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"]

Looking Forward.

Ask me my age, and ninety-nine percent of the time, I’ll hesitate before answering. This isn’t because I’m embarrassed to admit the number (I’m twenty-six); rather, it’s because I actually have to think about it to make sure I’m getting it right. My age at heart and my age in reality are two completely different things. I may be twenty-six. I feel eighteen. According to my parents, this feeling never really goes away. That’s not such a bad thing, I suppose – what’s wrong, after all, with being young at heart? Still, it’s jarring to think I’ve been out of college for five years; that I have to worry about things like health insurance; that people often mistake me as the mother of the children I babysit; that I’ve finally reached the age at which I always thought I’d get married.

Sometimes I look at my friends--most are in long-term relationships and hold steady, full-time jobs--and feel light years behind. Everyone else, it seems, knows what she wants and where she’s headed. They have plans. I have none.

But I also have very little to complain about. I’m a freelance writer, which means I create my own schedule. I live in the city of my dreams. I have wonderful friends and family. I keep a blog. In a recent post, I wrote about feeling “directionless but not purposeless.” It’s true, as a freelancer and as a single girl in a big city, I often do feel a bit lost. I don’t know where I’m headed, and I honestly haven’t a clue what’s next for me.

But here’s the thing. I’ve learned that being lost doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I’m happy. I’m having fun. And I’m pushing myself to keep trying new things (I recently started a series on my blog chronicling my adventures). How could I possibly be wasting time?

Having a plan might mean feeling more secure, and I’d be lying if I said that didn’t sound appealing on some level. On the other hand, not having one--despite the pitfalls--is deliciously, unimaginably thrilling. Anything is possible. The future’s wide open. It’s the ultimate adventure. And I’m looking forward to sharing bits and pieces of it here with you on the Equals Project.

See you next week!

A Word or Five About Our Design

I don't know about you, but I take on many roles. I'm a mother, a daughter (and daughter-in-law), a friend, a surrogate aunt, a wife, a sister-in-law, a business partner, a cousin, a niece. When we started to think about The Equals Project, it was important for us to visually think about the constant straddling that women do. While at the core of our beings, we are equals — equals to men, equals to each other — we often live with one foot on either side of an invisible line. Our logo brings that line to the surface. Equals straddles a solid line, indicative of the many divides we encounter—men/women, work/life, child/mom, abundance/poverty, old/young, privileged/oppressed, expectations/reality etc. It can be a divider, but it can also be a mirror. 

In our minds, while we are always on one side of the line or the other depending on the situation & circumstances, we are never complete without the other side, whether that other side represents an opposing idea or different people. It's the other side that makes us who we are as much as our own side. We are what we are because the dichotomy exists. This brings it back around to The Equals Project's mission and purpose—to widen the discussion about women's experiences. None of us are who we are without the experiences of others, and by understanding others, we gain a deeper understanding of ourselves. We hope that while we all peruse, read, and discuss, coming into contact with stories, opinions, and experiences that are different than, or similar to, our own, we can gain that deeper understanding.

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

Taking First Steps

It’s a gift to be able to tell when something is ready. I’ve always admired people who can identify that perfect moment to quit their soul-sucking job and completely change paths, break off a relationship that leaves them feeling terrible about themselves, move to a far-off city where they don’t know a soul, take a class in something that scares the bejeezus out of them, or even just leave a karaoke bar before the mood deteriorates from Sweet Caroline to All By Myself. I’m terrible at that, all of it. I love supporting people who are on the precipice of change, who need some hand holding and cheerleading before they embark on a solo adventure to Nicaragua or run off to open a surf shop in Montauk (I don’t discriminate on goals though. If your dream of a lifetime is to become a real estate attorney, I will check out all the books on property law for you). You should hear my speech about how doors start opening for you when you’re following the right path. There may even be a part about how it’s like leaning into the yoga pose that you hate the most because the discomfort is a sign that something deserves to be strengthened.  It sounds cheesy, but it’s very inspiring; you’ll have to take my word for it.

When it comes to my own next steps, I’m much more hesitant (An image popped into my mind of my daughter poised to launch herself down a particularly steep slide when she had second thoughts, bolted toward me, and clung to my leg muttering incoherently about broken arms and bears waiting at the bottom. That’s pretty much how I feel about change.).

Given my commitment to the constraints of the known instead of the abyss of the unknown, it shocks me to think of how many times I’ve jumped right into something that truly frightened me. That person almost seems like a stranger to me. I guess I’d really like to be her though. I’d like to be someone who says “yes,” even—no especially—to things that give me goose bumps and an ache in the pit of my stomach. And so I pretend that’s who I am when it counts.

I don’t do it often (which is quite possibly a good thing given that a certain level of commitment to your present life tends to be an asset to things like marriages and parenting), but every couple of years something proves sufficiently inspiring to compel me to be another person for long enough to send me on my way. It’s like I close my eyes, hold my breath, and commit to being brave until I’ve gone too far to turn back.*

I’m holding my breath right now. It’s incredibly uncomfortable to release something into the world that really matters to me. My urge is definitely to hold this project close---to spend many more months trying to come up with the perfect way to describe it, to tweak the site until it’s all that we want it to be, and to reach a point where I don’t worry about sending it off to play with the big kids. But instead I'm being brave because it's the right thing to do.

*Apparently, pretending to be another person is a common theme in my life. I wasn’t kidding when I said that I have to give myself a crutch for any large gathering where I’m expected to be chat and mingle like someone who wouldn’t rather be at a quiet dinner with her nearest and dearest. I should figure out the appropriate bravery talisman and then we’ll sell them to pay for printing.

