neuroses

Not long ago, I tried really hard to dig within and identify my neuroses. Eventually, I concluded that I didn't have any. I'm just not a neurotic person, I thought. I'm too easy-going. I was wrong, of course. Everybody is neurotic in their own way, I think.

The neuroses I have since uncovered are all to do with words and self-expression, which is fitting. Here are just a few...

1. I hate using baby words. For example: tummy/belly (even as a child, I have always used the word "stomach", even though I know that the term technically only relates to the organ, as opposed to the general area to which I am usually referring), hubby, telly... Sometimes, I defy my own instinct and use the occasional juvenile word, just to get myself out of my comfort zone. "Silly", for example, which I am now comfortable with using - sparingly (it is a real word, after all).

2. I really don't like ugly Australian slang. Moll, bloody, Pom*, bonking, snogging, yobbo, dunny, mozzie, dag, arvo, snag, even Aussie. I'm not even going to start on those disgusting racist terms still in circulation, which should have died out decades ago.

3. I avoid swearing at all costs. I think I have sworn once on my twitter feed, but I was quoting somebody (a bigoted ignoramus who accused me of being a "sh*t talker" - I made sure to encase it in quotation marks so my followers knew that they weren't straight from my mouth). There are two reasons for my reluctance to swear. One, I always have my mother's advice in my head, which is that "Only unintelligent people swear because they don't know any better". Two, brings me to my next point...

4. I want everything I write to be pretty. You'll often find me combing over my writing, replacing words and phrases that sound jarring. I'd rather sound too flowery and elaborate than even a little grating or vulgar. You may have noticed that I love pretty adjectives (lovely, delightful, adorable, gorgeous are some favourites... and I also love to turn them into adverbs).

So those some of my neuroses. It feels good to have them "out there". Just to be clear, I don't expect anybody else to adhere to my silly (see?), self-imposed rules. It's not that I object to or judge other people for using ugly or juvenile wording. Some of my favourite writers pepper their writing with obscenities (Benjamin Law, for example - his book, The Family Law, is incredible... so funny and poignant). It's just not me. I like to be able to read over my work and be satisfied with the flow and the pretty diction. Writing is one of my greatest pleasures in life, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I suppose I could delve deeper and use those those neuroses to ascertain a greater insight into myself... Perhaps I am a bit uptight and superficial, with an innate desire to ignore or hide the unpleasantries and ugliness that exists in the world. Or, in a more flattering light, maybe I am just optimistic, wanting to see the beauty in everything and share that with other people. Even if the former is true, at least that part of myself is restricted mainly to my prose, rather than being imposed upon everybody I encounter in my day-to-day life.

I guess that's the thing with neuroses. Everybody is weird in their own way, only we all try to hide it so that we fit in and appear normal. Instead of having it (what makes us different) "out there", we express our oddness through private moments - neurotic quirks that allow us to be ourselves, in a raw, natural state. Sometimes we try to fight these traits, but they manage to sustain themselves against our will. I think that, as people get older, they weaken that fight and let their eccentricities take over more and more. That is not necessarily a good thing because eccentricities are not always healthy, and rarely productive. Forcing ourselves to get out of our comfort zone or do things that we don't want to do, in an attempt to please other people, is part of life. It's not always fun, and it's vital to know how to balance it with "me-time", but, ultimately, it makes us better, stronger, more loving, and lovable, people. We live in a world where our happiness, and the happiness of those around us, hinges on our ability to be unselfish and compromising so, instead of resenting our idiosyncrasies, we should treasure them. They are, after all, little crevices in which we can be our true, unadulterated selves.

*Interesting fact of the day... Apparently - according to one, rather shaky, source - my great, great grandfather Edwin Greenslade Murphy ("Dryblower" Murphy) was the first person to pen the term "Pom". He was a journalist and poet during the gold rush in Western Australia, at the turn of the 20th century.

10 day cycle

I am a compulsive list-writer. I love to plan my days, set goals and organise my thoughts and ideas. It's fun, but a lot of the time it doesn't get me very far. Recently, I read an article on Steve Pavlina's blog in which he says:

Beyond the 2-week range, most of us think of our to-dos as being somewhere “over the horizon” and not of immediate concern. We don’t need to deal with them until they become more urgent.

