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This is Making Up Life, a brand new site by Yen Ooi that's just getting started. Things will be up and running here shortly, but you can subscribe in the meantime if you'd like to stay up to date and receive emails when new content is
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Bird in the Sky
a social media debacle
Quietly busy
or is it busily quiet?
Dragon, be free.
Celebrating Lunar New Year in the UK always feels haphazard. Since there still aren’t too many people celebrating it here, there isn’t much energy in its lead-up, unlike Christmas and New Year, where by November (as soon as we’re done with Halloween), it feels like everyone
Pterodactyl and the new year!
2024 is going to be a creative year! I feel it in my bones! Join me for a year of making things in whatever form you enjoy. And to kick things off, here’s a story I wrote nearly ten years ago that has a special place in my heart.
We mourn...
It is hard to consider ‘life as usual’ when there is so much death around us. Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedDeath She waits patiently, never rushing, never hurrying, never asking either. She picks— not favourites, not at random— she just picks from a list
Have you seen my card?
Last year’s AdventureX was the first in-person convention I attended since Covid. It turned out to be a bigger deal than I expected. Even just getting on the tubes heading to Greenwich gave me anxiety. I didn’t seem to know what to expect from events IRL anymore.
Being good company
It is only in my forties, now, that I’ve come to recognise the importance of a welcoming and loving community. Communities are support structures that shape us in whatever we do, and we naturally come to them through education, work, hobbies, etc. What I had taken for granted was
What the Water Gave Us
Last year, I had the incredible opportunity to be a part of a wonderful project—What the Water Gave Us—by Lucy Writers, funded by Arts Council England Lottery Grant. For a year, I worked with the inimitable So Mayer who proved not only to be a truly holistic mentor,
To bully or not to bully
I was a bully. As a kid, I reasoned to myself that there are two camps of people: bullies and victims. For survival purposes, I chose to be a bully. I didn’t steal lunch money or torture other kids, or anything like that. However, I placed myself in a
F*ck fear and failure
Recently, a friend asked ‘What is fear and how does it determine our life choices?’ Coming back to it, I read ‘Fear of life choices’ instead, and I think that is really telling of my thoughts about it. Failure Thanks for reading Making Up Life by Yen Ooi! Subscribe for
To be a butterfly...
On change
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Extracted
chewed, digested, expelled
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The world isn't ours
(poem)
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Time for togetherness
Rén, the Ancient Chinese Art of Finding Peace and Fulfilment
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The Tug of the Moon
It’s Mid-Autumn Festival today and the full moon will be at its largest in the year. With this coinciding with my period, I feel everything more strongly than ever—emotional yo-yo, over sentimentality, rage, despair, no fucks given and everything in between—coursing through me. So, why
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The Day The Bubbles Arrived
The Day The Bubbles Arrived is a poem that I wrote quite a few years ago about the arrival of an alien species that travels in little bubbles. This poem is still in its draft form, but I wanted to share it before it is edited and rewritten, as I
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We see a new way ahead...
Helen is one of the first women I met in London when I did my bachelor’s degree who showed me that being a woman (and a lecturer) doesn’t mean that we have to become caricatures of others’ expectations. I arrived in the UK, fresh-faced at 18 to
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Taking action
Recently, I found myself with an assignment that I wasn’t enjoying. The date that I had allocated to start the work came and went, and I found it hard to motivate myself. I am generally quite good at what I call “productive procrastination,” so I try and busy myself
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twenty twenty
that's a wrap!
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Happy Prime Day
It’s been a crazy September and October (so far) for me, work-wise, so this won’t be a long message. I was tickled to find out that today is Prime Day on Amazon, so thought I’d share this short story of mine that is just for you
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September
Time sat at the airport, waiting for their flight to be announced. It’s not like they were in a hurry. It was just that they had things to do, places to be. Time boarded the flight, waiting for no one. They didn’t look back nor forward. They were
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Two Cons and A Game
I’ve been a bit quiet recently as I’ve been working towards some exciting events coming up! Road to Guangdong For about 18 months, I’ve been writing and working on narrative design for a game called Road to Guangdong. I’m super excited, so so proud, and also
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Momentum
In physics, we learn that momentum (p) = mass (m) x velocity (v), and that a thing in motion stays in motion, unless it meets an external force. If we try and apply that formula to life’s momentum, there is just too much external force to reckon with. Every time