Category Archives: site

Updates!

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updates in pink, white and yellow

Noticed some changes around here?

It started a few months ago, I just really wanted a fresh & lighter feel to my site– so I did a lit­tle bit of tweak­ing. I’m still def­i­nitely in the process; hunt­ing through inspi­ra­tion on Pin­ter­est & start­ing to see pat­terns in what I want to do with Cos­mi­cOut­law. I’ve nar­rowed down on a color scheme-clearly revolv­ing around grey & pur­ple (I tend to grav­i­tate towards those 2 col­ors in all of my life)-but I’m going to be play­ing with some color here too (hello oranges, pinks & blues!). I’ve made quite a few behind the scenes tweaks as well.

I finally bit the bul­let & pub­lished a Face­book page (about time, you say!) I would LOVE for you to come hang out with me there! Also notice my snazzy new Flower of Life icons on the left of the page. (I got them here, if you like them!)

I’m so excited to be work­ing on my site! I feel such a renewed zest & vigor in all areas of my life lately, & Cos­mi­cOut­law is def­i­nitely my main focus. It doesn’t stop there though!

In my own life, I haven’t had a cig­a­rette in over 4 months! The effects have been pro­found, & not just phys­i­cally. I’ve learned a lot about myself & the nature of willpower & have been so inspired I’m cook­ing up a whole series about my exper­i­ments in self discipline.

sara and four different smoothies, a collage

Sara & her smooth­ies of late

I recently started using a Vita­mix & it’s fuck­ing changed my life; smooth­ies every­day (so far strawberry/ mint has been the best!), car­rot juice, aspara­gus soup, & that’s just the begin­ning. I’m ridicu­lously eager to try mak­ing my own nut but­ters & iced cof­fee drinks this summer.

I’ve been exer­cis­ing (ALMOST) daily & it feels amaz­ing. I’ve been clean­ing. I’ve been writ­ing daily. I pulled my bike out of stor­age (just in time for the scorch­ing sum­mer…) & feel­ing a vast improve­ment from how I’ve felt just a few months ago. If you remem­ber in my New Years post I talked about choos­ing a power word & I’ve really been focus­ing mine (war­rior). It’s filled me with intent & pur­pose & I’ve found that, even though I’ve def­i­nitely hit some tur­bu­lence this year, I haven’t fallen off track. High fives all around.

purple sara colorful collage art

Look­ing ahead:

+ I’ve been work­ing on some ultra excit­ing posts for you Out­laws– & have been exper­i­ment­ing with using an edi­to­r­ial cal­en­dar. I look for­ward to shar­ing with you on a more con­sis­tent sched­ule, so right now I’m just play­ing around with see­ing what works.

+ I’ve also been work­ing on the (some­times tedious!) process of orga­niz­ing my pho­tos & mak­ing art with them. I’ve been explor­ing all sorts of photo edit­ing apps & soft­ware– which is so much fun! I have some secret plans for my art as well… Some­thing else to look for­ward to!

+ I’m rework­ing my to do list/ life goals/ war­rior power plans. I’ve learned so much about myself, how I think/ work/ live, since I’ve last made any sort of long term goals– so I’m def­i­nitely eager to do a life audit. I know this is what I need to be doing because as soon as I made the deci­sion to do so, Alex pub­lished this piece on what is required for hap­pi­ness, & David posted this arti­cle on how to actu­ally do every­thing on your to do list. Ta-da!

+I’m in the process of going back to school in the fall! I know right!?

In case you’ve missed:

 

If you have any sug­ges­tions for Cos­mi­cOut­law– any­thing from posts you’d like to see me write about, to design tips; I’d love for you to get in touch! (Or even if you just want to talk to me about any­thing…!) Until next time!

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Rebirth

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You might have noticed the silence around here & come to accept the fact that I have caved into the resis­tance. It got the best of me, I admit it, but I’ve been rumi­nat­ing & sit­ting & reeval­u­at­ing & assess­ing my life, & I’ve drawn a lot of impor­tant conclusions.

