One of my life long mantras is to travel as much as possible.

I think of traveling as my “ikigai”. The Japanese concept that describes your reason for being. In other words, “the reason you get up in the morning”, the kind of passion that drives you day in and day out.

Whenever I get on the road I feel that same light inside of me spark into a million fireworks of inspiration. This was no different for my recent trip back to Portland, Oregon. A place I fell in love with over 10 years ago. How could I not? There is a very tangible electricity in there air out there.

Portland is the one seemingly magical place I’ve visited in all my years of traveling that encompasses everything that I’ve ever wanted all in one city.

If you’re the type of person who needs to be by the water, you can visit Portland’s beautiful coastline. If you crave snowy mountain ranges, you could venture beside the volcanic mountain range of Mt. Hood. Then there is also stretches of lakes, forrest, desert and even a wide cityscape.

While my most recent trip was just shy of a weeks time, I fell in love with the city all over again.

During my stay, I made my home at the Ace Hotel downtown in the Pearl District. I had never stayed at an Ace before (they have other locations in New York, Seattle, Los Angeles and Palm Springs) so I had no idea how awesome this was or how perfect this place would be for me. It was definitely an artist’s home away from home. The lobby was complete with a lounge area and black and white vintage photo booth sandwiched between Portland’s famous Stumptown coffee bar, and european style tavern Clyde Commons. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time going back and forth to these places.

The Ace’s event space called, The Cleaners, which was destination to the Blogcademy workshop that I attended on March 30-31st. The Blogcademy is a two-day workshop for bloggers who want to push their online presence to the next level, and is hosted by stylish super-bloggers, Gala Darling, Nubby Twiglet and Kat Williams. I joined a group of 30 women who all came together to discuss presence and voice in the blogosphere and all things related to writing, design, photography, promotion and strategy. In other words, it was a workshop full of cute nerdy girl stuff! I loved it. The class was a breath of fresh air. It was the first creative event that I’ve attended that provided an intimate workshop experience which made it was very easy to meet and talk to everyone who attended.

Leading up to this event I knew I wanted to make some changes on my website and now after attending I have a bit more of a concrete plan of attack for this year. As a spontaneous sagittarian, I’m not much of a planner, but it is so important to set goals and think about where you want to see yourself in a months time, 3 months time, 6 months time, next year, etc. If you can envision it, you are one step closer to getting there.

One of the biggest takeaways I got from the weekend was to treat my blog as more of a magazine. As someone who began blog writing in 2001 on Livejournal, I’ve always written for pleasure and mostly as a document of my life to remind myself of where I’ve come from and where I’m going. Twelve years later, I realize that while writing to document your life is a bonus, this space can be used for so much more.

While documenting my life and events, I realize I haven’t contributed here in a way that helps YOU, my readers, to join me in the exciting paths of art, design and adventure.  So from here on out my plan is to make a transformation here and feature regularly scheduled weekly columns about graphic design, VJing, travel adventures, finding inspiration and balancing creative wellness in our crazy busy lives. Keep an eye out for the next few posts – I’m brewing with ideas and can’t wait to share them with you!

What types of features might you be interested in seeing on this blog?  I’d love to hear from YOU!

Thanks for being here and inspiring me!

All the love,

Holly Danger