I think there has been enough time between the last ten lessons and this post to warrant the next ten lessons. So sit back, grab a glass of your favourite drink and enjoy the second part of my 30 lessons in 30 years.

Since I posted the first 10 lessons a few things have happened: I hung out with my parents and it was just the three of us, this is usually hard because they have other children (parents, am I right?) and I made a trip to the North West and visited my grandma’s grave and finally gave her the gift I got for her in Venice.

I think between then and now I have probably learnt more about grief, about family and about life in general. However, I haven’t changed the rules from what I put down when I wrote this the first time around, so here goes lesson number 11 to 20. I hope you find them useful.

11. Start over when you need to. Let me first give a disclaimer that the ability to start over is in itself a tremendous privilege, not everyone can for a lot of real reasons. This lesson however is one I felt I needed to reiterate mainly for myself. So yes I know, this is not always practical, but if you can and if you want to, start over as many times as you can.
12. Let people be. If no one is getting hurt, let people be.
13. Do not let people be. If “let people be” means that people get a pass for being racist, sexist, ableist, classist, homophobic, transphobic and any other thing that seeks to discount the humanity of others, you should definitely not let those people be. If their being is centered in disqualifying the “being” of others, they should definitely not be left to be.
14. Get some sleep, just do it. I know, you think there are things you could be doing to move yourself forward or whatever but trust me, sleep.
15. Friends are the family we choose. Treat them with kindness and stay where you are also treated with kindness.
16. Humans are social beings. Yes even introverts who have been known to feel drained after social encounters need humans and human relationships. So invest in human relationships, be it with family, friends, strangers on the bus, co-workers or romantic partners, put in the effort that you expect. Do not feel bad for needing human interactions, nurture these relationships.
17. Say “please”, “thank you” and “sorry”. And mean it.
18. If you find yourself in a room speaking from a position of privilege and the people you are speaking on behalf of are in the room, pass the mic. Pass the mic and let them speak for themselves.
19. Saying “I don’t know” is a great way to answer a question when you don’t know the answer. Try not to take up time pretending you know something when you don’t, if it’s important to you learn the answer and then come back to answer the question.
20. Tell the people you love that you love them, tell them often. Even if it feels weird at first, keep saying it until those you love live with the certainty and comfort of your love. I think about this often, how the last real conversation I had with my gran was not only me telling her I love her but making sure that she heard that I loved her and that she said it back. So, tell those you love that you love them often, not because they might not be here today but because it’s the truth and being told you are loved and knowing it to be true is one of the best feelings in the world.

I hope you’ve found value in my lessons and will be keeping them in mind as we get closer to 2020 and those resolutions are rearing their beautiful heads. If I had to choose a favourite it would be number 20. I think a lot of us go through life with a heaviness that convinces us that we aren’t loved or maybe we don’t deserve to be loved, be the person who reminds those you love that you love them. Most of the time honestly it does not feel life changing, it doesn’t feel like the most important thing in the world but sometimes it does, and isn’t it sweet and wonderful when it does?

See you next time for the last ten lessons. 

I am turning 30 in exactly one month and four days. This is a big deal for me because I am one of those people who have always wanted to be older, so turning 30 is something I have been looking forward to for quite some time.

With that being said, I am however extra nervous about turning 30 because as much I have wanted to turn 30 all my life, this will be the first birthday I have without my grandmother. My grandmother used to make a big deal about my birthday, everyone’s birthday really, but mine was always extra special. I remember her calling into Motsweding FM and wishing me a happy birthday annually, the pink and elaborate cakes with my name on them and the very pitchy birthday song singing every year throughout my childhood. As I got older and she and I no longer lived together she was always the first to call me and sing for me and generally brighten my day before I knew that it needed brightening up. I am trying to manage the fact that next year, on the 26th of January, there will be no phone call from her. I will wake up knowing that I will not hear her voice; not first thing in the morning and not any time during the day either. So, I expect some friction and maybe sadness towards turning 30 because I won’t have her singing and making a big deal about this little girl who loved her grandmother fiercely.

I am pre-empting my sadness. My therapist would say that I should rather focus on the now, how am I feeling right at this present moment. This is my way of offering a compromise; I have come up with 30 lessons (super hard by the way) I have learnt in the past thirty years of being alive. I think this is the perfect medley of the past, present and future. These are reminders, mental notes and things to look to in the future when faced with self-doubt, the noises and opinions of the world and maybe when I get the ludicrous idea to do this again at 31 and I need a reason not to do it.

A quick edit. After writing these I realised that 30 lessons in one post is a lot to take in, so I have decided to break up the lessons in batches of 10. So, this is the first post of 3 posts. Enjoy.

So here goes, 30 lessons: Lesson 1 – 10.