I’ve decided I want a more hands on approach to my life, my art & writ­ing, my site, my work. I have a ten­dency to dwell in the abstract, ungrounded & vague. To me, how­ever, the whole point of phi­los­o­phy is to incor­po­rate it into the very core of your being, into every facet of daily life. You learn it, inter­nal­ize & apply it, & then phi­los­o­phy begins to change who you are & how you live. The resis­tance has left me in the inter­nal­ize phase, brew­ing, steep­ing, sit­ting on ques­tions & per­co­lat­ing with answers.
I feel like now I’m enter­ing a more action ori­ented phase now. I’ve been mak­ing changes in my life & now my site will evolve to reflect that. The main theme of this site (& my life) hasn’t changed, I just want a more hon­est & holis­tic pre­sen­ta­tion. Oh yes indeed! I have had plenty of time to come up with a bunch of rein­vig­o­rat­ing, life ignit­ing ideas to reju­ve­nate who I am & what I do, every­thing from detox­ing my make up, cut­ting my hair, read­ing things like Willpower: Redis­cov­er­ing the Great­est Human Strength, donat­ing & rid­ding myself of the use­less & the stale, con­tem­plat­ing a redesign of my site, & devlop­ing some ideas for really fan­tas­tic new writ­ing. I want to fea­ture more art­work & more writ­ing on how impor­tant & life affirm­ing art really is, I want to cre­ate adven­tures for myself through writ­ing. I want to fully explore & uncover the depth & pos­si­bil­ity of life. I want to use cosmicoutlaw.com as a place to design, share & encour­age such adven­tures.
So yes I’m back & there’s a lot in store for us.

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A disclaimer **

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20120611-210427.jpg
This is a disclaimer.

I would like to state quite clearly who I am with (mostly) full dis­clo­sure. A com­plete dis­claimer for every­thing I was / will be/ am.

& thus we begin.

I have very para­dox­i­cal views on the nature of the uni­verse. This comes off as con­tra­dic­tory, but thus is the nature of dual­is­tic men­tal­ity. All is one. All is noth­ing. There are no incom­plete wholes.

This seeps into my whole being & influ­ences who I am in every aspect of my life, from a diverse range of inter­ests, to a deep need of aware­ness, joy & compassion.

Com­pas­sion too, is a para­dox. It is not for lack of com­pas­sion that we are the most cruel, but often a mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of it.

It is for this that I iden­tify myself as being a writer, an artist, a stu­dent of con­scious­ness & the nature of exis­tence in it of itself.

I am the poet­sci­en­tist. The stu­dent of myth & math. I flow to rhythms while explor­ing unknowns.

& it is good.

& it is really shitty.

But first & fore­most I believe that every­thing is really truly ok. & there’s noth­ing bro­ken or noth­ing to fix.

& thus we fix these things with that knowledge.

I come across often as not mak­ing sense, but there’s a mean­ing behind every metaphor.
Mys­tery is a won­drous thing. It just hints of magic, a knowl­edge that there’s more to explore.

So I’ll go on with or with­out an advance warn­ing of who I am. But here’s one any­way.
These things here, these things that come out of my mouth/ my fingers/ my mind may or may not make sense. May or may not offend you. May or may not be what is con­sid­ered THE TRUTH. May or may not be of a graphic nature.

Pro­ceed with caution.

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On Creating a Digital Sanctuary//Site Policy!

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This post is a tad on the bor­ing side! But it’s nec­es­sary in main­tain­ing a pos­i­tive, magic, dig­i­tal sanctuary!

This pol­icy is designed to ensure CosmicOutlaw.com remains a dig­i­tal sanc­tu­ary for myself and oth­ers. Cos­mi­cOut­law is Sara Whit­te­more, who is will­ing to address any issues, ques­tions and con­cerns. You can email her here

All con­tent on CosmicOutlaw.com unless oth­er­wise noted, is cre­ated by Sara Whit­te­more and is released under a cre­ative com­mons license. Please feel free to share or fea­ture her con­tent how­ever you may, she just asks that you link it to CosmicOutlaw.com

All opin­ions, views, and ideas are that of Sara Whit­te­more. Life is a per­sonal expe­ri­ence and she can only speak from indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences. Her phi­los­o­phy is inher­ently con­tra­dic­tory and stems from the idea that all is noth­ing AND every­thing. Please keep that in mind.

Addi­tion­ally, Sara strives for authen­tic­ity and accu­racy in her work, but she is no expert. Please exper­i­ment and find things out for your­self. Cos­mi­cOut­law is not to be held liable for any infor­ma­tion pre­sented on this site. The site may also con­tain adult themes-be warned!

Com­ments. In order to main­tain a dig­i­tal sanc­tu­ary, Sara Whit­te­more reserves the right to edit or delete any com­ments found neg­a­tive or not in align­ment with the ideals of this site, both on CosmicOutlaw.com and its social net­work­ing counterparts.

Affil­i­ates and Adver­tis­ing. Sara Whit­te­more may at times choose to endorse prod­ucts, peo­ple, and ser­vices aligned with the phi­los­o­phy of CosmicOutlaw.com. Sara Will note when this hap­pens. All Ama­zon links are affil­i­ates. If this isn’t your cup of tea, no wor­ries, you can search for them sep­a­rately. How­ever, by pur­chas­ing them directly off the site you can help keep CosmicOutlaw.com run­ning! Every­thing endorsed, Sara truly believes are beau­ti­ful and trans­for­ma­tive. If you are inter­ested in adver­tis­ing on CosmicOutlaw.com, please email Sara for rates and information!

