The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night.

I’ve been in London for a couple weeks. I started drafting my last post on the morning I was due to leave my parent’s home, but I got distracted by the piano and sat down to play for a while, using the noise to ignore the time that was moving away, as always, so damn fast. Time that would carry me back upstairs to hastily shove everything back into my suitcases, the fatigue of having to decide again for the millionth time what to pack and what to leave, off to the shoddy little airport in that little city with the green paint peeling off the walls, then up into the sky where, on short flights at least, things do feel beautifully peaceful.

I flew to Cape Town then for a scholarship interview, and stayed with my sister. The day I was due to leave I felt strange. Cape Town was getting colder and the city that I’ve become accoustmed to over the last couple years, a city of always-summer, was different. Like seeing the face of your love the first time you fight and that hostility showing you a copletely other side of the thing you love. I didn’t really want to leave, but I also didn’t really want to stay. But it’s been a year for that, for endings, for comings and goings, for shedding something that had to go, and what lies beneath feels raw and vulnerable to the open world.

I’m somewhat disappointed to be writing this in what is clearly a mood rather devoid of humour. I’ve ben nothing but a bag of jokes and vibes the last couple days. Despite the dire straits of some hard realities I’ve manoeuvring about, it’s challenge I’m tackling with what is mostly a helluva cheerful attitude, an adventure in resilience, in resourcefulness, in quick wits. It’s the windy path of the material life that can only ever be viewed with curiosity and quest, because hanging on to the stuff is about as practical as hanging onto a fistful of fine beach sand on a endless shore.

Love truly is a strange beast. It’s been the defining factor of my life over the last couple months, and I’ve become a bit more familiar to its ways, though I think you’d need a thousand lifetimes to ever really grok it.

We faced some tough decisions over the last couple days. Well, they seemed tough at the time, and I let myself get washed down in the heaviness of deciding the course of one’s life. That was, until, I suddenly remembered that it’s not really that deep - nothing is, really. It’s a tale as told as time that whatever it is, it’s as wonderful ro as hideous as you decide it is. Always. Always. You can curse your fate and bemoan the conditions or you can trot on perkily with a joie de vivre that isn’t really that hard to imbue. The way some people cling to their sorrow (more often amplified than what they really are) is surely a mark of insanity. Self-flagellation, dobby-esque, at its finest - and certainly most dull. As Seneca said, “We suffer more in our imagination more often than in reality.” Rings with such clarity and truth.

Make the bloody decision, move on. You can gather every data point in the world and ask for every opinion ever given, but at some point you must accept that with imperfect data and imperfect processing mechanisms, you must simply move forward with what you have. Stagnation is the only death.

And speaking of, work has certainly felt close to stagnation. I did take a hiatus in the whirlwind of love, but with the clairty of hindsight I can certainly say that the most unproductive part of it all was the self doubt. How silly.

“The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night.”

Not the external roadblocks, not all the "no's", not the always tiny runway, not the needing to upskill to do the new thing, not the external geopolitical conditions, not the market fluctuations. All that stuff is as close to irrelevant as can possibly be in the gigantic face of do you believe you can do it, or not, and the very dull mental fluctuation between yes and no. The answer must just be yes. Burn the ships.

The only thing you’ll ever wish is that you had wanted more.

Anyways. It’s Friday morning. First cup of tea has, of course, been drunk. Not really one to let things sit. No meetings today, but plenty coming up. I’ve been rather relentless in reaching out and scheduling meetings and opening doors. Today I’m working on some grant applications for some projects that need a bit of lifeblood.

I’ll be returning to Cape Town in a couple weeks time. Devastated to miss the European summer which carries the delight of peeling a fresh orange by an open window and devouring it in the morning and having your fingers remain scented and orange throughout the day. But yes, Cape Town. More than anything though, I’m feeling a big call to head west, a feeling that in the US I’ll unlock some part of myself and the work I do - startups, ventures, writing, film, making stuff, in a way that will be so massively amplified by the superb country with so much heart and so much fantastic ambition. During some marvellous meet ups lately, I’ve been encouraged time and time again, that’s it’s a place I’m simply made for. Feels like it rings with clarity and truth.

But we’ll see. With Oxford starting in October, there’s certainly time. But duty does beckon me back South for now - love and loyalty - and nothing can be taken more seriously than that, even pausing your own dreams.

The day outside is blue and crisp and far too full of promise to stay in bed on my laptop. I’ve got bridges to mend and cities to build, so must dash. Hopefully another update will come sooner rather than later.