Aussielicious

Recently I came across some blog posts about a book that features letters from celebrities to their 16 year old selves and I thought I’d join in.

Dear 16 year old me,

We both know that you worry too much, both in general and about what other people think. There aren’t many people you need to keep happy in this world and Mum isn’t as hard to please as you imagine she is right now. Stop letting other people’s opinions affect you so much, you are a good person and some people need to be shocked or contradicted every now and then.

There is a reason you are trying so hard to please Mr Kay the P.E. teacher. You may not work it out for another 9 years but compared to others, that little realisation will be a weight off your shoulders and a relatively easy process because most people worked it out for you way before you will. Mum won’t like it at all but she’ll come to terms with it eventually. She’ll even be able to joke about it in time. Don’t rush her so much. She loves you.

You are skinny now, and you can eat what ever you want, but stop taking it for granted. Everyone will tell you that you’ll get fat at 30. Thankfully you won’t, but at 37 you won’t like your body slowing down so try and develop better eating habits will you? Please? I don’t like the measurement on my new jeans.

In a year or two, you might want to also develop a good gym routine. It will save you all those years of feeling scrawny. Yes I know I just told you that you might get fat, but until then, skin and bone isn’t exactly a hot look and it might stop you getting so grumpy when you look at Men’s Health covers.

In 2006 you will be involved with an American, I won’t mention their name because that will ruin the surprise of the first paragraph, but I would suggest not getting involved at all. They will leave you battered and bruised emotionally and for some reason you won’t let that go for way too long. You are worth more than this person will lead you to believe.

You are painfully shy and prudish now about your body and people seeing it. Believe me, that will pass. There will come a time in your life that people will be wishing you’d put some bloody clothes on for a change. Don’t be so paranoid. It’s your body, don’t waste these years being so uptight.

Lastly, you really do know how to have fun. Let that out a bit more and do things that please you. A tip for you in one word. Circus.

Yours sincerely,
You at 38.

Today my work colleagues wanted me to bring in my new unicycle, so I did. We had a couple of goes hanging on to desks and walks inside the office but at lunch time we took the shiny red one-wheeler out into the sunshine and had a proper go. Riding a unicycle is way harder than I thought it would be but it’s a lot of fun trying!

This video isn’t great quality, either in the unicycle riding nor in the image quality.

It’s the last day of the 2011 here in Sydney and as can be expected, the evening will be full of introspection and reflection, and a bit of vodka.

I won’t touch on political and world events here in this post, they are being rehashed all over the globe in lists and count downs on every news station around the world. This is a post about MY 2011.

I can’t help but feel like I’ve had a fantastic year. Sure, I may be single again and some family members and people around me have had a really tiring and testing year, and I will be thinking of them tonight too.

2011 is the first year I’ve had a real, adult, healthy relationship that left me better than when I went into it and I have to thank Dan for that. I ticked off some really big bucket list items this year, fulfilling dreams of having a photographic exhibition, enjoying the craziness that is Burning Man and walking around, loving ever second of New York City.

I came a long way, introducing my family to someone special for the first time in 12 years and having them like him and accept him.

In 2012 I am hoping that some of that emotional stability continues and maybe, just maybe I’ll find someone special this year, but if not I have my next exhibition and all sorts of other good stuff to look forward to.

I hope all my readers, commenters and contributers all have an amazing New Year’s Eve, whether it’s partying hard or enjoying a low key evening like I will be, and that you all have the most fulfilling 2012 it’s possible to imagine!

While I’m still reeling a bit from the breakup a couple of weeks ago and there are moments when I’m really sad about it all and missing Dan very much, there are things that I’m looking at as positives. I now have more time to selfishly do what ever I want with.

One of the advantages is that now that I’m not waking up with my boyfriend, I’m trying to motivate myself to get to the gym more mornings than not. I’ve also managed to find myself a new training partner which will make me get to the gym on those mornings when I’d rather roll over and go back to sleep.

I will never look like the guys in this video, which I can cope with as nice as it would be, but getting a bit fitter and stronger again certainly wouldn’t hurt.

As long time readers of this blog would know, I’m quite good at stressing myself out at times. Some of those times are understandable and others are completely unnecessary. I’m currently under a couple of bits of stress. Money stress is apparently never far away but not a huge concern. I have a decent salary but live in an expensive city.

One thing I’m stressing about at the moment is working on the Aussielicious book which will hopefully be ready to soon. That stress is a good one. I want to put out a book that I am proud of and that people will be happy to buy and enjoy.

The other stress is that I’ve been handed an opportunity to do a couple of VERY high profile interviews for this blog and I want to make sure that doesn’t go to waste. I’m talking A-List. One of them won’t be til the end of the year but will hopefully be face to face (dying!!!). The other one will be via email as per usual but will be relatively soon. Now… I just need to work out what to ask. No, I’m not saying who.

Today has been one of those days where you need an eject button or a reset button so you can just abort it and start again tomorrow.

After a really bad night’s sleep at my boyfriend’s I left to go to work and my car wouldn’t start so I waited an hour and a half for roadside assistance who came and gave it a jump start. Once I got to work we had the full compliment of irritatingly eccentric (as opposed to fun eccentric) freelancers in who proceeded to uphold my rationale that there is a reason they don’t have a full time role. Finally at the end of the (cold and wet) day, I got in my car only for it to not start again. So I then proceeded to sit and wait another hour and pay $235 for the battery to be replaced. On a positive note, I did make sure the new battery was completely charged when I sat in traffic barely moving at walking pace for the trip home.

