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I've spent the greater part of my life trying to understand myself. What I mean by that is I've always felt this greatness within me that was not expressed outwardly where others understood it too. Funny enough, someone just returned a book to me they borrowed, and on the page I opened to I underlined "The part of the brain that controls our feelings has no capacity for language." Read that again. No wonder this is such a struggle! This supports my point that there is so much we don't know about things that effect the way we think, behave or react. It's why being kind to yourself and allowing grace is important because we are subject to an incredible amount of invisible forces that take effort to learn. Like learning how to drive, the rules of the road and etiquette take practice to understand, and it's all system we are dependent on one another to cooperate within to make it work. Same thing in how we communicate, although I'm sure we could all agree cooperation is not what we are best at there. How then do we share how we feel so we can understand and be understood by those around us? This is where I had the thought about states of being, and how my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual states coexist. How they work together and the roles they play are an area I certainly will dive deeper to in the future...for now my foundational learning starts with this sketch I made representing how they relate: sketch of thoughts 8.10.25 Our physical state is where I think our modern society places too much emphasis, and you can see it in the way value is placed on material things, vanity, and taking things at face value. We can point to something and say that exists. The same can't be true about someones feelings. We look for objective truths. In this way I can see a cup and you can see a cup and we can say, "Yup, there's a cup" and have something we can both agree on/relate to/have a kinship about. Our spiritual state is, whether you know it or not, where all of your beliefs, behaviors and opinions are rooted -- why you are the way you are either by nature or nurture. It's where you can find great joy in sculpting a joyful life or being a prisoner to your programming. It's an area I think our modern society/Western culture is wayyy under developed in, therefore a great cause of pain and illness. We've gotten so out of touch with it because...we can't touch it. Our worlds are bombarded with the latest technology, marketing promotions, beauty trends...millions of distractions to process that unless we intentionally quiet them, our spiritual state struggles to get any stage time. Enter our emotional and mental states. These are processing powerhouses doing insane work to bridge the gaps between our physical and spiritual states. Though they too are non-physical, they manifest in ways we can see like crying and burnouts. This is where I started to pay attention . Curiosity has led me down countless rabbit holes to ask WHY. Why do I choke up with tears when presented with a conflict I don't have the answer to? Clearly it's something important to my spiritual self. Since I don't know (mental) the words/research/tools to explain it, it manifests through crying (emotions). PAY ATTENTION TO THESE EXPERIENCES. Our basic education means we probably aren't going to have the knowledge on how to navigate so many things, so listen to what your emotions are telling you . I cannot emphasize this enough. I can deep dive into this another time, but it is the best place to start, I promise. It's helped immensely on my journey to understand myself and this world. Look at how many feeling there are (this is not even all of them) and they are all trying to tell you something. A wonderfully complicating nuance is they mean different things to everyone too. Source: https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/how-to-use-wheel-of-emotions-to-express-better-emotions-8037255aa661 Someone may look at a cup and feel happy -- "Oh it reminds me of the trip I took to Mexico with my best friends! What a great time." Someone else might look at the same cup and feel depressed -- "It reminds me of my family who right now is being persecuted." Both are valid. They are the individual's experiences. What we fail to do much of the time is consider others and not just ourselves ask others what something means to them (they might not share, or have even thought about it yet) show compassion and respect, even if it is not how we feel Gentle reminder / Red Foreman slapping you upside the head: we can coexist with others that we think and feel differently from. Back in context with our states of being -- we really are so much the same spiritually. Our clear differences lie in the physical world. And our nuanced mental and emotional processing is where you can see where we are strug👏gle👏ing👏 In our human experiences we all pretty much strive for the same things -- peace, love, belonging, enlightenment, not to suffer...but what circumstances we were born into plays a HUGE role in how we try to reach that. Imagine being born in another country with limited rights and access to basic needs like water and shelter. You're going to think, feel, and act much differently in order to achieve those things. So why I am I taking the time to write all of this and present you with yet more things to contemplate in an already complex world? Because it's been my experience that taking a step back when I feel overwhelmed, ask why, take time to learn more about it, practice it (over and over), and develop my skill to understand that topic, the result is a peaceful empowerment where I can navigate life experiences in a more enjoyable way while increasing my capacity to help others do the same. This is a way for me for me to help steer humanity in a direction of healing. And that to me is worth all this typing on a Sunday morning.

