At Long Last

My new mental strategy is not to stress about what I am going to do with the rest of my life. I am trying not to worry about how I am going to live a life full of value. Instead my strategy is all about focusing on next week. It is far easier to see what I need to be doing for the next week and how I can add the best value than trying to look forty years into the future.

Value does not have to be defined as what I do with the rest of my working life or how I am going to save all the orphans of the world. Those things are impossible to start as they are just such massive issues. Besides that there is no way to figure out the right answer before one starts. Instead the solution lies in much trial and error and the opportunities that life throws at one. I have been trying to solve my life from the comfort of my armchair yet life needs to be lived rather than solved.

More than that, value is different to everyone. I can add huge value to peoples lives by doing small things with great energy and cheer every day.

My focus last week was the completion of the halfpipe. I really worked hard on it and it is 98% complete. All the tough work has been completed and all that is left are the finishing touches. The kids love it! I am amazed at how fast they learn and improve. My skills are going to fade into insignificance shortly as they will soon be well and truly eclipsed by my children's abilities.

This week, I am focusing on upgrading the content of our new companies website. We are playing with an idea called FREE. Very simply, you give away your electronic capital (all the clever work we have done) for nothing! We shall see if this works!

Next week is still to be determined....

This focus has removed all of the mental anguish that has recently plagued me about my lack of value add. I am now able to enjoy every moment of life as it happens as I am able to fully live and experience it now. So far, my really short term focus has helped me to deliver value that I can live with.

I will keep you updated.

Old is Good

I had tea yesterday with the most interesting bunch of people. I laughed stacks. I heard a heap of true stories that made the hairs on my arms stand on end. And I ate two pieces of chocolate cake – my absolute favourite!

The average age of the people I met was on the far side of the 80’s. This was a group of elderly that had been rounded up by some caring people for an outing. The outing was a tea on a wine farm. Somehow I managed to sneak an invite even though my age profile was out by almost 50 years.

This outing was all about these old folk. Real people who get little attention and who have even less excitement in their lives! This was a big deal for them. Yet it was I who walked away on top of the world. Completely refreshed and rejuvenated.

There was lots of war talk, a period of history that fascinates me. Here I was listening to stories of people who had been there and survived it. More than that they had stories of the Great War that involved family and friends. Soon, the only way to learn about this stuff will be to read about it in a book!

I could not believe how interesting these people were and yet they are the ignored part of our society. Forgotten by the rest of us because we are so busy with our own lives! I really am surprised by how much I enjoyed the experience. I was there to help out and bring joy and comfort to their lives and ended up finding a piece of myself.

My future needs to involve more of this!!

Thinking Again

It has been a long time since I have written anything really meaningful about my journey.

Perhaps it is time.

It is now 14 months since I gave up my career in favour of a life theoretically focussed on the greater good. My starting point was the writing of a book. It was fun writing! My days were filled with these incredible surges and slacks as my inspiration peaked and waned.14 chapters of poor to mediocre drivel interspersed with moments of brilliance were soon churned out. Well at least I thought there were some moments of brilliance! At the time, I felt that I was achieving something real. And I was! For the first time in my remembered life, I started to experience my very own emotions. I got to experience freedom for the first time in my life and it was sweet. I thought deeply and had discussions with other people that were deep and meaningful. This was a wonderful reflective growth period of my life.

Then the call came. Five months into my year off, a large company asked me to help. So began four months in Tanzania followed up by projects in Ghana and Nigeria. On the professional front, I learnt so much about being a consultant. I probably learnt more in this time than in the last five years of my working life. In the end I discovered a business partner and we formed a new company which is to be the vehicle that delivers many of our hopes and dreams. It is to be a company that really values the people that it employs, the clients that it services, and the community in which it operates. We have put a lot of thought and effort into setting it up just right. So far, a client is yet to walk through the virtual door....

