WALLFLOWER

"Love is precisely what comes after all that. When the spell is over. 

Then, during dinner, you're happy to be quiet, because you're at peace. 

To love someone, you must really know them. 

How can you love someone you don't know?"

- Damian (Berlin)

Not a single post in 2023. What a year. From flying across the world for Coachella which was a dream ever since I was 18, to quitting my career as a lawyer, and moving out of home and into my own for the first time. All whilst continuing to build my two businesses. 2023 was wild. In 2023 I completely forgot about my blog. That is until a friend hit me up at the end of 2023 asking for some advice about how to start/grow one. And today, the first month of 2024, I revisited it. My last post was in May 2022. So the question is, what has changed in the last year and 8 months? 

With everyone getting engaged and married this year, and my life crisis not too long ago, I'm constantly analysing my position on love and partnerships. Re-reading my last post saddened me: "Fantasising the moment I would meet 'the one', romanticising it all. But at 18, my family showed me that 'love' could kill you and at 19, my first relationship made me realise a relationship alone cannot keep you fulfilled for the rest of your life." Now 7 years into a relationship and everything has settled into peace and comfort, I question whether romance is dead or alive. Love is one thing, romance is another, just like lust and also passion. They can all be mutually exclusive.

LITTLE WOMAN

"Women have minds and souls as well as just hearts, 

and they've got ambition and talent as well as just beauty. 

And I'm sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for. 

I'm so sick of it! But – I'm so lonely!"

- Jo March (Little Women)

My favourite fairytale growing up was Cinderella. When I was young, I had always been that invisible, quiet girl. So I fell in love with the idea of love and finding prince charming who made me feel seen and feel like the most special girl in the world. And I grew up trying to become that perfect girl worthy of a prince charming and invested time and care and thought into my looks, my intellect, my morals. Becoming 'perfect'. Fantasising the moment I would meet 'the one', romanticising it all. But at 18, my family showed me that 'love' could kill you and at 19, my first relationship made me realise a relationship alone cannot keep you fulfilled for the rest of your life. 

So then I started to invest in myself for myself. I wanted more in life than just 'the love of my life'. I wanted control of it. I wanted financial stability and freedom. I wanted self sustainability and independence. But despite it all, I still believed in love and in starting my own family one day with a husband by my side. Fast forward 8 years and here I am with two relatively successful businesses while working a well-paying full-time job as a lawyer and in a 5 and a half year long-term relationship with someone I instantly felt like I knew all my life when we first connected (and now building a house together). Life seems good. I am lucky and I should be grateful. And I was. For some time... 

HEY LOU

And I fell from the pedestal

Right down the rabbit hole

Long story short, it was a bad time 

Pushed from the precipice 

Climbed right back up the cliff

Long story short, I survived

- Taylor Swift (Long Story Short)

Those around me know me for my entrepreneurial spirit. Entrepreneurship these days has such a negative connotation though. I don't think it's perceived as hardwork and the brave taking the road less travelled anymore. It's now seen as the cop out to a 9-5 job. Entrepreneurs are those who are unrealistic dreamers and want to get rich quick. 

SHARE SOME GRACE WITH RACE

"If only closed minds came with closed mouths."

Saturday evening and a Caucasian woman in her early 30's walks into a Chinese restaurant. She is dressed up, but her hair and clothes are dishevelled. She sits down and orders a plate of food - $6.90. She then walks to the toilet and sits back down; she walks straight but her behaviour is odd. She starts flipping her hair into her face, then back again. She repeats this several times, scratching her scalp violently. There is a bottle of water and a cup on her table. She attempts to pour water into her cup but the lid is on. She holds the bottle upside down and starts thrusting it up and down in the air - in an attempt to pour the water out (with the lid clearly still on). 

The restaurant owner, a Chinese man in his late 50's walks over to help her. This man is my father. At 8.35pm I pick up a phone call from my father saying there is a woman who came into the restaurant drunk, has now started to sober up and says she has no money to pay for the food she ordered. She now refuses to leave the restaurant and claims my parents have stolen her bag. Their English is subpar so I race over in my car to help diffuse the situation.     

THE ARCHER

"Easy they come, easy they go 

I jump from the train, I ride off alone 

I never grew up, it's getting so old 

Help me hold on to you 

I've been the archer, 

I've been the prey 

Who could ever leave me, darling 

But who could stay?"

- Taylor Swift (The Archer)

Sometimes I watch movies or TV dramas and they make me desire a man who's more protective. And I think at first it's very attractive, because my infatuation allows me to submit to them. However as time goes by, protectiveness can come off as control. And I'm a Sagittarius. I'm a free spirit. I refuse to be controlled. That is a huge turn off for me.

