So, today is my 30th birthday and it has me reflecting on the life I've lived so far and the life I want to live from here on out.  This self reflection is not spurred solely on the idea of entering my thirties, it's been an ongoing project of mine for some time, but this feels like an appropriate time to post a little bit about it.  I'm finding as I turn 30 that I'm more interested in learning than ever before - about myself, life, love, art, and all sorts of other stuff.  This has become so important to me both in terms of my personal and business life.  I'd like to share one project that I have done in conjunction with a continuing class of sorts stemming from Jesh de Rox's Life (as an Artform) workshops.  I've had the wonderful opportunity to continue learning and growing in this community of people who have beautiful hearts. They have provided a safe haven for us all to learn from each other and grow more with each passing week.  This assignment in particular has struck a chord with me because it challenged me to really look at how I'd like my life to be on the whole and how I'd like others to see me.  In short, we had to write the blurb on the back of a book that would be our biography.  Here is what I came up with:  

It's impossible to sum up a life in a few hundreds pages.  Aptly named, "An Intimate Portrait" is just a glimpse at the life of Nicole.  An explorer of light and love, perfectly imperfect, a collector of moments - these are just a few phrases to describe Nicole. She brought passion to a great many interests in her life - art, music, snowboarding, friends and family.  Photography was a great vehicle to express the beauty she saw in the world.  Beauty in people, relationships, new life, nature, and simple pleasures in life have been captured both with her camera lens and pastels.  She was fascinated by light and color, not only in the world, but also in her subjects.  Most interested in capturing emotion and innate beauty, she lives on in the artwork created for her clients that has been passed down generation to generation.  Though she achieved success with her artwork, it is her journey of self discovery and exploration of life through her artwork that was most important to her.  She learned to "unlearn" to experiment and imagine, pushing herself outside her comfort zone and overcome fears to truly embrace all experiences in life.  She failed at things in her life with grace and humility and learned from those experiences to grow further.  She learned that life is hard and complicated, but sublime in both its pain and joy.  A favorite quote of Nicole's by Anais Nin wonderfully describes this turning point in her journey.  "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." She believed the infinite and the invisible held the most important lessons in life.  She believed life's magic was in genuine experiences, physical and emotional experiences in life.  It was her life's greatest success not in touching the lives of many in some small way, but greatly impacting the lives of those she loved.

So, there is just a little tiny taste of my journey so far.  My birthday wish is to throw myself fully into all I experience this year, play more, not to let fear guide my actions, and continue to learn all I can so that I may someday be able to pass on that knowledge in some form or other.  And since no post is fun without pictures, I'd like to share my self portrait that I took at the last  life (as an artform) workshop I hosted this past fall.  I did another self portrait during last years workshop as well.