I found this tip very helpful. It's true. A foreseeable deadline encourages me to get more things done, sooner, and discourages me from procrastinating. Being organised also allows me to designate free time for myself (to watch The Good Wife and bake cake), which means that I'm more inclined to do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done.

Steve endorses planning in a 10 day cycle. 10 days is an ideal time-frame because it breaks up the week-to-week drag. Usually, I have lapsed in my plans by Wednesday and I can justify waiting until Monday to take them up again. By creating my own blocks of time I can avoid conforming to the ones set by the calendar, which helps to overcome time hurdles.

Rather than a to-do list, I tend to base my plan around inspiration and new ideas or techniques to try.

Par exemple -

Books to read:

Recipes to try:

Alicia Silverstone's Carrot-Apple-Lemon-Ginger Cocktail

(via The Kind Life)

Skye Craig's Chocolate Avocado Mousse

(via Wild Sugar)

Makeup look to emulate:

Vanessa Paradis for Chanel

Nars Sheer Glow applied all over, blended outward with fingers

By Terry Touch Expert Advanced concealer applied under the eyes and on any imperfections with Nars Concealer Brush

Nars Loose Powder dusted all over with Nars Yachiyo Brush

Chanel Joues Contraste Blush in Rose Dust applied softly on the apples of the cheeks with Nars Yachiyo Brush

Nars Blush in Zen used under the cheekbones, jawline and either side of the nose, applied with Nars Yachiyo Brush

Nars Brow Powder (it's actually eyeshadow!) in Bali (for brunettes) or Blondie (for blondes) applied softly with Nars Brow Shader brush

Nars Eyeshadow Duo in Madrague - the lighter side dusted onto the brow bone with Nars Large Domed Eye Brush and the darker side pressed into the eyelid with MAC 217 brush

Nars Eyeshadow Duo in Bellisima - the lighter side dusted onto the brow bone with Nars Large Domed Eye Brush and the lighter side applied along the outer corner of the top lashline and along the bottom lashline with Nars Small Eye Contour Brush

Chanel Intense Eye Pencil in black lining the inner rim of the upper lashline

Nars Eyeliner Pencil in Iceberg lining the inner rim of the lower lashline

Chanel Inimitable Mascara in black applied onto the top lashes, two coats

Nars Lip Liner in Rosebud lining and filling in the lips

Chanel Rouge Coco lipstick in Mademoiselle, applied with Nars Lip Brush

Things to do

Watch the finale week of Masterchef Australia

Get organised for a new semester at uni

Do some laundry

(Some more of my favourite Pavlina articles include How to Become an Early Riser, How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off, 10 Tips for College Students, Soulful Relationships and One Week On, One Week Off. You would think that reading all these articles on efficiency would mean that I am getting a lot of work done but although I love reading the articles, applying them is another story.)

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a delicate resonance of longing

"Then she took my hand and touched it to the wound beside her eye. I caressed the half-inch scar. As I did so, the waves of her consciousness pulsed through my fingertips and into me - a delicate resonance of longing. Probably someone should take this girl in his arms and hold her tight, I thought. Probably someone other than me. Someone qualified to give her something."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

live your best life

So, would you do me a favour? Watch this. It is a little long, so feel free to wait until you have about 20 minutes to spare and perhaps some tea. Tim Tams will also go down a treat.

I have already written about my love for Elizabeth Gilbert. I loved Eat Pray Love, and Committed even more. She seems to be polarising in some ways but I think that she is intelligent and endearing. Her ideas and philosophies are incredibly valuable to modern women, whether or not you agree with them wholeheartedly.

Whatever your response to her books, I guarantee that you will fall in love with her after you watch her speak - she is so natural and accessible. I have posted her musings on creativity (see my first ever blog post, things that inspire me), and I recently watched this video of Liz speaking at Oprah's Live Your Best Life, a festival to celebrate the 10th anniversary of O Magazine. To paraphrase, Liz unveils the irony behind the fact that people look to her to find out how to live life (specifically how to get their lives "together"), when she just doesn't have the answers. Nobody does. She also explores the reasons so many of us look to others for the key, "the secret", to a happy, successful and fulfilling life.

