All posts by Avens O'Brien

Avens O'Brien is a second-generation libertarian residing in Los Angeles, CA. She spends an enormous amount of her time working for a digital media startup, and the rest of her time on numerous pursuits of passion: she tends to participate in fun antics and adventures (which she then writes about) as well as pretending to be really smart about politics and philosophy. She's an agitator of ideas, a doer of things, and contributes regularly for DL Magazine and Thoughts on Liberty. You can find all her writing on AVENS.ME.
Experiences

Winter Solstice 2019

In Old Norse tradition, on each solstice & equinox (each quarter year), we gather together to present a toast, a boast, and an oath. December 21st is the Winter Solstice. I do a personal version of this each quarter for myself (I grew up doing this with my Grove, which honored Celtic & Norse traditions), but I’ve decided that starting this Solstice, I will start sharing my toast, boast and oath publicly on my blog.

Usually the “boast” would be about something that came to fruition over the past quarter year, but since this is my first one publicly, and was included in my Solstice letter in my holiday cards, I’ve included a run-down of the highlights of my whole year.

Toast

My toast is to my friend Ali Cat.

I met Ali on AOL Message Boards nearly 20 years ago and we met in person for the first time in March of 2018 when she attended our mutual friend Arachne’s memorial service here in LA. She was in her mid-40s when she died of cardiac arrest unexpectedly last month. She was a good friend, a constant presence in my online life, and I will miss her tremendously. She was one of the most generous people I’ve ever known, constantly giving more of herself than she really had to spare. She is missed, but those who knew her knew she wore herself out, and now she rests without pain. My toast to Ali Cat!

Boast

My boast is that my life overall is very good and full of progress. In the final week of 2018, I moved in with Judd. This summer we celebrated the 7th anniversary of our first date. We’ve spent the year falling deeper in love, learning that we like living together, and mostly how to bribe each other’s pets to like us. 

His cat, Abby, is still skeptical of me, but always cute about it. My Quaker parrots, Petrie & Kiwi, are now 22 years old, and they don’t mind Judd approaching their cage as long as he’s giving them treats. Justice, my 8 year old footless conure is also subject to woo by treats, and will jump on Judd’s shoulder on occasion, though, of the 3 current birds at home, he has bit Judd the most. They’re slowly winning each other over. We keep the cat & birds apart though. 

Work is solid. I’m still consulting for Thoughtful Media Group, whom I’ve been working with since 2014. I handle their outgoing accounting each month. I also work closely with Judd on cannabis ventures which continue to expand – we’re working on building out and funding a fully vertically integrated cannabis company, which will handle product from seed to sale. It’s very exciting. 

Activism has been great as well. I gave very well-received main stage speeches at Anarchapulco and AnarchoVegas as well as the Libertarian Party of NH’s convention this year. I spoke on 3 panels at Freedom Fest as well as 3 panels at the Australian Libertarian Society Friedman Conference. I took well over 20,000 photographs and released over 9 albums of my photography, primarily at conferences and other events.

Other experiences this year included hosting a fundraiser for Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard in November, taking a helicopter ride over New York City in October, attending my first Ephemerisle in July, hitting some personal credit milestones over the summer, finding my baby birds (Friday & Sunday) a new home with a great family in June, helping with Los Angeles’ Yuri’s Night, and yet another Burning Man in August/September. I also did tons of karaoke, including adding Miley Cyrus’ Wrecking Ball and Peggy Lee’s Why Don’t You Do Right to my regular rotation.

Additionally, I was recently invited to join the Board of Directors of Feminists for Liberty this year. It is a fantastic organization and I’m proud of the work we will be doing.

Oath

In 2020, I have already committed to a speech at NH Liberty Forum in February and attending the Libertarian National Convention in Austin in May. Likely (unconfirmed) additions to my schedule include Anarchapulco in February, LibertyCon in DC in April, and Freedom Fest in July. I’m enjoying giving speeches and am getting better with each one.

I’m finding myself in a more comfortable place where I have more time to devote to things I really care about, so I’d like to be more active in the non-profit space with Feminists for Liberty and my own non-profit I’ve been trying to get started. I also plan to write more to bring attention to things I feel need it and to help my friends and fellow activists find ways to make their personal projects more successful, for the betterment of all of us. 

My ultimate goal (to make all the aforementioned happen) this coming year is to get better at my own personal time management, because doing so will make me more productive in all areas of my life. There is so much I wish to do and the only thing in my way is my own tendency to procrastinate.

Adventures, Character, Experiences, Humanity, Philosophy, Spirituality

Remembering the Dead to Remember How To Live

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10 years ago, on April 30th, I learned that Gabe Feld passed away. He was a member of my community in Boston. He was 24.

I didn’t know him tremendously well – I saw him at gatherings, had shared words and nods and smiles. But our community loved him, and what happened next really impacted my life.

