This is your next era: the energy and storyline you are stepping into.
Choose the image you gravitate to.
Take a breath before choosing, your first pick is usually the message.
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For a deeper, more personal reading, you can book with me through DM. Go here for some of the readings currently available.
Pile 1: The solo debut
Your next era is quieter, but much more powerful.
You are getting tired of overexplaining yourself, giving people too many chances, or acting warm just so nobody can call you difficult. You are not really becoming cold, you are just becoming more aware that not everyone deserves access to you.
This feels like black lace, dark red lipstick, candlelight, expensive perfume, and saying less because you no longer need everyone to understand you.
There could be a physical glow-up in this era, but the bigger change is that you stop trying to convince people who you actually are.
Your title track:
“I do not chase. I decide.”
Your message:
You do not have to keep proving that you are a good person by being available to everyone.
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Pile 2: The main character
This is your power era.
You are starting to see that you are capable of much more than you have been allowing yourself to go after, you might feel more focused on your goals, appearance, money, career, creativity, or becoming more visible in general.
This is the era of carefully selected outfits, confidence, strong choreography, camera flashes, and finally taking yourself seriously.
You might still have moments where you doubt whether you are “ready,” but honestly, you do not need to feel perfectly ready before you start moving, a lot of your confidence will come after you take the first steps.
Your title track:
“Watch me become what you thought was impossible.”
Your message:
Do not make your dreams smaller just because other people cannot picture them for you.
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Pile 3: The concept
Your next era is soft, creative, romantic, and a little unreal.
You are reconnecting with parts of yourself that survival mode made you push aside: your imagination, your style, your sensitivity, your desire to create, your ability to enjoy things just because they are beautiful.
But this is not the same softness you had before, you are softer now because you have learned what happens when you ignore your own boundaries. You can be gentle without being easy to manipulate.
This feels like moonlight, silver jewellery, pastel blue, flowers, blurry camera edits, dreamy music, and something slightly otherworldly.
Your title track:
“I survived without losing my ability to feel.”
Your message:
You do not need to become hard to prove that you are strong.
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Comment your pile, or reblog with the concept you got.
The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world. But the world will only be changed by the mind and the heart that is not afraid of its own desire.
There’s a kind of fight I’ve been in for years. Quiet. Constant. Largely invisible to the world.
Some of that fight has been about desire. What I want. Why I want it. And where those wants even come from.
For a long time, I lived inside a marriage that left me small. My sexuality, my softness, even my sense of worth, became part of how I degraded myself. Not because I wanted to, but because I had absorbed the belief that pain was what I deserved. I used those parts of me against myself and called it control, because admitting how lost I was felt worse than clinging to punishment.
I built a life of compromises because I had convinced myself that’s what I deserved. I let outside voices chip away at me until I couldn’t tell where their judgment ended and my self-worth began. And when I finally started naming what I wanted—gentleness, beauty, care—I didn’t trust any of it.
I thought maybe those wants were just scars reshaped into cravings. Some were. I fought them hard. Because some of them weren’t born from joy or freedom, they were built in the face of survival and shaped by harm. Some may stick with me forever, etched too deeply into my psyche to fully shed.
But instead of rejecting them outright, I’m learning to see them clearly. To ask whether they’re still hurting me, or whether I can reclaim them as part of something healthier, something mine. I don’t need to throw everything away. I need to know what still belongs. Over the last six months, I’ve been quietly testing that through the smallest of things. In doing so, I’ve begun to feel something shifting. Not abruptly. But undeniably.
Not all at once. Not loudly. But in those small choices, I’ve started to see just how deep the conflict runs—and how much I still long for softness in a world that has always rewarded hardness.
This story isn’t a confession or a revelation, it’s a slow, deliberate reclamation, not from others, but within myself.
The earbuds came first. And they shouldn’t have mattered.
But they did.
Because by the time I sat staring at that Amazon page, something inside me was already unraveling. Years of self-denial, masked desire, and learned restraint were beginning to loosen their hold. I wasn’t just choosing a color. I was confronting a wall I’d built brick by brick over the years. The typical choices were black and white. And the safe choice, the one I would’ve made without thinking, was black. There was a third option. A light blue. Not quite sky blue, but soft, subtle, and shiny. The color I was drawn to felt honest in a way I couldn’t explain.