Liz believes that this movement is a consequence of our burgeoning world. In a landscape where the possibilities are absolutely endless, it is so difficult to define our goals, hopes and dreams. Our parameters. Infinite options can be paralysing - when there are so many alternatives, it's almost impossible to be convinced of our choices, when we finally have the courage to make them. Choosing just one door, when there is an over-abundance open to us, is scary. I have struggled with this myself. I still do.

So there are the choices. There is also that imminent fear of failure. When we have the world at our feet, it's difficult to justify falling flat on our faces, not in the least to ourselves. We are bombarded with this ideal of "perfection", which we are expected to uphold in all realms of life - we should be good people, successful in our careers, supportive of loved ones, calm and collected, healthy, beautiful, interesting, happy... the list is never-ending. This all-round perfection is, of course, completely and utterly unattainable, which means that failure is inevitable. It's a viscous cycle.

Women are especially prone to this brutal discontent. As Liz notes, we are the first generation of women in the history of mankind who have had freedom, autonomy, literacy and access to their own power. We don't have strong, independent women to look to in history books. We are on the front line. No wonder it is so difficult to carve out our niche.

Liz uses the metaphor of the "maze":

When I look at my life and the lives of my female friends these days—with our dizzying number of opportunities and talents—I sometimes feel as though we are all mice in a giant experimental maze, scurrying around frantically, trying to find our way through. But maybe there's a good historical reason for all this overwhelming confusion. We don't have centuries of educated, autonomous female role models to imitate here (there were no women quite like us until very recently), so nobody has given us a map. As a result, we each race forth blindly into this new maze of limitless options. And the risks are steep. We make mistakes. We take sharp turns, hoping to stumble on an open path, only to bump into dead-end walls and have to back up and start all over again. We push mysterious levers, hoping to earn a reward, only to learn—whoops, that was a suffering button!

So this all brings us to the "age of memoir", (arguably) ruled by Oprah, the queen of self-discovery and self-examination. The popularity of the memoir is precipitated by our need to see how everybody else is solving these universal, endless questions. Snippets from other people's lives provide clues for our own "scavenger hunt". The danger, of course, is to compare ourselves with other people. The resulting envy and self-doubt is nothing but harmful and self-destructive. Consider this quote by spiritual guru Osho, from The Book of Understanding: “In this world, it is very difficult to find a happy person, because nobody is fulfilling the conditions for being happy. The first condition is that one has to drop all comparison. Drop all these stupid ideas of being superior and inferior. You are neither superior nor inferior. You are simply yourself! There exists no one like you, no one with whom you can be compared. Then, suddenly, you are at home.”

As Liz says, the only thing that we can do is to get up every single day and do our very best with who we are and what we have. To do what we can. To try to do better. And when we, inevitably, fall short, to pick ourselves up and carry on. We all want to live our best lives, so go for it. Aspire - but mitigate that aspiration with self-forgiveness. And make a promise to do ourselves no harm on our aspirational paths. Ultimately, being kind and understanding to ourselves, throughout our life journey, will be so much more productive than continually beating ourselves up. Our greatest challenge in life is to accept and, eventually, learn to love who we are, unconditionally. That is the one and only true "key" to happiness.

"We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us."

— Marcel Proust

the library

"Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

lean into life

I know that I sound like a broken record, constantly referring to Sarah Wilson's blog, but her column of a few weeks ago has made such an impact upon me that I just have to write about it.

Sarah interviewed Seth Godin, a marketing expert:

...Seth argues the workforce has changed radically and that it’s not enough to be a lemming employee any more. Lemmings are dispensable, as evidenced by the mass sackings of finance types across America in the past few years. Now, the only way to truly succeed and be remarkable is to create art. Not (necessarily) the pastels and parchment variety. Art, says Seth, is simply a gift that changes the recipient. It’s a generous act that sees you “lean into life”, like an aerial skier leans to travel further.

