Reflections...~

Can we get a bit deep and serious and what-not for a sec? Yeah? Cool? Great, let's go then!

Around the time leading up to my birthday I took some time to reflect upon the life choices which brought me to where I am today, and while I'm not exactly in a terrible place, I do regret wasting so much time procrastinating and being, simply put, a bit of a quitter. Because many years ago, when I was younger and even smaller than I am today, I had a dream that I was desperate to one day come true: to be a singer. And it wasn't a small, fleeting dream either. It was what caused me to spend just about the entirety of my teenage years fully determined to become a musician, from participating in choirs for over 10 years to forming bands and writing music, and even studying Music Technology during my A-levels.

I was so sure that that was going to be my future, that one day a friend and former bandmate of mine decided we should 'practice' what it would be like when we finally made it and made our own 'Songs That Change My Life' features, just like the ones that we would read regularly in Kerrang! magazine. It's been about 11 years since we made those and I'm just about 100% sure that they're lost somewhere in a probably long-since-disposed-of computer, so rather than hope to find those again and laugh at how adorably cute and cringey we once were, I commissioned a friend of mine to help me make an updated version to remind me of what had once meant the entire world to me, as well as to show me that my dream does not have to take a backseat and fade away. That this could still be my future one day, if only I take a page out of 15-year-old me's book and once again work my hardest to make this my reality.

Click to zoom - I know the writing is tiny! And a HUGE thanks to Ama for pulling this off! Just... how cool does that look?? Ahhhh!

Phew! So this has been quite an emotional journey for me. It has taken me so long to put this together, not just due to the sheer meticulousness of my dear friend Ama who deserves all the credit in the world for pulling off this amazing, near-authentic looking feature, but also because when you're sharing something so personal, you want to make sure that it comes out just right, you know?

Thank you for visiting my blog, this post, and for reading this far (you are awesome!) and I hope this has maybe inspired you to reminisce a little about your own childhood dreams. Did you achieve them? Do you still have the same dreams? Let me know!

-Philippa. x

PS.: oh, and in case the earlier links didn't make it glaringly obvious, go check out ama's page! now! she's super amazing! and clearly magic! go, go, go!!