Eugene Speaks : 29 Stories in 29 Days

Eugene Speaks is a personal project created in the white space between school, work and sleep. I was inspired by Humans of New York and Everyday Boston to tell the stories of my fellow Eugene residents. 

This project was both challenging and enthralling. Every day I would listen to someone's story. My hope was to learn from them and inspire their dreams through my questions.  

The questions I asked:

-What is your favorite thing about yourself?

-Has anyone every told you that you couldn't do something?

-What is your biggest dream?

-What is your life motto or favorite quote?

Challenges:

Interviewing, transcribing and editing every day proved to be more difficult than I expected. Getting text and images onto Instagram was at first tedious until I used Google Drive as my go between.

Takeaways:

People are people are people. We all want someone to care about our stories. I hold these 29 people's stories close to my heart. They taught me to care about all of the people I used to walk by without even looking them in the eye. 

Day 1 Marissa

Hi, my name is Marissa. I've been living in Eugene for almost ten years. I'm super good at puns and I usually can get someone to laugh if I have a conversation with them. I like to see people smile. If I can make other people happy it makes me happy. I feel like that's sort of a very Miss America sort of thing to say but it's true. If I see someone struggling, then I want to help. I remember when I was in middle school whenever I found money on the ground I would just give it to someone else and it would make their day. And that makes me feel like I have worth. Yeah, that's what makes me happy. When I know that I was able to help someone else. It doesn't have to be a big thing. I can't be Oprah and give everyone a new car. 

Ever since I was little, I wanted to be an actress. I am not good at acting. I had been seriously thinking I'm definitely going to be an actress up until I was 16 or so. That was my happy place for a while. Everyone said I didn't have what it takes. I didn't have the money to pay for failure. That was when I realized I should do something realistic and something I'm good at. I'm okay at Japanese. It's probably my second biggest passion. Sometimes I get sad thinking my life is just a compromise. But a least I'll have money!

#eugenespeaks

Day 2 Natalie

Hi, my name is Natalie. In my family I was always known as the smart one who could cook. I am a stay at home mom with my kiddo and I basically needed some sort of outlet other than just sitting at home. I didn't have any really great hobbies other than cooking. I cooked for my family starting in junior high. My mom didn't like to cook. I would basically take over different elements of cooking for my family and I grew up in a big family. I was the oldest of 7 and then we grew to 11 people.

When I left for college, I still had my job at Starbucks and I kind of kept that job all the way through. Then I started hanging out with the cooks who ran the kitchen at the Mackenzie Study Center. I thought they were the coolest people in the world. They made challah bread and beautiful soups from scratch. It was just this whole other world of like you make this really good food and it can be inexpensive. You can feed it to lots of people. It's something a normal person can do. It's something I could see myself doing and it made everybody love you. I could give my friends a lot of love by cooking for them. Not that that was the whole point, but like it was this really cool, quiet way to take care of friends and loved ones and people at large.

I think we all have that part of is us that just wants to help people. It's really cool because I could get paid and help people at the same time. It's allowed me to have this sense of pride about what I do and passion for what I do on a daily basis. It provides for my family with a good life and a happy life.

#eugenespeaks

Day 3 Tadd and Jessica

Hi, I'm Jessica and this is Tadd. 
Tadd: We've been married 25...
Jessica: It'll be 26 years in June.
Tadd: Yeah, 26 years.
Jessica: I think we've really gotten more in unison with what we want. We don't want a big old house. We just want simple, and we want to be healthy. I think when you're in your thirties you work towards getting all this stuff. Then you're just like, why are we doing that? Why are we striving for all that stuff and security? I think that God doesn't want us to feel secure in all those things. I think he wants is to be secure in Him. As Americans it's really hard to avoid wanting that security. 
Tadd: Yeah, I think we've always been together with things. We always talk a lot and always share our different dreams to do this or that. I'm a dreamer so that's a big subject matter. I want to do everything that I haven't done in regards to learning languages, to building boats to...
Jessica: ...learning all arts and crafts, making a rug in India, carving out a boat in Greece, making pasta in Italy, or making wine in France. Tadd would like to do all of this. And more! (Both laugh)
Jessica: My dreams are much more practical. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night at 2am and then I just lay in bed and think about my ideas. Then I wake up in the morning and wonder what was I thinking? It was so dumb. (Laughs)
Tadd: Another what I call "smile moment."

#eugenespeaks

Day 4 Michael

Hi, my name is Michael. I'm extremely busy. I'm 34 years old. I'm raising three kids singly. I have a 15 year old boy, 12 year old girl, and 10 year old boy. I go to the Y every day. It's just, um; I work full-time and do a lot of service work. I really like that and building relationships and stuff.

I can share this, but um, I'm trying to stay humble. I feel like one of the main reasons I go there (the Y) is because I see a lot of people who are physically unable to do something. So after my surgery I feel like I could just walk in there and maybe people could see, I don't know, someone doing it. Because I just had surgery in 2014. (Pulling up his pant leg, he reveals his tattooed, prosthetic leg.) So I just go in there to sort of make an appearance. I'm riding a bike, I'm swimming, but I just want to run.

#eugenespeaks