It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. Art is when a waiter gives great service. Because she cares. Art is not following the manual. It’s Susan Boyle ignoring the cynics and fronting up and singing. It’s smiling at the courier. It’s writing a book when there’s no guarantee of it being published.

A true gift is given without expectation of a reward. Although, they invariably become their own reward. Which is hard to fathom, so let me explain it with an anecdote. Last Saturday night, Seth attended the opening of Shepard Fairey’s art exhibition in Manhattan. Fairey created the now-iconic Obama Hope poster. He gave away 500,000 of the posters – at his own expense – during the US election campaign. He had no idea how it would be received. He just gave anyway. But as a result he’s become one of the most influential artists in America. Seth tells me a 4000-strong crowd attended the show and his work sells for $US30,000 a pop.

Fairey’s generosity made him remarkable. And, thus, indispensable. Any artist could’ve created that poster. The difference is Fairey fronted up, he gave, he leaned into life and took a risk. As Steve Jobs famously said, “Real Artists Ship”. That is, they deliver.

So how do we start giving gifts? How do we become remarkable? “The aim is to elevate connecting and sharing to the same level as breathing or eating lunch every day,” he says. By which he means, we start giving and then give some more and eventually it becomes a way of life.

And Sarah, on spending a day giving unconditional gifts:

It felt free, and expansive. Leaning in, letting go and not caring about being reciprocated felt natural and in tune with the creative process. It also felt more than a little bit daring.

This is something that I need to embrace, especially at my part-time job. I'll be frank: I am not an excellent salesperson, and never will be. (Too "nice", apparently.) It gives me anxiety because I want to be good at everything, both in my own eyes and in the eyes of those around me. So what I need to do is to bring something else, to make up for my lack of natural talent. Something human, and indispensable. It's easy to feel like a mouse running in a wheel, always trying to win praise and appreciation from superiors but never getting anywhere. It's demoralising. It makes us tired, and we wonder why we bother putting in all the effort. I guess what is really important is to set our own standards and live by them, instead of trying to reach the heights that other people pressure us to aspire to. It's the only way to truly live in the moment and be happy with ourselves. For me, I feel accomplished by making somebody feel prettier or giving them valuable advice. I try not to let whether or not they spend hundreds of dollars phase me too much. And, the thing is, it doesn't usually phase my bosses too much either. My "niceness"* outweighs their disgruntlement, apparently. Yes, that very niceness hindering my selling prowess is also my greatest asset — which, I guess, is the point I'm trying to make.

As for the other facets of my life, "leaning" into it is the perfect way to describe the best way of approaching it... and by "life" I mean love (human connection), excitement and joy. Embracing things that are enriching, rejecting those that are inhibiting, going above and beyond what is expected and offering more of myself with no expectation of reward or even recognition. Being self-aware and self-confident is something vital to this movement but something that I constantly need to work on, because it doesn't come naturally for me. The key, I think, is to embrace the things about us that make us special and unique, and exploiting them so that we are irreplaceable - not only in the eyes of others but, first and foremost, ourselves.

"No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That's all."
— Haruki Murakami (Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories)

* I say "niceness" in quotation marks because I don't think I'm all that nice. I could be a much nicer person... I'm working on it.

older love

So, I opened up This Is Not the Story You Think It Is by Laura Munson* to, of course, the last page. I always read the last page of my books first, so I know what's coming. I do it for the same reason that I often read the plot of movies and tv series on Wikipedia before I watch them.** I don't think that it spoils them for me (unless the ending itself is disappointing). I just like to absorb stories with the conclusion in mind. It helps me to comprehend them better, as a whole.

Back on topic... at the end of Laura Munson's novel I found this beautiful love poem that I want to share.

Older Love

His wife has asthma

so he only smokes outdoors

or late at night with head

and shoulders well into

the fireplace, the mesquite and oak

heat bright against his face.

Does it replace the heat

that has wandered from love

back into the natural world?

But then the shadow passion casts

is much longer than passion,

stretching with effort from year to year.

Outside tonight hard wind and sleet

from three bald mountains,

and on the hearth before his face

the ashes we’ll all become,

soft as the back of a woman’s knee.

