Next StoryPrevious Story✕Los Angeles — 07.08.16

Daft

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If anything I know, I have a tendency to isolate myself in small environments, ideally somewhere where there’s a fridge and couch in the limitation of a minimum ‎10 square meter space in times of a sudden creative calling. There, I can just sit around for days doing my own thing without really going out, letting all my friends think I might have gone missing or something like that. Thing is, I am the most social and outgoing anti social you’ll probably meet. I don’t know if this has anything to do with my upbringing, the fact that I’m an only child or the simple fact that I’m weird that makes it this way. But I personally never complained. I’m very happy when I’m alone, I do my thing, don’t bother anyone. It’s honestly pure bliss.

My parents for years used to wonder if there was something wrong with me and why I loved spending so much time in my room on a lockdown. Yes, yes… Even during summer holidays when everyone was out by the pool. I was proudly protecting my pale shade and downloading new meshes for my sims 3 and building the sickest houses by using the motherload code. If you guys don’t know what I’m talking about, you seriously missed on something in your childhood or lived under a rock… Or you were by the pool, for which, shame on you. Hope you did put on SPF. So, my parents came to the conclusion that I was simply a bit of a nerd, except my grades in school didn’t necessarily follow the “nerd” predisposition. Especially in math. Don’t get me wrong, I was a good student, especially in french where I would kill it by analyzing in depth Baudelaire’s dark and twisted poems, but only when I felt like it. The rest of the time, I was really fine just drawing future stage outfits in my sketch book and finding out ways to order weird diet supplies by clicking on all the add pop ups (for my defense I was 11 and my parents didn’t have an add block. also disclaimer, this stuff doesn’t work).

I find there something very empowering, to have the ability to appreciate loneliness. Sometimes, some of my friends don’t understand why I won’t go out or why I’d much rather spend the day home, doing my weird little shit, than meeting a bunch of new people and just casually, endlessly, most of the time meaninglessly hanging out. I of course do it sometimes, as I eventually did a more socially acceptable behavior. With my job it’s hard not to, plus there are indeed so many fun people to meet around. But still, I cherish and value the time I get to spend in my bubble where I can dive into my head and come out of with the best ideas and actually build myself, my knowledge and work. I don’t think Kayture would have ever existed without this tendency. Also, oh dear do you need to appreciate alone time when you write a book, edit images or even travel. I often fly alone, especially from L.A to France and trust me, 9hours on a plane by yourself, you better find a way to occupy yourself. And still, when the flight attendants start throwing in some convos, my face openly says, in a nice polite way, more like when Avril Lavigne does fan meet & greet cold poker face type of smile “I just wanna watch Titanic quietly while sipping on my chardonnay”.

For some reason, being an introvert is often linked to such a negative connotation. In high school, it means you’re not cool. That you’re not up for the party, and that eventually you’re pretty bad a joke telling. Which totally makes sense. Well hopefully now my humor got a bit better, but I am still in the “throwing some very annoying punchlines in your face” type of phase, which I’ve come to embrace by now. They say it has a charm. Sometimes, I do tend to feel bad, you know the fomo effect (again for those who live under a rock, it means fear of missing out, no harsh feelings though), especially with snapchat when you can check your friend’s story and notice that you’ve missed the party of the year, and all you got to snapchat is an old sandwich that you made an hour ago while sitting without pants on your bedroom floor. Visualize the thing. Yes, in these kind of moments I feel bad. But not for long, cause then I remember that I’m actually good at making sandwiches.

Thing is, you can never tell when a party is actually going to be good or not, plus all the small talk kind of gives me headaches at times. You’ll usually find me by the bar. And in my case, the small talk gets very repetitive, “so what exactly do you do?”. I’ve tried all sorts of answers to this question from the classic : I’m just a “fun” human being to the I’m a fashion blogger but not only. “What does it mean?” It means I’m quite narcissistic and post a lot of pictures of myself online, I get paid to travel, wear cool stuff and be in amazing places, so then I’m like damn… I need to do something meaningful with my life, I order an Uber, go home, make myself a sandwich, write a deeply tortured, melancholic song about the true meaning of life, fall asleep, wake up the next day and try somehow to be a good human being and spread love, positivity and do good work. Thus, not go out.

At the end of the day, and this is always what I’ve thought, as “pessimistic” as it might sound, we only have ourselves really. To me it’s not even pessimism, it’s more realism. You never know what’s going to happen to you in your life, you might move, have a big argument with your group of friends, your family might be busy or away, if you’re not good with yourself and doing what you gotta do, no one will do it for you. When I moved from Switzerland to L.A I knew it would come with challenges, being far away from all my bench marks and after all yes, having to make new friends was so frightening. But I was also so excited and I just rolled with the flow and did what I felt like doing. Never forced myself to go out if I really didn’t want to, never fake friended anyone, except Fiona, and made sure to make out of my apartment a creative temple, with a fridge always full of hummus and a couch where I fall asleep at 3 am most of the time.

I guess what I’m trying to say, is let’s make being an introvert cool again. Also stop bashing kids in schools for not being outgoing enough. Maybe we just don’t know how to talk to them? From my personal experience, I know I always appreciated real talks, someone who’d pull up a real interesting, meaning subject and not just some gossip or drama about someone they barely know. All intellectual deep stuff aside, you can still come and talk to me about stuff like the Kim K. / Kanye / Taylor feud (sorry Tay, I’m with Kanye, always been always will be). Being a bit of a loner doesn’t mean necessarily that you’re afraid of people, more so that you are bit socially shy and that there’s a freaking lot going on in your head. It must sound weird for people to think that yes I’m shy when in person, if you ever met me, you’ll know, I could just jump on a stage and start speaking in front of hundreds of people, but I still feel awkward when meeting new people one on one and constantly need to force myself to get out of my shell. In life, it’s really all about finding the right balance. So learn to be good by yourself, and then you’ll be even better with others.

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version 2
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BLUR final

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Photography Cibelle Levi

Jacket Versus by Versace

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