I am a product of my environment. I’ve lived in Melbourne all my life, and apart from the odd weekend here and there have spent almost every day of my life within it. It’s hard to quantify just how much being born into a middle class, white male existence in a developed country has dictated my life, but everything I do I do as a Melburnian.

This is me riding my scooter through Flinders Street at night. This video subtly says a lot about who I am, from my choice of location (see above), to the fact that I’m riding a scooter at all (which I do for environmental reasons).

The crowd at the Sydney Road festival was so immense that I was inspired to take a timelapse video walking through it from my point of view. I can’t say that I love people, generally, but I do love crowds and community events like music festivals and street fairs.

This is me and my friend Simon discussing the movie Space Jam for our podcast, which is themed around nostalgia and cinema. Analysing, discussing and dissecting media, particular cinema and music, is one of my most passionate interests, and I’m fascinated by the idea of nostalgia as a mediator of experience.

The sound of hundreds or thousands of people all making the same noise at once is incredibly powerful. There’s no sound on Earth quite like the roar of the crowd after the national anthem at the ANZAC Day AFL match – but in lieu of that, which won’t happen for another few weeks, I instead took a snippet of audio from a recent concert I went to.

My small courtyard and garden is a particular source of joy – I love to be able to sit with friends and chat about life, the universe and everything. Just over the fence is Glenferrie Road, home to many of my favourite cafés, shops and restaurants.

I love life’s contrasts and contradictions, like when two unlikely worlds collide. This is a beautiful old church on Sydney Road, relic of centuries past, hosting an anti-establishment feminist punk band. I’m made up of so many contradictions that it’s sometimes hard to keep track.

This photo of a sculpture is supposed to indicate that I’m a creative person – of course, I realise now that it’s the most literal representation of creativity one could imagine. (There’s another contradiction for you!)

A clean, blank page is both my favourite thing in the world and a scarily unsettling image. I consider my writing to be one of my personal strengths, but the process of starting a piece continues to be, and will forever remain, incredibly daunting.

I’m still growing. It took me a lot longer than it should take someone to figure out who I am and what I want to be doing with my life, and it continues to shift from year to year and from day to day. Continual self improvement is something I hope to strive for for many years to come.

As much as I hate to admit it, a large part of me is defined by the media I consume. This bookshelf (which I built myself) houses part of my book collection, and I believe you can tell a lot about a person by the contents of their shelves.

Ironically, for someone who considers their writing to be a strength, I really struggled to come up with a succinct description of myself in 50 words. I decided to contrast the ways that I’ve been described by others (descriptions that naturally I believe are unfair and untrue, but those people hold to be the truth), with how I see myself and what’s important to me.