Motivation

I’m a certified (certifiable?) cheapskate when it comes to my business as a freelance writer in journalism and creative writing. Freelancing has been a lean-times/fat-times endeavor over the years, and it’s the ghost of the lean times that still shapes my financial habits.

“A lot of people don’t understand that you can’t just pull out an old Casio keyboard and start making a beat and think that’s gonna compete,” says sync music producer Nick Phelps. “I wanna give people a fighting chance in the sync world. I wanna give people permission to stand out in their own way.”

How heavy I felt when one of my professors noted that I hadn’t applied anywhere else. Why had I only applied to SUNY Purchase? Didn’t I aspire to be an actor? And the truth is, no. I aspired to keep existing.

Southwestness publisher/editor Samatha Anne Carrillo shares the worldview and inspirations that drive her work: “In the real world, facts exist and science is real. … Since Southwestness is my own site, I have the freedom to report on our corner of the world based on my own perception of the world. There’s no question that this perception is still evolving and thank goodness for that!”

We’ve got to focus. We are at a point before the election where the actions of the next few weeks have the potential to impact our lives — and the lives of immigrants, children and the disenfranchised, as well as our allies and others around the world — for years to come.

For the last few years, I kept checking for accessible foreign editions of some of these books. I reached out directly to Reza Dalvand, the illustrator of Ace, who put me in touch with his publisher in Iran.

Ayanna D.N. Freeman explains how she went from having no idea her destiny was in skincare to launching and nurturing her own successful brand.

“Zahra, where is that from…oh, did you know that Iraq invaded Kuwait?” “Yes, I was there.” He asked what my thoughts about the Taliban were, twice.

We’ve been living through such extreme weirdness that otherwise easy civic activities like voting and census-taking can somehow fall between the cracks — so we’re hosting this virtual event to help get you supercharged!

It goes without saying there’s a lot riding on the November 2020 election and change isn’t gonna happen on its own. We are going to have to hit this one hard, folks! Here are some tips and resources for getting ‘er done.  

We believe we can leverage our social capital to inspire allies to support our vision for a future where the lives of Native women are no longer at risk and we have no more stolen sisters.

I started to get really pissed at so many things about being told what I was allowed and not allowed to do in dance, and I pretty much exploded from anger and it was like “Fuck this situation, I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want.”

John Fugelsang is in Albuquerque to perform “Unpresidented: The true story of a comedian trying to raise a toddler while his country was electing one” and we were lucky enough to get him into the Pyragraph LIVE studio (a.k.a. my office) to talk about comedy, politics, religion, and how he’s pulled all those elements and more into his unique creative career. 

There are so many things in our lives that might be considered “incurable” or terrifying, why not work with them?

For the most part, I’ve had the good fortune of doing work that doesn’t compromise my beliefs. But a few years ago I wasn’t so lucky.

Now, because of one man, there is hope for me and others like me throughout the country yearning to work jobs they have previously found themselves barred from simply because they have no experience. Who is this Chuck Yeager; this Jackie Robinson; this Harvey Milk of the inexperienced?