Excelsior in Summertime Sadness...

To read is to cover one's face. And to write is to show it.
Here's mine.

I've now lived in LA for 2 years... and every.single.month. i want to go "home"-back to austin. i can't afford LA and i'm not booking anything thats worth staying here for. But i also dont want to give up too easily. i rather be an "oh well" person than a "what if" type of person. plus, if it were easy, everyone would do it. i knew it wouldnt be easy. i just desperately miss having good hearted girlfriends that will swing dance with me in a dive bar any night of the week after we spent the day reading poetry to each other in a kayak. i miss affordability. i miss eye contact that is 10 out of 10 times followed by a smile.

i miss everyone riding their bikes to the natural springs or to movie in the park. drenched in sweat from the texas heat but still snuggling up next to each other. i miss the city where young people go to retire. i miss safety. today i walked to a coffee shop and asked "is it safe for me to stick around here a bit and write then walk back home, about half a mile?" and all 3 workers immediately responded with no's. "not unless you have a knife or mase." in austin i used to go far into the east side (before people realized it was a hidden treasure) to blues dance. i drove my vw thing and wore my saddle shoes and it held me  

hey little girl wont you dance those
blues away...

together every week. i was the only white girl most nights, the only lights were from the year round christmas trees, and there was free chili in the crockpot on the bar. people in there could hardly afford the $5 cover ... but ... they were happy. swaying their hips to the harmonica and stomping their feet to the drums. an old man in the corner playing the sax to the blues band. there was no place i rather be. it never got old. but in the bottom of my heart i always wanted to act. years went by living there and it broke my heart to leave a city i knew i could be happy in forever to go pursue something that may never even happen. but i did. 2 years later im writing this. 

this month i had to sublet out my place and stay on friends couches so that i can afford to stay in LA. usually on a work break i would take off to an orphanage and play the hokey pokey with children that love to dance... giving to each other joy unspeakable. thats not in budget out here and while staying with friends can be exhausting, im doing what i have to do. yesterday i was driving on the 101 thru hollywood, not having the best mindset on it. a blue ford festiva cut me off. i didnt think those cars were around anymore at all, haha. (the car jim carey drives in 'fun with dick and jane' when he goes bankrupt). this moment was really meant to be for me because i had that car once. in high school. i called it the blueberry, haha. and not only that, i lived in it for part of my junior year. i had a dreamcatcher hanging on the inside and painted "lets go for a starry night drive" on the side. it was tiny. 2 guys would pick it up and hide it

behind the dumpster to scare me, haha. but i made it my home, what was important was that i was finishing school. after lunch breaks i used to ask to go to the bathroom but go down to the soda machines to see if anyone had forgotten their change so that i could use it to buy a pack of tortillas to eat for that week. they were cheap and filled you up.. but needless to say i cant stand flour tortillas now and i was definitely not in shape. that car lasted me a year. i had bought it for $850 from a stripper, and when it broke down a year later i traded it for a c.d. player. how perfect was it for one to cut me off and remind me of that time in my life. while living in that car, i was headed down a path that is nothing like the one that i am on today. i was rescued. funny i called it the blueberry as well... because those are good for you, and that time was really good for me. it was hard being a highschooler and living in a car, but its made me who i am today. im more understanding because of it. youve got to make your mess ... your message. and now i can look back and say, "phew.. right now isnt THAT bad". and all i can hope is that years from now i will look back at this time and laugh as well.

live the questions...

It's strange how a lot of people see having a cold or the flu as a sickness that's not really your fault. But when you struggle with depression it's not seen as a sickness at all.. it's usually just misunderstood. That's why when i'm struggling theres not a single person in my phone (out of over 2k contacts) that i can call and talk to about it. it's not understood. C.S. Lewis says, "Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say 'my tooth is aching' than to say 'my heart is broken'..."
I do believe in self help and natural healing. But you have to become an expert at recognizing triggers. It's hard when you feel yourself shutting down because all that does is make you more depressed because it reminds you that you're not exactly "ok". But I know that all

seasons pass. You have to stay alive. There are good days and bad days and even if theyre not equal you have to learn to live for the good days. Honestly, the reason I've never committed suicide when i've battled before is because I'm scared that means that I'd go to hell. You can think i'm stupid for thinking that but that's been the case since i was 10, which is when it first started to cross my mind. I know this is a very transparent blog, but i dont want you to feel alone.
sometimes social media can make you feel even more alone. You see every one's 'highlight reel' and compare it to your 'behind the scenes'. We tend to only post the good and the party photos. why would anyone post photos of themselves sad and be a debbie downer? so we forget that others get sad too. but we've all cried ourselves to sleep, we all just want the same thing - to be happy. but all we see are the happy status updates on fb & the bride to be or happy mommy posts. we dont see what's behind closed doors. we dont see that the new mom thats so starry eyed at her child had to apply for food stamps to take on the added expense. we dont see that the lady who posts positive quotes every day does so because she's reminding herself to live as she struggles with depression. we dont see that our happily in love friend still has nightmares about her abusive parents. or that the guy who just got a huge break in his career is also having to break up with his gf of 5 years... maybe a few of these has applied to me, or maybe i know people like this personally... but what its taught me is that no one "has it together" in the way we think they do. we all are really just trying to figure this out. yet we forget and we feel alone.
but im reminding both of us, that we're not.

which one is worth giving up?

dont ever allow ANYTHING to steal your excitement for the future, there are surprises waiting just around the bend.