1. Always greet people when you walk into a room. This always bears repeating. Greet people when you walk into a room, it takes nothing from you, but it acknowledges the presence of the people in the room. There is no depth, there is no bigger lesson, it’s really just that simple – greet people when you walk into a room.
2. Drink water. This has become quite common advice, I know. People have claimed that it’s what gives you clear skin and it helps you mind your own business. I don’t know if any of this is true but what I know is that water is the ultimate thirst quencher, that (free) clean water is a luxury and that your body needs water to operate at it’s near optimal level.
3. Move your body – this is more of a reminder for myself because I keep forgetting how great it is and how great I feel after moving my body. Dance, run, stretch, do yoga, walk, do whatever makes you feel good but move your body as often as you can.
4. “No” and “I don’t want to” are complete answers.
5. Try not to spend too time much agonising about food. This can be food you’ve eaten, food you’d like to eat or food that everyone has decided is bad. I think we all have our issues with food and those reasons differ. I have been part of many conversations wherein either myself or the other person was stressing over food and I have often found myself thinking “surely this can’t be good for my mental health” – so try not sweat what you eat so much. If you can reach a balance that is good for your mental and physical health, that’s good enough in my opinion.
6. Wear sunscreen.
7. You don’t have to respond to every text, every email or every request immediately. Take time to think if and when you need it. Work on not feeling guilty about this, if you need to send a text back letting the other person know that you still need to think through whatever is being required of you, then do that. But give yourself room to think and work through what you need to work through.
8. Get a re-usable water bottle. Helps with lesson number 2, helps the oceans and helps save time by not having to wash glasses. It’s a win-win honestly.
9. If you are a black woman: the world sees your hair as political. The world has decided what you deserve, how smart you are and whether beauty is a word that can be assigned to you based on how you wear your hair. That however does not mean you have to give a damn about it. Wear your hair how you want it, do it at different phases in your life or don’t. Try not to let what people say about your hair affect your relationship with it.
10. Have fun and define what fun is for yourself. I still don’t know how to do this consistently, but when I think back to that one time when I was completely free and only concerned myself with having fun it was pretty great. The memory that comes to mind was letting my husband cover me in sand on a beach in Ramsgate. That was a good day because I was with someone I really like, I wore a skimpy bikini with NO SHORTS for the first time ever (the ocean kept pulling down my shorts so I gave up on keeping them on) and I giggled the whole day. We tend to forget to have fun in our day to day lives. We get caught up in being busy and being productive. But life is long enough without taking time out to laugh from the pits of your soul, do that as often as you can, have fun and invest in learning what fun is for you.

I hope you’ve found value in my lessons and will be keeping them in mind during this festive season, especially rule number #2. I know I’m not supposed to have favourites but it’s a classic for a reason.

So I am at the doctors office. I’m waiting, my doctor is never on time, I’m not even sure why they always bother to inform me about her “running late” – I’m prepared, I even brought a book. I am however uninterested in this particular book so naturally my mind starts to wander and I am back to thinking about my impact on the world. And I start to reflect on my life; all the friends I’ve made and all the friends I’ve lost. All the food I’ve eaten and all the clothes and shoes I’ve worn and outgrew or simply grew bored and tired of. I think about it all and the impact I’ve left in the world.

I am not really ready to look into my impact on friends and family yet so let’s look into something less daunting shall we.

My thoughts have been circulating around my impact on the world a lot lately. Sometime, somewhere last year I started thinking about the very real impact that my life, mostly the consuming element of my life, was leaving on the world. After all this thinking this year I finally decided to put an end to the constant wondering when I decided to avoid all animal products in my food, in my clothing and in whatever element of life I was going through.

If I’m honest I haven’t really struggled so much with the food element, except for a few social events when I’ve felt like I needed to over explain a lot of myself I haven’t really struggled. I really do miss having salmon sashimi but not to an extent where I feel like a major part of my life has been cut out, I can still enjoy sushi and good food without any of the animals that I used to consume. The biggest conundrum for me has been all my stuff.

Now I don’t necessarily have a lot of stuff but I have stuff. Stuff I have acquired prior to wanting to shop more ethically (and not at all) and stuff I bought before I knew that the fast fashion industry is one of earths biggest polluting industries and that they are also a leader in exploitation since most of their clothes are made by underpaid employees (most of whom are women) working in terrible work conditions.

So I am trying to reconcile my new found knowledge and my stuff. My approach to existing more ethically is simply by consuming less. I’ve decided to stop buying stuff. Truth be told I don’t need more stuff, the stuff I have is more than enough and I am content with most, if not all, of it. So I’ve been trying to decide what is more ethical for me at this point: do I get rid of all my clothes that were made unethically and start from scratch? Or do I accept that my clothes were bought in ignorance and eliminate the need for new clothes and ride these until the seams fall off?

What do I do? I don’t know. If I’m honest I am taking the option that will involve not consuming anymore stuff. I’m not fine with my prior ignorance in purchasing these clothes, far from it, but I am also not willing to have more stuff made in order to replace all my other stuff. Making stuff takes energy. For now I think keeping my bad stuff and not buying anymore stuff is my best option? At least until I find a way of disposing of it in a less harmful way.

How do you dispose of bad stuff anyway? Is it ethically sound to donate clothing made badly, by people who worked in atrocious conditions to someone less fortunate? Why must that person carry the burden of my stuff and my ignorance?

This is post that has no answers. I just needed to get these words out. Maybe by reading them I’ll find a solution or maybe someone out there knows something that can help me?