— Jim Harrison, from Saving Daylight

(via Dragonfly's Poetry)

* Sarah Wilson interviewed Laura for this column, one of my favourites.

** Thankfully, I didn't do this before watching Remember Me (starring Robert Pattinson and Emilie de Ravin). Please don't.

newness

I love "newness"*. It triggers motivation for a fresh start. A clean slate that acts as a jumping off point from which we can dive into a pristine and unencumbered future.

A few new things I am loving at the moment...

1. New books.

I have been on a book spree lately, acquiring them at a much faster rate than I can absorb them.

Just a few of the books on my "to read" list...

2. New bedding.

A reward for finally accomplishing that room "detox" I have been resolving to do for months, modelled on this dreamy decor:

No, you're not going to see my real-life bed – I haven't made it yet today...

I still need to find the cushions, but new sheets and bedspread are always delightfully refreshing.

3. New sunglasses.

I had my eye on these for months. Originally, I wanted to get the Oliver Goldsmith "Audrey" sunglasses, but I concluded that the frames overwhelmed my face. These are perfect. They make me feel cooler. I don't think I'll ever actually be cool, though.

Cutler and Gross "D-Frame" 0261

There is a danger, I think, in becoming addicted to newness and using a lack of it as an excuse not to change or adjust bad habits. Let's not forget the magic of rediscovering or reworking old gems, which is equally satisfying and wholly inspiring. Not only that, but newness is relative, and tangible. A preoccupation with it can lead to needless accumulation. I know this all too well, and, trust me, it doesn't get you anywhere, except backwards.**

"You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you."

“If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot you don’t.”

– Chuck Palahniuk***

* It's a word. I looked it up.

** Okay, so maybe I didn't need all the things on this page... only as much as a privileged 21-year-old living in a first-world country could ever need something... My old bedspread is covered in makeup stains, and I lost my last pair of sunglasses last December (did you know that exposing your retinas to UV rays causes your melanocytes to produce melanin erratically, resulting in permanently uneven pigmentation?) The surplus book tower is difficult to justify, although education is invaluable, yes?

*** Chuck Palahniuk is my boyfriend Andy's all-time favourite author. I can't read his books (too grim and gruesome - just read the synopsis for Snuff if you don't believe me) but Andy reads me tame extracts from time to time and he can be so clever and insightful. I just bought his new book, Tell All, as a present for Andy and, from what I can see, it doesn't seem too disgusting, so I may try it.

death to gwyneth

Speaking of Cate Blanchett, here she is in a delightful interview with Andrew Denton.

ten things

I have been tagged by The Belle Lumiere to do "Ten Random Things About Me". Here goes...

1. I have the best boyfriend in the world. We met when we were six and we have been together since we were fourteen going on fifteen. It is our seventh anniversary at the end of this year.

Andy and me at 17. Highschool sweethearts!

2. I love reality tv. Masterchef, So You Think You Can Dance, Project Runway, Top Chef, Real Housewives of NYC... you name it. My favourite at the moment is Work of Art. It's amazing.

Work of Art... The host, China Chow, is divine.

3. I don't wear jeans. Ever.

4. I adore Cate Blanchett. A couple of years ago, I saw her in a Shakespeare play for her theatre company. I was in the front row and she was amount two meters away from me. She is just as beautiful and talented in person as she is onscreen.

Isn't she luminous?

5. I don't like Evian Water because it tastes too clean.

6. I have a gorgeous little Poodle/Maltese called Janet. I named her after an Enid Blyton character (I was nine at the time). She is 12-years-old but everybody still mistakes her for a puppy.

7. I own a Wii Fit which I played once.

8. I own a copious amount of cosmetics. I have so many products that I have banned myself from buying any more makeup and skincare. I collect nail polishes instead now. Chanel Vendetta and Nouvelle Vague are my favourites so far.

9. I buy about 5-6 magazines per month. It adds up...

This was taken a while ago... the collection has grown a lot since then!

10. When I like a song I put in on repeat for a day or so until I get sick of it and never want to hear it again. Samson by Regina Spektor is doomed.

