By now it must be no surprise if I suddenly disappear from here for a week, a month or more. And as always I've got enough reasons for being MIA. Again. But to shortly sum it up for you, it generally boils down to this: 1) life is life, 2) once life is life you start to fantasise and build castles in the sky and then 3) you become either overwhelmed or unbothered by the shadows of those castles gazing over you and instead of laying bricks, you knit a jumper.

The initial draft of this I'm-not-dead-yet post, or, as I named it 'New Blog, Who Dis? 3 Things I'm Changing RIGHT NOW' (hell yeah I've become fluent in blog title *high fives*), consisted out of a lot of blah blah nicely wrapped in empty promises. Empty promises, so I discovered throug reading this blogpost by Golly Miss Holly on being a half-arsed blogger. Moral of the story: you're only going to get out of blogging what you put into it. So if your blogging-attitude includes the phrases 'oh well', 'I will do that later' and 'whatever', welcome to the half-arsed club we are happy to have you! And so, after realising all this, I started knitting another jumper.

What I've been up to

And now, while knitting before-mentioned jumper, I'm seeing a pattern of half-arsedness throughout my life and am thus finally anxiously scribbling down these words in the hope a fulfilled blogpost will fall from the sky. So while Fiyero is dancing through life, I'm half-arsing through mine (name that reference). Not in the sense that I hardly put any effort into 'living the dream', but more in the sense that the dream never turns out the way it was pitched in my head. Case in point:

These past couple of weeks I've had the pleasure of tagging along with the Modemuze-gang to three special occasions: a night opening of the exhibition High Society at the Rijksmuseum, a curators meeting at the Master Tailor Institute (special because we editors normally don't get to sit-in on the curators meeting and the headmaster would give a speech and show us around) and an opening of the Jan Taminiau Reflections exhibition at the Centraal Museum with Jan Taminiau.

This all sounds lovely, Dominique, how could you possibly half-arse any of this?

1. A humble beginning

Well, the Rijksmuseum promised all kinds of wonders during this night opening of High Society, from a lecture by Bianca 'famous fashion curator' du Mortier to personal guides and a live DJ. However they only managed to fulfill the DJ-part, which turned out to be a guy with a tablet and a Spotify playlist. Now I know this is more life-being-life than half-arsing from my side, but Modemuze being Modemuze aka existing out of fashionable intelligent people, I was provided with an off the cuff personal guide through the exhibition with all kinds of specialist knowledge on pantless gentlemen and how ruffs eventually became ties. Something my have-you-ever-heard-about-Coco-Chanel knowledge wasn't up against.

Half-arsing 1, building castles 0.

2. Lost in Amsterdam

As said, I was headed to an 'exclusive' meeting at the Master Tailor Institute, which is located in Amsterdam-West. I know sort of my way around the city centre and East, but West is complete new territory to me... I can only say that now more than ever I can truly appreciate the privileges of the 21st century: I ended up taking directions from my sister through the phone as she tracked me down on Google Maps and, literally, guided me step-by-step into the right direction after I helplessly circled around for over an hour.

In fact I got so lost that I ended up in that part of Amsterdam where local residents start beating up their local junkie for always making a mess and enough is enough! #truestory Just imagine me tiptoeing around them on my kitten heels with a chihuahua clenched underneath my armpit in a mini designer bag saying "excuse me, excuse me, I'm on my way to a very important fashion meeting". It wasn't actually like that but sure felt like it.

Half-arsing 2, building castles 0.

3. It's getting hot in here

Everything went according to plan. I was having a nice time with some of my Modemuze-colleagues at the grand opening of Jan Taminiau Reflections at Centraal Museum. After some speeches and visiting the exhibition we casually strolled to the garden for some chitchats. Yes it was 30+ degrees (which is highly absurd) and yes I, a creature of the shadows, was standing in direct sunlight, but I wasn't prepared to act upon bodily dysfunctions and thus happily waved away any unusual symptoms like distorted vision and hearing. You've guessed it: I almost went flat-faced but luckily I could just in time, not so gracefully, settle my arse down on the grass while all the semi-famous museum and fashion insiders stood around me mildly entertaining each other with insignificant small talk and bubbles (shout out to Sterre who handled the situation perfectly and got me back on my feet).

Anyway I felt very embarrassed. More so than walking into a drugs-fight like the lost innocent Barbie-doll that I secretly am. Which brings the score to half-arsing 3, building castles 0.


I'm afraid if I spend any more time with my head in the clouds instead of my feet on the ground things could end up seriously awry. So although I'm not going to fill this place with empty promises (like how I from now on will post regularly), I will hereby at least plead to build more castles instead of living in its shadow. And act, d*mn it, act and not just sit back and knit a jumper. I'm not going to live the rest of my life undereducated, lost in space and flat-faced on the ground!