08/06/2026
What wasn’t captured.
Today felt like a crossing.
We left behind the wildness of the bush and travelled towards a place that feels as though it has been pulled from the pages of a fairytale.
Dense forests. Ancient trees. Mist hanging in the mountains.
The kind of landscape that makes you wonder what stories were born here long before you arrived.
Long car rides have become part of the journey.
Today’s conversation centred around masks. The identities we wear.
Not because they are false.
But because they were useful.
Because they protected something.
Because they helped us belong.
As I reflected on my own, I found myself thinking about the party girl. The intellectual. The strong one.
And while there is truth in all of them, I began to wonder where the performance ended and where I began.
Which parts were protection?
Which parts were expression?
And whether some masks become so familiar that we stop seeing them as masks at all.
Strength was an interesting one for me.
For a long time, I thought it was something I put on.
Only to realise that somewhere along the way, it stopped being a performance and became part of who I am.
That theme followed us into our evening workshop.
We were invited to slowly walk a winding path while reflecting on a question.
The path folded back on itself again and again.
Much like the way life’s biggest questions tend to unfold.
Not in a straight line. Not through force. But through patience.
The prompt we were given kept me wondering…flowing through my pen on to the pages of my journal:
Who would I be if nobody was watching? What would I create? What would I risk being bad at?
And perhaps most confronting of all…
How much of what I call “myself” has been shaped by an audience, real or imagined?
I’m still sitting with that one.