Prod­ucts. Sara Whit­te­more offers PDF Pub­li­ca­tions (down­load reader), prints and full scale paint­ings for sale. All are done through pay­pal (though other arrange­ments can be made! Just ask) and are in USD$. These will be avail­able for down­load through a direct link or sent to you via email. If the item you have pur­chased requires ship­ping, addi­tional ship­ping fees may occur. All items will be deliv­ered after pay­ment is received. (Note: Sara will occa­sion­ally accept trades-So if you have a prod­uct or ser­vice of roughly equal value you would like to trade– send her an email!)

Sub­ject to change with­out notice, please check back! IF you have any ques­tions, con­cerns or sug­ges­tions please feel free to get in touch! 

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The Experiment Concludes: Publishing Daily for a Month!

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Ah! I can­not believe I’ve pushed pub­lish EVERY SINGLE DAY for a month! What a scary, trans­for­ma­tive, exhil­a­rat­ing expe­ri­ence! Oh the things I’ve learned!

You can read my thoughts on pub­lish­ing every­day after two weeks here. These per­cep­tions all still apply, but I’ve grown and explored even more since then.

I started this on day one, by think­ing ”I’m a flake, what will I write about? I’m gonna give up before I man­age to even start.” These were lies! Resis­tance lies I told myself out of fear. I not only did it, but was over­joyed to do it. Past the first day-which was the tough­est– I loved pub­lish­ing every day. I would say the most PROFOUND impact it had on my life was it s-l-o-w-e-d my per­cep­tion of time. Nor­mally, months whirl by and I just want to pump the breaks scream­ing I DIDN’T GET ANYTHING DONE! Pub­lish­ing daily was putting my foot on the breaks. I feel like I got a ton done this month! I have active proof that I did things this month.

My day has become struc­tured around publishing-which is what I wanted. I write, I read, I brain­storm, I go have adventures/experiences, I take a zil­lion pic­tures, I’m doing the things I love in my life, which should be the goal/end result of anything.

Con­se­quently, I’ve been exper­i­ment­ing with col­ors and I’d like to exper­i­ment with for­mat more. I’m on my site daily-so I can evolve it bit by bit. I’ve tweaked my side bar, added affil­i­ates, fixed my tags, changed my pro­file and about pic­tures, I’ve writ­ten a site pol­icy (which I shall be post­ing soon!), devel­oped a busi­ness plan, I have set spe­cific goals for how I’d like to grow my site in the next year-all from pub­lish­ing daily.

Ana­lyt­i­cally, pub­lish­ing every­day has def­i­nitely grown my read­er­ship. I expect this will con­tinue the more I go. I’ve shared my posts on face­book, twit­ter, and google plus and some of my favorite posts I share with the SOL­Diers. I’m still try­ing to fig­ure out how and who to share with (where do y’all post your work?). I sus­pect the more I pub­lish and exper­i­ment the more I’ll fig­ure these things out. Through shar­ing I’ve con­nected with all sorts of beau­ti­ful, cre­ative peo­ple, been intro­duced to their work, which grows me as well. Friend­ship and con­nec­tion were def­i­nitely two of my most impor­tant goals in start­ing Cos­mi­cout­law.

Pub­lish­ing daily has let to a lot of ideas for things to try and do in my offline life. I’m writ­ing a book, which I’ll talk about tomor­row, but now I’m already grow­ing an audi­ence and have a place to dis­play my art and writ­ing. This is thrilling! All from shar­ing daily!

So this com­pletes my exper­i­ment in pub­lish­ing daily for a whole month. It was an ecsta­tic suc­cess! Now I’m chang­ing the exper­i­ment to see how long can I keep going. I don’t have a goal. 100 days sounds nice, but really, I just want to go on for­ever. It seems likely that I’ll need a break even­tu­ally, but maybe not. How long can I go? How long could you go? (More than you think, I bet!)

P.S. Today is my 25th birth­day! What a great way to start the sec­ond half of my 20’s! Pub­lish­ing daily/Birthday high fives! 

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Pushing Publish: Two Weeks In

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It’s been almost 2 weeks since I began my exper­i­ment in pub­lish­ing daily. Since I’m almost half way through my goal of mak­ing in to Jan­u­ary 31st (which also hap­pens to be my BIRTHDAY & the day I plan on launch­ing an excit­ing new ser­vice), I thought that today would be a good day to talk about my experiences.

