FROM EMRYS AND BLAZE AT WILD KNIGHTS TO YOU,
We hope your day embodied the word HAPPY!
Here’s Coconut, the happiest pup we know!
Month: March 2016
A Message to the Passionate
Let me hear an “amen” and a “hallelujah” from all of you who want more but don’t know where to turn first. Let me hear a resounding roar of any frustrations you’ve ever had with being told you “can’t”. Let me tell you I feel this, and I’m taking a stand with you.
Whatever it is you want be it money, love, adventure, art, a change in collective consciousness, or even something as simple as to do exactly what you love and make bank at it, I know there’s a market or space for you to do it. I know too many people who know our systems are not working and even squash opportunity for the creative and ambitious, but that doesn’t mean we have to play their game. Every bully on every playground in the history of playgrounds wanted to fill a void of need in their life, and those assholes just grew up to tell the kids that life is tough, work is something to be survived and not loved, and change is a greasy pizza pie in the sky dripping on your glitz. Well, I say a proud fist in the face is in order. Stick it to The Man. Change starts with you, me, and, most importantly, US.
Do your research: every successful entrepreneur in the world has learned to listen and connect to their target audience. We don’t find success with a field unless we are passionate, so the world is better off with you following your dreams than not. Of course, let me define what success means to me: Success in my life will mean I am electrified and ecstatic to be in the present moment, interconnected yet unique in a wide world of beautiful people who all love and appreciate each other and our planet. NOT too much to ask for, eh?
What inspires you? What do you want to be? These are personal, so the more honest you are the better. I don’t care if your answer would fit perfectly onto a Hot Topic tee shirt (Mine is much more likely than the average bear’s, I promise).
I want to share another TED that helped inspire me. I’m still looking for where I belong, a lot like anyone who is experiencing the sensations I mentioned earlier, and this lady does a fabulous job of explaining the journey from having no one to share her art with to having a community a couple million strong: How To Find A Tribe That Loves Your Art: Heather Dale at TedxUW
Take on the world! Fight! WIN!!! And comment and tell us ALL about it! You can even tweet us @Wild_Knights!
Blaze
Start Your Own Adventure: Travel!!!!
My entire life I dreamed of seeing and changing the entire planet, but at the age of 21 I realized that I had done nothing to achieve it. I had worked on my music degree and I had cultivated different talents, but I didn’t have the resources to go on a grand adventure like I had always wanted. Or so I thought. Money had always been an annoying speed bump for me. I was always forced to live paycheck to paycheck at a mediocre job, and wasn’t sure how to break the loop.
One day by accident I came across a site that listed job opening for national parks. I saw openings for jobs ranging from Housekeeping at Yellowstone National Park, to giving sled dog tours in Denali, Alaska! I thought, “Eh what the hell, can’t hurt”. A week later, I was an employee at Yellowstone National Park.
The Greyhound was terrible. The destination: Worth it.
When I got there, I saw more and did more than I had in my entire life. I hiked from dawn to dusk, up mountains and across plains, and completely transformed my body along the way. I met people from all over the world who became close friends. A ridiculous Romanian who only ever referred to me as “Joker”. A Russian gal who was stern at work, but hilarious after 6-12 beers. A fellow from Virginia who was one of the best hiking partners I could ask for.
“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
Today I wanted to tell you a bit of my story, and list some of the ways that you could start your own travel adventure. Rather than working at an hourly job and waiting for the agonizing shift to end, go out and see the world. Here are a few of the ways that can help you take that first step:
- The website that I stumbled upon that started my adventure: http://www.coolworks.com/. You can find a job in a field that you are interested in, or you can try something new, like giving tours on sled dogs or becoming a hiking guide.Hell, a friend of mine get’s paid good money to Ski. O.o
- Get involved with organizations that interest you, but may not be close by. Internships or volunteer opportunities are available in many places, and it can put your foot in the door whatever field or passion that you want to be involved in.
- http://www.adventurework.co.uk/ is a great place to look for jobs for people who are active and want to be a paid instructor in activity that they love. From rafting, hiking, mountain climbing, ect. The list is goes on. Shake up the monotonous routine by doing something that makes you smile.
Those three options can help you begin your journey, but if these didn’t seem right for you, there are plenty more opportunities out there. Blaze and Me are happy to help all our Wild Knights find a path to the greatest adventures of all! Let us know if you have any questions, comments, or anything! If you need, I’d be happy to even be a work reference!
Farewell for now, Wild Knights. We are in this together! ♥
~Emrys
Can I Live in a Living Building???
Hey Wild Knights! Blaze Here!
I have another piece of environmentalism for you to think about: ever heard of the Living Building Challenge? Here’s a good introduction video that not only includes practical models and examples but also provides a different philosophy on architecture!
