On Happiness and Hard Work

   Hoeing sugar beets sucks. I mean, taking a sharpened garden hoe and standing in 102 degree heat in June to weed out unwanted plants from rows and rows and rows of planted sugar beets is not something I would suggest for a fun summer vacation. We weren't child laborers. We were paid. A little. We were part of a farming family. Working in the summers, even when it sucked, was just something that we did. Everyone had to help, so we did.
   I had it easier than my older siblings. I was born amidst a change in agriculture. By the time I was of age to really help on the family farm, the beet company had shut down in our part of state and the farmers in our community were struggling to survive. We had recently acquired a feedlot and were planting as much alfalfa and silage corn as we could, in attempts to service the 5,000 cattle we fed each winter. I grew up struggling to place a foot on both sides of the farmer/rancher divide, hating riding horses and loving to drive the 4-wheeler to irrigate after dinner.
   I saw many a farmer lose entire crops to a bad summer storm. I watched ranchers lose herds to terrible blizzards and strange disease. I watched family's come and go - struggling to stay afloat in a world where Agriculture meant imported produce from Mexico and Chile and no one really knew how to pay the bank back the hundreds of thousands of dollars they owed in debt. But, I also saw the simplicity with which these people lived. I saw the happiness on their faces as they watched a small seed grow to a record crop and a bum calf grow to be a prize heifer.
   I ran out after high school, with flames under my heels, determined to get away and "make something of myself". I was determined to make a living for myself outside of agriculture and escape from the chains of debt and small incomes. I ran so far away that I forgot about the smell of sagebrush in the spring, the sound of crickets while irrigating at dusk and the way you could actually see the corn grow in July. I found myself stumbling home the summer after my freshman year of college, working for the government in the most rural areas of Eastern Montana. And I found a sort of happiness in the work of the people that I met. I saw a contentment that I hadn't seen anywhere else. And I envied them for it.
   The older I get, the more I realize how important it is to love your job. On the brink of graduating college and storming the world to find a career, I find myself fortunate to have come from a family where the word "work" and "lifestyle" were synonymous. I was taught to do what I loved, even if it meant I would be poor the rest of my life. And I have never been more proud of where I come from.

   For this project, I have been compiling videos of people from my community concerning their views of "jobs" and "happiness". For research, I have found articles such as Benjamin S. Caunt's "Exploring the Causes of Subjective Well-Being: A Content Analysis of Peoples' Recipes for Long-Term Happiness," and watching Michael Pritchard's "Happy" documentary.

Living

I've decided to change my subject. I wonder how many times we'll do that? Anyways, I've decided that I am seriously interested in creating a video project that revolves around how people choose to live. So, here goes:

1) Ever since I was little, I've had a fascination with people that choose to live in extreme ways. It is still a major life goal of mine to debut in a Jackass movie. For reals. I devoured videos of extreme sorts icons, like Shane McConkey and the neighbor up the road who toured Vietnam on a motorcycle and established new climbing routes in Patagonia. I wanted to travel and learn how to live life unconventionally. My greatest fear was (and is) living a life without really living at all. While my skiing and mountain biking skills are all but exceptional, I wanted to embody the people I watched in those videos who my dad called "crazy." I started wrecking motorcycles and accepting dares that lead to more skinny dipping endeavors and uncomfortable social situations than I would care to remember. I ever broke any bones other than the ones in my toes, but I walked away with enough scars for my mom to call me "accident-prone."

I want to explore the minds of people that live this way. Through interviews and research, I think it would be fascinating to explore this topic. What drives people to BASE jump off of buildings, antennas and cliffs? What motivates people to drop out of college and become rambling adventurers? What made Jack Kerouac take to the road and Christopher McCandless disappear in the Alaskan wilderness? Why do we love adrenaline?

I think the first form of research will be interviewing people. I want to video conversations with people who live in an extreme way, as well as people who work 9-5 job. I want to ask: "What is your greatest fear?""If you had 30 days to live - what would you do?" "Are you happy?" I want to be surprised by people's answers. I want to understand what drives us to live the way we do. And I want to better understand my own desire to live a life full of living.

Through videos, documentaries, iconic books and other mediums in which the sense of "adventure" is explore, I mean to better understand this idea. I know my idea is a big one as of now, but I know that with research, my project will become more focused. For now... I'm going to go watch a movie about climbing in Chile...

2)

From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qfTTesptRk

My idol, Shane McConkey, died in 2009 during a 2000 ft cliff jump in Italy, when a parachute malfunctioned. Shane lived extremely. He was a professional skier and BASE jumper, who worked for Red Bull, Sessions, K2 and many other extreme sports brands. He appeared in countless Matchstick Productions videos and commercials, spurring my young self to decide to do stupid things like jump off the roof and onto the trampoline with my skis (Mom still doesn't know about that one)... I think that looking at how Shane chose to live his life, despite the struggles and risks that came with it says a lot about the importance of truly living. As his wife, Sherry, mentioned in the movie, "McConkey," Shane's biggest fear wasn't dying. It was having to work a 9-5 job.

