It is a beautiful day, or else, a terrible one, depending on what you focus on.

As I sit to type this, my mind goes into instant overdrive, as I'm relearning to single-task and the world is one giant, social-media-ball of distraction. I have an incredible headache. My feet are cold. I've been sick for almost a week. There's construction banging away right across the street from the chilly apartment where I sit, by myself, halfway around the world in Kiev, Ukraine away from my life, my home, my love, and my darling kitty that I miss so dearly and haven't seen in two months now.

All of which sounds pretty shitty, but despite all this I am overcome with joy and with gratitude, because of what I am choosing to focus on: I am on a trip around the world, because I am chasing my dreams. I am doing it. I have medicines from an inexpensive doctor in Paris and am sure that I am almost back to healthy. I have fuzzy socks that are mismatched and beyond comforting. Sitting and watching the construction team across the street is more fascinating than television. I have a whole day to sleep in, to catch up on emails, and to send photos to the incredible people who support me and my redikuluss quest for Worldwide #WhiteGurlBootay Domination..

​So should you ask me - It is in fact an INCREDIBLE day.

Basically, I am embracing the power of Focus. Where your attention goes, energy flows, and endlessly making and remaking the choice to focus on the beauty and endless joy of this present moment. After all, the present moment is all we have.

As you likely already know, I'm about to leave on my first world tour!! As you also already likely know, I have decided that a three month solo journey around the globe wasn't enough stress for one little blonde babe, so I've also created My First IndieGoGo and am currently crowdfunding the necessary funds to turn this trip into my first official webseries. And part of that process was a pitch page for "This Just Jin - Worldwide!" that features a countdown timer to my first flight this Friday evening...

This timer, which I thought was such a novel idea, has now become the deafening, ticking time bomb of what feels like my destruction. Or at least the destruction of my life on "stable ground." Come Saturday morning, I am a full-time traveler for the next three months, with dozens of photo shoots lined up, ZERO return flights booked, and infinite possibilities for disaster.

And I am fucking ready for it all!
(Well.. ready-ish!)
Keep reading for more fun, NSFW photos!

I recently had the incredible privilege of shooting with the delightful and talented Alan H Bruce in a beautiful sun-lit loft in San Diego. This recent trip was my version of a 'vacation' - three nights away from LA, spending time with family and my secret husband, and of course a loaded schedule and eagerness to spend every minute possible on my laptop, digitally conquering the world. Plus, you know, a couple shoots thrown in for good measure. A vacation! .. I may be doing this wrong .. 

Either way, I was doing a perfectly horrendous (my word of the week) job at doing any kind of relaxing, or any kind of productivity-ing. I had wrapped my mind too tightly around the concept of this 'getaway,' and when one thing out of my control happened prior to leaving, the whole house of cards came tumbling down. I suppose in this analogy, I would be the queen of hearts, laughing madly in the totally 2 dimensional pile of chaos on the floor - 'cuz that bitch is crazy.

Real quick let me put in a teaser photo, before I lose your interest all together (this is going somewhere, I think!)

All my usual bullshit goes out the window however (or at least it SHOULD) when the universe reminds me of the pain, and the reward, that results from new chapters in our life. Breaking through is ugly. Breaking through is HARD. And breaking through is also insanely, incredibly, indescribably beautiful.

At least that's what I've heard.
​I'll let you know once I'm on that other side.

This most recent reminder that, hey jin, life is hard, but also miraculous - maybe you should just chill the fuck out - came in the form of aforementioned darling and talented photographer Alan H Bruce. ... (keep reading, we're getting there!)

There's a certain magic to abandoned places.

There's whispers in the air, and endless spiders and sparkling dustmotes dancing hypnotically in the slowly drifting beams of sunlight. Your skin tingles with the sensation of another Someone, waiting, listening, breathing, right around the corner. But there's never an answer when you gently call out, except perhaps your own small voice, even smaller now on it's return, in reply.

The broken glass and wilting wallpaper, the illegible graffiti tags and random litter - the used condoms. .. seriously, you admire their dedication to safe sex.. well.. safe-ish sex - the couches thick with literal decades of dust, all silently speak of the hundreds of footsteps that happened in this once loved place. There's a Purpose and there's an Intention behind every brick in the mantel, every heavy, velvet curtain, every molding around a door frame, and that purpose up and left years and years ago.
Things change, and reasons die.

And we leave these places abandoned inside of all of us.

Now the weeds grow taller than the windows and the mosquitoes thrive in the thousands. And, this is Texas after all, everything is bigger here, and the mosquitoes embrace this just as fully as any one. What was once a Destination is now visited only by curiosity, trepidation, excitement.. and fear.

It's in these abandoned places that we face ourselves.
​It's in these abandoned places that we bring to life our fears, and it is here that we slowly turn, we breathe deep, we feel our hearts beat as we stand in hushed awe and, with great courage, it is here that we also find our faith. 

