slip-sliding away…..

Seven years ago, I wrote this on the eve of my 38^th birthday. It was a tiring time, with my youngest (then 5 years old) pretty high on the list of energy-sapping occupations, as she enjoyed her final years before the life-changing milestone of school began.

I remember hiding from her to write that post at 11 p.m., not wanting her to know that I was awake, lest she demand play time, or more food. Thankfully, now at 12 years old, she’s adopted far better eating habits – likely influenced by her older sister, who is obsessed with fitness and healthy eating. The same can be said for her sleep habits (which, again, mirror that of her sister).

The Write Life

That post reflected on a very full previous decade, in which I’d gone for Hajj, changed jobs, moved house, and much more. My publishing career, at that point, was budding, as I was moving beyond just blogging – working on my first book, which came out a year later. Plus, I was finally making some money from my writing, with freelance gigs coming fairly regularly.

Seven years later, those paid projects are ancient history, as the publications who’d sought my articles soon faced limitations, and I didn’t go actively seeking new work. The process of publishing my book, though, gave me a decent level of expertise, which enabled me to assist another three authors get their work out in the years that followed – all earning me a reasonable bit of extra money.

Encouraged by these successes, I attempted to launch an editing and creative service, to try to keep the work coming – helping more writers / creatives fulfil their dreams of getting their work into the hands of readers. Really, I was open to all forms of writing-related work, though. Even the boring jobs for organisations who needed to put out professional publications or works.

A few possibilities emerged, but nothing solid ever materialised. And I just didn’t have it in me to market my services as vigorously as is required for someone pursuing a side hustle. The service still remains available, but without significant effort on my part, I don’t think I’ll ever get any work from it.

Life is full of changes

And maybe that’s for the best. Because I’m at a stage of life where everything is just so full. My older kid is well into high school, with the younger one approaching it fast. The demands of their homework, projects, and – most of all – studying – can be harrowing in a household where my wife is a high school teacher, and educational standards are high. She tends to most of the school-related work, but I still chip in where I can. I don’t feel guilty about doing less than her, though. Education and schooling is her thing, so it makes sense that she dominates that space. I’m kept more than busy by the endless stream of house and family related shopping, admin, and more.

In the years since that post, we’ve gone through a pandemic, two very extensive (and harrowing) home renovations, the loss of my father-in-law, and then the another home move – the first time I’d lived in a house in 25 years. The first two years in this house were incredibly difficult at times, with the amount of work to be done, and a series of work by contractors who each had their own infuriating habits and issues.

Thankfully, it’s all settled now, though I still worry about the things that could break…something which was rarely a concern in our small, lock-up-and-go apartment of old.

Revival and a slow decline

I’ve gone through some health challenges in this time, too. Two operations (in the same area), the latter being preceded by 6 months of ongoing issues.

But all in all, thankfully, my health has been fairly good.

At the time of that last post, I was struggling to exercise regularly, and not getting enough sleep. I sleep better these days, for the most part – though late spring and all of summer is the worst, because of the short nights. And I actually became very consistent with exercise soon after that post. Given the afternoon traffic I’d face after work, I’d delay my trip home and go running twice a week on the university field near my office. It was a welcome return to the regularity of running – which was incentivised in my childhood (no running meant no allowance), but had fallen by the wayside in my 20s and 30s, when the busy-ness of being an adult just overtook any desire I had for being healthy.

In the pandemic years, I still managed to keep it up, and it’s only in the last year or so that I’ve stuttered, as my age finally caught up to me and I find I can’t push myself like I used to. I allow myself slack, though, because I know that it’d do more harm than good if I were to berate myself for not maintaining the standards I had set.

God works in wonderful ways, though, because my older daughter – the one who is so committed to exercise and fitness – has become like a drill sergeant to me, pushing me to keep running, “do your weights” (they actually belong to her, though – and it still hasn’t become habit), and drink daily concoctions which disgust me, but are apparently good for me.

During exam times – like this month – she joins me on my midday runs, which I’m grateful for, because through most of her childhood prior, I wanted to get her into the habit of running, but there were always excuses. I gave up on even asking anymore, but things worked out in their own time.