She wanted something to happen. something, anything.
She did not know what.

The most asked question in radio & magazine interviews that i do is "How did you get started in modeling?" I get messages often from aspiring models asking the same thing. To be honest, I never wonder that about other models… but maybe the reason I'm asked is because it's just odd that I get modeling work at all. i'm 5'3 (ahem, travel sized) with a gap in my teeth and a bunch of other traits people like to make fun of in their blogs. 

but the story of how i got started often boggles my mind about how life works and how one person can change everything forever, so here it is:

Collect moments, not things.

In October of 2009 i posted a Facebook status saying something like: "Hey, I'm going to backpack & couch surf the bottom tip of California to the top tip of California, I'm going to stop at Treasure Island Music Festival along the way. Any and all can join me, I'm leaving in 2 weeks." 

Quaintrelle - (n.) a woman who emphasizes a life of passion, expressed
through personal style, leisurely pastimes, charm, and cultivation
of life's pleasures.

I lived in Austin at the time, and if you know anything about my town its that the people are down for anything. Their tuned in for adventure and living life like a story. That's my home & i miss it incredibly. 2 people confirmed that they would  and could join. The night before leaving I met a long haired young musician (those are just so hard to find in Austin haha) that seemed crazy fun so i told him to come along.

The 4 of us left the next day, picked up a waitress along the way that wanted to see San Francisco, and sang our hearts out to paramore and meiko as we filled up on pringles and twizzlers. i was the only one in the car that didn't sing professionally, but they didn't mind that i chimed in. Every part of the trip was amazing. But it was in Ocean Beach San Diego that my path changed.

You get a strange feeling when youre in the midst of an adventure.
like you'll not only miss this moment and these people, but you'll
miss the person you are now at this time & this place, because you'll
never be this way ever again.

I was sitting on the sidewalk outside a coffee shop making jewelry with a beautiful gypsy girl that I had met, and a man came up to me and asked if he could photograph me. He introduced the woman with him as his girlfriend and told me that he had been looking for a model with a gap in her teeth for years but hadnt found the one. I thanked him for the compliment but told him that there was no way i could shoot with him. i wasn't a model and didn't feel like i could be one. he showed me his portfolio and told me "let me just show you what i can do with your look, if you don't

"I hate being so emotionally slutty. i need to stop loving everyone
i have a long conversation with." (in Ocean Beach)

like it…we'll toss the images." his photos were amazing and raw. even tho i felt like i could ruin his portfolio, i told him i'd try it out the next day before heading out of town. 

man in a van down by the river :P

The next day I met him on sunset cliffs in ocean beach and we shot for a few hours. I found out that day that he and his girlfriend lived in a van there in OB with their dog, and were very aware of peoples energies. When they had to go to the bathroom, one of them would hold a bag for the other one to go to the bathroom in. That's pretty close, haha. She had a gentle spirit and he loved to tell stories. We exchanged emails and i continued on my adventure across California.

Stayed in Hollywood a bit and one of the guys booked
a gig at the Roxy....

Slept under the dome in the San Francisco Palace
of fine arts 

I was the shyest human ever invented. but i had a lion inside me
that wouldn't shut up.

The others continued to explore SF and i headed
to Treasure Island music festival for the weekend

i kind of forgot about the shoot, and took off to Uganda, Africa a month and half later. i spent 6 weeks living in Kitoola Village with children I'll never forget. their freedom is what's behind my smile. 