It has now been three weeks at home with no work on the horizon. That in itself does not bother me as much as it should. I know that something will come my way when it is supposed to. My three weeks have been filled with community work. This is something that I dreamed about whilst locked in my wonderful office in the working world. The only think is that this work, although highly value adding to the organisations, is hardly the heart wrenching, emotional roller coaster, mentally absorbing stuff I was dreaming about.

The good part is that my 14 months have been filled with family. Obviously a fantastic gift that few men ever receive. I am thoroughly thankful for this time and my family relationships that have grown as a result of it.

Mentally, I am struggling, again. I find it difficult to see myself as the consummate businessman. I am good at that stuff but it really has not grabbed me. On the other end of the scale, my community work has far from thrilled me either. It has started to fill a deep guilty hole dug by my own apathy and lack of Christian response to the world, but I am not sure that this is enough. The real problem is that I left a job to lead a fulfilling life and am yet to find such a thing.

I am scared by the fact that I can no longer see a future that invigorates me. A future that appeases my social conscience and provides for my family! I know that it is out there but I am just out of ideas at this moment in time. Right now I am just playing the cards as they fall as opposed to opening my own new deck. I know I need to open a new deck but am just thoroughly disillusioned right now.

My partner and I have promised to give this business our wholehearted attention for the next couple of months. We have some great ideas and I hope we can pull this off. I do have a sneaky suspicion that I need to finish this book of mine. It is an unfinished chapter in my life. I wonder if by finishing it, I both close that chapter and allow myself the freedom to move into the next chapter of my life.

An Engine Block

The putting together of Tweety again (my bright yellow Ford F100) is taking as long as expected. It seems that this is a VERY slow process.

I did not think that too much was required on the car but my thinking was WAY wrong! The engine block was rusted and no good due it being re-bored to the maximum. We managed to find another block which is no small feat as the block I wanted was only made 37 years ago. That's right folks, before I was born! It also looks like a lump of old metal and I had serious reservations about its abilities. My new found mechanic friends tell me that it is the real deal! Of course this lump had a large requirement for parts which mainly had to be ordered from the US. Somehow the wrong bearings were ordered and so had to be returned and new ones ordered. Nobody seems to be concerned by the weeks of delay.

In the mean time, the engine bay has been resprayed black. The front suspension has been removed, serviced, and sprayed black. I have agreed the interior specifications and some people are eagerly beavering away on getting that right.

The good news is that this week they started to rebuild the engine and I was on hand to learn how it is done. I can tell you that I have learnt heaps - it really has been fun. I would love to do it myself, but am keen to get a warranty with this motor. Instead, I have chosen to get close with a zoom lens!

Here are some almost abstract pictures looking through the camshaft, and then the crankshaft, main bearing caps, the crankshaft, the bottom end, a portion of the crankshaft, pistons, and looking down onto the upside down bottom end (with dem biiiiiiig cylinders).......

Halfpipe Update

The halfpipe is coming along - slow but sure. It has certainly benefited from my slowing work commitments!!

I have now built the four curved ends and completed the base section as well. I still have to complete the painting work (gotta keep all of this exposed wood warm and dry in the wet Cape winter), the grind rails, platform, and decking. The end is in site!

I intend to have a neighbourhood braai. The idea is not burn the halfpipe but rather get all of the big kids like me, to lend a hand and get the decking complete. This is going to be a big job, and so a little family braai as a reward will make it worth the while. That and the adrenaline rush of actually using it!

A spanner was thrown into the works when our neighbour casually enquired about the nature of this wooden construction. She was a little concerned about the noise. I thought about continuing to build it right next to her wall, looking into her lounge, but decided against it as I would hate any of my neighbours to do the same to me. This weekend saw some serious garden work being undertaken in order to accommodate it in a different spot in my garden, in my new vegetable patch!




And here is my oldest, and key rider of this beast, inspecting the work!



My son was also selected yesterday for the Boland surf team that will surf in the South African grommet games in Port Elizabeth at Easter time.

Building the halfpipe has been an expensive leap of faith. The exciting thing is that it will now become a fantastic training tool. A wave in my yard, that is not bothered by swell or wind!

Stupid Racist Idiot!

