jc 4 ANKH

My boss (or i guess my ex-boss..fellowship program ended on Friday) is heading to Israel in a couple weeks for GovLoop. There were 3 people in the office that all had been there, which led to a major brainstorming session as to the places he should see and visit. Moral of the story..
1. I am sadly forgetting some of the names of the places I visited.
2. It made me remember how much I love and miss the holy land. I miss the weird smells in the old city. I miss the prayer call every couple of hours. I miss everyone being so truly dedicated and devoted to their religion. I miss the view of  the entire old city from outside my balcony. I miss the people. I miss the simplicity of life. I miss being able to go to Gethsemane or the garden tomb every week on my sabbath. I miss the pitas and honey. I miss being able to study Christs life so intensely and walk the places he walked. I miss shabbon. I miss hearing.."hey mormons" all the time. I miss walking up that last hill to the JC center after a long day of exploring. I miss the field trips and the bus rides. I miss the cuddle sessions on the bean bags and the sheckle shack.  I miss the security guards awkwardly coming into the lounge and never saying or doing anything, I miss how every photo was an amazing photo just because of the places we visited. I miss my huge JC family. I miss it all!
Jerusalem will always hold a huge place in my heart. This experience truly was the most incredible 4 months of my life...well minus the other most incredible 18 months I spent on mission in Brasil.

JC4ANKH.

can i just say...

Can I just say...I love where I work. I have been so lucky to have had so much creative freedom on my first straight-out-of-college job. This is rare. It's only after you've been working for a good number of years in your field, that you gain the respect to do what you want. At GovLoop my art director gives me a project and says, run with it. Music to my hears. Normally I get some 30 page Microsoft Word document with a bunch of graphs that look like this.

Boring right? I look at this project and any of the others as a challenge. How do I take something informative (maybe a little on the boring side) and turn it into something cool?  Here was the final result from the BYOD research report. Sad to say goodbye to the people and the job but I was happy with my time there. I was able to accomplish and learn so many things.  Now onto the next chapter of my life.

Open publication - Free publishing

tuesdays tune

number 3

Govloop, the company I work for is a social networking website for people in the public and private sectors. This is a term that has become part of my vocabulary since I moved out to DC. In other words it's a Facebook for government employees but better. The home page displays the top 10 blog posts that are currently trending. Since I do graphic design I haven't done much writing but the one blog post I wrote made it up to the number 3 spot. I had to take a screen shot to remember this moment and I wont  go into explaining how quickly these numbers change :)

tuesdays tune

Please tell me you remember them! Takes me straight back to the middle school days. So why this song? I blame it on my coworker. One day we were listening to random pandora stations and she picked Backstreet Boys. Let's just say this station has seriously the best 90s classics from my childhood.  Check it out, you'll hear Blink 182, 98 degrees, to Hoobastank. This goodie was on the playlist.

it just happened

So as a kid I always thought about that big day. The day you would spend at least an hour wondering what you were going to wear, feeling tons of butterflies, thinking about what they might ask and how you might respond, and walking into some big corporate building to have the interview of your dreams. Well ya. That just happened to me last week with National Geographic. While I haven't heard back from them yet, it was a wonderful, experience. Just the fact that I got to sit down, talk to and show my portfolio to the 2 creative directors at NatGeo was enough for me. They even told me at the end that I was really talented and they were highly impressed with my work! Job or no job, it was a day I will never forget. Here's to dreaming big.