Category: Creative pursuits
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I was always a bit frightened of my vagina
Or maybe I was frightened of the things that were supposed to come in and out of it, like blood. Other liquids of varying viscosity and colour. Tampons. Penises. Entire babies. For a brief time, I convinced myself I didn’t have a vagina at all. I was 12, attempting to use my first tampon. How […]
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Why David Hockney’s ‘A Bigger Splash’ is my favourite painting
I have a favourite painting. A large copy of it hangs in a white frame above the boarded-up fireplace in my living room. Perhaps it’s pretentious to tell you that I have a favourite painting. The art world feels very pretentious sometimes, doesn’t it? You have to know certain names, have a lot of money, […]
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Deep philosophical life lessons you learn while painting
Tonight, instead of binge watching MTV’s Catfish like I often do, I finished a painting I started at the weekend. I’m not technically trained in fine art, so it’s messy and not as good as it could be, if I knew where to put light and shadow. But I loved the process. It helped to […]
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What is it like being a copywriter? Pros and cons
These are some of the top phrases (or keywords, as copywriters call them) people Google when they’re daydreaming about what it must be like living the glamorous, coveted lifestyle of a copywriter: is being a copywriter a good career is copywriting worth it what is it like being a copywriter is a copywriter a good […]
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Knowing Nada – a short story
The black streets of Zagreb were shiny with rain. Above the traffic, the noise, the movement, almost-frozen raindrops ricocheted off the grand building facades. Their silhouettes reared up against the dead black sky as tall as the cliffs that marked the edge of the island Ana Horvat called home. But unlike her beloved coastline, these […]
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A lesson in failure from a champion paper airplane maker
I recently pitched for a scriptwriting project scripting videos for a massive YouTuber to broaden my skillset and earn some extra money. Unfortunately I wasn’t successful, so I’ve repurposed my sample scripts as blog posts so they don’t go entirely to waste. Here’s one of them – about failure, funnily enough. I hope you enjoy […]
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Thanks for being one of 200+ people following whalebeings! Here’s some art I made just for you
A few days ago I received a celebratory message from WordPress telling me I’d surpassed 200 followers on my blog after just two months of going live. That’s more people than I could shake a stick at! Not that I would ever shake a stick at you of course (side note: this saying comes from […]
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Today I failed at drilling a hole in a wall so I did a pretty painting instead
My bedroom walls are made of titanium. It’s the only logical explanation for how two drill bits snapped clean in half while I was trying to mount the brackets of my new IKEA desk to the wall today. That, or I shouldn’t have been so tight when I googled ‘cheapest electric drill I can possibly […]
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My short story that didn’t win Vocal’s Little Black Book short story competition [Mrs Brizzi’s Fish Dinner]
This week I’ve successfully not won TWO writing competitions! First the National Poetry Competition, and now the Vocal Little Black Book short story competition sponsored by Moleskine notebooks. This blog is turning into a graveyard of my failures. The first prize was a whopping $20,000 and to be quite frank, I’ve been daydreaming about that […]
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Watch me awkwardly read my poem, which didn’t win the National Poetry Competition 2021
Uvita River Dirt I wrote this in March 2020 🙂 I’ve also, embarrassingly, recorded myself reading my failed National Poetry Competition entry out loud, in case you’d rather watch me stumble over my words than read it yourself. Disclaimer: I’m wearing an inappropriately see-through leopardskin leotard because this is my lockdown uniform. It’s not something […]
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