On the subject of schedules, though, the thought of running in the middle of a working day seemed utterly impossible seven years ago, when work was in an office, and I craved more time at home.

That paradigm has been flipped completely, with work-from-home being a permanent arrangement for me since we left the office in March 2020. I love the flexibility and comfort of working from home, but I also feel the burden of dealing with home affairs far more than anyone else who lives here, because I’m expected to see to everything.

In reality, I would probably prefer to have one or two days per week in office, just for the change of environment. But I no longer have a permanent (or decent) workspace there, and the school runs and domestic arrangements that have settled in these years would make it difficult for me to go back in very regularly.

Still, in school holidays – when I silently resent my wife and kids’ freedom – I sometimes go in to my old office (which is now a meeting room) and enjoy the solitude that comes with working in a fairly empty building.

The Write Life: part 2

The first few years after that 2018 birthday post were fruitful, with my first book coming out in November 2019, followed by an inspired collection of COVID-related writing in September the following year. That project – the first I’ve ever done by collecting words from others – came together quickly, and was released within two months of the idea’s birth. I’m still proud of it today, and it stands out to me as a highlight of the darkness that overshadowed life in those pandemic years.

At the end of Ramadaan 2022, another book idea came to me – a collection of my own Ramadaan-related writing. And within a year, I managed to put it all together and publish it – notwithstanding the fact that 4 months of that year were consumed with moving house and renovations. I’m particularly proud that I managed to get a foreword from my imam – a man who has been crucial to my spiritual development over my adult life. Also, I managed to fit in a beautiful piece written by my wife, who’s barely written anything since the birth of our first child. (There seems to be almost no chance of her writing life picking up again, as she’s now many years into a career as a high school maths teacher.)

Early 2023 was the last time I felt any sustained push to actually work on a book of my own. The chaos, frustration, and depression of major home renovations consumed me in the months that followed, and I felt severely let down by what I felt were relatively poor sales of the Ramadaan book, despite me putting in a ton of detailed marketing planning and content, which I think would stand up pretty well against the efforts of a small publisher’s marketing team. But it felt like it all came to little, and with my confidence in the dumps, and the lack of joy sucked out by never-ending renovations and crazy contractors, I felt like I’d never again feel the call of a writing project.

I felt like the writer in me – the poet, in particular – was withering away, and I struggled to write anything I wanted to share with the outside world, let alone anything that felt inspired and ‘good’.

Thankfully, I kept journaling throughout this time. I think journaling is as essential to my soul as breathing is to my body. I need to write – even if only in private – to release things from my heart and mind. To process events of my life. To make sense of my world.

My ability to feel sustained joy and lightness, too, has been held back by the genocide against the people of Gaza, which still continues – despite the fraud of a ‘ceasefire’. The heaviness of these years has been draining, but in a way, they’ve also been positive in the sense of how millions of people worldwide have woken up to the reality of colonialism and oppression which – directly and indirectly – still plagues parts of our world today. Actually seeing the brutality on our screens has shaken the hearts of so many who previously simply accepted the mainstream narratives, perpetuated by media giants and governments who were always just puppets on strings controlled by darker, more insidious forces who have become more exposed than ever before.

My involvement in a poetry community over the last few years allowed me to work on an important anthology around this theme, which collected poems from the first six months of that genocide.

And this year, I’ve been in a year-long membership with the organisation, which has greatly enriched my writing life at a time when my output is still far below the levels I hoped they’d be. My day-to-day life – with family and colleagues, etc – doesn’t include many people who are writers – so this has been a rare opportunity to be actively involved in a writing community.

It’s given me exposure to exposure to very diverse types of poets and writers, where the common thread is that they – and us as the community – are all essentially artists, with writing being our primary art form. In this ever-connected online world, it’s so easy to be overwhelmed by the push to constantly publish your material, and the anticipation of what others will think of you and your work. However, these sessions helped to bring consciousness back to the core of it all – the craft I work within. My why.

The membership has also given me more experience in reciting my work to an audience. As a life-long introvert, I’ve never been a spoken word poet, and all forms of public speaking – even virtually – has always been a challenge. But within the safe space of this community, I’ve gotten to read my poems to small audiences many times…experience which even gave me the confidence to do an impromptu reading on a separate platform a few months ago, which was a pleasant surprise to me.

