Blog

I LOVE meeting new people who are doing amazing things. I met Sean a few weeks back, on a spontaneous coffee/vintage store/mall run with a few mutual friends, and found that he and three friends had started making their own cold-brew coffee. Needless to say, we became friends. I mean, they’re making coffee. I couldn’t help but immediately love them!

Niko, Sam, Sean, and Winny are four Indonesian transplants, living in Columbus, OH. (The area I transplanted from, when I moved to Alaska). Lokal (/lo•kal/ ), the Indonesian word for local, was born as a way to connect the local community they had come to love with their heritage. “Our cold brew coffee is a product of our labor of love. It is about us combining our passions, utilizing all that we have and know to share our story.” Lokal’s coffee beans are sourced with the help of local micro-roasters, from fairly treated Indonesian farmers, and then cold brewed for 12 hours.  This provides the lucky Columbus citizens with an amazingly smooth and refreshing coffee. “Each batch is thoughtfully and meticulously optimized to bring out the flavor nuances of the different regions and farms.”

Local has won over my heart for their coffee (GET UP TO ALASKA ALREADY PLEASE), but also for what they stand for: “We want to share our heritage with you; to contribute to the enriching of the cultural wealth of the city. We want to support our local communities, by acting as a vehicle for our excellent micro-roasters to showcase their products. LOKAL cold brew is a platform for us to give back to the city and people that have continued to show us the meaning of home.”

So next time you’re in Columbus, be sure to check them out. You can find them on Sundays, 12pm-6pm, in a small greenhouse, located in the back yard of a beautiful little home goods shop called Stump. They will surely greet you with a giant smile, and some absolutely delicious coffee, both cold and hot. You can thank me later. 😉

If you want any additional info on their brand, check them out at http://lokalcoldbrew.com

August 30, 2015

A crisp fall breeze whips through your hair. The sun is warm on your face, but hot apple cider in your hands sounds so tempting. You breathe in deep – your lungs can’t get enough of the crisp mountain air. An exhale leaves your breath hanging in front of you, dancing with the sunlight.

I’ve been to a fair before, but this is different. I am with friends. The crew. There are mountains on all sides. We are in Alaska.

I am home.

When did simply doing what we love, stop being enough? Why does the world tell us we have to make more than we can spend, and buy more than we need, or even want?

A great sermon this Sunday had me soaking in these words: “We are meant to pour out everything we have in this life.” What does that mean?  I think it’s subjective and ever changing. But also, I think it is being fully present at all times. Suck all the marrow out of life. We are broken. And life throws us curves all the time…but life is vast and grand.

All the people I’ve met in Alaska so far, have immediately adopted me into their friend group. Never before have I felt so at home and welcomed. It’s been a week and I feel like I’ve known these people for years. Here, life is more than getting a degree, getting a spouse, a dog, a house, white picket fence, a baby, and job security. Here, life is different. Success is subjective. To some people, everything I just listed is the dream, and that’s okay. But that is not my dream.

My idea of success is ever-changing. Currently though, success is Jaclyn getting carmel apple goop all over herself on a ferris wheel, overlooking Alaskan mountains. It is waking up to a text saying, what are you doing today?! Let’s go to the glacier! Fresh coffee made by housemates, first thing in the morning. Seeing the mountains from a curtainless bedroom window, while the smell of incense permeates the air. It is living in the moment. It is having and living with only what could be packed up into a little jeep. It is meeting new people every day, who immediately want you to come rock climbing and snowboarding with them, and immediately refer to you as being part of the crew.

Alaska is derived from the word Alyeska, which means ‘that which the sea breaks against.’

For now, success to me, is living fully in that which the sea breaks against.

I’ve never really felt I’ve truly belonged anywhere. But last fall I visited Anchorage, Alaska, and that all changed.

Fast forward a few months and a friend from college told me that she also was feeling led to move to Anchorage. From there our hopes blossomed into a a few months of consideration and possibilities. Today, I am gleefully postinIg from beside my travel companion and roommate, in our new hometown in Alaska.

Though I will continually travel and work in the lower 48, but for now, I am so happy to call this wonderful place my home base.

So many people have said things to me in the past two years like, ‘when are you going to settle down?’ ‘I thought you were going to move to New York City after graduation.’ ‘Did you get cold feet?’ ‘Are you ever going to get married?’ ‘You can’t live life on the road forever.’ ‘Why in the world are you going to Alaska?’ And ‘Be realistic.’

