Grand Opening!

Hello everyone and welcome! I'm so happy you're here.

I'd like to thank each and every one of you for patiently waiting for this new adventure I'm about to embark upon to finally begin!

Let me start off by telling you a little story from my past and why I decided to create this blog.

I was once a great writer. But something unusual took place in high school that I wouldn't dare let happen again -- and I'm still a bit confused as to why I allowed it to happen in the first place.

I was shot down and discouraged. Simple as that.

I enrolled in a highly advanced writing class my senior year of high school that was said to be incredibly challenging. I couldn't wait for it to start. Not out of arrogance, but out of sheer excitement for some kind of challenge. Once it finally began I was sorely disappointed. It was challenging, but in all the wrong ways. See, I wasn't learning how to become a better writer. I was learning how to write for college - as in, to write in a formulaic scholastic manner that required no tone, no creativity -- only some knowledge of the subject matter and knowledge of how the instructor preferred you to write about it. I had voluntarily signed up to become a clone of my instructor. I couldn't write like him. I wouldn't write like him. And I was ridiculed for it. He doubted me and I in turn doubted myself. So I dropped the class and slowly my love of writing began to cease.

It got worse after college. I was forced to write about things I didn't care about in a formula that transformed every student into a piece of paper with words on it. I suspected this was a ploy for instructors to make their jobs a bit easier. If everyone sounds the same, marking them with a red (or purple) pen is much faster and easier. Because what else would that prepare you for? In high school, every single student is strung into the same web regardless of skill, talent, interest - and is to prepare for college. In college, the prime directive was much more diluted. How exactly am I going to use "adopting Professor smelly suit's writing style 101" going to aid me in the in the next chapter; "real world?" 

No one could tell me exactly why learning the "skills" we were spoon fed would someday be valuable. No one would tell me why students were praised for doing exactly as they were told rather than for the individual skills that they worked hard for. I can understand being well rounded and properly educated in various subjects related to your future career (as in specific training), but to groom and condition? Not my thing.

Finally, after walking out of class when my English professor called me a cannibal in front of the whole class for being Catholic, I never went back and I never wrote again.

You could say that what I did was the opposite of what I ought to have done. And you would be totally right. I should have stuck it to all of those people who doubted me, treated me like a pest when I asked questions, and later called me names by rising up and becoming better without them. In a way, I did.

I stopped writing, but I continued to pursue other arts and exponentially improved my skills. Without writing in the picture, I created a more literal picture of what I wanted to communicate to the world.

But even that has become to diluted.

Without the ability to write, I eventually lost the ability to communicate. I was once very well spoken as well, but now my words and thoughts are fragmented. I have no way to organize the ideas that scratch against my head at night. No way to tell someone how I feel or express ideas without stammering and fumbling. I confuse myself and I confuse others. I say entire sentences backwards, jumble letters, and even forget how to say simple words like "lower" (true story, it happened the other night). Soon verbally communicating stopped almost completely and I began isolating myself in my thoughts. Even thinking of what I want to say with my artwork and other creative endeavors has become difficult for me to interpret. It's like I'm forgetting how to understand English. So I figure I better start talking again before I become a mute.

This blog will be the beginning of rebuilding that part of me that I lost over a half a decade ago. It will be a way for me to communicate my ideas to those who are interested in my work and a way to take myself a bit less seriously by making my growth and artistic life a bit more public. I know many of you are interested in what I have to say, but I must warn you that it will be a very slow process to get to the point where I can regularly write things like this again.

Now with that out of the way, here's a bit about the schedule of this blog:

Today: 

This and another blog post in a few hours (the first personal style post!) will be the only posts written on a Sunday unless there is a special event.

Mondays:

Monday is art day! Every Monday around 10am Pacific Time I will post about something I've been working on be it film or drawings and things of that nature.

Thursdays:

Thursday is fashion day! I'll show you every Thursday what I'm wearing, what it was inspired by (if applicable), where I got it, and why I love it. You can see this between 10am and 11am Pacific Time.

For now this blog will remain primarily a personal style and art blog, but it may eventually grow into some bigger, better, analytical and informative. I'll keep working toward that for you!

Sincerely,

Cassie Meder

Photo above and header photo by Myles Katherine.