Just Another Twenty Something

I've always found tattooing a beautiful form of expression and memorial for a certain important aspect of one's life. I'm not a big advocate for getting something not meaningful at all, especially something someone just thinks "looks cool" - those are the tattoos people usually regret. We've all met our fair share of people with the classic '90s tribal band tattoo, or the an infinite sign, or a cross… that they just got on a whim because they thought it looked cool. (Don't get me wrong, these are interesting ideas, but be sure you can back it up with something actually meaningful!) I am all for tattoos that someone can sit me down and explain to me something particularly important about why they chose it for themselves and why they want to keep it on their bodies forever; the minute someone just shrugs I get a little suspect. These individuals are the "shruggers" that I take issue with, at which point I excuse myself from the conversation that I regretfully found myself in, so I can go bang my head into a wall. My stories are quite simple but are both very important to me. 

My first tattoo I got relatively close to my 18th birthday. I had always admired the beauty and expression of tattooing oneself, so I had been thinking a lot around that time about what I found important enough to me. I wanted to memorialize this important time of my life with something that represented it. Art and art history had always been a huge part of my life, and still is to this day. I was about to embark on my first year in college and I was going to be studying my true passion: photography. Although not a photographer, Salvador Dali was a major influence in a lot of my creative processes at the time of my artistic career. His exuberant personality and creativity was something that I had hoped to embody in myself and my own work. I settled on a quote that has been said to be his last words, "I do not believe in my death." Although he would have probably spoke this in his native language, Spanish, I chose to get this in French, "Je ne crois pas en ma mort". I have always been enamored by French culture and the language. My true dream is to live in France. 

The second tattoo I recently acquired. A lot of changes have happened to me in the past year that it would take me three weeks to truly explain everything. Almost every aspect of my life has managed to change in a radical way. I moved cities, transferred schools, broke up with my ex boyfriend of four years, lost a lot of truly important friends, started dating someone completely different, adopted my pup, & have been dealing with some truly grounding family issues. I have the type of personality to never really talk much about how much all of this has really effected me, but it has. Some for the positive but a lot of negative too. I have always found it really difficult to remind myself to stay positive and to be grounded in any situation. Sometimes I just have to take a minute to gather my thoughts and remind myself of these important mentalities. 

The Om or Aum symbol has ancient relations to Hinduism and Buddhism, and often is chanted in the mantra, "om mani padme hum." I have never considered myself truly religious, but I do agree find myself relating to a lot of Buddhist philosophy. And although I don't often find myself chanting this particular mantra, I do often tell myself my own mantras in these times. I settled on the Om symbol to constantly remind me to stay grounded and positive in all times, no matter how hard it might be. I got it on my ankle as almost a literal reminder to stay grounded. 

Here's what I'm listening to:

Never Going Back Again - Fleetwood Mac

&

As Far As I Can See - Phantogram

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