Though they’re valid questions, they go against every grain of my being. Settling down seems so boring to me! And changing your mind is okay. I mean, that’s what college is for, to help you learn who you want to be. We are all made differently, and just because I don’t want to live as I am expected, doesn’t mean I’m being unrealistic. I’d love to get married, but it’s definitely not the first thing on my mind. I gotta find a guy to keep up with me first 😉 I’m being who I was designed to be.. and I sooooo encourage everyone to live the life they are designed for. It’s okay if you are happy where you are. But it is also okay if you want to make a drastic change. And it’s okay if it’s scary! That’s what makes it exciting.

Below are photos of the road trip up to Alaska, and my photo shoot in Glacier National Park for Pendleton Woolen Mills. I am so thankful for such wonderful people in my life who humor my wishes for photos: those whole travel vast distances in tiny planes, whip their hair around while balancing at the edge of a canyon, and volunteer their awesome skills (like flying a private plane to Glacier park for me). I can’t wait to begin sharing the beauty of my new home with you all!

People have always asked me if I’m fearful of going new places. I’ve never been afraid of traveling. Whenever opportunities present themselves, I jump and take them. It’s an insatiable desire I have. Some may know that since March of 2014, I have been living on the road. In this past year I have been to 20 countries and mostly just living out of one backpack. I’ve slept in every place from a train to the floor of a boat, a car to the branches of a tree, and even the side of the road. I LOVED every single minute of it. What some probably don’t know though, is that I was supposed to finish out a full year on the road with a short-term move to Cambodia this spring.

Something I’ve learned about myself is that I am totally comfortable in new places. I can explore and meet new people and feel absolutely no anxiety. The idea of Cambodia excited me! Living among the people there, learning about a new culture. The idea of living there for a few months ignites everything in my soul that I love. Yet something felt wrong. Like God was saying, not yet. Not now. I kept feeling this urge to go home, which is uncommon for me, to say the least. And to be honest, the idea of just staying home makes me more uncomfortable than anything I’ve ever done. 

I always thought of going home to Ohio as a let down. It’s not exciting or adventurous. And I had gotten so used to doing exciting things, that going home made me feel like I had failed. I thought of going home as weak. I could be doing so much more! Why would I go home when I could move to CAMBODIA! How cool is that?! I had the money saved, I had my housing arranged, I even had a travel friend. I struggled with what to do for most of the fall. What if I stayed home and missed out on this amazing opportunity? However, a dear friend of mine taught me that being home isn’t necessarily missing out on opportunities. In this case, going home could be an opportunity in itself. She kept telling me that there was a reason behind this bizarre desire I was having to return home. “A home is a guardian of identity,” and wasn’t finding my identity the entire reason for my traveling this year?

In the past months I’ve witnessed hospitality and love unlike anything I ever thought possible. It took a lot of fighting with myself to realize that now it’s my turn to give those things, rather than to keep taking them. Specifically, to give them to my family. Those who have always supported and loved and missed me. This is a season for me to remain home. To not work myself to death to pay for the next big thing. To do nothing for myself for the first time. I went to at Hillsong LA service a few months ago, while still on the road, and it was the defining moment when I thought, “okay God, I hear you.” The entire service was based on the quote, “There is beauty and power in us coming home.” The idea of being still in a familiar place makes me extremely uneasy. Yet, I know home is where I am called to be right now. And so I am. Just home.

Kelsey & Mikey Goodrich are two of my most favorite people in all this world. I met Kels back before I started college, at a IWU visit day. I saw her beautiful powdery skin and her dark hair and I marched up to her and declared, “You MUST let me photograph you” and we have been friends ever since. We used to go years between seeing each other, but I’m so glad that now days it’s closer to only a few months between my visits with this sweet girl. I had the absolute pleasure of being there for when Mikey proposed to Kels last summer, and also being the one to photograph their big day this past September. I feel so blessed to call these two beautiful hearts friends of mine. Kelsey works at a screen printing shop,  and is an brilliant artist, who also has quite the knack for decorating and creating all kinds of little things to sell on Etsy. Mikey is in a touring band, and entertained us with his guitar-playing during most of the shoot. We spent last evening together in their little home in Indianapolis, and I hope you love the photos as much as I enjoyed my time with them.