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