to people sharing incredibly thoughtful stories online with the sole intention of helping other people achieve happiness, it's clear that the internet is evolving from a place where we store and showcase our (often-unattainable) goals into a place where we can be real, multi-dimensional people. As we slow down and think about what we are really consuming on the internet, it seems as if we as a society are aching for meaning and process, rather than destinations and results. We hope you will find here a collection of stories, discussions, and art from women across the country (and across the world) that compels you to think, contribute your own stories and thoughts, and most of all, to act.

We are more than what we can cook, we are more than what we can create, more than our makeup, our jewelry, our aesthetic tastes. We are people with complex ideas, and conflicting thoughts, who read, travel, discuss, do, and make. We are people who are influenced and inspired by the women who came before us, and we aspire to create something greater than the sum of our parts.

After many months of work, tellingly accompanied by more grins than swear words, it’s finally time for us to make the Equals Project a reality.  We still have to pinch ourselves a little bit when we think of the talent, the stories, and the passion found among this amazing group of contributors and collaborators.  And we only get more excited when we think of how the Equals Project will be interpreted in print early next year.  We've also taken to jumping up and cheering on an hourly basis when we think about kicking off Equals Does, our philanthropic call to action--money is not the only tool for making a difference in the world.  In a short while, we’ll be announcing our first project representing Equals Does and featuring a series of inspiring projects that share a similar spirit. If you’re interested in supporting the Equals Project, you’re in luck:

• Follow us on facebook and twitter for regular updates
• Share The Equals Project with your friends, family, and every nice person you meet
• Contribute your writing, photography, or video (see submission guidelines)
• Send us a story of how you’ve used your skills, talents, or sheer gumption as a force for good in the world

Let's continue this conversation and get to know each other better, shall we?

Warmly,

Elisabeth & Miya

Filed Away: On Pinterest and Dreams

I am a careful curator of my own digital life, a user and lover of many websites on the Internet. But my Pinterest account was short-lived. One evening, I found myself pining for Bogotá—for its lively, colorful streets—as I scrolled through a photo essay on a travel blog. I made up my mind. This place is next. And since I had recently joined Pinterest, all I had to do was click the “Pin It” button in my browser bookmarks bar—and voilà. My dream destination was pinned. Filed away. Captured. Done.

For a moment, I felt productive.

* * * * *

I had joined Pinterest to see what I was missing. Naturally, I created boards for my interests, from my own photographs of street art to deliciously decrepit abandoned buildings (a board I called “Elegant Ruination”).

But these images were largely ignored by other users: no repins, no likes, no comments.

From the beginning, I saw what people liked: Party ideas. Hairdos. Photographs of luxury bungalows along the sea. Yes, people liked other things too, but when I perused Pinterest in the weeks I had an account, I saw more images from gourmet cupcake recipes and wedding planning blogs than I’d ever seen. And there’s nothing wrong with cupcakes and weddings—I happen to love both—but from the start this visual paradise just didn’t seem like my thing.

But I wanted to enjoy it.

So, giving in to Pinterest’s aspirational world, and my own desires, I added a board of industrial-chic lofts and a complementary board of pretty designer things to put inside my imaginary million-dollar space: Overpriced honeycomb-shaped bookcases at CB2. Lamps and rugs from Room and Board. What the hell, I thought. Let the drooling consumer in me go wild.

Suddenly, I found myself searching interior design blogs for airy spaces with high ceilings, brick walls, and wooden beams; and indoor swings, hammock beds, and hanging egg chairs to pin. While my own photographs of gritty art and urban ruins got little to no attention, these images of my dream domicile were repinned and liked and commented on like crazy.

And so, I observed this process for several weeks.

* * * * *

On my blog, Facebook, and Twitter, I’ve constructed a persona primarily from my own writing and photography. From my creations. Yet Pinterest was different: it encouraged me to shape my digital identity by curating content that was not mine: Marketable representations of goods. Other people’s dreams. Things I will never have. Pixelated perfection, I suppose. And so I swirled in a community of repinners and dreamers, in a Stepford-wifesque reality.

