Riverside

So today I was sitting and trying to come up with a vision of things I have to do in order to create this international magazine. I'm coming up with these broad (stretch) goals so that I can make them concise and fit them into smaller more manageable goals for the Riverside community.

Alex recommended that I get involved within Riverside first to research it, figure out the demographics, what Riverside is trying to accomplish, etc. This way I can learn what Riverside already has, and what it is striving to accomplish so that I can make these goals happen through the Riverside newsletter. Also, the term "newsletter" is being loosely used at the moment because I'm not sure exactly what to call it yet. It's not necessarily long enough to be a magazine, but it's not serious enough to be a newsletter either. I want it to be more fun.

Current thoughts are that I'm going to try to contact http://seizingourdestiny.wordpress.com/ because the newsletter could correlate to what they are trying to achieve, which is:

Seizing Our Destiny is Riverside, California's community-driven campaign that builds on the city’s existing strengths to create an even better place to live, work and play for future generations. Our goal is to improve quality of life, attract diverse and dynamic people, encourage innovation and work together for the common good.

This is the basic idea for right now. I'm going to try to contact other sources that I have at school to see if they can connect me to any particular groups or individuals in Riverside. I may also make a trip down to the city hall this week to see what I can find.

Empowerment Magazine

So I decided I'm going to start blogging about my Undergraduate Research Project. I'm hoping to make this an international magazine later. But that's a huge dream of mine, so we'll see how this goes.

Currently I'm the extremely beginning stages of the project. I'm going to be working within the Riverside community to create a blog/newsletter/magazine of people who are working towards changing the world. I'll elaborate on this later.

I'm in the process of taking a UGRC (undergraduate research in the community) seminar in which a group of us meet once a week to discuss the progress of our project. I feel the most behind on this, because a number of the people have been doing their project for about a year, and I am just in the process of starting mine.

I just emailed a professor who I hope accepts my offer for being a mentor for this project. By the professor being my mentor, she'll be able to help me whenever I get stuck on some type of research for this project.

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” - Norman Cousins

The chilly breeze of the ocean waves gently caressed her face, sending a chill down her neck. She closed her eyes and smiled. When the breeze subsided, she opened her eyes and attempted to memorize the blueprint of the sky. The full moon was her favorite thing about tonight. She loved the way it traded places with the sun at the end of the day— the one thing that always remained consistent. She lay there in the sand, just inches away from where the water finished chasing the shore. She thought about how things could have been— or rather, would have been, if she hadn’t taken a step back to turn around and look at the trail she had created. She thought about how different life used to be, how insecure she was around the people she thought she could rely on, and how delicate she had become because of it. But things changed this summer. She was now stronger, more hopeful about the future, and began to see the bigger picture of what really mattered. She learned that she had to leave behind everything that was causing her to remain stagnant in the ever-changing universe. As a result, by pausing and reflecting on everything that she had endured, she was able to smooth the cracks away from the fractured vessel that she had become. This vessel speaks the journey of her life, but does not define it. She has learned that matter doesn’t define who she is. What defines her is her atma. What defines her is the person she has become through her surroundings and experiences, and how she shares them with the world. This is her voyage of mindfulness. This is her journey. This…is my journey.