When i got home it took me a while to recoup fro
m all that i had seen there, and I'm still aching to help. I found out that the photographer had made me a page on a modeling site, and when i logged into it i not only saw the photos we had made together but also had a quite a few booking requests. i thought that it was cool that he captured my emotions in the photos. that they even seemed to tell a bit of a story. it made me want to create more. i decided that if i was getting booked, id go with it… why not give it a year and see where it goes? if it doesn't go anywhere, id see it as an adventure and since id always hoped to act, thought maybe it could get my foot in the door somehow….

that year that i gave it a go i was published in italian maxim and FIGHT! magazine… while backpacking Barcelona the photographer for maxim shot me for the issue, and in the
interview they asked what my favorite sport was, i said MMA. the photographer for FIGHT! magazine, paul thatcher saw that spread and decided to shoot me for their issue.

i almost didn't shoot with FIGHT! because they don't cover costs and they were in vegas, but I'm glad that i did because Bellator saw that issue and contacted me to be their "bellators blonde bombshell". 

it's funny how one person can change everything. how one YES can change everything. 

i decided to take a road trip across the country, shoot with a man who lived in his van

Robert F. Donahue and i on sunset cliffs

So wherever you are, thank you thank you:)

with his girlfriend, and it changed everything. 

if it weren't for him, i wouldn't have moved to LA & know my wonderful room mates, i wouldn't have my job with bellator, i wouldn't be in memphis right now with my best friend Tom (had i not moved to LA me and Tom would not have gotten close), i wouldn't have dated the guy that i dated last year, and i wouldn't even be writing this blog. that man in his van by the beach changed so much for me. and i almost said no. 

i think some of my best decisions were made with out thinking.

1st shoot ever, he of course made me show my
gap in every image...

this week i have really been questioning where my life is headed. i think we all tend to feel a little "pointless" sometimes. i just want to be used. a vessel. i want others to live because i lived. i want young girls to believe in themselves because of my book that I'm writing, and be able to continue on. i have big dreams. but i kind of thought by now i would be closer to having a family, and i dont even have a boyfriend. i thought id be closer to having an acting career and i don't even have an agent. but all i know is that I'm on the right path. how do i know? because I'm on it. and when you're on the right path, you just have to keep walking. view it as an adventure. if i never do have those 2 things, i trust that thats what was supposed to happen. because i will have what I'm meant to have. i was meant to go on that trip, & meet that man. and I'm meant to be writing this right now. you're meant to be reading it. and as long as were being used, thats all that matters. 

she always felt that her outsides were too dull for her insides.
that  deep within her was something better than what everyone
else could see on the surface. (shot by Rob)

everyday, re-write peoples definition of love. don't just live a beautiful story… involve others in it, making their story more beautiful too. that guy may have no idea what meeting him changed for me. and it's the same for you with others. we dont always see our effect on others lives. but its there.
the other day i was telling my best friend Tom about how i had been feeling pointless. He asked me, "what if tomorrow you met God, and He said to you - Jade, you came into Tom's life at a time that he really needed a friend. had you not been there and been the light he needed, he wouldn't have made it thru that time - how would you feel about life if He said that to you?" He used himself as an example because he knows that i want to live a life as giving and transforming to others as his. he constantly spreads love and frees slaves. whether in life or in spirit. there are times i wouldnt have made it thru with out him as well. knowing that ive been of any ease to him in the midst of this, it means my life mattered.
you dont realize how many people are effected by your light in this dark world.

you being alive changes things. every.day.

Sometimes the scariest things just end up being teletubbies.❤

Writers are desperate, if they stop being desperate they stop writing.
i dont know what makes a writer, but i dont think its being happy all the time.

My life is compiled of a bunch of stories that i am trying to turn into a book. my closest friends know me as a story teller, but they know they are all true. i am sometimes hesitant to tell these stories to people until they know me as an honest & transparent person, because i sometimes think that if i shared these absurd stories they may then question everything else that comes out of my mouth. but i enjoy being transparent. i enjoy vulnerability. when you are vulnerable you are able to be rejected. not being vulnerable is being closed up in fear that you may suffer rejection. have you ever been in a relationship with a closed person? it is like trying to love on a purcupine. you can not be intimate with someone who is closed. because "intimacy" is "in-to-me-see". its transparency. vulnerability. i know that when that person opens up to someone it will be beautiful, but oh how the adventure of their life would be so much more beautiful if they would just be open & inviting. my hope for you is that you never allow pain to make you closed. that you will remain soft to all who encounter you and love you. i hope that everyone around me feels that they can be open with out being injured.

Arent we all waiting to be read by someone, praying that
theyll tell us that we make sense to them, for once?

if youve read my blog before you know that i am vulnerable when i write. and if you havent youll see that in this story:

when i was about 13 or 14, i was hitch-hiking from san antonio to dallas (i had run away from home).. one man, about 300 pounds, pulled over to pick me up and he looked safer than the previous offers so i got in the passenger side of the back seat. after driving about 30 min i realized he had started to sweat profusely. this made me feel like he was nervous & going to do something bad... i waited about 10 more minutes until we were in a populated area, and then told him id get out here. he slammed on the breaks and said something that wasnt funny to me until 4-5 years later, "youre not getting out of this car until you buy a teletubby." i thought maybe this was some strand of ecstasy or other drug... and knowing i only had my journal, a can of beans, and $10.. i knew i was in trouble. i told him i had no money and he jumped out of the car and opened my door, grabbed me out of the car and jerked me over to the trunk. i thought, this is it. im being shoved in a trunk. this man is going to kill me. while i still felt safer there then in my previous situation, i felt it was the end of my life. you think you kick and scream in this situation, but i was frozen.

