Back in lockdown in 2020, I was wandering around the bush stoned as fuck because there was basically nothing else to do. And somewhere between the trees, the weed and the mild existential crisis that was COVID, I decided I wanted a full nature sleeve tattoo. Nature has always been where I feel most like myself.
So I messaged my tattoo artist, who I call Pussy. Yes. Pussy. Long story. Actually, fuck it. Short story. Years ago I was driving through Upper Hutt with my ex when I saw her and her sister walking down the street. The Upper Hutt bogan in me took over. Window down. “PINK PUSSY!!!” Fingers out the window.
Drive away. And somehow the nickname Pussy survived longer than the relationship did. As soon as lockdown restrictions lifted, I booked my first session. Seven to nine hours at a time. A couple of trammys. And a lot of fucking talking. During one of those sessions, Pussy told me about something she’d started doing.
TBM. To Be Magnetic. A manifestation programme. I’d always listened to her advice, so I downloaded the app, smashed through something like a hundred podcast episodes and signed up. And then I started asking for shit. A house to renovate. A bigger business. A motorcycle.
Money. Success. Things. And here’s where this story gets weird. Subscribe I got them. From early 2021 to mid 2024, I experienced the most materially abundant period of my life. My business grew. I bought another 1950s bungalow during lockdown and renovated the entire thing.
I documented it online. A national newspaper interviewed me about renovating through COVID. I bought my first motorcycle. I filled my house with beautiful shit. I even manifested one of the first fucking PS5s when nobody could get one. Ridiculous? Maybe. But from where I was standing, the formula seemed to work.
Write down what I wanted. Believe it was possible. Take action. Watch shit happen. And I got very fucking good at it. There was just one problem. I was getting better and better at building a life without ever stopping to ask whether I actually wanted to be the person living it.
Then I asked a different question. In mid 2024, I started another programme inside TBM. The Authenticity Challenge. Four weeks supposedly designed to make you more authentic. By then I knew how to chase external shit. But this challenge wasn’t really asking: What do you want?
It was asking: Who the fuck are you underneath everything you’ve built? And that question turned out to be considerably more dangerous. Because when you start auditing your life properly, you don’t just notice what’s working. You notice what isn’t.
The identities you’re maintaining. The relationships you’re forcing. The expectations you’re carrying. The things you’ve accumulated because somewhere along the way you decided they meant you’d finally fucking made it. Around the same time, one of my furniture suppliers approached me about opening a much larger showroom in Wellington.
I’d owned my furniture and homewares business for eight years. This looked like the next level. They’d take the lease. They’d fund the fit out. I’d run the showroom and staff. I’d receive a salary and sales bonuses. My existing business would operate inside it.
It looked fucking perfect. Exactly the kind of opportunity I’d spent years trying to manifest. The bigger store. The bigger business. The next level. The life I’d asked for. Except the opening dragged into 2025. Then Wellington’s economy shit itself. People stopped buying furniture.
I’d overcapitalised. The arrangement I’d relied on didn’t work out the way I’d expected. I spent eight months paying everyone except myself. Eventually, my business went into liquidation. Lesson number one from the spiritual awakening: GET IT IN FUCKING WRITING.
But the business wasn’t the only thing disappearing. My relationship with Fetch collapsed. The throuple fell apart. The house went. The business went. The version of myself I’d spent years constructing went with them. By the end of 2025, almost everything I’d associated with success had disappeared.
House. Business. Boyfriend. Gone. I moved back in with my parents at almost 42. Not exactly the five furniture stores and million dollar house hidden in the bush I’d imagined. And for a while I looked at my life and thought: What the fuck happened? Then I found the list.
THE FUCKING LIST. This week I found one of my old journals from the Authenticity Challenge. I’d forgotten most of what was in it. Then I turned a page and found something I’d written years earlier. A list. Not of what I wanted to attract. A list of what I wanted gone .