I noticed many users creating travel bucket lists, and at a glance, their boards were shiny and tidy and vibrant. So one evening, I tried the same: I created another board for places I wanted to visit. But the more I pinned images of Colombia and Cuba and Morocco, the more I felt as if I was bottling up experiences that had yet to happen—and may not happen—shaping my hopes and uncertainties into concrete, clickable images and then filing them away.

I once read a piece about bookmarking articles to read later, with the help of tools like Instapaper. It talked about bookmarking as a form of anti-engagement—a moment of fake action, of swift satisfaction: “It provides just enough of a rush of endorphins to give me a little jolt of accomplishment, sans the need for the accomplishment itself.”

I thought about this as I organized stunning images on my boards, some of which were snapshots of cities I had longed to explore. The process was entertaining, but time-consuming and, ultimately, inert. Or, it felt as if I was moving backward—foraging and favoriting, then labeling and archiving. In a way, I was doing something. And yet the more I pinned, the more I felt further disconnected from doing itself—a step in the opposite direction from the image, the idea, the what-if I had pinned.

When I realized I had been sitting upright in bed, pinning and accumulating “things” for three hours, I deleted my account.

Sure, I was collecting things in an online space. But it still felt like clutter, fit for shoe boxes under my bed. And with Pinterest, my aspirations no longer floated in my head. They were right there: discoverable, pinnable, and recyclable by others.

Aren’t my dreams supposed to be elusive? Unable to be bookmarked?

I don’t doubt Pinterest is fun and effective if you use it in a way that works for you. But it felt strange, even meaningless, to compartmentalize and file away my dreams. Yes, I am a planner and organizer—and an active curator of my digital life.

But at some point, I just had to stop.

Learning to be Happy, With or Without a Baby

During my first year of infertility, I remember feeling sad about my life when I heard that other friends were pregnant.

We're talking...mmm...maybe I'll cut out of this party early because I can't hide these tears any longer.  No thank you, I'll just sit this 35th baby shower out.  Don't you dare hand me a flower at church to carry around on Mother's Day cause I am already seconds away from busting out of this building early.

For a solid year, I was just seconds away from the deepest feelings of desperate/teary sadness, anger at the cruelty of this unfairness, inadequacy as a woman, shame that apparently something was wrong with my body, fear that I never would get pregnant, resentment that I was being left behind outside of the circle of mothers, and worry that somehow my life was not going to be worth anything if I couldn't get pregnant & have a family.  WHAT A SAD WAY TO LIVE!!  It was sad.  Very.

Luckily, years two, three, four, five, six, seven, & eight of infertility have been a completely different experience.  It has been a miracle.

I started learning that if I didn't change my overall perspective on trials, even if I DID get pregnant, I would still be pretty jacked up!!  Because even with a baby in tow, inevitably there would be many other things that wouldn't go my way.  It’s not like all of life’s problems would be solved by a baby (ha!)  So I started to see the scary reality that if I chose to live this way, basing my happiness on perfect circumstances, that I could easily live & die and only have small glimpses of happiness, only when things happened to be lined up perfectly.  I realized that was not the kind of life I wanted nor the kind of woman or mother that I wanted to be.  And so, year two I became a changed woman.  I changed the way I thought about my trials.  And I haven’t looked back for a day since.

And one of the greatest side effects of choosing to be happy?

I don't feel the tendency to compare my life with others anymore.  My life is what it is….and it is beautiful.  I now get to enjoy being TRULY happy & overjoyed every time I see a little baby.  And I am thrilled each & every time I hear of a friend or sister or cousin or neighbor who is pregnant.  And I am amazed at the miracle of a birth every time I hear that a new little one has arrived to this beautiful life safe & sound.   Babies are miracles.  Getting pregnant is a miracle.  Birth is a miracle.  Creating a family is a miracle.  What a shame that hearing of these things used to make me sad & cause me pain.  They're the most beautiful things that ever happen in this life!  What a privilege it is to see it unfold and to be a part of it in many ways, even if I am not yet a mother.

-Mara Kofoed