Leisure Life

I have to come to terms with the fact that I don't think I can ever have a normal job. 

I've tried having a normal job and it made me depressed. The kind of depression where the concept of possibility became foreign to me. The kind of existence where working, eating and sleeping become all that there is to your life. Some people manage to balance work and life well, but I'm not someone who's good with balance. Never have and never will. I make one choice and vehemently, I remain faithful to it till the end. I renounced writing two years ago but I've come back like an embarrassed lover, admitting that I'm theirs for life.

I love the world of 'leisure'. Put the word 'leisure' in front of anything and it takes on a thousand fold of glamour. Leisure painting, Leisure sports, Leisure Ikebana. So is it possible to live an entire life of leisure? Sadly, I'm not sure it is. But let me have a go and I'll report back my findings. I used to believe that a life lived with dignity and respect was one of conformity. To an extent, this is still true. Work at a job that you hopefully don't hate, pay your rent and have some left over for the fun stuff. I lived that kind of life and realised that it wasn't enough for me. I wanted more than that. I wanted glitter and butter and excitement and novelty. But is this just youthful naivety gone too far? I turned 27 this year and felt the chill of 30 around the corner. This is a turning point age and to be honest, I'd give anything to delay it.

So what is my ideal kind of life?
One of complete freedom, ease and mobility. But these things are expensive. Something that only the 1% can have. Despite all of this, I know that this is the only way I can live a happy life. I can either strive to attain this nomadic lifestyle, or give in to the man and queue in line with everyone else. I wouldn't call myself somebody who was privileged. But nor am I under-privileged. I'm simply a product of the generation and class of which I belong to. But I want the privilege to live a life of leisure. Chasing the tail of novelty and glamour all over the world. No titles, no responsibilities, no nothing. 

Writing Fiction

I've turned my aunts balcony into my writing / painting space. It's amazing how the most drab places can turn into something awesome if you just put your spirit in there

I've started writing fiction. It's kind of a strange feeling because i've never been a fiction writer, ever. I've always stayed within the confines of non-fiction where my own opinions couldn't be challenged as much as how they can be in a fiction piece. It feels like i'm growing an extra brain ( yet again ). It's coming to me slowly but surely. There's still a lot of practice ahead and lots of reading too which i'm looking forward to.

What I'm Really Like / Laser Treatment

Don't worry, there aren't any nasty scars or blood underneath those patches. I'm just putting them on to prevent sunlight from hitting my skin!

First of all, here is my latest published piece about " What I'm Really Like " HERE .
Secondly, I had laser treatment yesterday for the veins on my face. I feel so weird writing about it because most people avoid talking about the shit stuff that happens in their life and only post sparkly photos of themselves looking hot but I need to write about this.

In the past few months, I've been through HELL with things to do with my body. I've had a root canal, about a dozen fillings and now this. Imagine the shock and anger I felt when i discovered these red veins that were on my face completely uninvited. I still hadn't gotten over the stress of going to the dentist weekly and now i had a new problem to resolve.

Anyway, i got it done yesterday and i can safely tell you that it wasn't painful. Just uncomfortable but about hundred times less worrying and painful than getting a filling done. I'm OK! For now, i'm just gonna use this as an excuse to stay indoors watching The Vampire Diaries, painting and writing new essays! Hope you all have a great weekend

Love Y

27 Club

" Happy Birthday " is the name of this picture. I actually painted this on my birthday 

This was so cool! The restaurant i went to gave out free gel nail manicures as part of their 'complementary service' 

Some super beautiful rings at this cool shop near my Grandmothers house 

My aunty bought me these earrings for my birthday, i L.O.V.E them! 

Detail from a new work that i'm doing 

Three sort of big things. One, I turned 27 on the 25th, My very first 'cold send' article that was submitted to an online lit publication is going to be published in their September issue AND I've been hired to be a staff writer at Junkee. As i always say, things either don't happen at all or happen altogether at once and this was very true for me.

Let's talk about my birthday first. I didn't do anything for my birthday yet again this year because as everyone knows i really hate my birthday. It's just the one day of the year where i realise that time is ticking away and i'm having less and less time to be the person i want to be before i hit 30. I guess i have to be honest and say that success before 30 means a lot to me and now i've turned 27, that's only 3 more years to get ahead. I mean, that's not a very long time. Success is amazing and cool at any age but before 30 is just SO ultimate and sparkly to me and i've always wanted it. Being closer to 30 makes me nervous and anxious about my 'career'.