Soon after he passed, a number of people within our community gathered around a bonfire to share stories of Gabe, and did so with his family present. His family didn’t always know this side of Gabe, but we shared our memories with them.

It was heartbreaking and it was powerful. Gathered in a circle around a bonfire in the backyard of a house on Wyman St in Jamaica Plain, I watched his family’s expressions. I watched people cry, and laugh, and all of us cry and laugh with them.

And while I was sitting there and listening to stories of Gabe, I selfishly thought of myself, and what would happen if and when I died.

I imagined who would mourn, and what stories they would tell of me.

I listened to all these stories of Gabe, of his yoga teaching and his fire spinning and his adventures, and I suddenly wondered if I was living the way I wanted to live – if I was living a life that upon my death, my friends would be able to gather and tell wild and fun stories of me, to share words that reminded them of me – to speak of my kindness, my intelligence, my heart, my passions, my fearlessness. The way they spoke of Gabe’s.

Would they say what I want them to say?

And then I thought about the fact that I can’t tell them what to say – I can’t control what someone might say about me once I’m gone.

But I can control myself, and the choices I make, and the life I live, and I can do things deliberately and with intention — I can live my life in a way that inspires people to say certain things about me.

I can’t control what they remember – but I can do my best to be memorable, and to be what I want to be remembered as.

Something shifted for me in the spring of 2009.

It took a break up that summer to push me through the next steps – but I remember Gabe’s memorial as the first moment where I choose this life.

I choose to write down words I always want to be remembered by. Adjectives and nouns I want people to use to describe me. I held those words close, and I started this chapter of my life.

I often credit my ex, Chris Baum, with helping me take the next bold move into the future – for inspiring me to move to Los Angeles, for ending things when he did, for pushing me out of my comfort zone and showing me I’d be perfectly okay.

But I don’t credit Gabe nearly enough. It’s weird because I didn’t know him closely – but his death, his memorial, it switched something in me, and started a path that others have helped me along – exes, lovers, friends, coworkers, mentors, strangers —

A year later, I set out to live 3,000 miles away from everyone I knew, and in my bag was a book with words I’d written down, of the legacy I wish to leave, and that all my choices, all my decisions, should remember those words.

Does what I do honor who I wish to be remembered as?

I live in many times:

I retell my past as vividly as I can, to remind myself of where I’ve been and what I’ve done.

I live as much as I can in my present, to truly give myself to the now and be what I want to be, and so I can tell these vivid stories as well when they are my past.

And I live in the future – by using who I wish to be as a compass for who I am now.

I even live in my death, by planning for it in this way.

2009 was a formative year for me in so many ways. And Gabe was part of that. And so were so many of my friends. And so are many of you.

It’s guided my activism, my online behavior, my offline behavior, my relationships, my work, and my decisions.

I remember sitting around a bonfire. I remember Gabe.

I am so very grateful. For all of this.

Adventures, Experiences, Philosophy

A Valentine (Again)

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Four years ago today, I posted a short entry to express affection for a man who’d been making himself a little home within my heart.

At the time we’d been dating for about six months. I teased him regularly that the shelf life on most of my relationships was less than eight months, and as he approached that mark and then surpassed it, he often joked that he was running out of time on my attention span and he’d lose me soon.

Early in our relationship, he shared his lack of fondness for Valentine’s Day. He’d avoided it every year, even when seeing someone, he told me. Women knew he wasn’t going to make plans with them that day, and that was that.

So when our first Valentine’s Day approached, in 2013, I assumed his personal tradition would hold true. I was living in Las Vegas, he was in Los Angeles. I wasn’t disappointed about it — I knew what to expect because he told me what he was like.

The day before Valentine’s Day was a Wednesday, and he sent me this adorable picture of the two of us, and told me he wished he could spend the day with me. I asked if he was serious.

He said yes, but he was leaving to shoot 2013’s International Students for Liberty Conference on Friday, so he’d be flying out at 8am the morning of the 15th.

He said if I could get to him for Valentine’s Day, he’d buy my return ticket home. So, at 5:30pm on the 13th, he purchased a ticket for me from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, same time as his flight to DC.

Last minute flights were a bit out of my price range, so I befriended a random German tourist who had decided to rent a Ford Mustang and drive from Las Vegas to Los Angeles on Thursday morning.

I’m not kidding. I met the German dude on Craigslist. He was 25ish, having his “American road trip” experience and was happy to drive me to LA for free just for the company for the 4.5 hour drive.

Thursday morning I hopped into the car of my new German friend, with just a backpack and my heart on my sleeve.

I arrived at his house mid-afternoon, bid good-bye to my chauffeur, and we spent the day and evening together – we made dinner and watched the movie Ted. We stayed up all night talking (and not talking), and in the morning we headed to LAX for our respective flights.

It was a perfect Valentine’s Day that neither of us expected.

I drew this for him on 2/14/2013.

