As Aristotle once said, "Fail fast, fail real bad, get back up, feel okay, try again, fail less badly, repeat."

In dark times, just as I feel myself giving up, I always turn to this classic Aristotle quote. It was one of his less famous philosophical quandaries about the nuance of failure. It's 100% accurate and authentic according to the translation from AlphaBetaGPT (the hit new AI tool for stuff people said ages ago).

Anyway. 

Welcome to Picnic Journal! I'm Johanna, a designer, artist, and writer living in South Korea.

I was born and raised in Melbourne, where I spent my summers collecting and selling seashells to nurture my deeply entrepreneurial spirit. That's the fun way of saying I lived near a beach and went to private school.

When I was 22, I made the unhinged decision to live the rest of my life in mild discomfort and chronic outsider syndrome by moving to Seoul, South Korea with less than adequate Korean language skills.

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I started my first blog when I was 14. It was an assignment from my English teacher. She was a great teacher, but, and I say this with love, she was a mess. I hope she's doing well. 

We all started our blogs for the assignment as a bit of fun. After all, Wordpress was pretty funky fresh in 2010. But while my peers went on to focus on becoming lawyers and doctors, I decided to take my assignment a little too seriously and keep my blog active for the next 14 years, becoming a professional recluse in the process.

I started writing about my love of Japan and documenting my travels, teaching my three readers about Japanese words I liked. At university, when I wasn't busy fumbling my way through early adulthood, I was slowly falling in love with copywriting, branding, web design, and marketing.

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When I went to Korea in 2017 as an exchange student, it made sense to pivot from Japan to start a new blog documenting my travels. Well, at least that's what my agent and I agreed on when we were discussing all the different ways I could remain in indefinite financial disarray.

Fast forward seven years, I live in Seoul, am married to a Korean man and have a human son that I birthed somehow (hashtag matrescence, am I right, ladies?). I also managed to worm my way into becoming a professional working lady in corporate South Korea, as a copywriter no less. Hashtag don't mind my grammar hashtag I can't read but I sure as can do try my darnedest.

Through these life changes and uncomfortable culture shocks, I've always kept the slightest semblance of embers alive on my blogs and internet presence, trying desperately to fan the ashes of my online world into something more… flammable?

This time, all bets are off, and my head is in the game. I'm soaring, flying and breaking free all at once. I'm physically and literally Troy Bolton.

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I gave birth 20 months ago. Since then, my relationship with social media, interacting with strangers on the internet, sharing my life with people I've never met, and making "content" has changed a lot. Mostly for the worst. Hahah what's a human conversation?

I've done virtually nothing online. I've become a hermit. I have to Google what trends are now. "Hey Chat, what does demure mean and why don't I have any friends haha!"

But I'm back now. Doing things my own way. Sharing what I want to share.

I'm taking things back to the Tumblr MySpace days. A homepage on the web that's designed just the way I like it. I'll share when I want to and encourage unobliged readers to check in if they feel it necessary.

Welcome to Picnic Journal. A place where I share all of my brain soup thoughts and word vomit ideas, fuelled by a mild addiction to terrible wine and a laundry list of undiagnosed neurosis.

At Picnic Journal, we're leaving our expectations at the door and writing for ourselves. It's me and everything that I am. Everything you see on this blog is designed by me and written by me and illustrated by me. Here's to humans doing things. Making mistakes. Saying funny things that are confusing but impossible for a robot to concoct in their tiny little robot brains. Err, hello, I can comprehend human emotions! You guys are just beep bopping your way to the top. I say we jail all these GPTs and PPTs and make LinkedIn life updates a federal crime.

Okay, bye for now!

Welcome and hello!

Like and subscribe!

Just kidding, we don't do that here!

P.S. Don't worry, I'm okay!

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