Speaking of career, I applied to be a writer for Junkee last month and i found out that i had gotten the job. It's so cool because i get paid to write for them which makes me feel like more of a ' real writer '.  I totally didn't think i was going to get this because the editor didn't get back to me for a while so you can imagine how awesome it felt to read that email. For those of you who don't know what it is, it's sort of like Australia's answer to Buzzfeed but way less " We want viral content and hits mean the world to us".  

Also, my first cold send article is getting published which is great and exciting. Cold send is my way of explaining when you send an article into a publication as part of an open call for submissions. Most of the work that is in my writing portfolio has been published based on a staff writer arrangement which means i churn out regular content for a publication and there's a 90% chance of it getting published. Cold sends are when a publication asks for writers to send in their work and if you're lucky, then your writing will get picked for publication. This is way harder than how i used to do it because you're competing against hundreds of submissions so i'm super duper happy about this. I'll share the link of it once it goes live.

In other life updates, i've been really well lately and have just been resuming my cruisey life here in China before i leave for Melbourne. I've decided to book my tickets on the first of September which is totally just around the corner. I have this LONG ass list of things I need to do once i get home and i can't wait to tackle each and every goal. Other than that, i've been painting a lot. I love how i learn something new every time i start a new painting but it just means that my writing gets neglected. I've had so many cool ideas for new writing lately so i feel like i should get on top of that.

Have you guys seen The Vampire Diaries? I know it's such old news but i've just gotten onto it and i'm so addicted. This is so embarrassing but i actually love Vampire stuff. I think it's probably the most genius fictional character to be invented in lit history.  I've been on a bit of a Fantasy kick lately. I started off watching Queen of the Damned and then The Picture Of Dorian Gray and finally i'm making my way through The Vampire Diaries. I'm usually really into real life things such as documentaries and movies that are rooted in realism and the depiction of daily life but i'm finding myself growing more and more fond of the Fantasy genre as of late. 

OK, when i see sunglasses i always get tempted to buy them especially if they are red and pink which is in my opinion, one of the best color combos ever but i never actually wear the sunglasses i buy so i put these back even though i thought they were rad! 

I bought this coat though. It wasn't cheap but the color combo / pattern reminded me of the coats Prada did a couple of seasons ago which were amazing. I can't afford those Prada ones but this one comes so close and i'm really in love with it

My uncles roof top 

I had a cup of tea with the owner of this shop and we talked about travel, writing, work and family together

Paris and my fraught relationship with it

Me at the Pompidou center, this was well worth the visit. I am also sporting my favorite sunglasses which magically make all my clothes look 100% better 

My Air BnB which i enjoyed all to myself 

I visited Paris this year for my 16 year old self who was hopelessly infatuated with France. It's kind of stereotypical and very expected for girls to love Paris, especially if they are young and i fell into that category unabashedly. Upon leaving paris as a 16 year old, i made a promise to myself that i'd be back someday and i was. Just two months ago, i made it back to Paris.

What i discovered this time around as a 26 year old was a different place completely to the dreamy, hazy and romantic version which was the Paris i knew as a 16 year old. This Paris was curt, snobby, cold and scrutinising. On Leandra Medine's podcast Monocycle, she said that Paris had a way of making her feel like the most insignificant and unimportant person in the world. I couldn't have put it more perfectly than that about myself and my own experiences too.

Paris is really gorgeous and has a history that can't be beat but going there literally makes you feel really cruddy about yourself. For one, the curtness can be very blunt. And another, you get looked at a lot by the people around you especially in the metro. People are always checking out other people and you don't know whether they're looking because they like or don't like what they see which gets un-nerving as hell.

It took me nearly until the end of my trip to get used to the city and its edge. As interesting and beautiful as Paris is, it's hard to be there because you feel pressured to always check yourself so you don't wreck yourself. Observing locals revealed to me how codified behaviours, social mores and fashions were. I mean, this is the same in every foreign country you visit but there's a very established 'way' in Paris and if you do not subscribe to their ways then you are more or less ostracised. What sets Paris apart is that they're snooty if you don't do it their way. Instead of being weirded out, confused or surprised, they're snooty. You could see who were locals and who weren't very clearly. You could also see how different their ways of life were just by how they spoke to each other. You really had to earn a Parisian persons trust and respect. They don't start off being warm to you, especially if its one girl to another which made me feel quite sad.

The Bastille Market : I got up really early to come here and it was great. I loved the sheer amount of produce available. The quality was great, the prices were low and i couldn't stop buying raspberries

I sound pretty bad right now, don't I? Mouthing off a whole city of people and their ways. But as always, this is a just one persons generalised account and it's un-necessary to tell me that there are good Parisians too. Of course there are, but there are also trends and things that you can't ignore as well. I don't hate Paris at all. In fact, i always think about going back again and again and again. I can't get enough of it. It's just that, this time i was there i saw it in a realistic light and it's kind of a cold and judgey place. 