Living Buildings for a Living Future – Jason McLennan
If you don’t have time for a 15 minute video, here’s the short of it: Imagine one day having a city full of homes, businesses, and public buildings that have functioning parts like an organism and are GOOD for the environment rather than being “sustainable”. They create more energy than they use. These buildings are even compared to flowers the way they operate (Who wouldn’t want to live in a building that works like a flower.)
photo: Joe Mabel
This is the “ooh la la” of living buildings, The Bullitt Center in Seattle, Washington. Be like the people that made this: let’s make Wild Knights HQ look like this in the future, but with more trees! Or, let us animals take it a step further and make a real Zootopia! Please?
Art that should totally be real courtesy of Walt Disney Animation Studios
Until next time you foxy thing,
Blaze
A Call to Arms
Good evening all! After a couple days of expanding the blog, changing platforms from Tumblr to WordPress, getting us a Twitter, and recruitment of new Knights, I wanted to do a quick post more related to our overall mission. As it says in Our Purpose page;
“Wild Knights is a blog/movement created by two lunatics who wanted to bring the world’s most talented and optimistic people together. We wanted an organization that celebrated all passions, from music and writing to environmentalism and politics. Together with such a diverse and magnificent group of people, we can come together to shape the future of our planet.
So regardless of what you love or what your background is, if you want to get involved and change the world please let us know. We would love to work with you! This blog may seem to include a wide variety of topics, but they all serve a purpose: to invite others to broaden their minds to something that they didn’t know before, or to show how far we have come in different ways.”
In my travels across the U.S. and making many international friends while working at Yellowstone National Park, I found people who were all so very different in personality and hobbies, but all wanted to make a difference in the world. Like a lot of people who want to change the world, we didn’t know where to start. Should we donate money to an organization like Greenpeace? Should we volunteer somewhere to bring awareness to environmentalism?
Our answer was Wild Knights. At first just a blog to share our interests and bring awareness to various important happenings across the world, we have expanded to become more involved in these affairs. As shown by the Bernie Sanders campaign, when a lot of passionate people come together, there is nothing that can stop us. We have a long way to go before we can enter the global stage, but we WILL make our mark!
Tell us what you think and let us know how you want to get involved in making our planet a better place. We appreciate any ideas for expanding our base and involvement!
“To really change the world, we have to help people change the way they see things. Global betterment is a mental process, not one that requires huge sums of money or a high level of authority. Change has to be psychological. So if you want to see real change, stay persistent in educating humanity on how similar we all are than different. Don’t only strive to be the change you want to see in the world, but also help all those around you see the world through commonalities of the heart so that they would want to change with you. This is how humanity will evolve to become better. This is how you can change the world. The language of the heart is mankind’s main common language.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Tons of love!
Emrys and Blaze
Into Darkness
Hello all! Apologies for the delay this past week, had a shift in living arrangements in preparation for my next Yellowstone adventure. 😀 For tonight’s post, I’m going to take a mini break from animals and environmentalism. I want to look into the history and various forms of a beastie in mythology and popular culture that has fascinated me recently:
Demons.
Generally, I imagine that everyone knows the word, and even has a general idea of what a demon is. The standard depiction of a demon in this day and age is of a supernatural entity, mostly malevolent, depicted in everything from religion to ancient folklore.
The origin of the word demon in Greek, Daimon, did not actually imply any set morality. The word itself simply meant “spirit”. Over the ages, the word has come to mean something bad.
In the Christian faith, a demon is considered an unclean spirit or fallen angel, capable of tempting mortals and inhabiting their bodies, requiring an exorcism to remove. In Islam, demons are called Jinn, and their origins are quite similar to their Christian counterparts. Unlike Christian demons, Jinn can be good or evil, and being a Jinn does not imply malevolence.
Christian demonology is the most expansive reference for what a demon is and does. Like angels, demons have entire hosts or armies and are often led by an Archdemon. In older texts,
Belial, Ashtaroth, Asmodeus and Lucifer were the names of the Archdemons in charge of the infernal host of Hell.
The appearance of demons are extremely varied. In some cultures, the can appear like any other person, usually with features that betray their true nature. Jinn-type demons on the other hand are depicted as glowing beings of ash and smoke. Even further down the spectrum are depictions such as the Christian lord of demons, Beelzebub, who often appeared to mortals as a fly.
One of the most well known pieces of literature about demons (besides the Bible), is Faust by Goethe. In this famous German legend, Faust is a successful scholar who becomes dissatisfied with life, and makes a deal with a demon called
Mephistopheles for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. In this depiction, the demon is not so much the antagonist as the tool by which Faust brings about his own end. Mephistopheles is shown to be capable of great feats, but only as part of the deal he made with Faust.
The connection between demons and making deals has gone on well into the 21st century.
“Faust” and the adjective “Faustian” imply a situation in which an ambitious person surrenders moral integrity in order to achieve power and success.
There are sooooo many different types of demons in history and mythology, so below i’ll leave a link to an A-Z list of demons of all types from all different cultures. http://www.deliriumsrealm.com/demons/
(as for my personal favorite demon; Sebastian Michaelis from Black Butler)
Hope this post wasn’t an overload! As always leave us some feedback and let us know if you want to see any topic up here. May your week be wonderful and your nights be Wild 😀
~Emrys
Wild Knights 