The Skulking Ratio of Create to Consume
Hello you. Hello life. I’m sitting on the built-in window seat in the Higgovale apartment that we moved into just over three weeks ago. The views from the window seat look up at Table Mountain, which right now is shrouded in huge low-lying clouds and mist and fog rolling off the ocean peninsular.
It feels strange writing. I haven’t really done it in a while, and certainly not a way that I adore, a way that feels like it’s completely soaked in beauty and meaning and flow. I suppose the only way to once again do the thing is to just simply do the thing - so obvious, so painful. Perhaps I’m writing again because after seven months of my life completely changing, it’s now starting to feel like a new normal. Being with someone all the time, living together, making decisions together, learning and growing in love.
I didn’t want to leave London at the end of May - right as the summer was taking off, and the days stretching on for miles, deliciously, and finally getting into a stride of meeting incredible people and making things happen. It was awful to have to pack up, yet again, box things up, yet again. I realised the other day that I haven’t lived in the same place for more than a year since I was 15. And while I’ll always love travelling, it’s different when there’s no solid idea of home to come back to, but rather an endless string of short term rentals and suitcases and losing things.
That being said, I also didn’t want to leave Cape Town in February, and I sulked for a good two weeks before resigning myself to my fate and making yet another home, home.
It’s helluva unproductive, which has been the most frustrating part. And I can’t blame the moving of course - you can only ever blame yourself if you want to maintain your agency. I feel like I haven’t really built anything in ages. I’ve done stuff, sure - like my director work for NYDA continues and I’m trying to roll out some new projects; I’ve had meetings with producers about this show I’m trying to launch; endless meetings with LPs trying to launch Pharos. I got accepted into Oxford for a Masters and won a full scholarship for it, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. I got appointed to the board of Sentech and voted in as the chair of IC (investment committee). Everyone keeps telling me to chill out, that I can’t really make anything now anyways with the Masters starting in three months time, and once I’m in the thick of that, ideas and opportunities to create will bloom and spiral out like endless fractals of possibility.
And yes, I’ve learnt firsthand just how unproductive excessive multi-tasking is. But also - my goodness life is short, and fast, and at 32, I feel like the weight of it at almost every second. The urgency to create and build and do things. My ratio of create to consume is way off currently. I’ve been reading loads and going on trips and I guess, building a relationship, but’s it’s busyness rather than creation.
As usual - as boringly always - life is, of course, what you make of it. Step one in any of this is assessing the ol’ mindset. What limiting beliefs have settled into place and rendered such a state of victimhood? There is no excuse except one’s own ineptitude. And that’s a helluva refreshing and liberating reminder. Every minute of life is what I’m choosing, in how I experience it. I’ve taken to reading the daily stoic lately (medicine for those with a long-faced disposition) and this nugget popped up from our good friend Aurelius:
”You could enjoy this very moment all the things you are praying to reach by taking the long way around - if you’d stop depriving yourself of them.”
I mean - how utterly delicious is that? This, combined with some Alan Watts podcasts, and my new absolute best - Poor Charlie’ Almanack (which, I must add, I got for a discount from the bookshop because the clerk recognised me as the author of Upstart which is also sold in the same shop - that really put me in a good mood), is chicken soup for stupefied voyager.
It’s 6.15pm now. I’ve written this post in stops and starts. Pitch dark outside, rain lashing down manically and a veritable river coursing down what was once our road. Fire is crackling in the lounge and my bath is slowly filling up with achingly scalding hot water, at least twice as hot as the surface of the sun, and I plan to submerge myself in that shortly with Charlie Munger (my book) and a rooibos tea (I’ve decided to stop drinking again). Today all I really did was wake up to a hell of a lot of cuddles and snuggles, go to gym for an hour, go for a massage (which was so fantastic I fell asleep and awoke with a start giving the masseuse a hell of a fright), eat a vegan veggie buddha bowl (this is Cape Town after all), do some grocery shopping and then some admin. All in all, pretty useless. But I am pleased as punch to have written this post chronicling my useless day. Guess I’ll update you again in another 8 months or something. Tally ho!