I am currently engaged in a community service project I started. We are building a bench and a sign that is surrounded by a garden. This will act as the starting point for a self guided walking historical tour of my town. There will be a map and brohure that you can take from the starting point or download off the internet and proceed to learn about the town’s history. We have planted the garden and are in the process of finishin up the bench.

When we stopped at the bookstore the other day I was pleased to find the last copy of GOOD Magazine and quickly picked it up before someone else did. GOOD Magazine is as you guessed a “good” magazine.

They describe it as, “GOOD is for people who give a damn. It’s an entertaining magazine about things that mater.”

It feautres stories and articles about people who are doing positive things for their culture and community. Oh, and did I mention that all of your subcription fee goes to a charity of your choice. You really need to pick up a copy or subsrcibe.

(Photo by Steve Rhodes)

As it turns out today is Blog Action Day, when blogs across the internet stop and talk about the environment and sustainability. And as I was reading the blogs in which I subscribe to this afternoon, I realized that I hadn’t taken part yet. Well, it turns out that this morning my advisor at school and art teacher actually talked about what he does to help out with all of these problems we are facing.

He lives in New York City and drives about an hour and half to and from school every day just to teach us art. At school today he had two big bags with tons of plastic bags inside. This where some of those reclosable bags, plastic packaging, and other plastic containers. He will be bringing them home to wash them out and reuse them, which has allowed him and his wife not to purchase plastic bags for the past year. It gets even better. All of there leftovers from what they eat are put into a big plastic container and it all freezes. Then when it gets full they take it down to a place and they turn it into compost and sell it.

He said something along the lines of, “If your not doing stuff like this, then your part of the problem!”

This is about how I work on so many things and how to fix some problems.

I sleep, eat, go to school, do design work, write this blog, work on Grab Bag Book, apply to colleges, do homework, work on a community service project, do the lighting design of two major dramatic productions, post on Videos for Creatives, run a video website for school, and more. Add to that an internship that I am starting (more on that soon), a social life, and the requirement of time to relax after working all day. Don’t get me wrong, I have a great life, and for that I am very grateful and lucky. I have great friends and family. And I love what I do and what I want to do in the future, near and far.

There are some things I wish I could do more of, but I don’t have close to enough time to do them. For starters, I would like to read more books and magazines. I have considered subscribing to the weekend edition of the New York Times. Some day, I would like to walk into a book store and purchase tons of books to read and then proudly place them on a bookshelf. I would like to write more, probably leading to more content to be found here. And lastly, I would like to have more time to be creative. To draw and paint without have to worry about the still life drawings that need to be finished for my portfolio or a new poster that I have been asked to do. The sad thing is I don’t see any of these happening soon, but the spring looks promising as a time for things to slow down a little. We will see what happens and hope for the best.

To be honest with you, I enjoy writing this blog and sharing my ideas and stories with you. I have been thinking for a while on how I can make this blog better, how I can produce more content, and how I can still manage to do everything else I do. I wish that I was able to post stuff more easily like with Tumblr, I wish I could write longer pieces that take more of an essay form, and I wish that I could post more. The first two can’t really be solved right away. But the last one can. The following is the plan, as of now, to accomplish this. (1) Set aside a certain time each day to blog, sometime around 8:30. (2) Realize that I don’t have to blog every day. (3) Develop new content including interviews, photos, lists, and more. (4) Post essays and writing from school.

I think that wraps up what I have been thinking lately. I hope to see some changes come about from this, so keep an eye out for some great content coming soon. And of course, thanks for reading and feel free to share your thoughts.