In 2018, I signed up for a course titled “Careers in Writing” after becoming interested in the course description. When I walked through the door and heard that we would be conducting professional interviews with clients and would have a lot of group work, I nearly walked right out of the course to go home and drop it entirely. For whatever reason, I thought that this would be a good first chance to step outside of my comfort zone and really test my own limits. Our first assignment? Create a portfolio website that was encouraged to keep up with through the rest of our college years and beyond. Thus InkandCrystals was born. Most of my peers created their websites as FirstNameLastNameCreations/ Writing/ Whatever, which is fine. I wanted mine to be unique and memorable.
The “ink” portion of InkandCrystals is a bit symbolic in terms of the entire name. For starters, ink is used in most forms of writing from simple paper and pen ink to the ink from your printer. This is a writing website, is it not? However, the other reason for “ink” is because I’m tattooed. I love my tattoos and they’re a large part of who I am and an extension of my personality. The third and final meaning is that there is a song called “Ink” by the band Coldplay. I really like Coldplay. At the time this website was created, I was going through some pretty traumatic life events including a complete loss of self and loss of religious faith. I spent a year or so really delving into paganism where crystals are a huge part of most practices under the pagan umbrella. While I’m not as into it as I was when I was researching and exploring it, it’s still a meaningful reminder to me of that time period and I find it fun to look at where I am now.
I spent a lot of time tweaking, updating, and trying to perfect my website. I don’t think I’ll ever truly feel like it’s perfect so you might see it change in appearance and structure from time to time but my posts will always be there. I spent a lot of time ensuring that every essay and assignment that shows off the skills gained while attending college are shown on this site. I have found that, as a college grad working full time, it’s quite difficult to come up with new pieces that aren’t selfish, goofy pieces. I’ll keep trying and keep brainstorming, so I hope you stick around!
Ink and Crystals 