I am doing my godamn damnest to find faith through my fear, in all of my abandoned places. And honey, there's a lot of them.

"Hello Jin," I whispered into my folded arms, my hands clutching around my sides, feeling my quivering ribs beneath my desperate fingers. "It's OK Jin," I hold myself and try not to cry, try to just breathe into the moment, to tap into the infinite joy that exists, always, in the stillness of the present. "I love you, Jin," the tears well up regardless, my words come out choked and broken, and they sound completely foreign to my ears. Had I ever said them before..? Had I truly almost-reached 30 and never once told myself how much I mean to me? How beautiful I am? How strong and proud and determined and wonderfully, shatteringly human I am? I've shouted it from digital rooftops, I've screamed it in laughing faces and graffitied it on walls under cover of night.. but have I ever said any of it to Myself??

I never knew I needed to. I've spent my whole life looking at love's dancing, warped reflection on the water, trying to achieve what was only an illusion. 

"I love you, Jin."

I say it daily now. I say it, and I mean it.

​Or at the very least, I'm learning to mean it more every day. They don't teach you this in Hollywood.

So I'm sitting here in my bed, in my beautiful LA home, having just seen off the incredible Boston-based model/unicorn Collibrina who brought her unique, awesome, New-York-Jew/Bright-Light into my life, and I've got my mint tea and my uber chill music, my darling little lap desk set up and this GORGEOUS photo set to share.. and I want to write something prophetic and inspiring and enlightening and oh so so honest to go along with it.. 

​And all I can think about is how friggen anxious I've been this past week, and how much of a bummer that is to even share.

Let's face it; It's a pretty fucking anxious time.
​
But I'm happy to be here, to be anxious, because it means that I am alive and that I just have so so much coming up (I truly do!) and that my body is saying, 'Hey Jin, you know what happens when you eat sugar and drink tequila every day for a week.. Let's let this go, huh?' So let's not talk about anxiety.
I'm letting it go, and I'm building better habits, and I'm focusing in every moment to just be more mindful, more present, and to just be indescribably joyous about being alive.

*You probably know the drill here, but the photos to come are quite NSFW*

sometimes, you end up exactly where you are exactly when you need to be there.
​
and by sometimes, i mean always. at least, that’s what i believe.

(this image takes you to a special video post)

considering the rough waters of my life at this moment, my current state of insane self-transformation, the uncertainty of who I’ll be when I emerge, and the very recent death of my grandfather, it’s hard to always hold on to this belief...

​Today started with my usual morning ritual since I read The Miracle Morning  more than 200 days ago - Five minutes each of meditative silence, journaling, reading, affirming,  and visualizing. 

Yes, I am one of those. Or at least, I am trying to be.

"Wild Thang"

​Today's morning ritual was a little extra special though as it ended in tears after a particularly trying and long week, along with a sincere plea to the universe to send me help; To help me find the strength I know I have within me to be better and to work harder and to do the things I know I need to do in order to achieve the life that I want.

It would be completely accurate to say that I spent five minutes praying to God. It would also be completely accurate to say that my prayer was answered.

There is that brief moment at nearly every photo shoot, where I arrive, 50+ lbs of luggage in tow, and knock on the door to the home or studio of an absolute, complete stranger, where I stop and pause and think to myself how weird my life must sound when explained out loud.

At the very least it would be fair to say that my life is full of surprises. And often, they are quite incredibly beautiful.

You know those wonderful moments in life when you end up getting exactly what you needed, without ever having realized that it was what you needed in the first place?

This beautiful, serene, and memorable photo shoot with Bill Moisuk of Bill M Photography was exactly one of those moments.

'Holy shit - I still haven't done my VIP blog post this month! Where the fuck has September gone!!'

This thought raced through my head late one recent night. Actually I guess that was four nights ago. Shit. Feels like yesterday/a year ago. It's true - life for JNT has been CRRRAAAZZZY lately and this little B has been traveling, working, and loving life non-stop. But seriously - I hadn't yet done my VIP post/newsletter for September? Shit!!

Happy but exhausted, with about a million things still left to accomplish in what was already a late night before packing up, grabbing a couple hours of sweet, sweet, Zzz's, and waking up early to transport myself and about 75lbs of luggage from the heart of Brooklyn to the far west side of Manhattan as I moved on to the next leg of my northeast model tour, (*inhale*)
​I diligently added to the next day's schedule:

"Figure Out VIP Shiz!"

Just then, my host and Brooklyn native/amazing photographer/night owl/wayward-model savior  Paul Ward spoke from where he was seated at his computer about 10 feet from my bottom bunk, model nest (that's right, he has bunk beds for traveling models, be jealous), "I've just emailed you your top favorites from our shoot."

It feels good to cross things off the to-do list.

Prepare for some truly Amazing..