Kate Bello's Blog

Horizon

Stonesteps in Leucadia.

Patreon

It's been an extremely busy couple of weeks and I'm beyond stoked to finally be able to share with you my Patreon page.  It’s taken a lot of time to do, much more than I anticipated.  I didn’t want to just throw something up there asking for your contributions. I want to give you guys something special in return for your support! 

I’m really excited about the rewards which include a digital monthly magazine, downloadable poster size hi res photos as well as online photography and Photoshop tutorials every month.  You can find the complete list of rewards and details at https://www.patreon.com/katebello. 

Everything you need to know about how it works and what your contributions will be funding in on there.  I also encourage you to watch the video below!  I’ve been working on it the last couple of weeks and it really gives you the full picture of what I’m attempting to do which is give you, my readers, an escape…a world you can get lost with words and images.  I hope you enjoy it :D

I also want to make it clear why it is that I built this page.  It has been a life long dream to create and work for myself.  One that I have not accomplished as of yet.  The work I have done on this blog; the recipes, diy beauty, advice and tips, photography, stories, etc all take a lot of time and I have give away pretty much everything for free without cluttering the site with advertisements.  Doing all of this is pretty much a full time job in itself.  I do this in hopes that you truly enjoy your time on my blog and of course I’m always hoping you come back for more. 

Patreon is a way for you to contribute to help me be able to bring you content, even better content than I have in the past.  You can look at it two ways: as a virtual tip jar or as a subscription in which you will receive products every month (as named above).

P.S. Whether you want to contribute is totally up to you!  You will always be able to enjoy my blog for free of course. 

If you do decide to support, thank you, thank you, thank you!  You’re helping tremendously in being able to bring you better content as well as giving me the time to finish these lingering projects.

Mood

Taken at Swamis last night.

Mixing

I'm just having fun messing around in Photoshop.  Most of the photos I take tend to air on the more realistic side, but I'm liking more and more to push the limits to see what I can create.  Back in the day, I used to do stuff like this all the time (I wanted to be a graphic designer), but I've gotten away from it.  

I had a scare last night that my camera broke.  It wouldn't turn on.  Turns out I had forgot to put my card in.  For a minute I thought, shit...now I have to get a new camera.  The thought was enticing until I realized that I do not have the funds for new equipment at this time.  I want to do so much more with photography, but for now I'm still stuck with my seven year old Canon Rebel.  It's a great little dslr camera, but it's limiting.  My lens, the Canon 50mm 1.8 is also a great little lens, but that's also limiting.  For now I make do and try to make up for the limits on the editing side.

I like exploring the fantasy side of photography, but mixing it with realism, which is much like my writing.  I know I've been talking about it forever, and frankly, I'm sick of talking about it.  My short story collection is pretty much ready to do go with the exception of a couple of edits that I'm waiting on and I need to get it proofread.  These things take time I'm finding.  Bear with me.

I am working on project that has also unexpectedly taken a ton of my time as well, but it is almost done.  Yay!  It is my Patreon page.  Patreon is a bit like Kickstarter, but instead of helping to fund a single project, essentially you're making monthly contributions to help support your favorite artist's work.  Contributions can be as low as $1/mo or as much as you want, it's entirely up to you.  

The reason this has turned out to be a big project as well is A. I'm making a video in iMovie which is not my forte and B. I had to decide on rewards for contributors and that's not as easy as you think!  I want to make sure you guys receive something worthwhile for contributing...and I think I've come up with some good ones.  Anyway, I'm eager to get my Patreon campaign up and running!  I'm supporting a couple of creatives I follow on there and it's nice to know I'm contributing to their endeavors.

That's about all I got right now.  A new volume of Peanut Butter Vibes (newsletter) will be out next week so stay tuned...

Update

I’m yearning for a sense of adventure…somewhere, anywhere.  It either has to be at night or somewhere surreal during the day (see above). 

But for now, I will have to live out my escapades in my head.  I’m stuck at home working, writing, torturing myself.  Typical.  I will have to keep this short, you see, there are much bigger projects I’m working on (for you). 

