The Big Life Update

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For those of you who have been kept abreast of the blessed managerie that my life has become, and for others on the outskirts of the chaotic endeavors I’ve become accustomed to, I say HELLO!

wesley at strawberry music festival

It seems normal to write in a blog an apology for being busy. Truly, there’s no need to apologize. I’ve been keeping lists (thank you Wunderlist), staying organized and keeping an incredible amount of things on my plate. The amazing thing about saying YES is the never ending heaps that continue to pile up in front of me.

Just right now, looking about my computer desktop, there are:

  • 5 windows of flights from Cancun to LA. I can close those as I’ve already booked it. That’s me getting back from Cuba in mid-July, just in time for Lightning in a Bottle
  • Some content I was collating from last year’s Toyota Racing Dream Build Challenge
  • A half-written list that would be good for McSweeney’s called “If Last.fm Actually Tracked EVERYTHING That I Hear”
  • Some css for a project that needs to get done quickly
  • A list of stupid celebrity band names that I keep hearing (“Com Truise, Kill Smith, Trill Murray…and so on and so forth)
  • Then there’s the Browser windows… a pinterest board of things for traveling with, three accounts worth of Google Calendars, duffle bags to buy, sandals to buy, lasers that look fun, graduate programs…

Anyway, there’s a lot going on, you can tell. It’s a blessing, not a curse. And truly, it’s been a blessed year, and it’s only going to get better. It’s incredibly how much of synchronicity happens out of hard work. It pays off big time. The run-down on things I’ve been up to lately:

  • Working full-time at Gardner Automotive Communications, where I run the day-to-day business of social media strategy, web and graphic design, among many other things. I also blog a bit on our new website.
  • Teaching at University Synagogue up in LA for my second year. This year, I had a class of 6th graders for Jewish Studies where our curriculum revolved around Prophets, Israel, Values and the History of Jews in America. I also had a class of 8th-9th graders once a week that I taught 3 different sections: Being Jewish on the Internet, Jewish Music, and Yiddish Culture. I also squeezed out an occasional song session for the school.
  • Working at and going to festivals. We kicked it off with this year’s Lucidity Festival in Santa Ynez, our second year. It was incredible, there are so many stories and lessons I have learned from this truly inspiring community that I couldn’t begin to write them here. Short story is that I help put together the ticketing and gate procedures and manage logistics of getting people in and situated. Then I made it out to Coachella for Weekend 2. For Memorial Day, I just wrapped it up volunteering as an artist liaison at Strawberry, which was my first time actually working at my home festival.
  • I’m also consulting on some other projects, including almost a year and a half working with marketing and branding over at Brainard Strategy.

Woah. It’s hard to get all of that down in ink.

crazy

So what next? Well, I moved home from Los Angeles to Huntington Beach at the end of March to shore up some loose ends before the journey continues. I’ve decided to carefully wrap up some of my current business for the time being and take a bit of a walkabout for the summer as I explore some options including graduate schools. Here’s a quick run-down of my current itinerary:

  • June 9-21: LA->Colorado->LA. I’ll be volunteering with the Sonic Bloom festival in Georgetown, Colorado.
  • June 21-July 9: LA->Mexico City->Playa Del Carmen->Cuba->LA. I’ll be exploring, taking lots of pictures, and delivering donations to the Jewish community in Cuba
  • July 11-15: Volunteering with the Lightning in a Bottle festival in Temecula, California. My mom is coming to this too!
  • July 16-August 6: LA->Bay Area->Oregon->Washington->Vancouver, BC: Sauntering my way up to British Columbia. Visiting friends, getting into trouble, probably drinking a lot of microbrews.
  • August 7-12: Shambhala Music Festival in British Columbia. I’m just attending this one, since I can’t volunteer (darn Canadian work visas)!
  • August 20somethingth: Burning Man. Bye, bye, birginity.

Once that leg of the journey is up, I’ll be making my way through the South to check out some cool town and some cool grad schools and visit some cool friends that I miss very very much. Tentative idea of that trip is:

  • Tuscon, AZ (visiting Alex & Aliza?!) but really I’d rather be dead in California than alive in Arizona
  • Austin, TX (checking out UT)
  • New Orleans, LA (checking out Tulane)
  • Nashville, TN (checking out Vanderbilt)
  • Knoxville, TN (visiting Rick & Shelby!)
  • Durham, NC (checking out Duke)
  • Asheville, NC (visiting Avi & Liat!)
  • Maybe if I’m not broke by this point, I can swing up to New England and back across the mid-west. There is a good chance I will be broke by this point, though.

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