Rowan Spazzoli

Today I managed a full “admin day”. I handled some household chores, went to the bank, did some shopping, fixed the bathroom sink, ran on the promenade and replied to most of my emails and texts.

When I first started dealing with this sort of admin, each item on its own would be a massive deal. But as I’ve done more of it, it becomes easier. I’ve become better at adulting.

It reminded me of an analogy I’ve used a few times with friends when they’re feeling overwhelmed by the real world.

How is it possible to manage all the admin that comes with being an adult? How are we supposed to juggle friends, family, work, chores, health and still have time to ourselves?

And it only looks like it gets worse, with potential spouses, children and households of our own in the future.

How do people cope with this? How are we going to survive as we get older?

And this is where the analogy comes in….

The Grade 8s 

In South Africa, Grade 8 is the first year of high school, which you enter when you’re 12 or 13 years old. I remember being in Grade 8 and looking at the Grade 12s, who were all either 17 or 18 years old.

The Grade 12s seemed to have everything figured out. Many of them had awards listed down their blazers. They seemed so comfortable when navigating the school and when interacting with teachers and each other. Some were able to handle first team sports, academics, various committees/ portfolios and extra curricular activities and still have time for themselves.

I was in awe of these people. And thought that I would never get there. There was no way that a Grade 8 like me could be someone like that. I could never handle it.

But I did get there. I became someone like that. And I handled it.

The growth and learning I experienced in the new environment eventually gave me all the tools that I needed to get there. It was a tough learning curve and the journey was tough. And I managed to rise up to the challenge

The Grade 8s…. of the world

In the same way, when we left university we entered the real working world as first timers. We were able to rely on our parents less. The world became more complex and a multitude of variables sprung up that we had never dealt with.

Taking a look at people in their 50s, I became fascinated at how they were able to handle so much. There they were with jobs, families, cars, houses and a list of admin to do that was much longer than I could possibly imagine.

So I began to imagine us, the fresh-out-of-varsity-kids as the Grade 8s of the world. If we consider that our working lives will span from when we’re around 25 until we retire at 65, then there are around 40 years to navigate this “real world”.

This means that our “grade 8” phase is the first 7 or 8 years after university. In other words, our 20s and early 30s. This time of our lives is scary.

We don’t feel like we have control. We look at people older then us and wonder how they do it. We think to ourselves that we will never get there. There is no way that “Grade 8s” like us could be like that. We could never handle it.

But we will get there. We will become someone like that. And we will handle it.

So if you’re in your 20s or early 30s and you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t worry. We’re the grade 8s of the world. We don’t know what we’re doing yet. But we’ll learn. And one day we’ll look back and realize that we were capable of handling it all along

Image was taken on Seapoint Promenade this evening on mine and Jared’s cycle/run 🙂

Blog 53/365. Read more about my #365of25 journey here

The week between Christmas day and New Year is a bit odd.

The frenzy of work and the chaos before Christmas has died down.

But the excitement of the New Year is yet to begin.

It’s the twilight zone, the Sunday evening, the no mans land of the year.

This period has becoming really important to me as a time of reflection. It’s when I consolidate the year, think through my accomplishments and my shortfalls and set goals for the year to come.

The Year Summary

Part of this is my annual “Year Summary” which I have compiled since 2012. In it, I list my favourite moments, songs, achievements and people from the year. I summarise each month and then reflect on the year as a whole.

It’s a great way to close the year off, and start with a clean slate in the year to come. It’s also wonderful to look back on a few years down the line.

Bring on the week of reflection!

Image is of Lions Head as seen from the patio where we had Christmas lunch this afternoon 🙂

Blog 49/365. Read more about my #365of25 journey here

So tonight has been my first real instance of writers blog since embarking on the 365 days of blogging. Nothing interesting really happened today and many of my thoughts are almost the exactly the same as my other posts.

One notable moment was when “Unwritten” by Natasha Beddingfield came on while I was driving. It was one of my favourite songs as a teenager, and I opened all the windows and belted out the words at the top of my lungs.

OH! And there were fighter jets flying in formation at the same time and I got a picture of it. So that’s cool.

So here is the song, it’s a great way to start the day:

Image is of fighter jets flying over campus. Pretty cool right?

In June this year my flat mate of four and a half years moved out. Since then, I have pretty much lived on my own.

Before this, I lived in Kopano residence at UCT. Despite having a room to myself, I was surrounded by hundreds of people who I could call upon at any moment. Four of my best friends lived on the same corridor as I did.

And before this, I lived with my family for 18 years, meaning there had never been any serious period of being alone.

Coupled with my new state of living alone, I work on 3/4 different jobs or projects at a time with different colleagues, and none of these are on a full time basis. This means that no person or group of people quite know what I do (the opposite to this being a corporate job, where your colleagues experience the same environment as you for 40+ hours a week)

So over the past few months, I’ve experienced loneliness in a way I’ve never quite had to before. It’s a loneliness that can’t be solved by seeing friends or family, because ultimately you still go back home and are alone. There’s no one to pick you off the floor if you’re having a down moment, no one to make you food if you aren’t able to and no one to judge you when you binge Netflix for hours on end.

