a whole lotta good news

Life has been a journey recently. Every week presents new challenges and new triumphs, new highs and new lows. During one of the most challenging periods of our lives, I’ve found a lot of happiness and excitement due to the following: I’m still completely blown away that this is happening. It really is such a huge deal for me and I’m just so grateful, excited and happy that this happened! It’s funny, I think about this so often about where I was this time last year and I was in a completely different place. I had no work, barely any money, I’d just taken a huge, huge risk (story of my life!) with moving out. I had the smallest amount of savings which meant I could afford two months rent, but I remember I feeling so alone and anxious about how I was going to make my rent.

I had all these people I wanted to work with, all these ideas I wanted to do but I couldn’t even afford spare 35mm film or to get my film developed. It was also hard moving out to live alone, when I didn’t have much work. I pretty much spent most of my days trying to get work, sitting alone in my flat. It wasn’t fun, but I’m still really glad I did it, I don’t know why but I’ve always been good at knowing when things are meant to be, and moving out felt so right. I needed that time alone to figure out my life and what I wanted to do and how I was going to do it. Buuuut, fast forward a year and god, so much has changed.

During the summer months, I applied for this competition with The Dots x Pinterest, to Reimagine Christmas for my chosen brand, which was Sony Music. I really didn’t think I’d get through the initial stage, as I always thought I wasn’t particularly talented at coming up with ideas etc. But it slowly happened, I received an email to let me know that I had gotten into the Top 20, then the Top 10… and then the final Top 5.

which meant. that I. had. won. the. competition.

I was out on a walk with my friend Naomi and we were sitting on the beach when I received that email, my phone signal suddenly went and I couldn’t open the email, so I ran with all my power up this huge hill till I could get signal, I opened my emails, read the email and then screamed and jumped and cried and screamed a little more. Naomi thought something was wrong. I finally managed to spurt my words out, and then she started screaming, jumping and shouting. Haha, good times. We then walked to the nearest pub, ordered some wine and just looked at each other like wtf is happening, how did this just happen. In the email, they said that they were going to pitch my idea to Sony. MY IDEA TO SONY. ONE OF THE BIGGEST RECORDING LABELS IN THE WORLD. It took a couple days to sink in. Well, I’m not sure if it’s even sunk in now, because it’s crazy. I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone for a few weeks, but during this time I had to do an interview for a group feature in Creative Review (!?!??!), and people from Pinterest were emailing me, I was put in touch with people from Sony. Like, people from Sony were emailing ME. I was out for dinner with a friend when I saw that they had emailed me…can you guess what happened? A lot more screaming and jumping and crying.

I tried my hardest to not get my hopes up, because who knows what was going to happen. I had my vision and had the things I hoped and hoped and meditated on to try and get them to happen. And then long story short, it’s happening. My biggest client yet, Sony Music. Using old Christmas family photos of me my mum and dad from when I was little. Reimagining Christmas with Nostalgia. Can you believe it? I don’t think I can. Your girl is working with Sony on their Pinterest Christmas campaign. Completely mental, hey? This is something I dreamed off for the longest time.

After the most hectic previous 6 weeks, I now have some time off which is lovely. I’ve had the past week off as well as the following 2 weeks. I find it terribly difficult to let myself slow down and relax, I always feel lazy and as if I should be doing something productive. But being in lockdown presents a challenge where when I would have usually had time off, I would’ve filled it with seeing friends, going out, exploring etc. As none of that is possible, I’ve worked through a lot of adulting admin that needed doing, and feel accomplished that I finally managed to tick them off the list! Next week I will be prepping and planning for a local exhibition which I’m very excited for, and I’ll make myself relax by watching some films and Netflix, read a lot, finally put clothes up on eBay, enjoy baking and play a whole lotta Sims 4 😎 I know I need to make the most of this time off as my mind and body really, really need it. I do feel tired and should enjoy this time to slow down and sleep and rejunivate myself and go out and take photos for new personal projects.

All the love as always, A x

PNAU - Solid Gold / Harry Styles - Golden, Fine Line, Sunflower