hopelessly devoted to... yes, that's right: Fargo. and Misfit.

Yeah, I know. I don't expect you to understand it right off the bat. I know it sounds strange, right: me, North Dakota, Fargo. 

And it's almost 11pm and I'm writing, and I'm not a nighttime writer generally. Because generally I'd have been asleep for a few hours by now.

But after Day 1 of the Misfit Conference in mind-blowing Fargo, North Dakota, I'm fairly-well buzzing. In fact, if it were possible to levitate, to achieve lift-off just by the power of a mind stuffed with amazing new friends, great conversations, unbelievable food, the brilliant speakers, creativity and inspiration just of Day 1, 

well, fuck: I'd be flying right now.

Instead I'm scribbling at 11pm because I don't know what else to do with this feeling, now that I'm back to the quiet of my plush hotel room and the ringing in my ears from the sound of my own laughter is subsiding.

Now that I'm back and reflecting a little on the day, trying to sort through what I lived through today, what we lived through.

Here's what's miraculous about being in this precise place, Fargo, North Dakota, right now. Because I'll be honest, and I know it'll sound weird or a little crazy, it does feel distinctly miracle-ish.

I've been obsessed with Making lately, not just in the sense of remaking my whole life (check! which I'm still jumping around about), but also with the very real task of actually making *things.* And I've been obsessed with buying things Made by other actual people, people who give a shit about the details, who go the extra mile to ensure that even the packaging of whatever that thing was you bought off Etsy is awesome, people who mind their penmanship on the handwritten card they send, people who deliver above-and-beyond.

That. I've been obsessed with that. That attention to detail which recently I realized, thanks to a short piece on NPR about Walt Disney, is what makes something, an experience, an object, a moment, ART.

Buttering all the way to the edges, or plussing up as Disney called it: that's what elevates something, even something ordinary, to ART.

And right here, right now, in Fargo, North Dakota, I feel like I've been dropped into a community -- and I don't mean the community of people who have traveled here for MisfitCon from Australia and France and  Ireland and Canada and Puerto Rico and England and Mexico and all over the US, but the people who live here -- I've been dropped in the midst of a community that is quite deliberately all about this notion of Making, whether it's in a gallery or a restaurant or a store, or whether it's about re-Making their entire town, with intention. in other words, with ART. 

So yeah, I'm reeling from hearing Jonathan Fields of Good Life Project and and Nathan Clark of Wondermade, and Amos Kennedy, among others, from listening to Claudia Alick just slay us with poetry, from hanging around in a happening place with happening people. I'm inspired and keyed-up and so excited that there's another day of the conference. And then after that, lots more days, though not in Fargo, to keep knowing the great people I've met and to keep feeding off this great circuit of energy.

'Cause here's something else: all that Making, all that extra-mile ART? That's love, pure and simple. Love, baby. And I love it.

I'll be coming home all filled-up, fired up to keep on living deliberately, a big life, the one I want, one that's beautiful and bold and creative and just right.

I keep looking around and asking, How'd I get so lucky? Was I really good, and then I died and this is Heaven? Is this real life?

It is. And it's so good. It's Fargo.

Fuck yeah.

XX