By and large I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I’m very much a life runs off vibes kinda gal — but lately I’m sitting across the table from Multi-millionaires and Attorney Generals.

Is this bitch about to glow up and breakthrough? Let’s hope.

I see life through the lens of an artist. I’ve always needed writing to process and feel. And dancing to embody and heal.

A couple of times I’ve been called a savant. I feel like I’m more of an average Jenny-from-the-block.

I’m an elder millennial, born in late August of 1986.

Fun fact, I’ve met at least dozen other people with the same birthday as me. Five of us all graduated high school together, which made it kind of fun.

And seven years ago my youngest nephew was added to the list.

Some folks tell me they’ve never met another person that they share a birthday with. Ain’t that something.

This crew of birthday buddies and I, we were all born under a blanket of stars said to be performers and healers — the Leo/Virgo cusp — or the “Cusp of Exposure” so it is called, by astrologists.

Leo is a performer and a leader. Virgo is a healer and a teacher.

Me personally? I’ll let you be the judge. I can tell you, because of my Cancer raising I’m very sensitive. But with an Aries moon, I’m also quite direct and outspoken.

…Unless I have a crush. Then I might get shy.

I’m analytical and a divergent thinker.

Early teachers recognized me as equal parts left brain and right brain. It was suggested I could skip a grade, going from one to three. But for some silly reason I talked myself out of it.

Maybe I felt intimidated about introducing myself to older kids. Definitely there’s some Enneagram Type 4 wing 5 in me.

I’ll tell you a story next time about the time I felt embarrassed sitting down for a tequila with Roger Hardy, founder and CEO of Clearly Contacts, Coastal, and now Kits Eyewear.

Life as a 38 year old retired dance teacher living in Vancouver, BC

I’ll post sunsets that might have you thinking this girl’s living a #quietluxury dream. But trust me, the vibe is much more #sneakyluxury over here.

Like any good daughter born into the capitalist machine, here I am using a digital platform to serve you my perspective in exchange for whatever attention-gets-value currency I can muster.

Well, I hope you’ll find it honest, sincere, amusing, and/or at least unique.

Wish me luck. Here goes…

I’m a near 40 year old single, female, elder millennial who’s trying to crave a path from starving artist to legitimate philanthropist on the mean streets of the digital world. All from a Downtown Eastside rental in Vancouver, BC.

In a real Banksy move, I won’t be sharing my name. And to anyone who arrives here already knowing me, thank you for meeting me here. Thank you for your attention, your curiosity, your eyes, your ears. And your hearts.

I hope buried somewhere in each piece of TwT || This Woman’s Truth content, a gentle and genuine offering of humour, humility, appreciation, irony, sarcasm, encouragement, motivation — or, at bare minimum — a pretty sunset and some moody music can be found.

Till next time.

— TwT

The story of how I almost bought an $875,000 Vancouver condo as a single, starving artist.

Keyword there, almost… spoiler alert, it didn’t come together. So — still renting.

These skies have been my closest audience this last year. And to be honest, they’ve been witnessing a pretty serious ego-death lately. Does that happen to everyone approaching 40?

Thankfully, the views have kept me dreaming. Keep me scheming. Keep me reaching. Grinding. Hustling. And kept me humble — felling held by nature, and inspired despite the pressure of soul-peeling bark shedding season.

Growth is not always comfortable. I’m feeling that tight restriction that comes just before the expansion.

Something else that might not always be comfortable… my not-uncommon use of long and often too verbose sentences. Like the one I’m going to try and impress you with next.

I’m sitting in my how’d-I-get-so-lucky-to-live-here second bedroom, that I’ve recently converted into an office while I take a much-needed-and-long-overdue break from living with roommates in order to stretch out, decompress, and enjoy the view (along with some solitude) while I gather my thoughts and schedule meetings with the Attorney General’s office.

Three years ago this unit was appraised just $125,000 shy of a million dollars. Even though it was well beyond my scrappy little single-artists budget, I was plotting an ambitious scheme to buy it.

Broke as I am, I’ve always been rich in smarts and creativity. So I jumped ship from Bank of Montreal to Vancity Credit Union and I worked with Small Business BC to develop a bed and breakfast business plan.

The vision was sue the pants off of the man who inflicted acts of torture against me in a foreign country and if that didn’t work out (it didn’t), secure a women-in-business low-interest growth loan. As well as a first and second mortgage with a private-lender in order to buy the property.

Luckily, a unit like this, in a building with dozens of successful Airbnb’s seemed like a feasible plan and strong enough collateral. Suddenly the far-fetched dream was beginning to take shape. It was a highly creative financial risk but one that lenders seemed willing to take.

The exercise gave me an appreciation for my own resourcefulness that up until that point I had never really given myself perhaps enough credit for.

The mortgage was going to be steep, but the Airbnb revenue lucrative, so I kept going, working on the business plan with Small Business BC. I registered The Nest, at Strathcona Village and decided I’d no longer declare the rental income I’d been earning for the last five years as personal income but as business income instead.

It would mean the income would be subject to higher corporate tax rates than personal income tax rates but it would finally make me a home owner. I’d had more than my share of landlords reclaiming the unit that I’d been renting for their personal use, unfortunately well before legislation was written to afford accommodations to renters who are put in such position. It happened to me three times in as many years.

I honestly didn’t care if I’d be paying more in accounting fees or taxes. At least I’d be building equity unlike the hundreds of thousands I’ve paid in over the past two decades as a renter. As this was starting to come together, I was growing excited.

Without knowing how high interest rates were going to climb and what might happen with inflation, I was likely going to have to Airbnb the unit full time for the first year to cover the near $5,000 mortgage and costs. This wasn’t concerning for me since I was booked back-to-back with petsitting gigs for much of the next year and a half.

For contingency, I decided to purchase a 1978 17’ boler travel trailer that I could camp/travel in when I was not otherwise petsitting. I was 37 years old, single, and cooped up all through covid… why not.

The hiccup was, the last interest rate hike of 2022. It put private lenders on notice. Financial institutions that had long-gotten-rich off real estate speculation in Vancouver were suddenly a lot more cautious. In order to prevent the housing bubble from bursting, the condo market in Vancouver was about to experience a real cool down up.

After that, two friends offered to loan me $40k to help me cross the finish line — one, a male friend who’d just broke up with his girlfriend but when they got back together a few weeks later the offer was reneged; the other, a friend who offered unfortunately after the private lender had pulled the plug.

My parents, unfortunately, had just undergone a pretty stressful period. My dad developed Kidney Stones during Covid. A typically routine surgery to laser them away resulted in a snagged blood vessel, significant blood loss and a blood transfusion. A year later he also underwent a quadruple bypass heart surgery that came with its own post-op complications resulting in lung failure, kidney failure, and heart failure before hospital staff realized that a tube they’d inserted to more quickly remove the excess gasses that they pump you up with during surgery had accidentally remained tied, essentially turning him into a balloon of even more carbon dioxide, rather than deflating him. Whoops.

So no, needless to say, my parents weren’t really in the frame of mind to talk business and estate planning. My brother, to his credit, offered to buy into my parents estate, which would allow my parents the ability to re-deploy capital with me. However, the conversation proved to put too much pressure on my parents who were already in the midst of confronting their own mortality. The timing wasn’t great.

The unit was not sold, I continued to rent. It’s now two years later and FIFA ’26 is just around the corner.

Till next time.

— TwT

At some point I might get super honest and vulnerable with my writing. It might start to feel a bit moody in this corner of the digital world.

But for now, let me try to win you with levity once more.