IN WITH THE NEW

No makeup, No nuthin' //my 2014 soundtrack: Warpaint//Chet Faker//Courtney Barnett//Alt J//
Basement//Nai Harvest//DZ Deathrays//Angus & Julia
The other day a palm reader in Byron Bay grabbed my palm while doing my sister's reading and said: "Ah, independent as hell! But you're relying on your parents too much. You, YOU, have got a big, HUGE life ahead of you! You, *waggles finger at me* are very smart, you have very high values - are you living up to them yourself? No! You're not! It'll take you half your life to get there if you don't start now! You've got big things ahead of you!" So I better get cracking...

Looking back over my soon to be sun kissed shoulder I can see 2014 dissolving into memories of just another year gone by. It was my after school oasis that I dipped into and was able to swim whichever way I wanted.  I got myself overseas through determined saving and working two jobs  - one I loved and the other I did not love - and proved something to myself: that it is possible to travel at 17 years old with your twin. The travel bug most definitely bit and I now hunger to get on plane to New York, Canada, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, India, back to Europe anywhere I can... or in a car down the coast through NSW and out onto the Great Ocean Road. But you can't do it all at the same time, let alone the same year (unless I had planned my work/saving a little better) and I sometimes forget that I have some life ahead of me with some ambitions to fuel by studying a University degree. Who knows if the paper certificate is my way to get to them or not, but it's a start and it's knowledge of different worlds that I want to immerse myself in. I've always strived to achieve the goals that I set for myself, I guess I just like to succeed at things I deem important in my own eyes. It's just a matter of finding another kind of determination, grasping ahold of it, and going with it. 

I constantly reevaluate myself, think of how I could've been better in a moment, but the most important thing to recognise is that you had that moment in the first place. It was apart of your year, it came and went like a distant ocean breeze. Now something new has blown in, 
and it's time to get salty. 

Post-travel I found life back at home okay, but I felt really quite depressed while working after two weeks or so. It hurt to wake up each day and not have a new adventure, experience, cuisine, or person in my life, just a shift for some money to suffice. I realised how spoilt you become while in another culture, they're cherished weeks of my life that I will refer to an reminisce on - often just for the comfort of knowing that I did leave in the first place! The waves of travel disease come and ago, some stronger than others, but they hit pretty hard in my little post-school oasis that was... therefore I want this year to excite me, to bite me, to frighten me, to light up and shout: THIS IS WHERE YOU WANNA BE! But it won't do that by itself, I need to step up and shout for it. Because this life I'm in can go anywhere, I just need to make it happen. 

This is my first blogpost of 2015, something compelled me to sit down this rainy afternoon and type my little heart out over my laptop keys. I hope this kind of sudden inspiration is inspired to come out regularly over the year, because boy, that'd be a great help! This year I'm enrolling in uni which is both exciting and stupidly scary; I'm working on my blog collaboration with sleepwear label ROMERSK (@romersksleepwear // romersksleepwear.com) and hopefully releasing it ASAP; I'm also working with the Noosa boutique Bow & Arrow (@bowandarrowtrading // http://www.bowandarrowtrading.com) and learning more about the local and national fashion industry; I'm quitting the job that got me overseas in the first place -  so the fear of never leaving the country again will probably hit me more than once. 2015 will see me evolving, adapting, and changing. I'm interested to see what it holds and where it will take me, all I know is that I'm hoping to be productive more than anything. I don't know if I feel like there's any kind of oasis to be found but I'm hopeful at least one will appear along the way. 

I hope that if you're reading this that 2015 brings you peaceful solitude so you can converse with yourself and hear out your own do's n' don'ts rather than believe in someone else's, I hope that you make a new friend, find a new hobby, buy a new dress, a new hat, some new sunglasses (I da know, just treat that wardrobe right) and continue all the good things in your life that are actually good for you. It's gonna be good, and I hope that things will be more better than worse! 

Thank you for reading and looking with your very own eyes at my blogposts, it really does mean so much to me. For those that have emailed and messaged me encouragement and feedback, thank you! There are still two more travel posts in the vault to start with, but I will hopefully be doing more interviews and fashion related posts during the year. It would mean a lot for you all to stick around! 17,000+ page views for 2014, that makes it all worth while!

Love, Chlo x