I had written: Debt. Stress. Working face to face with the public. Body dysmorphia. Feeling like I didn’t belong. Self doubt. Giving a fuck. I just stared at it. Because one by one I realised something. Every single fucking thing on that list had either disappeared or was disappearing.
Debt had forced the business to end. The job dealing with the public was gone. The identity I’d spent years maintaining had collapsed. Therapy had started dismantling the belief that I didn’t belong. I was becoming less interested in whether everyone approved of me.
Even my relationship with my body was changing. I’d asked for those things to leave. I just hadn’t specified how . Apparently the universe doesn’t offer fucking terms and conditions. Maybe you believe in manifestation. Maybe you don’t. I’m not particularly interested in convincing you.
Because there’s another explanation that is probably just as interesting. Maybe writing that list changed me. Maybe once I’d admitted what I didn’t want anymore, I couldn’t keep pretending I wanted the life built around it. Maybe authenticity isn’t some magical frequency that makes the universe rearrange itself around you.
Maybe authenticity is simply becoming so fucking uncomfortable with your own bullshit that eventually you stop participating in it. Either way, I got what I asked for. Just not how I expected to get it. I thought losing everything meant I’d failed. For a while, I genuinely believed 2025 had destroyed my life.
There was a point last November when I didn’t particularly want to keep living it. I was exhausted. Ashamed. Completely fucking lost. Then I went through EMDR. I started pulling apart the shit I’d carried for years. Fear. Hypervigilance. Belonging. Identity.
The constant need to prove something. And underneath all of it I started finding someone I recognised. Not businessman me. Not homeowner me. Not showroom me. Not the version of myself I’d built because I thought success would finally make me feel like I belonged somewhere.
Me. Bogan. Gay. Masculine. Sensitive. Sexual. Creative. Fucking weird. Nature obsessed. Motorcycle riding. Sometimes incredibly confident. Sometimes still figuring shit out. And increasingly unwilling to apologise for any of it. That person eventually got a name. Woulf Ryder.
Woulf didn’t replace me. That’s something I’ve realised recently. He’s not a character I disappear into. He’s not a mask. He’s certainly not some perfectly healed version of me. He’s the part of me I spent years editing out. The loud part.
The sexual part. The provocative part. The vulnerable part. The part that walks into a room instead of trying to disappear inside it. The part that says the uncomfortable thing. The part that publishes the fucking article. And weirdly, the more I’ve allowed that person out, the more my life has started moving again.
I’m writing. People are actually paying to read it. I’m building friendships. I’m finding community. I’m talking openly about sex, kink, trauma, masculinity, queer life, harm reduction and all the shit we’re usually told to keep behind closed doors.
And none of it requires me to pretend I’m something I’m not. That’s fucking new. So what am I manifesting now? That’s the funny part. I don’t really know. And maybe that’s the lesson. For most of my adult life, I knew exactly what success was supposed to look like.
The house. The business. The money. The furniture. The stores. The relationship. The fucking checklist. I got enough of it to discover something I probably couldn’t have learned any other way: You can build the life you always wanted and still realise the person who wanted it doesn’t exist anymore.
So this time I’m doing things differently. I still have goals. Of course I fucking do. I want another home. I want financial freedom again. I want Woulf to grow. I want adventures. I want sex. I want community. I want to keep writing. I want a life that makes me curious about tomorrow.
But I’m trying not to build another cage and call it success. Because I’ve already done that once. And rebuilding from nothing has given me something I didn’t have when I had everything. Choice. Every day I get to ask myself: Is this actually what I want?
Not what looks impressive. Not what proves I’m successful. Not what makes somebody else comfortable. Not what the old version of me would’ve chosen. Me. Now. Maybe that’s manifestation. Maybe it’s psychology. Maybe it’s just what happens when you’ve had your entire fucking life dismantled and you’re forced to decide which pieces are actually worth picking back up.
I don’t know. But I know this: The life I asked for wasn’t mine. So I’m building another one. This time, I’m going to make damn sure it is. Arwoooooooo 🐺