I’ve been learning to dance with this loneliness. Sometimes, it’s a beautiful waltz. One filled with tea and book reading and meaningful self reflection. Sometimes it’s a catastrophic attempt at a sokkie at 3am in a shitty Claremont nightclub, and I end up on the floor with no real sense of how I got into the problem or how to deal with it.

Today started off as a waltz and ended up with me on the floor of the proverbial nightclub.

While in this state, I stumbled upon a video by The School of Life titled Why we’re fated to be lonely. It started with the following intro:

“There are few more shameful confessions to make than that we are lonely… [however] its a part of being a human and it’s a built in feature of a complex existence”

I’m not going to attempt to summarize the whole video, it needs to be enjoyed on its own. However, one thing stood out for me that linked to yesterday’s post: that a fundamental component of this loneliness is that it is impossible to tell everyone what’s going on in your own head. As much as we try to share our thoughts, they are shaped by a multitude of complex forces that no other person has experienced. And we do not have the means to ever be able to communicate it.

The video offers a really interesting argument based on this. Given that this is a natural state, loneliness isn’t our fault and the mutual incomprehension that causes it doesn’t mean life has gone wrong… instead, it’s what we can expect.

Which means once we understand this, we can begin to accept it and start to expressive ourselves better, through writing or creating or even through enjoying the arts.

And so this brings me full circle, and back to my daily blog writing. I didn’t intend for this to be a reason for my blog, but I’ve seen that it has become a way to express myself. And every now and again, someone shouts “I feel the same!” and both of us feel a little more understood.

And as the video says “[Loneliness] heightens the conversations we have with ourselves… we develop a point of view and will be capable of far closer and more interesting bonds.”

So the dancing will go on, and I will continue to learn different ways to express myself. Be it through a tango, a waltz or even just a 3am dance in a nightclub to some 80s pop music.

Picture is from a solo mission to Kalk Bay earlier this year. I took the train there, swam in the ocean, wrote down goals for the year and had ice cream. It was a good day

There are days like today where everything is chaos. Where there is not a single moment free from when I wake up until I get to sleep. Where start the day not knowing how I’m going to manage and go to bed having made it.

Those are the best days.

Today included talking to my mom, seeing my friends, meeting (and having pizza with) my wonderful team, organizing a big entrepreneurship event and a whole lot more in between.

I feel like it’s in these moments when I experience the most “flow” (the kind that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes in his seminal work)

I chose this picture for the post cause I feel it captures it perfectly. Sheer ridiculousness coupled with potent badassery (I don’t care that that’s not a word, it is now). The pic is from @jstlbby’s instagram account (see yesterday’s post for more from this epic human)

I cannot wait for more days like today.

When deciding whether to jump off my old career path and onto my current one, my thinking was almost entirely set on my fears and not the opportunities. What if I fail? What if I regret this? What if I hate it? What if I’m bad at it?

My fears held me back… much longer than they should have.

Today showed me that I shouldn’t have let that be the case. My day was spent running an exam in my capacity as a lecturer, researching the impact of AI on employment and interviewing one of the most well known social ventures in Cape Town. I also received my brief for my consulting project on an impact evaluation of a government innovation project and I found out that I’d made the final round of a startup accelerator.

I would never have imagined having days like these…. And this is because I spent my time imagining everything that could go wrong.

Throw the Fear 

“Importance of just keeping-going
Perseverance will be your greatest friend
Don’t die before you’re dead, keep watering the plants, love
In the end, the end is just the end”

-Throw the Fear by Tom Rosenthal

I discovered this song when I woke up this morning, and have played it 14 time since then. A little obsessive, but it captured my mood perfectly. Listen to it here.

It’s a popfolk song which Tom Rosenthal wrote to his newborn daughter. Tom is a person who clearly doesn’t fear much. He has one song about his love for Pasta, one dedicated exclusively to watermelons and one titled ” Toby Carr’s difficult relationship with Tuna”.

The interesting thing is throwing away his fear of people finding him weird is likely what ultimately led to his popularity. He is unique, precisely because he doesn’t fear doing things differently

Defining Fears

To round off today’s theme, I stumbled across a Ted talk titled “why you should define your fears instead of your goals“. It’s by Tim Ferriss, a serial entrepreneur and the guy who wrote “The 4 Hour Work Week”.

This shone a whole new light on how to handle fears. Conquering fears, in my mind, usually involves suppressing or ignoring them. Not for Tim.

Tim uses a stoic approach to dealing with fears. He created a worksheet to do this. The first page has the focal question: “What if I….?” followed by space to define your fears. Then, you list how you can prevent these from happening. Finally, you explain how you’d fix the issue if it happened.

In doing this, there are two key results. Firstly, you have a plan on how to deal with a number of negative outcomes. More importantly though, you’ve defined your fears and seen that ultimately, they can all be eliminated, reduced or handled if need be.

It’s always going to be difficult to overcome fears. We’re preprogrammed to experience them. But we can train ourselves to overcome them. In doing so, we open ourselves up to an abundant number of positive possibilities

“Throw the fear, throw the fear, let the day become the year
You’re alive, I’m alive, we’re a-la-la-la-la-la-live!
If you go, if you go, take all the heart with you
History, is all gone, make the new, make the new”

-Throw the Fear by Tom Rosenthal