I did something radical today. Maybe radical is a bit of an exaggeration but for me it certainly felt like a radical thing. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do since I got a car and started working in 2017. Today, on the 19th of March 2019 (two years later after dreaming of all of this) I took nap in my car during lunch.

This seems like a not so big deal but for me it was because it stemmed from something I have been practising and trying to implement a lot lately and taking a nap in my car has been a pretty big deal to me for a while. I have always been of the belief that we all need a nap during the day, something short, something simple, something to help us recuperate somewhere during the day and find the calm and centre we usually have a few minutes after waking up. You know what I am talking about, those few hours (or minutes) of a day when you feel well rested, ready to tackle the events of the day and you are feeling alive both with possibilities and in a more practical sense in that your lungs are filled with air for yet another day? That is one of my most favourite feelings because I happen to be a morning person and someone who feels really good and motivated when I wake up early in the morning.

So back to this great nap I took and why this simple thing took me so long. It all goes back to what I wrote about a while back about the shoes. These two things seem unrelated but when one takes a closer look it all has the common golden thread that was my desire to please others. Even though most times this option has always sort of been available to me I have resisted doing it based on what I thought others would think of me if I chose to enjoy my lunch alone with a book or followed by a nap. I always assumed that people would think I am rude and stuck up or that I saw myself above them or their conversation, I am not quite sure how I reached these rationalisations but I did and after I did I let them keep from doing a lot and napping in my car was one of those things.

Lately I have been trying to check in a lot with myself and what feels good to me. This was inspired by a lot but most recently (yesterday to be exact) I discovered it via a yogi on YouTube (Yoga by Adriene on Youtube) who encourages one to “do what feels good” when practising yoga. I think this a terrific concept for life especially for those of us who go through life just simply doing because it is socially acceptable or because of some deep seated desire to be liked that has as a result made us disconnected from what we actually like and who we actually are. And so I have been asking myself this a lot lately: Does it look good on you? Does it feel good on you? Does it taste good you? Does it make sense to you? Does being here feel good to you? Stopping throughout my day and asking myself these questions is giving me some meaning to my days and consequently to my life that I never knew was missing. It is also helping me be more honest about things I have no interest in doing because I am slowly realising that something NOT feeling good is a good enough reason for me not to do whatever that thing is.

Asking myself if something feels good has added consciousness to my mind, body and somehow my soul as well which I have recently decided to feed more (a blog for another day). Of course this does not give me permission to be reckless in my interactions with myself and others. There needs to be some boundaries. Doing what feels good does not mean that I disregard anyone else’s feelings or efforts, it does not mean that I am self-harming in my desire to be a hedonist only eating dessert despite the consequences of sugar on my health. Doing what feels good does not mean living life selfishly but rather living life consciously. Doing what feels good means added awareness to what makes you feel joyous and alive as opposed to what moves your day along. Sometimes what feels good is eating lunch in company, sharing stories and laughing full heartedly. Other times it means having your lunch at your desk because you are doing work that is both fulfilling and nourishing to your mind and body. And in some very particular instances doing what feels good means having lunch in your car listening to a podcast you’ve listened to many times before, taking a nap and waking up refreshed and inspired to write something for your blog.

If you haven’t done this lately maybe now is the time to do it. Maybe now is the time to check in and ask your body if it’s feeling good. Start at the top of your head all the way down to your feet. Is your mind feeling good or is it calling for a break? Are your shoulders feeling good or are they tensed up? Is your stomach feeling good or does it need a little TLC? Are your feet feeling good or do they need to be planted a little more? Is your body feeling good or do you need to find balance? Stop today and ask your body, mind and soul if they are feeling good, you will be surprised at the responses you get.

I’ve always been scared of reading books that are deemed classics, more so books that are deemed classics and happen to be written by black women.

For as long I could I avoided reading anything by Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and up until today I have yet to bring myself to read “The Colour Purple” mostly because the movie has haunted me so much with it’s perfection that I am simply afraid what will happen if I even look in the direction of the book.

Of course every time I have read these classic books written by phenomenal writers who happen to be black women I have been blown away and have devoured each and every single word never stopping and coming up for air.

Zola Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” is at the top of the list of books I’ve been terrified to read and I am finally breaking my fear and daring to finally let Ms Hurston tell me her story. I am ready to meet the characters, I am excited to get lost in their worlds and I am looking forward to falling in love the way so many before me have fallen in love with this book.

I had deemed 2018 the year of bravery and to my memory throughout the whole year I tried my best to ask myself if I was being brave in whatever I did. At the beginning of this year I had decided that this is the year of finishing things off and to a large extent it will be that for me. Some things I cannot avoid finishing off, for example my twenties, that is simply time and that is something that I welcome with bated breath. I have decided that this year will also be the year of not allowing myself to hide behind any excuses. So I stopped saying I don’t have time and I am finally learning French, I have stopped saying I am not flexible enough and I have conceded to the yoga mat calling my name, and I am finally ready to get lost in worlds that are rich in beauty and that require me to rise above my intellectual laziness.

So here’s to reading and getting lost in books – you know like back in the day when we used to read without the need to blog about it first.

🙂