Delightful. Now can I go relax somewhere warm where clothing isn’t required and the sun shines every day in a land free of crazy people?

On Sunday I spent the day pottering around the house and found myself in a very motivated mood so set about tweaking the layout of my photography website, building an online store to sell prints and creating a facebook page for my photography as well. I need to keep pushing myself to pursue photography and not lose the inspiration and momentum I had after the exhibition.

I thought it would never happen, that I might have got away with it but it seems like a trial separation is underway, headed for a nasty breakup. It just goes to show you that you can’t take things for granted. Sitting on the lounge every night having a couple of beers doesn’t help the situation. A little more effort is needed. I hope I can get the spark back, some energy and some enthusiasm.

Sorry, just to clarify, I’m not talking about my relationship with my boyfriend. I’m talking about the relationship with my metabolism. Everyone said that one day I’d put on weight and I never believed them. I could eat what I liked and not worry. Sure, I exercised but in times gone by, if I stopped exercising I lost weight. Apparently that isn’t the case anymore. The weight is slowly creeping on. My workouts haven’t been very good for a year or so and in that same period I’ve also been living in an environment where we have beer in the house all the time and I’ve gone from going two-three weeks without a drink to having a beer or two every night. The result? I feel fat, sluggish and caught in a vicious cycle. I feel lethargic so I don’t go to the gym, but because I don’t go to the gym, I feel lethargic.

Granted, everyone thought I’d get fat once I turned 30, so I did get an extra seven glorious years before my metabolism started to resent my neglectful ways. Time to work on getting that magic back. Things will never be the same again I’m sure but I can always try a bit harder.

In the adrenaline rush immediately after my first exhibition I wanted to keep the momentum going with photography and booked the gallery straight away for next year for exhibition number two. For some time I’ve enjoyed shooting guys in water so decided to get out of the studio and do an aquatic themed exhibition. I’ve now done two shoots for the exhibition and I have to say I’m struggling.

One of the things that helped me with the last exhibition when I went through a bit of the same feeling was talking to a friend who was helping organise the exhibition. We sat and chatted and he really pushed me to answer questions on why I was doing the things I was doing and what did it mean.

As yet I haven’t had any clear realisation on what the photos or the water theme means and I don’t know why I’m doing it. Until I get that sorted I think I’m going to struggle. I’ve got some vague ideas but I need to think about it more fully. For years I thought artists banging on about deeper meanings in their work were full of shit, and some of them genuinely are, but now I am understanding you need to find your motivation otherwise you are just taking pretty pictures.

Above are a few of the shots that I’ve taken with this exhibition in mind.

Last weekend the circus school I go to had a fundraising performance night. There were some beautiful and some spectacular acts, some were both. Mine was neither. I half fell out of a trick and managed to get tangled. While I got myself untangled relatively quickly, having to do that in front of nearly 200 audience members wasn’t my ideal situation. Once I got untangled I don’t think I did the rest of the routine well at all either.

My boyfriend and a friend of his were there and they loved it, but I think the longer I do aerials classes the more my expectations of myself grow but naturally your skills plateau a bit. Oh well. I’m determined to do the routine properly, even if it’s just for myself. I love the song and think the routine (when done properly) is a good one.

A few people have told me over the past few years that I should turn this blog into a book. Other people have also told me that I should put out a coffee table book of my photography. I don’t know that I have the body of work to release a whole book of photography but the idea is germinating to do a book combining the two.

So to all you long term readers I’m asking if you have a favourite post from all 5 years of the blog in both it’s forms, here and the old blogspot version? If you do, and you can find it, please email me and let me know the date of the post and I’ll put it on the list.

This isn’t a guarantee that the book will happen but it’ll give me food for thought. Keep in mind that it needs to be the writing in the posts and the topic that you like as most of the photos I post on the blog are from the public domain and I do not own them.

After blogging for over 5 years now and watching nearly all but porn blogs slowly drop their hits over the years as other networking and media take off, I can still be surprised from time to time. I had a text message from a friend last night saying he’d seen my blog mentioned on one of his porn blog reads.

It turns out someone at Queermenow is reading little old Aussielicious. In one of their regular gay porn roundups they have linked to my interview with a 19 year old nudist. Not porn but they find it interesting which I appreciate. Doing a search on their site for Aussielicious, as I had to do to find the link, it turns out they’d posted a couple of my pole dancing videos too. Super cool. Thanks guys.

As you all know by now, my first photographic exhibition is over and done. After months of buildup, stress, excitement, nerves and creativity (I hope) the time it was on the walls of the gallery has flown by and the day after I took them down I had a case of the blues.

I’m really proud of committing to it and getting it done. To keep the momentum rolling I have already booked the gallery for next year around the same time.

However as a result of this exhibition I have 11 framed images sitting in my apartment looking for homes and many unframed prints also up for sale. If any of you out there are in the market for some photography to hang on your walls, please get in touch.

It’s always the events with the biggest build up that go the fastest. Tomorrow is the last day of the exhibition that I committed to nearly 12 months ago now. If any of you that are in Sydney want to come and see it, the gallery is open tomorrow (Saturday) from 11am – 4pm. I will be in the gallery from 1pm, so please come along and say hello. There are also plenty of prints left to buy. Hint hint. ;)

We are in the last 4 days now of my exhibition. Saturday is the final day and I’ll be in the gallery from about 1, so please come by and say hello and have a look. Today’s images are portraits, above is “Chris 2″. Poor Chris suffered for my art, he was dusted in charcoal for this image which took 3 days to remove.

Below is “Matteo 2″. Talcum powder is much easier to remove apparently!