By far the most beneficial aspect, though, has been the Critique Circle every two weeks, where we take turns to analyse and give in-depth feedback on each other’s work. These have helped me to improve specific poems, while also helping me to see patterns in my writing and ways to improve those.

Critiquing others, as well as craft workshops, gave me exposure to and encouragement to experiment with form a lot more. I am more conscious of it and how I can use different techniques to achieve different effects.

In a way, I would say my time in this community this year has sort of revolutionised how I see myself as a poet, in the sense of the importance of in-depth feedback. This differs from how I’d operated previously, where my work reached a general (non-poet) audience, and when I’d get stuff published in publications, there wouldn’t be many edits. I self-published two books and even in those, the changes from the editors weren’t as in-depth as the sort of input I got in Critique Circle. So, this year has showed me the value of having an engaged group to help make each poem the best it can be, before I consider using it in a book.

Whether I’ll actually feel the push to work on another book, though, is another story. I’ve had a new book in various draft formats for over five years now, but it’s never been ready for the world. Other books and projects, and then life, always pushed it aside. And, given that I operate on intuition, I don’t even want to take it forward again until it feels right. I believe that book projects can take on a life of their own, and you have to be attentive to the signs telling you when and how they want to come out to the world. I won’t force this one just for the sake of publishing.

If I never put out another book, so be it. I don’t lose anything materially, because this type of writing (and publishing) has never been my full-time job. Which, in a way, is a positive, because it removes the pressure to always be producing. I can do it for the love, and with authenticity, never being crippled by the fear of writer’s block (which, at age 8, was the reason I told myself I could never become a professional writer).

Getting around

Soon after that birthday post of 2018, we travelled extensively that summer: a month-long holiday covering Orlando, London, and locally, Plettenberg Bay. It was (and remains) the longest holiday I’d had in my working life as an adult. (My Hajj pilgrimage in 2011 was longer break from work, but it wasn’t a holiday.)

We’ve travelled locally in the years that followed, but these were fairly short trips, though still very much needed as a break from the pressures of day-to-day life.

Internationally, we were going to travel to Europe in mid-2020, before those plans were killed by COVID. Two years later, our planned London trip collapsed at the last minute, in what was the one of the saddest days in my memory – when my father-in-law passed away hours before we were due to leave.

We’re finally getting close to another international trip, in the coming months – though that, too, almost collapsed due to bureaucratical complications with one of the passports. I won’t take that trip for granted until it actually happens.

Childhood love rediscovered

These past few years – specifically 2024 until now – have seen a personal return to the sporting love of my life: tennis. I was never into sports as a child, which was probably why my parents put me in a week-long holiday bootcamp at around age 10. That programme included a wide range of sporting codes, including karate (which I was already doing, but wasn’t fond of).

I muddled my way through most of the activities, and took an interest in cricket. But it was tennis that leapt into my heart that week. I took an instant liking to the game, and that enthusiasm led my parents to enrol me in coaching, which I attended for about five years thereafter.

I never actually competed much outside of coaching. Mostly, I played with my brother and cousin on the courts near our home, or when we went on holidays. There was one tournament – at the end of primary school – where I played doubles with my cousin. But our on-court bickering didn’t help, and we won nothing but a consolation prize.

In reality, I probably wasn’t good at all. But that didn’t matter, because I loved playing the game. And for someone who isn’t turning pro, that’s really all that matters, isn’t it?

I lost touch with the sport after high school – not bothering to even try playing at university, where social phobias blocked me from doing anything other than academic work. I rarely played in all the years since then, until the start of 2024, when both my kids took a sudden liking to the sport while watching the Australian Open.

I got them racquets, and we were soon playing regularly. Later that year, they started coaching, and they’ve improved steadily ever since. We also go to play on most weekends – outside of exam times – which has allowed me to get back into the swing of things. To be honest, I’m probably worse than I was as a teenager – given my ageing body’s limitations, and my serve is still pathetic. (Incidentally, the only time I’ve ever been proud of my serve was in one coaching session as a teenager, when I was on fire – serving with such power and accuracy that I didn’t know where this ability suddenly came from.)