Right before Valentine’s Day two years ago, we decided, very amicably and mutually, to break up. We wrote loving testimonials to each other and meant every word. The response from friends and followers was enormous and loving, and we were so grateful that our communities that we were both so involved in did not have to “choose sides”. We stayed close afterwards, and over time the lines we’d drawn eventually blurred between us.

Now he’s my Valentine again this year. Whether this lasts another 6 months or 6 years or a lifetime… I love our story and these adventures we have.

I’ll admit, I see us both as people who see the world and what we get from it as something within our control and ability. Like: I’m this way, and so this is how I react, this is how I want this interaction to go, this is what I do, and this is what I expect to happen.

I think when it comes to love, we’ve both let go of a number of our assumptions, because engaging in this story together as it unfolds is new, challenging, exciting, and unlike anything either of us has really done before.

Maybe it’s just a kiss, frozen in time, echoing back over four and a half years of very influential memories that keep us coming back to one another. But it’s special and it’s real.

I can’t say if it’ll last. I’ve never been out this deep before.

But I love that he’s my Valentine.

Character, Experiences, Humanity, Past

To Grammy…

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My last living grandparent died a year ago, on August 28, 2015. My father’s mother.

Constance Jacqueline Bouchard Erickson. We called her “Grammy”. She was 83. I don’t have a happy memory to share, really.

I last saw my Grammy when I was about eight or nine years old. I don’t remember much except the smell of cigarettes and particular sensations, like the feeling of the upholstery of her couch and the way her voice touched my ears.

She and my mother disliked each other tremendously. From everything I’ve been told, they had two major things in common: they had the same birthday (November 27th) and they couldn’t stand each other.

Continue reading To Grammy… →

Character, Experiences, Neo-Paganism, Paganism, Past, Philosophy, Spirituality, Writing

The Winter Solstice

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Though I’m a fairly agnostic atheist now, I was raised neo-pagan. My mother is a Druid High Priestess, my father a Wiccan priest. Several people have asked me to write about my experiences being raised this way — sometimes I consider it. In the meantime, here’s a snippet. Continue reading The Winter Solstice →

Adventures, Burning Man, Experiences

The Avens-Approved Burning Man Supply List

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So, you’ve decided to go to Burning Man. You found a ticket & have read the 10 Principles of Burning Man. You even read the Survival Guide.

You may or may not have friends you are going with, but you’ve requested that vacation time & you are determined to make it to Black Rock City & see what everybody keeps talking about.

Make sure you’re well acquainted with the guides that BM provides. Make sure you have a car pass for the vehicle you are traveling in (they want to encourage carpooling, you will not get in without your car having a car pass). The next thing you do is you end up asking one of your friends who has been going if they have a recommended supply list.

There are so many out there on the web & all of them are pretty awesome. Mine is a decent, every-growing production that has served numerous friends of mine in the past, particularly as I add colorful contextual commentary. However, there are definitely more comprehensive lists out there, I promise you that if you follow my list you won’t forget anything essential. You just might miss some of the treasures Mama’s dug up.

For the following list, I have included Amazon.com links that go through my affiliate program, so if you feel like buying “through” me, I appreciate the support. Thanks! Continue reading The Avens-Approved Burning Man Supply List →

Burning Man, Character, Experiences, Humanity, Philosophy, Spirituality, Tattoos, Writing

The Formula for Wanting

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My friend once asked me, why do we want what we can’t have?

It’s something I’ve thought about a lot. Living in Las Vegas, I saw many people let loose from their normal self-restraint, and watched as they deviated from the character they were, or pursued things far different than what they claimed to value back home. Continue reading The Formula for Wanting →

Character, Experiences, Humanity, Past, Philosophy, Spirituality

Right Place, Right Time

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The drop of a dubstep song and the scent of tequila: Las Vegas. A place where they pump extra oxygen into the casinos and clubs to keep you wide awake and dissipate the scent of cigarettes. I called it “home” for less than two years, but sometimes I feel I lived two decades inside them.

I like to believe that my life in Las Vegas made me a better person. It taught me so much about human interaction, the highs and the lows of life, and how you never know exactly what somebody else’s personal struggles are, no matter how perfect their makeup or how thick their wallet is. Living and working in Las Vegas was a study of the human condition – and how I can make someone’s day or night tremendously improved by my influence. Continue reading Right Place, Right Time →

Adventures, Character, Current Events, Experiences, Modeling, Past, Philosophy, Photography, Politics, Writing

See Me

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I have a lot of passions, some of which I advocate very strongly for. I think we all have things we care tremendously about, whether it is a way of life, or religion, politics or a particular hobby.

I hate to call myself an activist, I feel like it’s not the appropriate term for me, despite my level of political involvement. I would call myself a political writer, but I think I already explained in another post how I feel more like an “interpreter”. Mostly, I just live the life I wish to have – trying to be a positive example of the things I invest my time in. Continue reading See Me →