35 LESSONS I’VE LEARNED FROM WINGING IT IN LIFE

I celebrated my birthday a week ago and it felt like a huge milestone. I’m not a planner. I’m a professional procrastinator and have specialised in the art of winging it, so I didn’t have the vision board with the husband, children and the townhouse. I didn’t know what I’d be doing – I had no idea what my life would look like at this stage. I was just going with the flow, doing what I wanted, what felt right, and here I am. And I’m really happy, and grateful, and still winging it to some extent.

Since I turned 30 I’ve had this little tradition: I like to spend a few moments on my birthday each year reflecting on my life, my achievements, areas of growth, all my blessings and how I can challenge myself in the next year (to procrastinate well you must have a list of things to do), and occasionally I share those things.

Last year I shared 12 lessons. This year I’d like to share 35 – in honour of turning 35. Here goes!

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ASK ME ANYTHING: ON INTERIOR STYLING

A few weeks ago I posted an Ask Me Anything sticker on Instagram and got a few questions about interior styling. I’ve shied away from giving styling “advice” because I don’t feel like an expert. I’m just a babe who likes nice things and seems to know how to pair them and where to place them, but I thought it would be decent of me to share a bit of what I know since some of you seem to think a bit highly of me in this area. So here goes:

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MODERN MYTHS: THE BABYGIRL LIFESTYLE

I read a hilarious article the other day. It was a two-year-old blog post on “babygirl lifestyle tips” by a (then) fresh Nigerian university graduate offering her fellow young women pointers on how to live their best lives, which included – among other things – becoming the “enjoyment minister” or “enjoyment president” of your life, “pressing necks”, “peppering dem” (I had to Google those two) and “don’t allow men to stress you”. It intrigued me. Not just for the expressions and laughs I got out of it, but for the message it preached, which I’ve seen a lot of recently on my Instagram feed.

This #babygirllifestyle thing is everywhere. It’s on t-shirts and other cheap branded merchandise, posts with captions extolling the virtues of “the soft life”; a life free of responsibility, labour or hardship, characterised by champagne-soaked midweek brunches, frequent luxury shopping and carefully curated holidays. It’s the life we all wish we could live – if only it were real.

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FAVOURITE HOME STYLING MOMENTS + WHY I STOPPED STYLING PEOPLE’S HOMES

About 3 months ago, in April, I decided I didn’t want to style people’s homes anymore. It was a hard decision to make, and one I had been sitting on for at least a year by the time I made up my mind.

By then I had been doing it for fun for about 2 years, and what started out as a little hobby became something a bit bigger than I thought it would be. I couldn’t believe that people actually wanted to pay me to style their spaces. I wasn’t even actively looking for clients, I was just having fun posting things I liked and bits from our home, and people would come to me and let me spend their money and live vicariously through their wallets, inspired by Pinterest and numerous home decor Instagram accounts, blogs and videos. It sounds crazy, but that’s how I got into interior styling.

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