Hope & Childhood

"Mommy, Baachan and Jichan will come back tomorrow, and we will all go to the playground together." We've just left my parents off at the airport; they are making the journey back to San Francisco after a week visiting us and shuttling my nearly three year old daughter around Brooklyn. She calls them by the japanese name for grandmother and grandfather. "Oh, honey," I say, "Baachan and Jichan will be back soon, but not tomorrow." "They will! Tomorrow they will come." And she leaves it at that, nodding to herself. It dawns on me: she is wishing, or more than wishing — longing — something that I haven't noticed her doing before.

I've found that one of the most unexpected things about having a child is that it brings back so vividly my experience of being a child. Though she is still so young that there have been just hints and glimmers of her inner life, through my daughter, I am starting to remember how I lived seamlessly gliding between reality and fantasy for much of my day, every day. There was the strong conviction, even though I logically knew it not to be true, that if I hoped for something with my eyes shut tight enough or felt longing strongly enough, the impossible would somehow become possible. The possibilities, as the saying goes, were endless, unconstrained by logic or physics. I could reverse time, my orthodontist would decide to override my mother's wishes and give me hot pink braces, my little plastic figurines would really spring to life at night and carry on a life of their own. My hermit crab, Zeus (yes, I was that child), would decide to crawl back into his mighty shell rather than apathetically dragging his nubby stub of a body around in little circles, a hint at the surrender he was planning. My parents would finally agree that the our new puppy, who at that point had been responsible for the destruction of not less than sixty percent of the flooring in our house, was lonely and wanted a litter of friends to play with. I hoped for smaller things, too (ants on a log, a sunny day to go to the zoo), but it was as if the things that I knew I couldn't control, and perhaps more importantly, likely wouldn't get were the things for which I felt compelled to hope with the most conviction.

Though I hope for many things as my life moves forward, I don't hope anymore with the same conviction that I did as a child. I don't throw my entire being into hoping or longing; hope at this point is often guarded, muffled by reality, translated into drive and action.  I am not sure at what point hoping for hoping's sake fell out of my emotional repertoire. I remember hints of it in my adult life: sitting on my grandfather's bed after he had died and the body had been taken away, thinking about my husband the night after our first date, being pregnant with my daughter and waiting to hear the results of all of the routine tests. I'm curious about whether hope of this sort can be reintroduced, or even whether it has a place in my inner life as an adult.

These videos are so evocative of that hope in childhood. The first, Caine's Arcade, is a wonderful story both because the boy is so passionate about his arcade and because there was an adult who recognized that passion and became caught up in it. The second, a video for "Tuck the Darkness In" by the Bowerbirds, just captures that hope so profoundly.

"Tuck the Darkness In" by Bowerbirds from Secretly Jag on Vimeo.

Image at the top is a screenshot from the video above via the fabulous The Fox is Black.

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

Being "Camera-ready"

I had just gotten braces when I went to Europe for the first time with my family. There’s an entire photo album---with acetate sticky pages and all---of me looking awkwardly lanky and oddly unhappy in four weeks’ worth of posed shots: beside the Grand Canal, in front of the Coliseum, atop the Eiffel Tower, and below ground in salt mines of Austria. I didn’t want to smile and reveal a mouth full of metal and I hadn’t yet seen Tyra Banks preach the value of the “smise” (smiling with one’s eyes) on reality TV. And this was at a time when only a handful of people would see the glossy prints we had to wait two days for and pick up from the drugstore. I sometimes wonder what fourteen-year-old me would have done if there were the promise (or threat) of family photos on Facebook.

To bemoan the pressure young people must increasingly feel to be “camera-ready” for social media risks falling in the category of “good ol’ days” nostalgia. And as an adult with a personal blog as well as my own array of social media accounts (and a compulsion to document life), it also risks condescension.  In other words, feeling self-conscious and controlling one’s public image is not a new phenomenon. And getting over that feeling or letting go of control are not challenges reserved for the young.

Even now, I look at photos of my beautiful mother with me as a baby, images so fondly ingrained in my mind, and catch myself trying to compose myself for family shots with my son---hoping that he too will one day look back and think "look at me and my beautiful mother." If I look at a photo of myself holding the baby, fresh from sleep, with bed-head and pillow wrinkles still pressed into my cheek, I am apt to cringe and tempted to say "delete"---always seeing the images through the eyes of an imagined audience. But with the passage of time (even days), I find that my vanity fades and I see how valuable these candid captured moments are.

What feels new is that these challenges of being "camera-ready" must be (or at least now tend to be) met so often, even hourly. With blogs and social media, everything is documented and shared. The playground and the cafeteria extend into the living room; and if you're not the one telling your story, somebody else probably will be.

The cynic points to the unsavory image of pre-teens vamping in Facebook profile pictures, hoping to get more “likes,” or the attention (or envy) of others; the optimist talks about things like community, memory, and hobby (and maybe mumbles something about phases and trends).

At its most benign, the hundreds of photos we take with our phones test the limits of our hard-drives, but there are other more troubling consequences as the reach and the size of one's imagined audience grows.

French theorist Michel Foucault talks about the Panoptican effect whereby the threat of being observed at any given time leads us to self-police (control, inhibit, regulate) our behaviors to fit social norms. Essentially he argues that we internalize the expectations (or desires) of others, with dangerous results for those who fall outside the norm.

There's no resolution to this. There's no "outside" from social pressure. So I suppose the only goal can be mitigation. I wonder sometimes what I might say to a daughter. How does one advise someone to put down the camera phone for a while and just enjoy the moment? To stop waiting for that imaginary audience's approval? It’s something I could be better at, too.

[image by Brooke Fitts]