Location: Classic Coffee - Glendora, CA

About: Arielle Estoria is a Los Angeles based spoken word artist, speaker, performer, and author of Vagabonds and Zealots.

How We Met: Arielle and I, like everyone that comes in and out of Azusa Pacific University, have a lot of mutual friends and just recently overcame the acquaintance barrier. Our knack for over thinking, wanting the church to remain relevant, and our desire to instill people with positive self-worth is what initially connected us.

Coffee: Arielle Estoria, Poet

The hallway between Classic Coffee in Glendora and that random pizza place that I don't know the name of but ate there once two years ago, is a who's who of the APU community almost any Saturday morning.

However this Saturday, there was a color run scheduled at the university, which led to us only knowing one other person in the whole place. So funny and interesting given the direction that our conversation took.

1)  Most Reoccurring Message in Her Poetry

I had a pretty good guess of what this was going to be, but also wanted to ask so I could hear her answer. The message Arielle wants people to hear in her words most often is that they are worthy of being loved. This often is portrayed in her words about how people relate with themselves and urging them to do it more positively and not believing that they are any less because of perceived shortcomings.

2)  Connecting Small Pockets of People

We talked a great deal about social media because outside of our tangent down this philosophical path we were talking about how to create a website and build a following in order to make a difference. We noticed that there a tons of pockets of people at APU, our microcosm at the moment but applicable to others, that never end up getting connected. To put it in social media terms, we need to have the courage to follow each other back! Social media is a conversation, it's not you shouting your message and not replying to anyone else.

3)  Creative vs. Practical

This last part we talked about, the idea of a creative and practical side in all of us, was actually my favorite. "Who's to say being creative isn't practical," Arielle said, then went on to describe her personality as "Fluid and in tune with her creativity in a type A practical way." She finds this by being content in the instability.

I have pondered this a lot since our coffee chat and am myself now working on being content in the instability.

Conversation Notes:

Arielle's Website - www.ArielleEstoria.com

Enjoy one of her poems!