From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U87cReyC7a4

Sarah Burke was a professional skier, who died in 2012 in an accident on the mountain. She pioneered the way for women to be a part of the skiing culture that exists, including fighting for the women's halfpipe to be a part of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Her face plastered mine and my little sister's walls, where we looked to Sarah for inspiration on how to ski. For years, my little sister told people, "When I grow up, I wanna be a ski bum." We lived in Eastern Montana, 3 hours from Red Lodge and almost 5 from Bozeman, where skiing was accessible. We started skiing at a young age, but only went a few times a year - meaning we never became exceptional skiers. My favorite part of this video is when Sarah says about the mountains, "It's where we met, where we play, we live and hopefully where we'll die." What about that lifestyle on the mountains draws us in a way that makes it worth dying for?

From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq32prjmwLw

Rory Bushfield, Sarah's husband, talks about the death of his wife. I think it's profound that the spouses of these people who died living in such an extreme way are so sure to accept that "they were doing what they loved." Sherry McConkey, Shane's widow, has said many times that she would never have asked him to stop, even though they had a young daughter. There is something in living a life this way that makes it worth dying for.

Niederschlesien

   My grandfather, Hans Gett Wilhelm, came to the United States at the ages of 15. Now known as Johnny, my Opa is the happiest little German dwarf that ever stepped out of a fairytale and into reality. His fingers resemble thick sausages instead of appendages, his accent turns "cheap shoes" into "sheep shoes" and he tends to tear up when he talks about how lucky we are in America. The first time I drank, I was fourteen and the story involved my Opa, a nun and a bottle of Jaegermeister hidden behind a crucifix. Needless to say, whenever my Opa is around, a good time is bound to be had.

   Though our German heritage is an important part of my family's traditions, my Opa greatly dislikes talking about the majority of his time in Germany. Like I said in class, a few bottles of beer usually brings the stories out in a slur of English and German. Luckily, I'm my Opa's favorite "little shit," and I tend to wrestle more stories out of him than anyone else. In the last few years, his memories have become more prominent and descriptive than ever before. He attributes this to his old age and can even draw small maps of his childhood home now. Previously, he had pushed these memories out of his head because he wanted to blend in with his American friends and forget about the horrors he had seen in Germany. While he has never said this to us, his sister, Karin, has said the same of his mother, my Great-Grandma Mary. I can only imagine how horrible some of those stories are to remember.

   For my project, I would like to attempt to research the area of Niederschlesien, where my Opa was born. The area has been traded back and forth between Poland and Germany over history, but now resides as part of Poland. My Opa hates to talk about that fact - he would much rather remember himself as being a German. I guess those roots run rather deep. For interviews, I will be able to speak with my Opa and his sister Karin, as well as a cousin of theirs who has done a lot of work on our family history. I have not yet decided on a medium for the project, though I believe a documentary style video or a series of short stories would fit this subject matter best.

Photo Essay Reflection

   The content of my Photo Essay assignment is heavy. Extremely so. As a society, it's difficult for us to talk about domestic abuse and sexual assault. Imagine, then, attempting to find women to pose with bare shoulders and black paint, exposing those very issues. It was so hard to find models, that I ended up taking self portraits for the most sensitive photos I wanted to take (my screaming photos). Taking, editing and compiling the photos was emotionally exhausting. The photos are haunting and bare, just as I had wanted them to be.

   Due to the strong nature of the photographs in my Photo Essay, it was strangely difficult for me to find the words to accompany the piece. I am both a writer and a photographer, but have never done a project that requires me to utilize both. As you can see through my rough drafts, I was struggling with my essay. It seemed that everything I tried to say was forced. My photographs seemed so stark and bold, with black and white and heavy subjects. My words were dirtying the photographs, filling in the shadows with dramatic flares I knew didn't belong. I wrote and re-wrote the essay at least forty times, erasing and cutting pieces until I was left with a blank slate over and over again.

   I knew the statistics I had added to the video explained the idea behind the photos and the song I chose only added to the emotional pull of the subjects. Every time I watched the video, I kept thinking back to a poem I had written in early 2013. I had written the poem based on my own experiences with domestic abuse and sexual assault, with much the same idea in mind that I had approached this project with. When writing the poem, it had seemed completely out of character. It was simple, blunt and bare, unlike much of the writing I had done up to that point. The nature of my photographs and my poem seemed to go hand-in-hand.

   I believe my decision to delete the essay portion of my writing and instead leave only a poem beneath the video was the right one. Since my final draft, I have watched the video and read the poem several times and feel the piece to be complete. I hope that the people who have looked at my Photo Essay feel the same way I do. If not... too bad.

Paint - Final Essay

you are:

the fingers that push back my hair

heroin and needles

gasp

burning cigarettes

the tuning of guitars

that scar on my arm

i am:

older than i was

passive in a bad way

oh, babe

flannel sheets in May

coffee with soy

that river bed

we were:

tattoos and freckles

frowned upon

good for each other

stop

too different

wildflowers

no

spring fever

too emotional for me

i think it’s best if you

just

leave.

- K. Weyerbacher, 2013

Websites:

http://www.rainn.org/

http://www.raderprograms.com/

http://www.oneinfourusa.org/index.php