The anxiety wasn’t rational. It crept in as hesitation, shallow breath, the urge to click black and move on. Safe. Invisible. Normal.
I asked myself questions I didn’t want to answer. Is this too much? Am I trying to be something I’m not? Will people see this and assume something about me, I’m not ready to face myself? Will they be right? And underneath all that, one question lingered. Am I allowed to want this?
The hardest part wasn’t choosing the light blue. It was daring to believe I could choose at all.
Next were my nails.
Matte Ash lavender. Not bold. Not flashy. A quiet shift on the surface, but a quiet storm within.
The truth is, I never had the desire to paint my nails until long after I had become deeply entrenched in a cycle of self-erasure. That desire didn’t grow from freedom or playfulness. It was seeded in humiliation. In the media I consumed when I was at my lowest, the fantasies were meant to emasculate and degrade. I internalized it. I made it part of how I endured inside a broken life. I told myself I liked it because it hurt. Because I deserved it.
Was I reclaiming something, or was I just repeating harm? Was this self-expression or another echo of self-erasure? I fought with them in silence, circling around shame and survival and something that looked like want. But when the polish dried, those questions didn’t matter the same way. They had already done their work.
And now, I don’t ask them anymore.
Only one person has asked me about them. A friend in his late seventies. I told him I painted them to go to Pride, and because I envied the ease with which others seemed to move in their own expression. He just nodded and said, “Cool.” That was it. And somehow, it meant everything. He asked if I did them myself or had them done. I said I paid someone. That was the end of it.
But I still find myself waiting. Waiting for someone to make a big deal. Waiting for the judgment I’ve trained myself to expect. And at the same time, I’m amazed I didn’t back out. I found a thread of confidence in myself and followed it. That I didn’t make a public declaration or post a picture:I didn’t tell anyone the day I did it. Because it wasn’t for them; it was for me.
What helped most came before. A friend reminded me of the Dao. She called me Pooh in the gentlest, most grounding way, referencing The Tao of Pooh. Maybe, she said, I didn’t need to fight every question. Perhaps I could just be.
So I’m trying.
Trying to let the struggle quiet itself. Trying to live what feels right.
But I have kept them painted. Because it was the first time I felt a hint of choice inside a story I used to believe had already been written for me.
That feeling has quieted. As I settle into the Dao, I’ve stopped questioning the desire. I have it. It doesn’t cause harm. And more often than not, it feels good. Some days, there’s still a hum of doubt in the background. But mostly, I’m just living it now.
Then came the wallet.
By then, the quiet had settled into my bones. Just last night, I bought a burgundy leather wallet. It hasn’t even arrived yet, and still, I know exactly why I chose it.
For the last week, I had been researching wallets—scrolling past minimalist designs made of plastic, webbing, and metal. Cold. Hard. EDC-style things that looked tactical and sharp. Wallets made to feel rugged, impersonal, even aggressive. And I couldn’t picture enjoying a single one of them.
Then I stumbled on leather wallets made in Arizona by Lost Dutchman Leather. Suddenly, something shifted. These weren’t soft in a traditionally feminine way, but they carried a warmth that still felt grounded. I could already picture the feel of it. Supple leather, molded over time by the shape of my body and touched by the patina of daily use. I could smell it. Its warmth lived in my imagination. And I hadn’t even received it yet.
It settled over me like breath returning. The world isn’t black and white. And neither are my desires. I don’t have to categorize every choice as hard or soft, feminine or masculine, safe or deviant.
The wallet reminded me of that.
It brought relief. Because I’m learning a new language. Back then, my mind felt knotted, tangled in binaries of feminine or masculine, soft or hard. I didn’t know there was another way to be. But with time, I’m beginning to understand that I can be soft and still be me. That not every choice is about pushing the envelope. The wallet is an excellent example of that. It wasn’t about making a statement. It was about choosing what felt right for me.
These three small things… they’re not small at all, not to me.