Perhaps this weekend I will have an adventure somewhere…or maybe even sooner, you never know.  Right now I feel like I know everything around here too well.  I want a surprise.

 

What You Need to Know

I’m yearning for a sense of adventure…somewhere, anywhere.  It either has to be at night or somewhere surreal during the day (see above). 

But for now, the adventure will have to stay in my head.  I’m stuck at home working, writing, torturing myself.  Typical.  I will have to keep this short, you see, there are much bigger projects I’m working on (for you).  Time is running out and time couldn’t be more of the essence.  But you must take extra time if you need it, details can sometimes make all the difference.  But don't overthink it.*

Perhaps this weekend I will have an adventure somewhere…or maybe even sooner, you never know.  Right now I feel like I know everything around here too well.  I want a surprise.

*This the tortured writer talking.

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

Ernest Hemingway

 

Getting Lost in the Fantasy

I’m trying desperately to write, but I just can’t.  I’m watching Midnight in Paris for the third time in four days.  I can’t stop.  I’m hopelessly in love with this story.  Have you seen it?

You should.  You should watch it if you have any sense for your wellbeing, any sense of wonderment. 

Mount Laguna

Quote of the weekend: "Well, if you really think about it, the earth is like a spaceship.  And the sky is the window of our spaceship."

Wise words spoken by Blake (aka Poo Deer during camping) while we were star gazing at about 11pm on the Pacific Crest Trail.  Poo Deer also pulled me (aka Meadow) aside after my scary nightmare story that I had told the group, to tell me that my condition was actually called 'sleep paralysis'.  A condition where you're literally paralyzed while in the process of waking up and according to him, can hallucinate (which explains the little gremlin I thought was in my room shaking my sheets).  

Poo Dear was also the only one who could remember an entire song during our music sesh by the campfire.  I don't know if it was the tequila or whiskey or the fact that we had been partaking all day, but none of us could seem to find the words to literally one song that we usually knew inside and out while not camping.

Brota and I got there late Friday night, but the trip started out right as we were welcomed into the campfire circle given gifts of beer, tequila, whisky, snacks that tasted like Life cereal and our camping names; Meadow and Leaf.  The leaders of the circle, Twig and Soil (formerly Sage) introduced us to the rest of our group...now, let's see if I can get this right: Willow, Cat Crystal, Hummer (or Hilbert), Little Fawn, Chestnut,  Ripple, Star Shooter, Bark, Rock, Grasshopper and of course, Poo Deer.

I was extremely tired and went to bed early in the Subaru that night (car camping is so much easier btw!) and the next day awoke to our neighbors playing loud hip hop songs of my youth down below.  Still tired, I asked Leaf to prepare me one of his special coffees with agave nectar that was sure get me  (somewhat cracky) on track for the day.  It did.  And seeing Grasshopper pop the top off of a bottle of champagne reminded me that I had brought the wrong beverages for camping.  We immediately went to the general store in town where we got water and more champagne and I forget what else, came back to camp and got ready to go to the meadow.

The meadow was glorious and there was a huge tree with branches like ladders that we climbed.  Props to Soil for taking the many lovely shots of our camping family in the tree.  After hanging out in the tree for awhile, we decided to head back to camp for more champagne and sitting around.  Our pilot friends came to meet us (sadly, I don't think they ever got camping names) and told us how they flew their own plane to Burning Man.  Pretty cool.

By late afternoon, a nap was in order for most of us, so Leaf and I went back to the Subaru where I tried to sleep and he played the guitar and we sang, and ended up taking photos and not really sleeping.

Then nighttime...

We made bomb vegan tacos and sat around the campfire for what seemed like many hours and talked about many things that I cannot remember clearly now.  I do remember telling everyone my freakish scary stories and then a small group of us went on a short walk to the lookout over Borrego Springs.  Twig kept mentioning that we needed to stay up all night and the skies seemed a bit cloudy which was a little disappointing.   We wanted to see the stars.  