I expect that my eldest – and, later, my youngest – will overtake me in ability before long, which doesn’t bother me at all, because I’ve lost the competitiveness I had as a child. For me, these are precious bonding experiences with my kids, which I hope they’ll look to with fondness when they grow up.

The cheapest form of travel

Another childhood love which has resurfaced over these years is reading. When I was young, I would love getting lost in other worlds. Books – fiction, in particular – are the cheapest form of travel imaginable. And reading is especially important nowadays, as a way to nurture imagination – which has been stifled by the information overload of our age, and the constant availability of entertainment on demand.

Sitting down to read a book – and committing to it – is a struggle with all these digital distractions relentlessly assaulting our senses.

Perhaps, in a way, my re-commitment to reading was influenced by my kids, who have become bookworms of note in the last few years. I’m proud that they aren’t screen-obsessed zombies, and that they don’t partake in social media like many others of their generation. Their interaction with it is limited to our (their parents’) accounts, which we don’t often let them see.

The other element which drew me back into reading is how much easier it is to access e-books via our city library’s subscription to OverDrive (via the Libby app). I’ve bought my fair share of e-books in the past, but when it comes down to it, we read most books only once, so why pay when you can get the same experience for free? Of course, if I really enjoy a book, I do consider purchasing the physical or electronic copy. I know how much time, creative energy, effort, and money goes into publishing a book, so I’m more than happy to support authors when their work has really touched me.

That said, I still struggle to find books I actually want to read. I don’t really have a particular favourite genre. Whatever appeals to me at the time of browsing is what I read. But I do find that I’m far more drawn to autobiography. I love fiction, too, but struggle to find stories that enthral or entertain me that often. I guess my quality of being very particular shows up in this realm too.

Anyway, I might start a sort of book review series on this blog. Not in-depth reviews, but just quick thoughts about the books that pass my way. Doing so would certainly help me be a bit more consistent about posting, given my relative scarcity here in the last few years.

Speaking of which, next June marks the 20-year anniversary of this blog, so I’m also working on something for that milestone.

The battle inside

As for my own headspace, I feel like these last few years have ramped up tremendously in terms of sustained internal pressure and anxieties. I often feel like I’m under siege – with all the demands of work and family responsibilities and home affairs sometimes coming all at once. At times like those, I feel like it’s more than I can bear, which leads me to become easily triggered into bouts of moodiness.

However, my time off after surgery a few months ago helped to give me a better perspective of such situations. And since then, I’ve consciously reminded myself to let go of the standards I have of trying to get everything done perfectly. Internally, I’ve always held myself to those high standards, because I always felt I had to do things the best I could, no matter the cost. And I realised that such a high bar is simply unsustainable. It puts a tremendous mental burden on me, which is detrimental to myself and those around me, because when I can’t reach that bar, I turn into a version of myself that I don’t want to be.

I’m not saying that I’m just letting everything collapse to slacker standards. I still do everything I need to, and try to keep to standards of quality, effort, and attention to detail which people have come to expect from me. But when something just feels like it’s a step too far, instead of trying to do it, or berating myself when I can’t, I simply let it go. I don’t worry that I’m letting someone down. I’ve made peace with imperfection. It’s allowing me to set new, healthier boundaries – firstly within myself, and then with others around me.

Looking ahead

There’s still more than a week until my birthday. But as I sit here, fast approaching the age of 45, I don’t wonder what my future holds. Instead, I appreciate the opportunity to have gone back through time – from that post seven years ago – and reflected on how life has changed, and how I have changed, and am still changing.

Life is always a work in progress, and milestones like birthdays are wonderful opportunities to pause and look back.

Whether I’ll still be around in another 7, 10, or more years to hold further reflections like this, I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m grateful for where I am at this stage of life, and I hope that the coming years – however many of them await – will be filled with personal growth, noble contributions to my dear ones and the world, and a lot more peace and contentment…if the machines and (human) monsters don’t destroy this planet first.

If you got this far, thank you for reading, and well done on getting through a such a long post. It’s personal proof that there is still hope despite the ongoing war against our attention spans 😊.