What parts of me have I buried to be acceptable? How much of my past was performance? What do I actually want—and why was I so afraid of wanting it?
I used to define myself by opposites. Feminine or masculine. Soft or hard. Never both. The Dao has taught me better. That duality isn’t the only language. That the world moves in harmony, not opposition. That I can be soft and still carry strength. What feels right doesn’t have to be justified. It only has to be lived.
I used to look at people who moved freely in their expression and feel a pulse of envy. Not because I wanted to copy them, but because I wanted to feel that free in my own skin. I still feel that sometimes. But I also know I’m closer now than I’ve ever been.
What I do know is that each of these small choices helped me breathe a little easier, even through the anxiety and self-doubt. They didn’t silence the internal war, but they reminded me that I can choose. I don’t have to keep carrying everything I once believed made me strong.
Softness isn’t the opposite of strength. It’s the strength I didn’t know I was allowed to have.
These three small things are the start of something bigger. Not a transformation, but a return. A remembering. A reclamation of the parts of me I thought I had to leave behind.
And the fight to get here is the proof that it matters.
I don’t have to push. I don’t have to arrive. The Dao isn’t about conquering or defining. It’s about letting go of the struggle to control what already wants to flow.
And I’m starting to believe I can move through the world in a way that feels open, steady, and real. Not all at once. Not perfectly. But that’s the way of it, isn’t it?
Make the judges look! I'm not talking about putting a cute little smile on your face as if they're doing you a favor. Make them look! If you're gonna eat mat, you're gonna eat mat hard. Don't play it safe. You gotta throw your best tricks as hard as you can.
I didn't realize exactly how much, until I was older.
I was kept safe.
I was quiet.
Movies and TV shows were my window.
Drawing pictures was my outlet.
Which was fine.
But also...
I didn’t know how the world worked.
Didn't know a lot of common knowledge things.
Didn't know how big the world truly was.
Didn’t even know you were even allowed to say “no tomato on my burger, please.”
On my eighteenth birthday a friend wanted to take me to another town to go to a huge shopping centre.
I called my mum to ask permission.
My mum was about to say no...
Until my older sister grabbed the phone off my mum and told me to go.
I think I was 21 when my mum said "You know what? I don't think I want you watching this show." It was Two and Half Men. I had already seen many episodes.
I didn't know...
Didn’t know the rules were bendable, breakable, up for debate and negotiation...
And sometimes?
That the rules were completely made up.
So now?
I'm starting from blank.
I’m building an empire.
That's why I'm VanillaBlankCanvas.
No sprinkles, no toppings, no scribbles, no rough sketches.
But what do you do when family dysfunction is playing out on a worldwide scale? When nearly the entire human population is effectively reenacting the trauma of our collective lineages? When Big Tech, Big Data, Big Oil, Big Pharma, the medical cartel, and government totalitarian elements are capitalizing on that widespread dysfunction/addictiveness to fear? When nearly the entire human population (unrecovered from generations upon generations of violence/trauma) slams the people who have been doing the work of self-recovery and self-reclamation? Slams us down and says, “Nope. Your body is not sovereign, you selfish jerk. Your individuality is irrelevant. The power of speech you’ve shattered and rebuilt your self, your *soul*, to reclaim is dangerous and must be censored.” What do you do when nearly the entire human population is force-muzzling and shoving you into the box that you’ve shattered your self, your *soul*, to emerge from? Facing flames of this magnitude of collective dysfunction in my experience burns a person to nothing. The long work of self-recovery feels irrelevant now in a world that places no value the individual and is burning self-reclaimed people at the stake *for the greater good.* Being strapped to the stake brings no peace to anyone. What then do you say to your children?... “I’m sorry I failed.”
I honor everyone who has ever gotten out of a toxic/dysfunctional/abusive relationship of any kind (romance, friendship, family, workplace, healthcare provider, etc.).
I honor everyone who is continuing to stay out of that relationship through No Contact and/or other means.
I honor everyone doing whatever personal work is necessary to avoid repeating that unhealthy pattern in future relationships. It can be the toughest work of a life and lineage. I honor the grit, resilience, sacrifice, and surrender through the void necessary to reclaim authentic self.
