Bloody Good Bloke and I bought a minuscule house!!!!!!!!! Wtf. I damn near had a heart attack at the auction while BGB remained cool, calm and collected as usual… (thank god). We decided he should be in charge of the bidding in case I accidentally cried or shouted out the wrong number.

Afterwards I WAILED for a solid 10 minutes,

I was that overwhelmed. Like a full body wracking sob kinda wail. It was all rather bizarre.

Here’s a photo of us and our new so-tiny-I-can’t-believe-it’s-a-house house (which I routinely walk past and hug, even though we haven’t actually settled yet and therefore don’t *actuallllllly* quite own it).

Yeah G’day. So that’s a wee update, more on that shortly.

Sorry I ghosted you all there for… 6ish weeks. I miss you and your blog post reading face! That sounds like some marketing tripe, how can I miss you when there are many thousands of you… most of whom I don’t know individually?!

…I do know hundreds of you very, very well, as I’ve had the privilege of being your coach over the years or meeting you at pre-pandemic real life workshops 😮…

But I miss you all because I know that you’re a wonderful collective of interesting humans that follow this blog.

Even if we’ve never met, I know we’re on the same wavelength because (it seems) you resonate with my writing — my struggles are your struggles and yours are mine. We’re the same brand of black sheep.

After every blog post I write, I receive loads of beautiful emails and comments from you legends, writing from your homes (possibly yurts?) all over the world, sharing your stories with me, your triumphs, and your bloody lovely words of wisdom and encouragement.

When I wrote about not having a damn clue whether I want kids or not, I received so many helpful and thought provoking replies from people on both sides of the equation, people who love their kid-free lives, people who love their kid-filled lives despite the challenges, and everyone in between.

I feel super grateful to have such a beautiful bunch of humans following this blog. Many of you have been around since the very start, back in 2014, when I was running around in my ugg boots in a starting-a-new-business flap, writing about awkward Tinder dates, getting ghosted by the guy I was dating (See: An open letter to all non-repliers!) and recipes for “Suspiciously Purple Pho”*. Cripes, I’ve been self employed for EIGHT whole years!

*My foray into health coaching lasted about 6 minutes before I realised I could and should focus my coaching on my *actual* passion.

As it turns out,

I’m far less passionate about raw vegan almond nut milk that I’ve had to hand strain through a goddamn nut milk bag…

And far more passionate about helping people (and myself!) find and follow our gut instinct. And taming the bejaysus out of the mind — so we can stop living lives that we don’t fit into, and instead create lives that feel BLOODY GOOD for us, and our families.

Also, kale chips are rank. Ohhh and biting into a delicious looking vegan cheesecake that I’d just spent far too many hours making… I just wasn’t cut out for that level of disappointment.

So. I miss you. And the thing is, I’m rubbish at marketing, at keeping up with all the social media thingos that I’m meant to keep up with. And I only ever want to email you/ post on social media when I have something useful for you,

not because the marketing and deliverability police told me I *must*.

Hence, sometimes you can’t keep me from knocking on your inbox door every week or two, and other times I remain eerily silent like a terribly inconsistent friend. Which to be fair — I also am. I go on “keeping in touch sprees”, voice-messaging and calling all my friends with vigour, and then disappearing into a cave of not messaging for weeks while I focus on everything in my non-iphone life.

The gist: I can’t multitask to save myself, so when I’m really busy doing one thing, as I have been lately, I can’t seem to simultaneously keep you in the loop/ write blog posts/ tell you about how fabulous the corporate workshop arm of my business is going.

And I hate the marketing brag vibes, strutting round on LinkedIn like “Ohhh I just lovedddd running two full day workshops on mindfulness for managing stress for the awesome teams at Tissot and at Omega this week.”

All of that is true (cue: pretending not to brag while bragging),

I actually did just run workshops for the legends at Tissot, Omega, and Swatch Group, and many other corporate clients, and I did love it, and so did they… But, for reasons that have made all the marketing strategists I’ve paid the big bucks to sigh loudly at me, I just cannot bring myself to announce stuff like that all over the place.

Which is bad for business, because it probably looks to the outside world like my business is in hibernation, when in reality, I’ve never been busier with corporate workshops, alongside being perpetually fully booked with 1:1 coaching clients, who I love coaching to help them get clarity on big life decisions and reduce their overthinking. Meanwhile a bunch of do-it-yourself ninjas are currently flouncing their way through the epic Bloody Good Life D.I.Y. online program.

And in the meantime in my personal life, as well as buying a house (whatttt??), Bloody Good Bloke and I went to a wonderful off-grid cabin in the Australian bush with no reception, a cosy fireplace and a bath under the stars. We celebrated our two year anniversary. We had yet more fascinating conversations about psychology and brains and spirituality. We fell more deeply in love.

My Mum came over from NZ to see me for the first time since the start of the pandemic and to meet BGB. Naturally, BGB got Covid that exact day, thwarting our plans once more, so instead they met for a brief chat while standing 5m away and Mum and I instead had the best time hanging out in Northern NSW. 😂

OHH, also… for music lovers, women, and women lovers…

I went to one of the most beautiful, powerful gigs of my life a few weeks ago — my incredibly talented friend Sam Buckingham. Check out this powerful clip that I took at the gig here, and get to one of her shows around Australia if you can, you’ll be so happy you did, (not even just bigging up a friend.) You know when you just experience something and you feel like “fucksake everyone needs to hear/ see this”… this is one of those times. I love Sam’s new music video too, in which she shaves her hair off, the power of her words made me cry.

Sam was in an emotionally abusive relationship for many years without realising. Her new album and tour, Dear John is about finding herself again and not apologising for being yourself and taking up space as women. It’s so powerful and empowering, I adore it. Also, my favourite song on the album is all about walking away from the little voice in your head when it attacks you, AKA Sam = my people! You’ll hear the lyrics in the gig clip I linked above.

Hence, unsolicitedly appointing myself as Sam’s PR manager even though she already has an actual PR manager (she’s a self-managed full time artist, you should see how hard she works!) and telling everyone I know round Aus to get to her gig cause it’s only $30 and she’s gonna be mad big one day soon! (If you can’t get to a gig, get amongst Dear John on Spotify)… and lmk what you think!

So. In short, a lot has been going on. Life has never felt more full nor more wonderful. And I haven’t had time to write about it.

So instead I’m popping in to say g’day, not my usual blog post style, though I’m sure more of those will be coming sometime soon.

If you feel like replying and letting me know what’s going on in your world, and/or if there’s anything that you’d like to hear me write about (or run a workshop on) in future, please do, I love hearing from you.

Until next time a blog post comes rushing through my fingers unannounced…

x

Andrea