Hey. (Addressing my absence...)~

The last time I posted on here was literally on the last day of 2019. And while I'm sure my absence is quite easily forgivable, given what we've all been through in the months and now years following that, I feel like I just want to explain a little bit more about why I've been so silent. After all, this is my blog and my space to share my life with whoever happens upon it and what I am about to write about is a huge part of the recent me.

2020 was supposed to be my year. I had SUCH big plans for 2020. I was due to go traveling and experience the world and myself in a way that I had never imagined before and I was going to document tons of it here. OOTDs, hauls, travel tips and discoveries - heck, I was even contemplating making a vlog channel for what I couldn't manage on here!

But obviously none of that happened.

And what sucks extra is that I don't know if any of that will ever happen, not with the way the world is right now and not even after things have started going "back to normal". Unfortunately for all of us, we've had to shift our priorities to accommodate the changing world and for me that has meant giving up what would have been my greatest adventure to date. Possibly ever. It's been hard to come to terms with that fact and even now I find myself nearly breaking down at the thought of all the missed opportunities. So with all that said, taking a break and stepping back to regroup was for the best.

Now, I've been blogging on-and-off for the past 10 years, which is nuts to think about really, and this break has been the longest I've taken so far. The landscape of the internet has changed so much in that time that I'm not sure if anyone even blogs or reads blogs anymore! But I'd like to continue it. Maybe someone will stumble upon it and find what I post on here interesting or helpful, much like others' blogs have been for me in the past. Or maybe no-one will ever find it and it'll just be another space for me to ramble. But I don't want to just let it die and fade away yet, as I feel like if I were to do that now, it would only serve as another disappointing reminder of what never was, rather than instead a time capsule of what moments were in my life.

Of course, it would be nice if one day I got to make the type of content I had been hoping for for 2020. For now, however, I will probably be mixing things up a bit here. Less beauty and fashion-y type content and more lifestyle. Sort of like... less curated and more random and spontaneous? I dunno, we'll see.


-Philippa. x

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!!