About

First, a warm welcome to Essential Prose. This blog is a platform for discussions on creative, conscious living.

I passionately believe that engaging your creativity is an essential step toward living a more conscious life. Living consciously means that you are intentional with the things you say and do, and that you constantly strive to expand your awareness. Only when we are constantly asking questions and challenging assumptions can we make the changes that truly matter — both personal changes and changing the world that we leave behind.

To this end, I write posts about:

• creativity
• writing
• cultivating ideas
• motivation and change
• balance
• communities

The community here at Essential Prose never ceases to amaze me. The comments on this blog often deserve to be full posts themselves, given the thought and insight readers share.

A Bit More About Me

Hi, I’m Zoë Westhof. I’m currently living in Thailand, where I focus on expanding perspectives and enabling change through writing and traveling. I’m an independent writer working with other writers, nonprofit and educational organizations, and media. In addition to this blog, I also write short stories. I love exploring the crossroads of communication and creativity, trying to understand what we are capable of individually and collectively.

People aside, there are two loves in my life to which my devotion has been consistent: words and uncharted territory. My fascination with words was spawned soon after I learned to read; I became insatiable, absorbing any book I could comprehend, and sometimes even those I could not. Filled as I was with so many words, it was perhaps inevitable that I should begin to write. This seduction with words later embraced foreign languages, leading me to the second keeper of my devotion.

Though the implications of “uncharted territory” seem quite grand, I simply mean those areas outside my experience. I am willfully drawn to boundaries, if only for the chance to push them. This drive translates into a desire to travel and to transform the distant into the familiar.

These passions have lured me to my current location in northern Thailand.