INVISIBLE STRING

Time, mystical time 

Cuttin' me open, then healin' me fine 

Were there clues I didn't see? 

And isn't it just so pretty to think 

All along there was some 

Invisible string 

Tying you to me?

- Taylor Swift (Invisible String)

*Oops I did it again. Last post was in July. And here we are in November (BIRTHDAY MONTH)... Back for two more posts before the end of the year to tie things up. 

What we should never agree to: external validation and succumbing to its pressure... Here I am, a month from turning 26 (...oh dear lord 30 is imminent). The age where my parents married each other and had their first child (my older brother). A time where my friends and acquaintances are getting engaged, left right and centre. But I don't feel any rush and I don't feel the need or want either. For them, they are ready. For me, I am not.

FAILURE

"You need to become someone new to execute against that vision. 

If you had your dream today you would f*ck it up."

- Tom Bilyeu

It's a very negative word, a heavy word on the shoulders pulling your entire body down to the ground. 'Failure'. As many of you know, I started my business 'Christiaan & York' back in 2017. Over these past 3 years I have invested approximately $11,000. It was my first business... and it wasn't a success. 

BECOMING

“If you don't get out there and define yourself, 

you'll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.” 

- Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama's new Netflix documentary 'Becoming' is truly inspirational for 1.5 hours of your time. It lightly touches on many areas which are insightful (like feminism and race) but the highlight of the piece which was relevant to not just women or people of colour was the importance of how you viewed yourself. Not being invisible doesn't start by others acknowledging you. Not being invisible starts by you not feeling invisible from within.    

STORYTELLER

"It's important that we share our experiences with other people. 

Your story will heal you, and your story will heal somebody else. 

When you tell your story you free yourself, 

and you give other people permission

 to acknowledge their story as well."

 - Iyanla Vanzant

Currently I am reading 'Talking to Strangers' by Malcolm Gladwell and a few lines stood out for me. First: "Today we are now thrown into contact all the time with people whose assumptions, perspectives, and backgrounds are different from our own." Second: "If we were more thoughtful as a society - if we were willing to engage in some soul-searching about how we approach and make sense of strangers - she would not have ended up dead in a Texas jail cell." And third: "If I can convince you of one thing in this book, let it be this: Strangers are not easy."

RETROGRADE

/ˈrɛtrəɡreɪd/

adjective

"directed or moving backwards."

I am currently on the verge of losing it. And so I turn to writing. My sanctuary. Reading my most recent post it's crazy how in March 2020 I said "It's month 3 out of 12 and so far things are looking pretty great". Only one month after that post and how little thought did I give at the time to the possibility that life, for myself and everyone else, would tip upside down. 

LUNAR

"People use to think the skies the limit, 
then somebody went to the moon."

I don't have any new photos so I am going to be lazy (or smart) and use some photos from my trip to China last year in October... Reason is, these are one of those times when my desire to write exceeds my desire or ability to produce new photos.

With the Lunar New Year having just passed a few weeks ago I think these photos are very fitting for where my mind is currently at.

OBSESSION

"You could be anyone if you put in the time. You will reach the top. 

And that's that. I'm not talented, I'm obsessed."

- Conor McGregor

The last few hours of the 2010s decade and I managed to squeeze one last photoshoot and blog post in - making this year's total of 5 published posts. Poor effort - I know. Hopefully in 2020 I can devote myself to doing more of this because this didn't even take that long. 15 minutes of makeup and 15 minutes of shooting. The post-editing was the most time-consuming part but that is also my favourite part of the process. 

This new decade scares me, in the most exhilarating way possible. Because I'm now 25 and this decade is where A LOT will happen. Hopefully get married, have children and create an amazing business (or two, or three)... 

DAYLIGHT

“I don’t wanna look at anything else now that I saw you… 

Now I see daylight. Only see daylight.”

- Taylor Swift (Daylight)

It’s morning now… Now 25, a quarter century old, it’s time for the annual pre-NYE reflections. Today, it’s just mine.

I never liked ‘winning’ - whether it’s winning lotteries or any other completely luck-driven competitions, because I have this weird idea about the balance in the world. Everything good that happens will be balanced out with the bad (and vice versa). You win some, you lose some. I don’t like the idea of winning lotto because I feel like this luck comes from a finite supply somewhere and afterwards you’d be hit with a string of bad luck.

SEPTEMBER

Do you remember 

The [27th] night of September? 