It’s actu­ally been a lit­tle more easy than I thought. I thought I’d feel anx­ious and unin­spired most days, but really the hard­est day was Jan­u­ary 1st– I came really close to not even begin­ning. I kept think­ing, Oh It’s not really that impor­tant, I’ll just start next month, I’m not pre­pared.’ But those were all resis­tance games and I wouldn’t have been any­more ready next month, it would have been the same game but eas­ier to put off com­pounded with more guilt.

I thought inspi­ra­tion would be a huge issue– which it is, but it’s eas­ier to stay inspired than I thought. I’ve been read­ing sev­eral books, which give me ideas daily, and all the lovely new blogs and peo­ple I’ve encoun­tered are end­less sources of inspi­ra­tion. I’ve found that inspi­ra­tion isn’t really some­thing that STRIKES you, it’s some­thing you have to actively work towards. By push­ing pub­lish, I’m build­ing up an archive of inspi­ra­tion. I have proof of what I’m doing, it’s a build up of momen­tum. I can look back and gain ideas from past insights.

It is a rev­o­lu­tion in my own life (or at least it seems like the begin­nings of one). Since I have to actively seek inspi­ra­tion– I can’t just spend all day smok­ing weed in bed watch­ing tv. I’m forced to read things, to go out and do things, to work, or I won’t have any­thing to share. I’m forced to think more.

Another one of my con­cerns was the fact I spend a lot of time out­side of my house. It’s easy to work alone in your room, it’s harder to work out­side with your boyfriend and most of his friends over. And I’m a not-so-secret huge sports fan, and my foot­ball team made the play­offs for the first time in 18 years, so not being caught up in that (when all of your friends, par­ents, ENTIRE CITY is hyped) is vir­tu­ally impos­si­ble, and it is a dis­trac­tion. I’ve man­aged to push through and work even when I’m here (which I cur­rently am). I feel that this is TRANSFORMATIVE since I’ve never been able to work here before. This means, the resent­ful, neglected side of me that gets offended over too much Mad­den & Fifa, doesn’t come out that often because I’m focus­ing on my own shit.

The thing that causes me the most anx­i­ety is if I don’t have some­thing ready to post the night before. ‘Great, now I have to think of some­thing and write and edit tomor­row a midst blah blah blah blah.’ I am con­cerned that I’ll give up more eas­ily if I don’t have some­thing I can post (at least an idea!) the night before. I am craft­ing this the day of, but I had an idea of what i was going to say last night. I also sort of cheat on Thurs­days, it’s not my writ­ing, just the linkstreams of inter­nety good­ness. This feels like my bingo free spot and gives me an extra day before the week­end– and the week­end, like I said, can be pretty dis­tract­ing. I feel like if used cor­rectly, I could get all 3 week­end posts knocked out on my Thurs­day free­bie, which releases a lot of anx­i­ety (and makes sure I keep going!)

I guess what I feel the most is proud. I have stuck to things before (albeit rarely), but this time feels the most dif­fer­ent. First of all, I haven’t hit a point where I’ve just wanted to give up yet, it hasn’t even crossed my mind, in fact, I’d like to keep going after the 31st if pos­si­ble, I’d like to see how long I could go in gen­eral. I feel waves of pride when I check off on my cal­en­dar, Yes I did hit pub­lish today!

It’s also get­ting eas­ier to share the pieces and I am learn­ing what types of things land with what types of peo­ple. It feels like a lit­tle social exper­i­ment. A lot of my lovely read­ers have liked my Prin­ci­ples of Art, a lot have enjoyed the things I say about writ­ing. Some posts get more likes and oth­ers get retweeted more. It’s really inter­est­ing but I hope it doesn’t start to affect the way I write. I’d like to just keep writ­ing and keep notic­ing with­out judg­ing or chang­ing. I have learned that the more vul­ner­a­ble the post it, the more it does seem to land for peo­ple. And well, if I do change any­thing about the work, being more vul­ner­a­ble is pretty ok with me.

So that’s it. Two whole works of actu­ally pub­lish­ing. I would like to give myself a pretty big, whacky, overzeal­ous high five right now. I would also like to sug­gest that you exper­i­ment with pub­lish­ing daily. Because I see it not just chang­ing my writ­ing, but my men­tal­ity, my relationships…MY LIFE. Why haven’t I been doing this…Always?

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newsletter questions

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I’m set­ting up a newslet­ter and am curi­ous as to what you the read­ers would be inter­ested in hav­ing in it. What can i add to a newslet­ter that will make your expe­ri­ence of this site even bet­ter? What do you want from a Cos­mic Out­law let­ter?  (What kind of things would you like from the site in gen­eral?) And how often would you like to receive it? Thank you, your opin­ion mat­ters mucho to me! As soon as I get it up and run­ning I’ll make a post so you can opt in!

Love!

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