he opened the trunk & stood me up. he pointed in the trunk & it was full of teletubbies, tags still on. he told me to choose. i had $10. he obviously thought they were worth more but took what i had. i walked the rest of the way to austin. i often wish i still had that teletubby, but i realized yesterday morning in conversation with my best friend that i have teletubbies in life all the time. we all do. our heart is hurting. our bank account is empty. we cant seem to connect to anyone. yet another break up, or break down. we feel lost. and then a trunk opens and we realize its not the end, its not so bad...we can stand on our feet and see that its just a teletubby. a story to tell. something to somehow find the humor in. (finding the humor in all things is a developed talent) ive felt despair so many times in life, but "i know bliss because i have a reference point for pain". and i am starting now to see my problems as those innocent little teletubbies with a lesson behind them.

this is so fitting it brings tears that blurs the words
every time i read it.❤

i love this quote to the left. i live with so many questions every day. i dont know very many answers at all in my life, just a few that matter most and keep me in peace. like "oscar wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it - that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything. there is a truth to that. we are not nouns. we are verbs. i am not a thing - a writer - i am a person who does things - i write, i act - and i never know what i am going to do next. i think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun. friends i go out with (really i just mean hiking when i say go out, haha) often ask me how i feel when a man makes a comment at me. my best friend has taught me to never judge someone for pushing a button of mine, but to instead reveal the button and ask myself why it was pushed. why its a button. when im walking by and a man says something degrading like "nice tits" i want to kick him. but WHY? why does it offend me? if i know that i am more than what he has called me, why am i so bothered? because i hate perversion? then i need to search my own heart for perversion because that which disturbs us in another is reason to examine ourselves for it. or is it because deep down i worry that that is all that i am?
i know that i am a woman of depth, a woman of creativity and compassion. but the fact that i am questioning what i will do after bellator, and even during our long few months break, is cause to examine this because my job IS based off looks. i dont know what im doing april-september and everytime i almost lock down an opportunity there is a hidden agenda revealed. this comes with the industry but is something ill never accept. id like to work those months in a place where i can focus on my book while still covering my expenses. but this whole situation is a big question mark even weeks away from it. i can not judge a man for his comment, i can only look into that button and see that i am offended because im questioning this area in my life that is tied to it if i look deep enough. but this question of what will i do, where will i go... as the picture on the left says.. i must love these questions. i must let it be an adventure. a trust exercise. at the very least, this mess will just be a teletubby. when someone pushes your button, dont push a button back, or judge them. reveal why the button is there. and grow. when something upsets us, there is a reason. "HEAL THAT IN ME WHICH JUDGES OTHERS" ❤
this is a different time for me.. because im in LA now and not TX, i cant just drop and go to a third world country to be with orphans and hike in jungles... my expenses are much higher. i wrote a list of things that make me happy, and what do ya know... it made me sad. (if you know me you know this isnt odd haha, im a woman full of thoughts and emotions and passions) i miss nature, i miss writers, i miss meeting people who know about the genocide in darfur, i miss those that when they ask me to watch a movie they really mean a documentary. i miss austin. but i dont think its time to leave just yet. a channel must be changed tho. i have this group out in malibu. but im in the concrete jungle of hollywood. a big change is coming, i can feel it in my veins.. full of creating. the thought it isnt coming scares me, but then i remember to breathe, and to embrace whatever the universe has for me.. because wherever i go, there ill be. and there ill love. and there ill embrace. and hopefully, there ill start to blues dance again... because its been a while.
If - Rudyard Kipling
If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

I contacted my birth dad today. i opened communication
with him for the first time in 14 years. this is day 1. the past
may be put in a book, because writing about pain helps others in
their journey, but no one else will pay for this past. after writing this i looked at
his facebook and saw that he is still heavily involved with alcohol,
and although thats something i dont want in my life, grace and mercy is.
there have been times ive wanted to start this before, but my heart was
broken or i was working thru something else, and i was just saying
"as soon as"... but that is something we do too much of in life.
this is day 1. i am vulnerable. i am not afraid of pain.

If my heart was a compass, you'd be north.

as i was about to hit publish, this email came in:

It's as if everyone has a built-in, happiness-now button, Jade, which can instantly change how they feel, no matter what's going on in their lives.

But for many, most of the time, they prefer not to push it.

Go on, push it real good -
    The Universe

Beautiful. I love you, Universe.

haa. ssshhh. push it. pu push it real good.❤