POV: You live in a beautiful home. You have a beautiful partner—buys you fresh flowers every Sunday, delivers fresh coffee to your bed each morning. You don’t have any major financial obligations. Your business is successful, and on paper, it looks like you’re living the picket fence life (minus the picket fence, the kids, and the dogs—but alas). And then, one Thursday, you decide: Fuck all this. I am moving to China, and I leave in 48 hours.
It's giving main character energy. Absolute chaos. But also… so very ‘Chris.’
And then you arrive in China. It’s an unfolding disaster. You then out of the blue, you decide, actually I don’t like the name Chris anymore—I’ve only had it for the past 29 years. Let’s go with Lucy—a strong name (for an 8-year-old). And run around with some dumb made-up accent. THANK GOD we’ve managed to get rid of that in recent times—it was terrible.
Most of you have lived through this beautiful Chinese disaster with me—at least the snippets I chose to share (which, idk if what I’ve chosen to share lately, have been some of my wisest decisions) on my Close Friends account. However, together, we’ve seen more hotel rooms, more nightclubs, and met more random people and village idiots than I can even begin to explain. I don’t think there’s been a single Friday or Saturday night where I’ve walked through the door of whatever place I’m living in that day before 4 a.m. the whole time I’ve been here. I’ve been homeless more times than I care to count, and somehow, I now own five suitcases?
Anyway, amongst all this, you may have noticed I’ve abandoned my Close Friends stories for the time being. I’m not sure how I want to move forward with this account. I’m sitting here now, looking through videos I took last night and didn’t post—they’re funny (well I think so anyway) and I’d love to share them. But on the other hand, I can’t help but feel like this kind of content is undoing the reputation I’ve worked hard to build for my career.
Is it really a crime to be 29, on the other side of the world, partying, and posting stuff? Probably not. But it’s 2024, and everyone seems to have an opinion about whatever you put on the internet.
It’s funny, really, how the person crying into their Close Friends stories at 4 a.m. is also the one steering a business built on science and precision. As we move forward into product formulation, I can confidently say this: we’re not a brand that takes pre-made formulations, sticks our logo on them, and chucks them in a pink box. Most (not all—for full transparency) of our products are formulas we own. The science behind them and the product quality are far superior to the price we sell them for. And they come from the brains of people much smarter than me—I'm really just the girl you see online, who is only really making the things come together.
As we move further into this space, I can’t help but feel like the persona I’m posting online is undoing the work going into this. Sure, I know there’s a simple solution to this… why don’t I post what I actually do from a work perspective? Meh so boring. It’s pretty much just me staring at a computer screen and scrolling through endless WeChat threads.
It’s not like I’m standing in my kitchen whipping up some random concoction for us all to try—hahaha, no, no, no (can you IMAGINE what sort of disaster that would bring). No, we have engineers for that and biotech chemists, and they do an incredible job.I’m so lucky to have found this talent in such a specialised field. But, of course, you’d never know that because I don’t ever show that side of what goes on. Instead, I’m more than happy to show you the inside of some random bar at god knows what time in the morning. Gahhhh Christina, make it make sense!!
So essentially, this is my long-winded way of saying—I love you and I love sharing my life with you, but I don’t know where to go from here. There needs to be a happy medium, I guess, but right now, I have can't even begin to picture what that looks like.
So yah this is where we are. Somewhere stuck between wtf is going on, my life is a chaotic mess and science-backed product development. And somewhere is amongst this I need to try and figure out how to move forward. Arrrghh everything feels so messy. It can get very lonely here, so I do love sharing what goes on with you - now I just need to work out away that doesn't 'cheapen' me I suppose?
So on that note, I guess we’ll see what happens next, together.
Wishing you a beautiful new year,
See you soon ❤️
Chris (& Lucy 😅)