I usually sit down every couple of weeks to write one of these. Not because anything has resolved, but because I need to name what’s still in motion.
I’m back in Sydney. And Sydney is… Sydney. Familiar in all the ways I remember, but off-axis too. It’s strange how a place can feel like home and still pinch at the edges. Everyone says give it time. Just try. But the more I try, the more I see cracks in what I thought I knew. I look back on Mexico with golden lenses, even though I know I shouldn’t. Maybe it’s the season. Maybe it’s just being home again.
I’ve also been looking back on London. A longer chapter, harder to hold. London gave me so much — an identity, a pace, a city of edges I grew into. It gave me people I loved, some I lost, and a queer community that saw me through more than I could name. Even when things got hard, it held me. Sometimes I forget how much of myself I built there. I don’t want to mythologise it, but the contrast is sharp. It’s hard not to compare.
Work-wise, I’ve been in a blur. So many interesting conversations. Regeneration. Participatory democracy. Design in Australia. Bikes and how we might open the streets. But still no clear way forward. No offers. No anchor. Maybe I’m spread too thin. Maybe I’m just chasing too many futures at once.
I know I need to be here right now. That part is non-negotiable. My parents are navigating cancer. The days are full of small things that matter. I want to be close. But it’s hard. I feel everything stretching.
And still — there have been moments. Reuniting with old friends. The kind who remember you at seventeen and don’t flinch at who you’ve become. We’ve laughed. Made things. Talked late into the night. It’s strange how easily you can fall back into rhythm with someone who knows your early shape. I didn’t expect to feel that again.
While I was still in Mexico I applied for everything. Fellowships, masters, residencies. Spent weeks building ideas, mapping them out, testing the edges of what could be. I got some yeses. Which was the dream. And now, I find myself far away from those opportunities. Wrong time zones. Wrong energy. Like they belong to another version of me.
There’s been a weight on my chest lately. A kind of low pressure system hovering over my thoughts. It’s hard to see the next step when everything is about holding things together. The cost of being here grows. The money doesn’t stretch. And the things I want — the ones that felt possible just a few months ago — now feel further away.
Mexico gave me something I didn’t expect. Not clarity exactly, but momentum. Creativity. A feeling that I was building something — even if I didn’t know what. I haven’t found that feeling here yet. But I know I need to. I’ve been telling myself to pick up a pen, a paintbrush, something, anything, every day. Just to remember what it feels like to be in motion.
Still here. Still trying. Still somewhere in between.