I tag Celeste of Read Me, Love Me and Loola of LoolaZen :) xx

lovely

"A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely."
— Roald Dahl

(P.S. I know that this quote is from The Twits, not Matilda... but frankly, there are no pictures of The Twits that are pretty enough to grace this blog. Plus, Matilda is my favourite Roald Dahl book and I always hated The Twits when I was young. It was a little too sadistic for me. I do love this quote, though!)

julia gillard

So, we have a new Prime Minister.

First of all: please let's not get too preoccupied with the ethics and morals (or lack thereof) involved in Kevin Rudd's downfall. Politics is a dirty game. One person's success relies upon another's failure. Politicians know that they have to constantly be on top of everything - policy, scandals, polls - and if they slip up, someone else will use the opportunity to get ahead. Kevin Rudd did it to Kim Beazley, Tony Abbott did it to Malcolm Turnbull. Peter Costello tried to do it to John Howard, during his term as Prime Minister. Of course, anybody with a heart can't help but to feel awful for Kevin on a personal level, especially when he "blubbered" (yes, even me). But Julia's ascention is not as unscrupulous as Rudd and Abbott want us to believe - and it is entirely in line with the structure of our political system, whether we like it or not.

I don't try to hide my political persuasion. I am a "Young Liberal". That's not because I am a strong supporter of the Liberal Party of Australia. In fact, I can't stand Tony Abbott, and I find a lot of his beliefs pretty scary. I am a "small l" liberal, in the idealistic sense. My utopia would consist of a progressive, minimalist, secular government that provides infrastructure, law and order, protection and aid for the most vulnerable members of society - and no more. I am at odds with the Liberal Party because I find some of its policies nauseatingly conservative, including its opposition to a republic, indifference to the plight of asylum seekers and resistance against the legalisation of gay marriage.

Julia Gillard is not exactly the answer to my prayers - yet I can't help but admire her and entertain the thought of voting for her party, now that she is at the helm. It's not because I agree with her policies. In fact, she has already voiced her aversion towards two policy points that I feel very strongly about - compassion toward asylum seekers and the legalisation of gay marriage. No, what impresses me is her character. She exudes a trustworthiness, earthiness and diligence that I just couldn't see in Kevin Rudd. Is that enough? It shouldn't be. But the truth is that there is nobody in Australian politics who has the power, or the desire, to create my ideal society. So I am forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. At this point, Julia Gillard is that lesser. I just hope that she lives up to my expectations.

equilibrium

I love couples that consist of a short man and a tall woman. It kind of absolves that completely unromantic "list" approach to finding "The One"... You know, "he/she must have blonde hair, a great body, a good sense of humour, be intelligent, successful, taller/shorter than me... etc." Love just doesn't work like that. Thank God. If perfection was a prequisite to love, then we'd all be very lonely.

Garance Dore and Scott Schuman


Sophie Dahl and Jamie Cullum


Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban

I love how they all look as though they are in their own little love bubble, oblivious to the fact that other people may be thinking less than kind thoughts. Or maybe they just don't care, which I love even more.

"But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives."
— Haruki Murakami

vague fantasies

"It was late september. I was eighteen. I had experienced a rather unceremonious exit from school. I had no real idea about what i wanted to do, just some vague fantasies involving writing, a palazzo, an adoring Italian, daily love letters and me in a Sophie Loren sort of dress, weaving through a Roman Market holding a basket of ripe scented figs."
— Sophie Dahl, Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights

braids

I have been bombarded with braids lately. First, my best friend Kimberley posted this and this on her blog, Glued to My Chest. Next, lovely Zoe Foster chatted about and photographed her magnificent travel braid. And finally, I saw these gorgeous pictures on Primped of a versatile braid sported by Nicole Ritchie.

So... I am now obsessed with braids. I have been wearing one almost everyday for the last few weeks. They're perfect for evening, casual, work and the gym. They look fresh, even after a few days between washes, and they are versatile - I can do hair up, hair down, curly, straight, wavy, au naturel, elegant, boho, ladylike, cute. You get the idea.

