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Stephanie Ortiz – A Storyteller And A Muse

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Pop Jones with Stephanie Ortiz and Tigre Hill during the filming of A Muse for Pop Jones. A Muse For Pop Jones
🩵 Finding Extraordinary

A Muse For Pop Jones

February 1, 2026January 31, 2026 Stephanie Ortiz4 Comments

A New Year’s reflection on Pop Jones, recognition, and how one unexpected conversation can change the way we see ourselves.

A Muse For Recognition: a story about legacy, memory, and the moment language finally catches up to feeling. A Muse For Recognition
💛 Legacy Love

A Muse For Recognition

January 11, 2026January 12, 2026 Stephanie Ortiz2 Comments

A story about standing inside someone else’s legacy long before I had words for it—and the moment recognition finally arrived.

The Muse Vault: A Creation Story Ask me what kind of learner I am, and I freeze. Visual? No. Auditory? Also no. Are there other options? It wasn’t until a friend casually said, “You’re a tactile learner—you learn by doing,” that something finally clicked. I laughed, because of course I did. That explained why I can’t hear a thing while taking notes, why I have to write everything down, and why—when I sit down later to “study”—I hit another wall. I’m supposed to read this and somehow understand it? What I didn’t know how to explain back then was this: I don’t just struggle with information. I struggle with where to put my thoughts. The unruly ones. The ones that show up the moment I sit down to write and start tapping me on the shoulder. Before I know it, my precious creative time is gone, spent tending to worries, memories, and half-finished ideas that refuse to wait their turn. I needed a container. Not a metaphorical one I was supposed to visualize with my eyes closed—but something I could touch. Something real. That’s where the Muse Vault began. I Never Liked Being the Canary Here’s the thing: I never liked being the canary in the first place. It sounded dangerous. Adventurous. Like I was supposed to fly into places I couldn’t see. A rock climber. A construction worker. Jobs that require a steady stomach. Because the mine isn’t adventurous when you’re inside it. It’s crowded, dark, and quiet—until your own thoughts start making noise. What Happens Inside the Mine Let’s suppose, for argument’s sake, I was that canary—navigating the world inside that mine. The light gets dimmer and dimmer the farther in we go, until it’s hard to tell where you are—or how you got there. That’s what it’s like when I get lost in writing. And once I’m lost, the thoughts get lost along with me. It’s loud and alive, like thoughts swarming my head the way bees swarm a beekeeper. Buzzing. Relentless. Insistent. In those moments, I can’t even locate my body. People say, “Notice what you’re feeling,” but there’s no space to notice anything when the air is thick with movement. The thoughts feel so alive they crowd out everything else. I don’t get curious. I get scared. Because once they start swarming, I don’t know how to stop them—or where I’ll land if I follow one down into the noise. And here’s the problem: writing is how I find the story. I can’t think my way to writing. I have to write to think. So when the thoughts show up first, I’m stranded. Building the Vault My EMDR therapist had been hounding me for years to build a container—not to run away from my thoughts, but to give them somewhere to go. The problem was, I couldn’t visualize one. And even when I tried, I’d forget it existed. I needed something I could see. Something grounded and submerged, not airborne and invisible—like viruses, or the thoughts themselves. So I built it. I asked for a vault—strong, gold, capable of holding what felt too alive to manage. And then I did the scarier thing: I paid someone to make it real. Gulp. Here you go again, Stephanie, with your bright ideas. Look how much they’re going to cost you. But when I saw the first still—before it was even animated—I knew this wasn’t a harebrained idea. It was a place to put all those harebrained thoughts. Not a solution. A submarine of sorts. Just looking at the vault door, before it could even open or close, I already had somewhere to put the loudest thought of all: What if this is a terrible idea? I set that thought inside. I imagined the door closing on it. Not forever—just for safekeeping. Long enough for me to stay, breathe, and find out for myself whether this idea deserved daylight. Coming Back Out of the Mine And so the canary comes back out of the mine. A little shaken, sure. A little dusty. But intact. Because this time, she wasn’t carrying everything with her. She had a place to set the buzzing thoughts down before they turned the air thin. A way to leave them somewhere safe and find her way back to herself. Maybe that’s all the Muse Vault really is. Not protection from the mine, but a way through it. A door you can close behind you, knowing what’s inside will still be there when you’re ready. And maybe—just maybe—I am that canary. Only now, I know how to come home. The Muse Vault: A Creation Story
🩵 Finding Extraordinary

The Muse Vault: A Creation Story

December 21, 2025December 20, 2025 Stephanie Ortiz2 Comments

I never liked being the canary. Which is funny, considering this photo was taken in Aspen in 2003, just before I followed a guide into a coal mine wearing a bright yellow hard hat.

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Meet Stephanie

I’m Stephanie Ortiz, a storyteller–like a professional organizer; only I use words instead of boxes. I’ve written fiction and nonfiction since being a journalism major at UNC-Chapel Hill–before there were iPhones, to know a story when it hits me. And whenever I need a muse, there’s always real life to draw from.

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