‘If you don't risk anything, you risk even more.’ — Erica Jong

It's those in-between days of late winter. Sunshine teases and the air is soft. I meet with friends for dinner on a Friday night.

Have you ever stopped yourself short from fully throwing yourself into making something, worried it will get messy Maybe you keep thinking about the thing you want to make, or say, or do, but you never get started.

When we receive a creative impulse, it can come through quickly. When it arrives, it doesn’t always make sense in that neat kind of way. And when we spend time with our ideas, developing them through the creative process, meaning can be fluid. We’ll start one place and end up someplace radically different.

Have you ever felt it was challenging to feel truly free to create and express yourself? Maybe you hesitate to spend time doing the things that you enjoy — painting, singing, drawing, writing, playing the guitar, taking photos — worried that you should be doing something more practical, concerned what you make won't be good enough?

One of my mentors once shared a way of looking at how we grow and move through life. She suggested I imagine the process of drawing a flower — like a daisy or a wildflower with a circle at the centre and petals looping around.

It's springtime in London and the season of renewal takes on an even greater resonance this year. Out in the hazy sunshine, I feel myself taking gentle and playful steps in the world.

When I moved to London over eight years ago, I underestimated the change I’d experience in this city. Letting go of ideas of girlhood to become a woman, facing some of my greatest personal challenges, and allowing myself to reconnect with parts of myself I had abandoned.

Your essence is your fundamental nature and what makes you uniquely you. It is the deepest part of yourself, where your authenticity lives.

From the moment we wake in the morning until we drift back to sleep at night, we move along the path of life making decisions and taking actions that steer our life in a nearly infinite set of directions.

I'm seated on the balcony of a cafe overlooking a rice field. It's a soft blue day in Canggu, Bali, an easy-going beach town filled with open-air bars and trendy hotel. Since hitting the road six weeks ago, I've been on a journey that's taken me around the world.

I’m heading to New York City next month. I’m so excited to catch up with friends and see how things have changed over the past three years since I was there last. I lived in NYC for 13 years, from 1995 to 2008. I moved there to study architecture at The Cooper Union. Whenever I had a chance, I took elective courses in the art program. Photography was one of my favourite classes.