Happy First Birthday, iCiNG!

Shock, horror!

Shock, horror! Can you believe it? iCiNG is one year old today!

Happy birthday to us!
Happy birthday to us!
Happy birthday, dear iCiNG!
Happy birthday to us!

Here are some wallpapers to celebrate!
Version one: 1024×768 & 800×600
Version two: 1024×768 & 800×600

Happy birthday, dear iCiNG!

On this day last year, I published my first article on iCiNG: Fashion Help For Recovering Goths.

Since then, I have written 670 (!!!) articles on topics ranging from buying shoes to removing negative people from your life. iCiNG started as a site about fashion, but one thing I’ve learned in this first year of its existence is that clothing is nothing if you’re not happy on the inside. I started receiving questions about life as well as dressing up your curves — how to get out of a bad relationship, how to find a career that you love, how to appreciate life when it seems to be going a million miles a minute — & the possibility of not giving my readers what they wanted never even occured to me.

I’ve given away sweatshirts, striped underpants & sparkly nipple covers, fielded thousands of emails asking all kinds of questions, been head-hunted by the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine & woken up happy every day.

iCiNG has had over 2,000,000 visitors — yup, 2 million, half the population of the country I was born in — each of whom help to make the community the amazing, thriving, supportive & fantastic place it is!

How did I get to where I am?

“i want to do something worthwhile. selling soap & bath bombs & cosmetics, while fun, isn’t life-changing. i want to write & publish. i want to have a writing party on top of a building where all the incredible people get together with a bunch of typewriters & write frantically, & when the page is finished it gets thrown over the balcony into the masses of people in suits, the kids at school who are wondering what the %^&$ they can do now, the thronging traffic, the people who need it. i want thundering manifestoes, overflowing, i want to stick them to traffic lights & spray them on sidewalks. i know that lives can be changed through tiny words, shiny like beads, strung into a sentence. i want to be part of things, only i don’t know where to begin. so show me.”(Journal entry from 2005.)

When I arrived in Melbourne in October last year, after travelling for a couple of months, the last thing I wanted to do was go back & work in an office or retail. My boyfriend & I had spent time in San Francisco, Seattle, New York, London & Oslo, as well as camping in the desert for a week at Burning Man. I couldn’t think of anything more painful than submitting myself to a mundane existence. I just didn’t want to do it.

We moved into our new apartment & I started thinking about what I could do for a living. My boyfriend told me about this guy, Steve Pavlina, who was making thousands of dollars every month from writing online, so I read his stuff. 10 Reasons You Should Never Get A Job actually made my brain pirouette. A whole lot of things started to click in my mind. I always knew that I hated working for other people, doing mindless tasks until some preordained time when I was “allowed” to go home & have a life of my own for a few hours. There had to be more to life! I also knew that I wanted to do something creative. I had wanted to produce a magazine for a long time, but was painfully aware of the horrific expense involved in doing so. Not to mention the waste.

I thought that maybe I could start my magazine online as an experiment of sorts. I would see how it went & see how I enjoyed it, & take it from there. Almost as soon as I started, the response was overwhelmingly positive. People LOVED what I was doing. I loved what I was doing! I loved being in control of my own creative destiny & constructing a place of joy & inspiration. The rest is history.

Not to make this like an Oscar’s speech or anything, but I would like to thank some people. (Which kind of reminds me of this!)

Thank you so much to… Simon ! Richard Clark of Red Spider. Sarah Wilson of Cosmopolitan fame. American Apparel. james & august. Bristol6. Darren Rowse. Nubby Twiglet. Nadia. Alex. Tokyomade. The Bargain Queen. Audrey. & my friend Jacqueline, for prompting me to write the first article! MWAH. Thank you!

Okay, now that that’s all said & done, I would like to offer up a little something for my nonpareils!

Win with iCiNG & Tarina Tarantino!

To celebrate our first birthday, the fabulous & talented Tarina Tarantino is giving away a pink & black three-row neon buddha cuff bracelet (worth $170) to one lucky iCiNG reader!

All you need to do to enter is to leave a comment below extolling the virtues of iCiNG. What do you love most about this place? The style tips? The incredible community? Things I Love Thursday? The cupcake mania?! I want to hear it!

Be sure to enter your real email address, so I can contact the winner — who will be drawn at random on Thursday the 20th of December.

Once more, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for being a part of this & helping me to make iCiNG a reality. You are all amazing & I love you like mad!