Friends, family and locals gathered at Coffee Cultures on Park Avenue in Alameda on Saturday afternoon to support their community in creative arts while enjoying the space and refreshments the cafe had to offer. The show's name "A Decade of Jones" was a nod to the last ten years that Mindiana Jones has grown as a traveling artist, seeing every opportunity as a call for adventure. Exploring far away places, and the deepest inner spaces, she shared how continuously meeting new people gave the opportunity to practice the qualities and behaviors she was self-teaching herself along the way. Learning how her sensitivity to emotions was not a hinderance but an ability that helped navigate through life, grew the belief in herself to take on projects that once seemed greatly overwhelming. Years of experience freelancing photography, the happy accident of working at a merch agency, self taught design and branding techniques, and working hands-on with countless projects has brought about this skillset of creative services that are now a part of the official launch of Mindiana Jones Creatives, LLC. Local collaborator Jeremy Castro has been a mentor and catalyst for great things in Jones' journey, teaching her a vast amount within the merchandise industry as well as connecting her with Jason Michael Paul, owner of Coffee Cultures and JMP Entertainment. They all worked together in 2023 for the launch of Jason's Heroes Symphony tour , and continued to dream up ways to fuel each others creative journeys which led to the art show that unfolded on this beautiful fall day. Visitors were welcomed to a gallery of photography and multimedia collages that showcased both inner and outer voyages, along with an art bar with different supplies to paint, draw or collage their own works of art and be a part of the playful joy of creating. Pieces came of the walls with a raffle giveaway and buyers eager to take home a special something. Learning new things, meeting new people, & seeing new places are some of her greatest joys, so there are definite plans to continue pop-up and collaborative events after seeing the inspiration drawn from this inaugural event. If you are interested in dreaming something up together, please email Mindiana Jones directly at collab@mindianajonescreatives.com

Tucked in a San Francisco alleyway, in a neighborhood now gone from memory, we met up for a sunny afternoon kick it with a new mission. Half of the group were graffiti artists with tags all around the Bay, but instead of the usual covert outings, they organized a legal street painting session down a row of garages in the city. This was 2015, and most of us were happy to just to get a paycheck from some mediocre job so we could buy weed and booze and kick it watching sunset after sunset together. As friend groups intermingled, I got to meet more of these artists and we spent many days adventuring to obscure places. Places you'd never find in a travel guide, but ones that make you experience the area in a deeper and more meaningful way. It was a new kind of art to me. I noticed the art itself with the imaginative designs, impressive locations and techniques, as well as the camaraderie and creativity it brought out in those that channeled it. Of course there were some that had beef that caused drama, which was low key annoying but also entertaining. Once I learned what they wrote, it was fun seeing their tags around town. It's when you see something they did high up on the side of a building and say damn props for pulling that off. And it becomes a sort of dance; rhythms of this subculture saying fuck your rules with quick feet (and a smart mouth) around any authorities. And to anyone who hasn't seen behind the curtain of graffiti artists, they very well could just see it as disrespectful and a nuisance. And honestly there are the stupid shitheads that live up to that reputation. But what I saw was passion and community, supporting each other and pushing their boundaries. And, they're relentless. Try to paint over their work, and they will come back with something more badass. Try to fence off a building, and they'll find a way in. It's why being adaptable and curious are my lifelines because they let me see into the lives of others that run parallel passions. So, what do you think?

I came up on a typewriter this year, and we bonded quickly after co-creating nearly every day on my roadtrip to the PNW. With the influence of Jack Kerouac's spontaneous prose, I typed out with great intention streams of consciousness that's allowed practice and healing. I had no intention of sharing these pages, but without anything else planned there's no sense not to. I do not make drafts, nor care much about formatting or typos. My mind goes to many places, and it's not always the easiest to invite people into these sorts of rabbit holes. This is a recap written after month 1 of 6 of subleasing my apartment for the first time.

The world is full of life hacks. They're essentially methods and mindsets developed or learned by people to achieve a certain result based on their positioning in time and space. Now that last part is important, because no matter how much someone swears by it, its still not going to work for everyone. Any "discovery"of information or technique is a persons perspective, influenced by their input and environment, arranged in a new way that resonates with their understanding of this existence. That new insight is also going to resonate with its own unique demographic that otherwise wouldn't have happened. (what if there was a database of life hacks, searchable by outcome, life situations or beliefs?) So what am I getting at with this? Naturally, I can only speak from my perspective, but this comes from my own experience of trying to figure out this life of mine; to understand my inner being and what purpose and passions light my soul on fire, because in that is how I want to spend my time in this Earthly existence. I have spent hours and months and years unpacking my reasoning and behaviors, not to mention FEELINGS. My, all the feelings. All of these invisible, intangible things that shape our thoughts and actions and that translate to the then physical manifestations of such. Those invisible things that are hardly taught in modern society, yet so greatly impactful on our well-being consequently brings us to where we are. These thoughts overwhelmed me for a long time, and instead of going all-in on one of these solutions or hacks, I started by trying all sorts of new things without an attachment to the end result. Overtime I've collected the practices and beliefs that resonated, and discarded the rest. In short, I just started by starting. Overthinking/analyzing is the antithesis of flow, for flow is freeing, creative non-attachment that creates worlds of opportunity otherwise stifled by expectations, comparison, Both can be innovative, so not to say one is wrong or right, rather used with intention based on the desired outcome. It's a balance that comes with practice, beginning when your skillset is low, but willingness and determination are high. It's why having solid foundations are so important, so you are not shaken when success doesn't come; these then were not the solutions meant for you, but lessons that broadened your perspective to achieve that thing, that Why, that we are all chasing. So, whatever you are feeling called to, go to it. Don't think too much about what you are expecting it to be; that part will work itself out.