My partner related an experience that he had whilst standing in a queue yesterday.

It was hot and stuffy inside this building and flies abounded, pestering all in the place (as good flies do). The chap in front of my partner, a 19 year old, turned around and began a conversation saying, “Do you know why there are so many flies here?” My partner responded that he did not have a clue but would like to be rid of them. This chap then replied, saying that “it’s the darkies, they stink and attract the flies!”

My partner is a coloured man!

Just so that you know, “darkies” is a racial slur denoting all non white people.....

I thought that South Africa was doing incredibly well in terms of moving forward and burying the racial prejudice that once ruled our society. And then you hear things like this from a youngster. I sincerely hope that this was just one misguided youth and that nobody shares his prejudiced generalisms.

Can you believe that anyone could be so stupid as to share a racial intolerance with a complete stranger of the group that you cannot tolerate?

Oh dear, I think I have a prejudice against stupid people!!

In The Trees

We spent a weekend recently with four other families at a place called Treetops. We got to sleep in our very own tree house!





Is this not the childhood fantasy? Our kids certainly thought so. And we had some fun!!

Here are my 2 favourite pictures.....

Nigeria in Pictures

I thought I would tempt you with some photographs of Nigeria. Perhaps you too would like to take that once in a lifetime trip to darkest Africa? A land that is quintessential Africa, exquisitely beautiful in parts and violently chaotic and ugly in others. It is certainly a land that requires exploration with camera in hand but that may well lead to your camera not being in your hand, or your hand on your arm....




This is a warped view of the street outside the complex in which I stayed. The white wall to the left is the wall of our complex. This is a good part of town, as can be evidenced by the Mercedes on the pavement. It's time of going is long gone!



Most of the Nigeria I saw in Port Harcourt looks like these pictures. The nicest buildings are those that house fervoured revivalist Christian services and you will find at least one on every block. The sun struggles to pierce the clouds, smog, and humidity during the day. I saw blue sky once as evidenced by the picture below - my first day there!

Here are some photo's of places on the water. Port Harcourt is situated in the Niger Delta and so there is plenty of water all over the place. The waterways are really beautiful. Many houses are built on stilts in the water and would make awesome photographic subjects. Alas my camera spent a lot of time hiding!

There are 150 million people living in Nigeria. It is a hive of activity and there are people everywhere, all the time. Traffic is a debacle. I have never seen anything like it in my life. The driving skills seem to be inversely proportional to the amount of traffic. Perhaps due to the fact that the only driving speed is crawling, great driving skills are not required. I spent a lot of time hanging onto my seat!

This is not a land for the feint hearted! It does have an allure though. Almost a challenge that goes, I survived the place once, I can do it again!

Will I?

A busy Update

I have been back home in SA for almost two weeks. Boy have I been busy. I suspect that I may be the busiest unemployed person that I know!

One of the things that has kept me busy is my new business. I suppose that this is not a strange concept to any normal person (maybe one day I will become normal). In order to generate more work, my partner and I have started to tender for some interesting government work. Last week, we managed to get hold of the documentation for a particularly interesting tender. In order to submit in time, we had to have all our work complete by last Saturday morning. I was amazed at the number of hoops that one has to jump through in order to be able to tender. From equity certificates to National Industrial Participation Programme agreements to tax clearances to our company policies on people with disabilities. None the less we managed to put our tender together and we think that we got it right. It was a big learning process for both of us as we had to get really creative in order to solve the obstacles that seemed to stack up one behind the other.

Our chances of getting the tender are practically nil but we are now far better prepared for our next submission!

The community side of my life seems to have blossomed. At one stage I did not think I was doing enough, last week I seriously considered that I may have taken on far too much! I have become the secretary for our church council, an organiser and MC for a men’s breakfast this Saturday, the secretary and treasurer for a non profit crèche, and a member of another committee looking after street people, whose AGM is next Monday. It also seems as if all of these organisations have burst into flower at exactly the same time with big requirements for the worker bees to get busy!

I am alive and loving life. And I am free to choose the things that I want to do. Who can ask for more?