31 March 2018

The Best Is Yet To Come

I think so far every Romanian blogger and his/her cat have written their resolutions for 2018, which means putting me on the list of those who are still slowing down with the related article about the best moments of the year that has just passed and the plans for the next year. Even though the vast majority of people say that 2017 was a difficult year – hard to bear, hard to cross, hard to finish, I will tell you that this year was a full year for me, full of changes. A carousel of emotions. Since the beginning of the year, I have had many changes, starting with the team I work with, the place where I find inspiration, the nature of the collaborations, and the way the projects themselves are running.

In 2017 I traveled a lot thanks to my blog and I will start the list with the first series of Fashion Weeks – in February I left London and Milan. At the first one all my myself, just to be a model in Joshua Kane’s fashion show. Two hours after the show, the photo on the runway appeared online on Vogue. I’m glad I started the year with a lot of “yes” – and I hope you start to say “yes” to as many challenges as possible – this is probably the only way you can surprisingly evolve from one day to another – accepting new challenges, seeking solutions and overcoming your fears. I think I can also crawl “Do somethings that scares you everyday” because it is also a catalyst for our new experiences and personal development. We flew to Hong Kong, Paris, New York, Barcelona, Athens, London, Milan and to Bucharest – more and more often. No, I’m not moving to Bucharest in 2018, even if many choose to do that, I feel at home in Cluj and hey – now Bucharest is “45 minutes away”. It is time for us to go to Sibiu to attend an event. I have appeared in Elle, Glamour, A List and Fashion Premium Magazine. I had the first cover story with my good friend Carmen – something I did not even dream about six years ago. My favorite shooting this year remains the one you will see in this article – an editorial made with the A List Magazine team, with the styling of Venera Arapu seen through Oltin Dogaru’s lens. In June I was nominated for Elle Blogging Awards and I won the Best Fashion Blogger award for the 2nd year in a row. In October I learned that I was nominated for the Elle Style Awards. After three years of nominations, in December I climbed the stage with emotions to get my Best Fashion Blogger of 2017 award. This year, I won Best Fashion Blog, Best Facebook Page and 2nd Place – Best Use of Photography in Blogging, Best Instagram Account and Best Use of Video in Blogging, at Digital Divas. I’ve been back home every time and I’ve got it all over to self-indulge myself. These awards are a confirmation of our work, play an important role in the professional career, but at the same time they raise a question of introspection – what you are doing today, now that you have what is called the best blogger, or the best chef, the best … the best! What are you doing? You have to open new roads. Doing what others do? Yes, but in a different way. You almost feel a kind of depression around the corner, as if there is no need for you to fight now that this happened. What are you doing now? You have a much greater responsibility.

2017 helped me form as Youtuber. We officially started the Vlog sessions at the end of 2016, but things have grown nicely throughout 2017. It’s a journey that has come – naturally again, because now more than ever your attention goes to other ways entertainment – faster, more focused. But at the same time it was a new challenge for me, over time I found myself a lot in post-production video, it’s a job for which you need a lot of patience and a sharp artistic spirit to beautify the pictures in -a story. At the beginning of this trip, I noticed many skeptics on my Youtube channel. People who did not believe in what they were doing, people who said “this is not a vlog,” people whom my mounts seemed too much of. In our vlogs we presented our lives as they are – with many flights, many events and a lot of excitement. Most of the time, we don’t even get to shoot everything we set our mind towards, but we try to keep up. Probably the world was accustomed to something else. For example, two-minute videos where you talk on a couch about a particular subject or pamphlets and sketches. It was not our territory. We came to do something else. I was surprised by the lack of information, the almost meaningless purpose of many videos on Youtube. Not that I had the tail on the cherry, but there was a real need for people to say something. Anything. People who know what they are talking about and want to convey something. With this desire in mind, we launched the Episode of Beauty – a series of beauty-related videos that I wanted to answer, in turn, the most exciting questions, but also to bring a new type of serial content onto Youtube, that is, some episodes that are really informative and useful. I talked about rhinoplasty, tooth whitening, hair bleaching, facial treatments, and cosmetic procedures. All episodes are here.

What I think we should all be proposing for 2018 is to be better as people. Better by attitude, better at what we do, better with others. Let’s become our best version of ourselves through actions, words and thoughts. I am a dual sign, always caught between “work for what you want” and “take more time for you” and I know that I will never get rid of my anxiety when I am not writing. All I propose for 2018 is to be more careful about my needs – if I feel the need to say stop, I will say stop, if I feel the need to go, I will go – and to the needs of those next to me. 2017 poured out my powers at one point and it was hard for me to come back. 2017 also took me to New York, which I first saw with my best friend at the fashion week. There are ups and downs. It all depends on how you think and what you do for what you want, but also about the energy you invest every day. Let’s take this year differently – one day at a time. I started by writing everything by hand on a white sheet of paper. Bring it on, 2018.