Eventually we made our way down to the PCT (literally right under the lookout) and decided to lie down on our backs in the dirt to look at the night sky.  By that time the clouds seemed to have gone away and we could see stars for days.  We kept talking about strange things like aliens and parallel universes and Leaf kept seeing shooting that no one else was seeing.

When we got back to camp, it was time to sing.  Except that no one could seem to remember any songs.  We vowed that we would learn entire songs for the next camping trip (although I would say the chances of this actually happening are slim to none).

In all seriousness, you couldn't ask for a better group dynamic.  Everyone was on the same page, the food was great, awesome company and the weather was perfect.  Can't wait for the next one.

 

In the Woods

You’re camping.  You’re in the woods with friends.  Someone says they want to hear a scary story.  Nobody speaks up.   But you have a scary story.  A freaky and creepy story.  Perfect for telling in the dark.  Perfect for in the woods, while sitting around a campfire.  When you can see in front of you, but behind you is vast darkness and you have no idea what may be lurking in the shadows.

 

I have scary stories.  I have a small fascination with horror and the unexplainable.  I’ve had very strange things happen to me as well.  And I had a story to tell this past weekend in the woods.  About a door.  A door that closes by itself.  A very heavy door that has no explanation for why or how it could close by itself.  Are you scared yet?

I wasn’t the only one to witness this.  I was in a class with about fifteen other people, in a room that had a wall of sliding glass doors.  It was muggy and hot out and all the doors were open.  Halfway through the class one of the sliding doors slid shut evenly, almost slowly.  We could see that there was no one there to close the door given that it was a glass.  We all looked at each other like, hmmm…that was weird.

Then class went on.  I don’t know if anyone else forgot about it, but I didn’t.  I asked the teacher the next time I saw her about it.  She said that wasn’t the first time that it had happened.  I remember when she said that, I had a very eerie feeling, almost sick to my stomach.  You see, I was spending a lot of time at this place.  I won’t go into where it was because I don’t want to name it.  But I was there every week.  Spending the night.

Because of this incident, I was totally freaked out to go to sleep at night.  This was also the same time I was having obe’s (out of body experiences) at this same location as well as very vivid dreams and sleep paralysis.  Weird shit was happening and it was draining me.  For some reason, I was open to these strange happenings at this particular location.  When I look back, this was a pretty rough time of my life emotionally.  I was a wreck.  Maybe that was why I was experiencing all of these strange occurrences.

Eventually I went back to that room with my ex to do some paranormal investigating (fun by the way).  I convinced him that we should go there when it was empty and do a recording where we try to talk to whoever or whatever closed the door.  We went.  It was daylight and the room and bright and sunny, not scary.  I opened the same door.  We started recording.  I asked, do you want to open the door?  What’s your name?

The door didn’t shut.  We waited and nothing happened.  I was a little disappointed.  Afterwards, we listened to the recording.  After I asked, what’s your name, you can hear someone say “yes” presumably to the first question I asked.   It was a male voice and it didn’t sound like it was in the room, but somewhere far away.  I’ve played it for quite a few of my friends and everyone could hear it…so, did we talk with a ghost?  I don’t know.  What I know is that someone answered yes to my question, which was, do you want to shut the door?  No, the door didn’t shut again and who knows why.

There’s something about the unexplained that intrigues me.  There’s something about being out in the middle of nowhere, under the black night and the billions of stars, that makes you question things (who are we and why are we here?).  I find it all a bit fascinating.  There’s the nerd inside of me that loves that stuff. 

Camping always brings this out.  That’s part of the charm of it for me.  More about this past weekend in the next post, plus pics.  Stay tuned.

High Tide

Grandview Beach in Leucadia.  Sunset.  High tide.  Body surfing.  Beer.  Photos.  

Looking at these just reminds me how much I want to get out there with my camera more.  A lot of my work around writing and this blog keeps me inside on the computer.  Which is fine, it's a necessity I can't get away from, and I really don't mind it at all.  I love working.  But getting out there is the best.  Gathering.  Gathering images and experiences.

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