Parisians possess a languid, unaffected sensibility, as if their house could be burning but they'd still walk at a pace that was comfortable for them. The house can't be salvaged anyway, so i may as well take my time. THATS SO PARISIAN. I remember summing up Parisians as doing 'seen but no reply' on the daily to you on Facebook messenger. THAT'S ALSO SO PARISIAN. I think i'm pretty laissez faire ( that felt painful but necessary to write ) but i'm also pretty neurotic so i can't be completely laid back which made me feel like i didn't truly fit into Paris world. 

Solo Living Tokyo Style

💗 Essential things for a good start to the day : Breakfast, Coffee and watching my favorite Youtubers !! 💗

Initially the thought of sleeping on a futon was weird for me. But i got very, very used to it. I LOVED it even. It was very comfortable, convenient and easy because at night you had a bed and in the morning you rolled it up to make extra space in your apartment, bliss 💁

LIVING ALONE IS :

- Freeing 

- Relaxing 

- Independence boosting 

- Mature 

- SO SUPER GOOD 

So i've been off the radar for two years from Melbourne and so i thought you guys would probably enjoy seeing some photos of what my living spaces looked like in Japan and here they are.

 The shitty thing about living in Melbourne is that there's no way you can live alone ( unless you're a high flying 30 something or living with a partner ). Tokyo was great because everybody lives alone there and so the market is very open to people my age who want to live alone. In fact, share houses are a pretty recent phenomenon there. People seem to have always preferred solo living and the privacy and ease that naturally come with having to deal with nobody but oneself ( which makes perfect sense ).  

You can see that my second apartment was a lot better looking and nicer in general than my first ( pictured below ). But you might be surprised to know that the second apartment was one of the WORST places i've ever lived in. In terms of utilities and convenience it was amazing. But i lived next door to the neighbour from hell which ruined my time there. My first apartment gave me the solo living that i really was looking for and i'll always cherish the time i lived there by myself. 

I remember the absolute CLIFF HANGER week it was when i applied for this place. I have always wanted to live in a Loft apartment and i got it, but it was totally different to what i thought it'd be

The sleeping space was pretty large. It could have slept about three people. I made it into my reading and sleeping space with books, a coffee table and a lamp

I've always loved big dining tables and i finally got to call one my own in Japan. It was perfect for everything. Eating off, working off, dumping your bag on... 

CAREER CHANGE

Looking at my old Tumblr bought me back to blogging. The other evening at around 12 the time when my brain is finally actually alert, i was reading all the messages i used to get about my blog and i realised that i had a good thing going but just never realised it at the time. I also realised something else and that was that the more you open yourself up on the internet and the less scared you are about that, the more people open themselves to you and reach out to you. I don't know if i can do that again ... but i want to.

Aging has really killed a lot of creativity in my life. But it's also bought about a lot of things which i really needed especially when i was younger. Things such as Order, Discipline, being realistic and Decisiveness.  Great things for a person but bad for a writer.  In fact, i often wonder if it's worth continuing on with writing as a whole, blog or not. Some of you might have noticed that i have begun doing art a LOT lately and i've converted my instagram into just an Art instagram.

I've been enjoying painting a lot lately as it's always been something that's been in the back seat not fully realised or developed into what it is now. I've always called myself a writer and made that my no.1 priority. But i feel like it's time for a change because it was getting stagnant and it's so hard to be a writer these days. I like painting because it uses another part of myself. I feel like i've grown extra antennas and i am sensing and feeling around the world on a different level. But it's intimidating entering into Art since i've known a lot of artists and i care about what they think, even if it mightn't be much.

The hard thing about making a career change is that you start from zero. Going to university is beneficial not only because you learn all the basics but also because they set you up for your career by giving you opportunities that outsiders mightn't have access to.

In my case, i'm not going to art school ( who can afford doing two degrees? )  so i have to start from baby, baby steps which i have to admit is daunting and i have no idea where to go or what to do or who to ask for help from. But that's also liberating as hell. Starting from zero is like being re-born and being able to redeem yourself from the past in a new form. Re-invention to the max!
Once i get back to Australia ( Surprise! ) it'll be time for big re-invention. I've spent two years away from Melbourne to get my inner life sorted and i feel very much like a new person already. And because i feel so new, it's time to build a new life with a whole new set of rules, outlooks and achievements.

Y