Hello, 2024 - my word for the year!

I don’t know what it is about this year, but for some reason, I feel like breathing a sigh of relief and saying: we made it!

Maybe it’s not so much about this year, 2024, but more an indication of how last year felt.
2023 was a really good year for me, but it was also a very very busy year. A lot happened: we had seven weddings (after just getting married ourselves); we had to move through the intricacies of being husband and wife: dancing with the joys and leaning towards grace in the not-so-musically happy moments, I quit my job, built a business, started studying, launched the business, and am now full-blown into focus mode on how we will make. this. work.

But I have to say - even though I have zero answers and no clues, I feel peaceful about it.

I think it’s because I’m leaning towards grace to figure it out, and also knowing that God already has the plan - I can just relax, rest next to the waters, and trust. This usually does not come easy for me, but for the first time in my life, it does because I have zero plans on how to figure this out. So the only option I have is to trust God, and not myself, because “myself”- doesn’t know how I’m going to bring in the clients or how I’m going to make this sustainable.

*Even if I make the plans it does not work, because this was supposed to be a blog post about the Interior Trends for 2024, but now I’m busy spilling my guts and unveiling my heart, going deep-deep.
Oh well - let’s dive.

I stopped making New Year's resolutions probably five years ago. It’s just a false sense of security you create for yourself to make you believe that you’ve got it all figured out, to make you feel like you have a plan and that you will succeed… But the minute you fail, that false sense of security goes and the resolutions soon follow after.

The last three years I decided that instead of making a list of resolutions, I’d rather choose one word for the year. It’s only one word that you focus on and keep at the forefront of your mind. It’s a better way to keep you on track than a list of things you have to do: it’s more a flow from within that dictates your moves and ways. It’s softer and way less aggressive than a list of things that you don’t keep and kill yourself for not doing so.

This year my word is: surrender.

It’s like I said: I know what I want this business to be, what this brand should be, but I’m not exactly sure what I need to do to make it happen.

Last year was also an interesting year spiritually. I felt at times lost and alone, almost abandoned in a time when I thought it was going to be my most sacred season with the Lord. There’s a Johannesburg-Ansu who was an actress; writer; and single; living in her rental apartment that she made home. And then there’s this new-Ansu that appeared in a year: living in Paarl; married; not acting; still writing a bit; studying Interior Design and has her own business as a designer. A lot of things about what “made me”: profession, marital status, location, etc, changed. I was trying to use Joburg-single-Ansu’s ways to find Paarl-married-Ansu.

I shared my experience with my dearest friend and she said that she felt the Lord saying that I am not only in a new season, I’m a new person and that I will not find God using my old ways, but I should seek Him in new ways and I will find Him in more ways than I could’ve ever imagined.

So now I have a business that I have dreams for but no clue on how to make them happen, and I’m also feeling a little bit lost in myself and don’t know how I’m supposed to find myself.

This may sound depressing and confusing, but to me, I’m so happy I’m here.

For the first time in my life, I’m not projecting who I want to be or what I want because I’m seeing what other people have or the way other people are and thinking I want to be like that… For the first time, I want to come back to my authentic true self. One that is not clothed in the things of this world that I have dressed myself with and accepted as part of my skin.

It might be weird to write this on my Interior business page, but I read the Taylor Swift article in Time magazine (of course I did, BIG SWIFTIE) and the journalist ended the article by using this sentence: “Our Interior Lives Matter”.

And that just *clicked* for me.

He referred to Interior Lives being our emotions - and of course, I agree. But I strongly feel the connection between my emotional interior life: my feelings; and my physical interior life: my home. I say our outside affects our inside, and our inside-outside. And I think that’s why I’m writing this: I don’t just want to help others create the home of their dreams and leave it at that. I want the interior of their home to affect their interior - to say that their Interior Lives Matter.

I feel for me to have a successful business I very much have to operate out of my most authentic true self because I don’t want to create this business out of a mould that others have used before me. I have something different to offer and the only way I will know what I have to offer is if I allow my true self to live and lead the decisions.

I’ve always been a lead-from-the-heart kind of girl, but at the same time, I’m also a crazy over-thinker. Sometimes the brain takes over my heart and I don’t operate so authentically. So this year the word is surrender - surrender who I am, surrender my plans and purpose; surrender Hello, Huys so that there is authentic flow from the inside to the outside. Because in the end our interior lives: our home and our hearts - both matter.

So here’s to 2024: the year we make space for ourselves (physically and emotionally).

Let’s go.

Love and Light,

Ansu