New Years Eve

525,600 minutes, 8760 hours, 365 days, 52 weeks

One Year

This Year

Your Year

2017

I’m not a fan of new years resolutions, I think they send out the wrong message to the universe. Like there is this one singular moment where you have a chance to change. I guess it’s a kind of placebo, like when someone starts a diet on a Monday instead of a Friday, the idea of a fresh start, a blank page, a reset button. But in actual fact, you get a fresh start whenever you decide you want one. You can wake up on the third Tuesday in May and decide that you’re going to go to the gym, you’re not going to smoke, you’re going to finish your novel, quit the job you hate or sell everything you have and move to another country.

January 1^st is the ultimate fresh start, the first day of the first week of the first month of a brand new year. A brand new you. Such a cliché if you ask me.

2016 was apparently a big fat write off for everyone, but it was a year of change for me, really good, soul refreshing change; I quit the career I have had for the best part of the last 10 years & I went back to school to study the career that I had always wanted, but never thought possible: fashion. It has been so amazing & so hard at the same time; I have never been so happy yet so broke! I guess I’d always known that I was meant to create something, I just wasn’t ever 100% sure what. Don’t get me wrong; last year had its moments. I questioned myself over & over. Every time a bill came in, every time an unknown number flashed on my screen, my heart seemed to stop & my stomach would flip – how the fuck was I going to pay it? Working part time in order to study was the biggest challenge, it was insane, there where weeks where my bills where almost double what I earned, I was constantly chasing my tail & there where a few really close calls that if not for my mum, I cant say I would have made it through! Yet when I think about the year I barely even remember those moments! I remember all of the fun, the excitement, the newness & the sense of purpose I felt knowing I was doing what my heart wanted. So for 2017 I want more. I don’t want to set resolutions as such, but I figured I would write this as a reminder to my future self to read at the end of next year, in the hope that I will have stayed my course and reached the goals that I want to reach, to hold myself accountable. Yes I could just delete this & come next year there will be no evidence, buuut given I’m pretty sure no one reads this, I’d only be cheating myself out of my very own little time capsule, and whats the fun in that?

So.

Here goes.

The big one.

After three years of being on my own & focusing on me & only me, I will make a conscious decision to be open to whatever or whomever comes my way. It isn’t easy to open your heart to love when you have been burnt by those who have previously been let in, but to shut down, close off & become hardened doesn’t benefit anyone, least of all me. So hopefully come December 31^st 2017 I will have met someone. Not just any someone, an incredible someone. They will bring out the absolute best in me, they will shine in their own light, be ambitious, independent, curious about life, adventurous, spontaneous, courageous, loving, supportive, honest & above all they will find happiness in the simplest of things.

I will remain committed to my health. Having a back injury & a broken arm in 2015 set me back, but 2016 gave me Pilates & 2017 will have given me back my love for fitness & my strength. Ill have my best body yet.

This year you better launch one of your labels. By April, before Autumn/Winter you will have enough jackets ready to launch & on the backs of a few legends. Commit. Focus. Make a plan and execute it. Don’t be scared of what anyone will think, in fact don’t think of anyone at all. Remain dedicated to your own life & your purpose

Move to Melbourne. Just move. It’s time. 

***Edit the above was written in January, I'm only coming back to it in May & have executed two of my goals... working on the other two, cant really force one & well.. you know, cant force myself to exercise either, I'm very stubborn... 

So for the second half of this year, lets assess what I would like to see by December... I think really, the only last remaining irritation in my life is my absolute disastrous handling of money. 

Sooo i guess my final note to self, is sort your life out. Work harder, Make more money & don't piss it up the wall, get on top of your bills, get organised & get ahead. no matter what it takes. 

There you have it, the five top priorities of 2017. Love, Career, Health, Life & Wealth

the switch

There are moments in time that I am so incredibly in love with my life, so utterly obsessed with every single moment. 

And others I feel the unbearable weight of every doubt & fear I have ever harboured in my mind, it is an indescribable heartache, every inch of my body terrified. 

These are described as the highs and lows of depression. 

I disagree. I believe this is just life. 

I am not a doctor, so I guess i'm in no position to disagree with a medical professional, but I am a human being & as such I am entitled to an opinion. And in my opinion, it is human feel the lows. You're just not meant to unpack & live there. It's like creepy uncle Franks house, you stop in just for good measure so you can appreciate the fact you don't have to go back until next Christmas. 

My experience has been just that, MY experience & others have had THEIR experience. I often hear the line "oh but there are people dying in *insert 3rd world country*" given as a perspective point, but i personally find this statement an insult. You cannot discredit someone's worst by comparing it to something they haven't experienced! In fact, who are you to discredit how they feel at all? Their worst is the worst they have experienced, it doesn't make it less or more than the worst that I have experienced. Im not saying this in relation to war, so don't roll your eyes just yet - that is my exact point, you cannot compare my worst year to a moment in theirs, it is incomparable. So i feel like people who say this are also somewhat discrediting the immensity of just how bad it is in those countries! ANYWAY, back on subject. My point is comparison is not the key to perspective. 

Depression is a huge umbrella, there are different kinds, different triggers, different reasons and different "fixes". I do not believe that depression comes from nowhere, I believe it is our body and mind's way of telling us that we have something in our past that we need to resolve, whether we consciously are aware of it or not. This is not always the whole truth, for some I do believe that they may have a chemical imbalance that makes their lows unbearable & in those cases, sometimes medication is needed to help - alongside a life coach or psychologist. I say "I believe it" because I am not a doctor & I can only base my opinion on my experience, and the lows that I have experienced have been insanely scary. There where some very close calls for me and I am, by my own judgment and many others, a very strong person. What scared me the most though was feeling nothing, of being in an almost catatonic, blank state of mind. In all of these times I can remember feeling worried for myself & simply desperate to feel something again. I have had 1000 moments where I have felt so exhausted, so depleted and just tired of having to be so strong all the time, wondering what "test" the universe had in store for me next - I had nothing left to give. I wanted to give up & give in to the darkness. But I never did, my fire never completely went out & each day I woke up and willed my heart to beat another day and promised myself that it would get better. And it did.

I have had a life coach since the age of 15 to deal with my catastrophe of a childhood & I am still learning now about what a complex web my parents weaved for me. My waves of depression can come at any moment on any day, even if absolutely nothing is wrong. It used to be pretty scary for me, I would shut off from people as I didn't want to burden them with my misery. I would simply wait it out. It took me an incredibly long time to learn to let someone in, to learn that just opening the door will let a little light in. In the last year I have had the least low swings of my entire life. They have still come here & there, but they have been shorter & less heavy each time. My heart has been winning the war against the tricks my mind likes to play. 

We have unconsciously trained our minds to revel in misery, to wallow in self pity and focus on what we don't have or what we wish we had. We need to RE-TRAIN our minds! And it really isn't that complex. Finding just three things each morning that you are grateful for, that you appreciate & feel lucky to have will change your days, maybe you wont see it at first, but if you commit to this for 30 days, I promise you will start to feel a little lighter. Slowly, but you will feel it. By acknowledging the good, you are setting your mind up to continue noticing the good throughout the day & to not give so much power to the bad things that happen. 

Our journeys are all different, so i guess technically we are alone in it, but if we're all alone then we're all alone together.
If you are feeling totally and utterly lost, don't trust in me & my words, trust in you & how amazing & special & incredible you are. You are heartbreakingly beautiful, undeniably irreplaceable & so so loved