If you know me, you’ll know I am slightly obsessed with houses, and some of my favourite homes are terraces. I recently had the privilege of exploring one in Sydney’s Surry Hills with my good friend Tess. This talented lady is a designer, a marketer, a human rights advocate, an energetic life-force and a wonderful human. Scroll to the bottom to read a little interview with her, where she talks about working on her life, what’s she’s realised, what she likes to spend money on, and her drive to solve problems we’ve made for ourselves.
Tell me a little bit about yourself please. How do you spend your days?
My average day begins with a blend of early morning meditation, walking and strength classes. The bulk of the sunshine goes over to work, coffee, reading articles online and working some more. Evenings are typically dinner and drinks with friends, heading home for possible freelance design work and reading, before bed at the final hour… I definitely need to make more time for sleep.
What’s the best thing that’s happened to you this week?
I was accepted to study a Masters of Development Studies at UNSW. That, and I booked a flight to Cairns to get my dive ticket. After talking about it for five years, I will finally be getting it – while living on-board a boat on the Great Barrier Reef for three days.
What are you currently working on?
My life – I’ve recently changed jobs, changed apartments, made the plunge to further study and enrolled to get my dive ticket. My life is really just a series of ‘ripping off a band aid’ moments – it’s three jabs “thinking about it” and one final punch to “do”.
What was the last photo you took?
I snapped a light fitting in a friend’s apartment in Bondi. Sydney apartments have such exquisite lights! This was the centrepiece in her living room. It was like a flower – it had a white ceramic centre, out of which came four glass petals in a deep mint green. The room would have sufficed with no furniture at all – just this one feature.
What’s your favourite word or saying?
Words are fickle, so I’ll settle to throw over some of my favourite sayings to date:
“If things don’t start to happen. Don’t worry, don’t stew. Just go right along. You’ll start happening too!” Dr Seuss
“Be what you would seem to be – or, if you’d like it put more simply – never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise” Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” Einstein
“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind” Bertrand Russell
What are you most passionate about?
PEOPLE. And doing what is right. Over the years, I’ve come to accept there is little I care more about. There’s a fantastic humanitarian and author I follow, Zainab Salbi, who puts her ambition down to service: “There is no question for me about that, I just want to be happy as I am in service”. I’ve never resonated with something so strongly in my life. I want my life to be about service – and seeing to it that human rights are found equal for all.
What problem would you like to solve?
In my lifetime I’d ideally like to put an end to the inequality of women and men once and for all. For now, I guess I’d just like to see my female girlfriends own their own body, harness their unique minds, and never sell themselves over to complexes of inferiority, self-doubt or self-loathing again.
What’s your favourite thing to spend money on?
BOOKS. It’s been nearly two years since I moved to Sydney, and already I’ve filled an entire suitcase full of paperbacks. After years of caring less for reading, I think I finally appreciate the tag bookworm. It’s become an insatiable curiosity. My mind has never been stretched in so many directions! I guess the only other similar thing money might serve to replicate is travel – I’ll spend money on experience any day.
Where can we find more of what you do?
For small snippets of design / advocacy work, head to www.tnpcreative.com.au.
vicki jane fletcher 
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