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Allow me to reintroduce myself:
I’ve been away for a while (an obscene while) but I also never left ya’ll. Hi Im Ntoetse, I trade in personal essays and silly whimsy, this is my creative outlet and because I’m 31 now and here’s 31 things to know about me (by way of reintroduction).
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Help!
I’m writing to all the different versions of myself for wisdom and guidance. I am not myself at the moment and feel terrified and lost so I’m returning to the source. The Alliance of Delightful Humans Doing life with me.
Continue reading “To all the women who came before,”
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I am located right in the centre of my joy and I believe in perfect days. I believe that negative and positive experiences can be beautiful. My threshold for perfection may be low but “with all it’s sham drudgery and broken dreams, it’s still a beautiful life. Be cheerful, strive to be happy”.
Continue reading “Gentle Magic II”
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I was going through my gallery and realised I’ve lived through some perfect days in recent memory. I think people are reluctant to declare days perfect. Perhaps my threshold is too low, all I know is: if you can’t identify them in everyday life, you’ll wait for a day that won’t come. These are vignettes of joy, sorrow, the bittersweet and contentment featuring friends lovers and in-betweens. (disclaimer: I own everything that happens to me)
Continue reading “Gentle Magic”
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I am 30 now and I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night, startled awake by my own giggles. I greet my ancestors every morning now and every so often I sit in the peaceful warm embrace of my great great grandmother’s love. I’m trying to document how I got here and as usual, I’m bringing you along with me, with all the chaos of a stream of consciousness…
Continue reading “Surrender”
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I’m learning to listen to all the dreams I whisper and “joke” about so that I don’t have to to reckon with the extent of my longing. The whispers are like seeds: tend to them for they’re trying to tell you the things that you’re not ready (or willing) to know about yourself yet.
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Alternate title: “I have other talents” a meditation on fear and failure.
I’m a dreamer, a scientist and an artist. An optimist and a realist. I believe in the life-affirming power of contradictions and fear.
Compliments of the new year and welcome back! Today I thought we’d try something a little different. I present: Selected transcriptions of my 2023 (pen and paper) journal. Whilst preparing for an (initimidatingly) overdue journaling session tonight, I was struck by the few gorgeous truths I wrote on the rare occasions that I actually put pen to paper in 2023, (quite frankly I’m a little freaked out that I wrote some of these in the first place to be honest).
Continue reading “This I know to be true”
This blog sometimes moonlights as a travel blog-come-photo album (and I’ve learned that these have actually helped ya’ll plan actual trips of your own!). It offers me an opportunity to share travel wisdom and document my trips so that I can show my uncle that I’m still enjoying (relatively) single life when he asks me where my husband is (it actually worked BTW, he begrudgingly had to admit that I was having a great time being an unmarried heathen when I showed him the pictures). OK let’s go!
Continue reading “Travelbug: Summer Romance”
Word to the wise: “I wish somebody would’ve told me/warned me/prepared me” is a shitty feeling. If we wanted women to succeed we would stop selling them fantasies. It’s not informed consent if you don’t know what to expect. We teach girls that they “become women” at menstruation, that they’re destined for motherhood (conveniently omitting sex as the path to said motherhood) and condition us our whole lives to become wives (“no one will marry you if… “) but somehow they still fail to tell us the truth. The whole truth. Fantasies are for children and continuing to perpetuate them robs us of our agency.
Continue reading “[Un]informed consent”
I don’t like writing about medicine if I can help it (ya’ll have asked). But as I start preparing to rejoin the clinical fracas (death by a 1000 cuts) I would like to reflect on power: I think we have a profound misunderstanding of the amount of power we wield over one another as colleagues. The damage we do. I’m going to tell you a tale of casual cruelty that stuck with me longer than it had any right to. But it illustrates my point perfectly *minor details changed for obvious reasons*
Continue reading “Casual[Cruel]ty”
A sweet short study of my favourite yellows: a colour so good you can taste it. It’s also a feeling I’m always chasing that somehow often captures me …
Continue reading “Buttermellow”
Collaborative Eavesdropping 