Love was changin' the minds of pretenders 

While chasin' the clouds away 

Our hearts were ringin' 

In the key that our souls were singin' 

As we danced in the night, remember 

How the stars stole the night away  

- Earth, Wind & Fire (September)

I told him I was having a terrible day. He asked me why. I ranted to him the things that were going wrong. And he said: ah ok. Are you serious, is that it?... but other than that good day :) ? I couldn't help but smile at how ridiculous he was but how effective it was too. In a way it felt like he wasn't listening to me. In a way I knew he was playing. And in a way... it was an extremely clever way to get me to forget all about the negatives and focus on the positives. And I know him. In his playful dismissive way, he made me smile. Other than all those things I ranted about, yes it was a great day. I was breathing, I had a job, the weather was looking lovely (despite being stuck indoors for most of it). Lovely day :P I replied. 

EMPIRE STATE OF MIND

"Something's always happening here. 

If you're bored in New York, it's your own fault."

- Myrna Loy

As I'm getting more and more entrenched into the professional world (especially in the legal industry) I find it harder and harder to be expressive on this public medium. I used to write journals anonymously on an online artwork community - the only thing holding me back was my fear of speaking ill thoughts into existence. Now? I feel the world watching... judging... Ghostly whispers of "Perth is so small" in the back of my mind, repeating constantly. (You know what is not so small? New York. To that, I will get back to later on this page). On some rare occasions I hear about people reading my words, people I've only met for the first time, and it makes me feel so extremely naked. The fact that they could know about my deep 2 am thoughts when I talk to them for the first time at some party and I would know nothing about them... And you know whose fault that is? Mine. Yet here I am doing the same thing... writing not so anonymously on a not so private medium.

It's weird.

ACCLIMATE

ˈaklɪmeɪt,əˈklʌɪmət/

verb

"to adjust or adapt to a

new climate, place, or situation."

It's been a while, again, I must admit. But I will always come back here to my writing sanctuary as my source of therapy to remain grounded, to take time to breathe and think about the past and plan my way forward. You (may or may not) hear that reflection and goal setting is important to a person's success and I just happen to take this a little more... publicly.

It has occurred to me recently why routine is deadly. In a time and place of newness we acclimate. We are more alert, more conscious, try harder. In a time and place of routine? We are half present, sometimes even completely absent. We become blind to our surroundings and we stop trying. And when we stop trying, things die. 

TWENTY-NINETEEN

"We obsess with memory and we obsess with the future. 

That's what intelligence is, the ability to see the future, 

to simulate the future in complex realistic ways." 

- Michio Kaku

As another year draws to an end, we find ourselves reflecting on the past 365 days and begin to create new goals for the next 365...

I was on a flight either to or from Sydney for work when I was listening to a podcast interview with Michio Kaku. He said "We obsess with memory and we obsess with the future. That's what intelligence is, the ability to see the future, to simulate the future in complex realistic ways." It may be from the same interview with the same man but he compared humans to dogs. How we are more intelligent than animals because we have the ability to think about the future, to somewhat grasp it I suppose. Whereas dogs cannot. They don't plan for tomorrow, they don't think: "What should I get up to tomorrow?".

LUCID DREAMING

"Dreams are real as long as they last.

Can we say more of life?"

- Havelock Ellis

I laid on the warm tiles and stared up into the bright blue cloudless sky this afternoon. Feeling the warmth of the sun and listening to the calming sound of the water fountain. Later I found myself playing music on our old forgotten piano. And tonight... I sit here reading old novels I had written 7 years ago, captivated by my own young wild mind and reminded by how creative I once was... yet saddened by what 'growing up' can do to it.

I haven't taken a break like this since... three years ago. A break where I took time to really get back in touch with my own creativity. My largest novel ever written was 185 A4 pages long and 104,680 words. And it's crazy to think I don't write anymore, not fictional stories at least. I don't blog anymore either... and I ought to get back in touch with my deeper thoughts.

WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME

"Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful? 

Will you still love me when I've got nothing but my aching soul?"

- Lana Del Rey

Yes - I am temporily back! Won't be regular fortnight posts and unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to even commit to monthly ones but it's November (birthday month!) and my last post was back in July. The hiatus has been unbearable and I have missed the sanity of writing (not so much the dressing up for photos part - or having photos taken part either).

CONSTANT MOVEMENT

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states,

other lives, other souls."

- Anaïs Nin

In the words of Lonely Planet: "Hong Kong is a city of contrasting light and constant movement; a whirl of commotion that combines climbing skyscrapers and golden stretches of sand with steaming bowls of wonton noodles and ceaseless traffic."