By the way... today one of my customers called and referred to me as "the girl with the braid". I don't really know why, but that made me happy.

visualisation

I don't believe in The Secret. I know that I wrote in a previous post that I was "embracing" the law of attraction, but that is only because I believe in the concept, in an abstract sense. I believe that being purposeful, having clear goals and direction and working towards something helps us to achieve our dreams and aspirations. I don't think that there is any magic involved at all, but I do think that it is more likely that your life will evolve the way you want it to if you can picture the way you would like your future to turn out. This way, your path will be more direct.

So these are a few, somewhat materialistic, things that I am "visualising" right now...

A bicycle

Or, to be more specific, looking absolutely adorable on a bicycle, preferably somewhere in Europe. New York will also do quite nicely.

Cute vintage caravan

For travelling around Australia with my boyfriend Andy, à la a memoir I recently read called Love and Other U-Turns by Louisa Deasey. Some friends, including Andy, have expressed their doubts about the likelihood of this ever happening...

Prism glasses

A writing career


Sarah Wilson on the Mumbo Report, talking about her covetable "portfolio career".

Like I said, I don't believe that just visualising these things will "attract" them to me. I know that I actually have to take steps to grab them for myself. But I think that it helps, in a way - if only to justify all the time I spend dreaming.

Here is some food for thought: the darker side to positive thinking, by Barbara Ehrenreich. In animation. Warning: these videos are dangerously addictive (in a good way, unless you have work to do).

And a few intriguing quotes from another Barbara, Barbara Kingsolver...

"The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof."

"Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it's not separate from your life. It grows right up out of it. "

"It's the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future."

i'm a planet

I have watched Juno a few times over the last couple of weeks and each time I see this scene, I find it so touching and oddly powerful. The acting and dialogue kind of sums up the innate, biological inequity between men and women. Even in this case, where the guy is incredibly sweet and the girl is tough as nails, she is forced to carry the burden of their tryst. Under her sweater. Whilst he goes along with his life, as if nothing ever happened. And even though she clearly wanted that for him, she is heartbroken at the same time. And this is all portrayed with such lightness and humour. Simply perfection!

the beauty of literature

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

(Not to take away from this magnificent quote, but I want to say that have an obsession with red hair at the moment. It's just so beautiful. I swear it has nothing to do with our new Prime Minister... but maybe a little to do with my infatuation with Horatio and Joan Holloway.)

block

One of my goals for my five-week uni break was to write. Which, as fate has it, I can't. I have writer's block. I have started about a million posts, but I can't bring myself to finish any of them. So I'm sorry for the lull. Hopefully, this too shall pass... and there will be a slew of new posts on the way. If not, maybe just some pretty quotes and pictures to fawn over. xx

P.S. In the meantime, you can check out a guest post of mine that has recently been posted on a lovely Australian blog that consistently inspires me, The Belle Lumiere. It's just a short one, to do with my essential beauty products for winter. Enjoy!

five weeks

So, I have recently finished final exams for the semester and I have a lovely, long five week break ahead of me.

What I really want to work on during my break is prioritising. I tend to want to do and be good at so many things that I paralyse myself. I want to wake up early and yet I also want to stay up late reading fashion blogs. I want to do well in my exams yet I also want to preoccupy myself with twitter and authors@Google. I want to lose weight yet I also want to sit in bed and watch Top Chef on my laptop. I want to save money yet I also want to buy clothes and makeup and books and magazines.

I recently read The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone, which is absolutely fantastic and has completely changed the way I think about food. She said something that really struck me in her introduction: that the only way she can maintain her diet is to make food her priority. And that really struck a chord with me. (By the way - I really, really love the idea of being vegan, but it's not so easy in practice. So I'm working on cutting down on meat and animal by-products, slowly but surely. I'm not going to pretend that I am entirely embracing veganism or macrobiotics, but I am determined to try).

So my priorities for this break are as follows:

1. Write.
2. Exercise.
3. Unclutter.
4. Read.

That is all. So far, it's not going so well. I am struggling to write coherently, and I have missed the gym for the last two days. My room is still full of empty boxes, ready to cart out my junk. I have read three books, if that's any consolation. So I suppose you could say that prioritising is something that I'm still working on; with the aspiration to have something to show for it before I start a new semester at uni, afresh.