I’m not at all sure what to say. I’m feeling quite boring.
In the last week we had another intern start. This one, Oriel, is from the UK
and is a wicked smart cookie – I have her working with me on systems design at
the moment which is tremendously exciting and we’re cooking up some interesting
plans for the new year. At this time of year in Cape Town not much business
gets done so it’s a good time of year to do the things you’ve meant to have
done a long time ago. Lilian continues to make progress on her research work,
and I actually can’t remember what I did last week. That’s not optimal.
Then again, when the body isn’t well the mind won’t be
either. I had a bunch of physical therapy in the last week and went back to
training on Thursday. Took it easy and went a bit harder Friday, then regretted
it the next morning while doing a trail run. Somehow doing 70 front squats
within 13 hours of a trail run may not be a good idea. That trail run was also
not a good idea because the course was straight up then straight back down,
neither of which was at all good for my strained psoas, as both of these
movements aggravate the lower back. It was good for my own personal limiting of
my competitive streak where I specifically decided not to push myself and race
even though on a healthy day I could probably have won the race.
The work week was punctuated by a 3-hour visit to the
FoodTents GrowZone to help Shaun fill out his status report, some amusement
over who had to supervise whom in making coffee (!), a dreadful charity
luncheon, a meeting over coffee with a venture capitalist, watching the
scoreboard refresh on some test match cricket (SA almost kept Australia to a
world record low for runs), and an ASEN event at the GSB where I met a couple
interesting people, mulled over a few concepts, got into an argument within the
first 5 minutes of arriving (and it wasn’t about the subject of who has a
workshop and fails to provide tea & coffee). I’ve already gotten over the
fact that no one pays any attention to your dietary requirements when you
specify them upon registration.
On Wednesday I missed my buddy Sam’s coming home party
because it had been a bad day at work so instead I went to Peter & Mandy’s
and what was meant to be one drink turned into about four (!) and then I went
to my other friend Robyn’s housewarming before heading home to some
well-deserved sleep. Oh, and I bought some furniture: a table and a mirror.
Hey, it’s progress. Of a sort. Thursday I was treated to a surprise dinner at
Babett’s (sending me pictures of yummy food with captions like: ‘I cooked too
much food; wanna come over and help me eat it?’ … I mean that could be
considered entrapment in some states!).
The weekend was equally busy with the aforementioned trail
race, a visit to the Biscuit Mill to stock up on meat, a bodywork session,
paintball (hostile paintball no less!) and braai with CCF, chocolate pudding
& chilling with Mona, then Greenpop party at the Assembly. That day did not
go according to plan: I was consistently late for everything, the run hurt my psoas
which had been healing nicely. I guess paintball went according to plan, I kept
my body protected and played sniper.
The Greenpop event was quite a cool reunion with a number of
people I hadn’t seen in a while, so was cool from that perspective. I had hoped
to get home by midnight. Instead I got home around 2. Jeremy & his crew
played a particularly good set, though, so that was, as always, an experience.
But I had a hard time getting out of bed the next morning – eventually did,
though, and Mona & I went over to Camps Bay to have brunch and several
coffees with Roland, and soak up a little bit of sun.
In the afternoon I headed down to near Muizenberg to
Charlotte’s birthday party, where I ate ice cream and discussed strange Americanisms,
touring America, and exactly why American football is such an amazing game.
Speaking of Americanisms, I then went to the house of some Americans to make my
famous poblano pumpkinseed stuffing (with gluten-free bread thank you very
much, and jalapenos since you can’t buy poblanos in this country apparently),
and enjoy a lovely Thanksgiving. Great company, great wine, great food and too
much of it. It’s not Thanksgiving if you don’t eat until you’re sick. I did,
felt sick, and went home to a very early bed.
10.5 hours later I woke up with an absurdly sore back. Gluttony
is hectic, and so is excessive sleep. I was considering not training CrossFit
but then I decided I needed to get some blood to my muscles and I could always
stop if I encountered pain. Seems to have been a good move. Plus I do love a
good barbell complex.
This week I have a couple of missions: mostly around
marketing, and sales, actually. I need to get the messaging right and write
copy for our new web site, I need to write a couple of articles, and I need to
get some proposals out. It may be a slow time of year for sales, but goodness
knows the best way never to generate money is never to do any sort of sales
activity.
I also need to wait for the other shoe to drop. It’s going
to be an interesting week.
You know how sometimes if something seems really difficult
maybe it’s worth it and maybe it isn’t? Peter had an interesting metaphor
relating to me this week: he told someone else not to confuse my desire to win
the game I happen to be playing with my thinking as to whether or not I
actually want to be playing the game at all.
I think sometimes we do continue with things past the point
at which they make sense just because we’re attached to something: identification
with what we’re doing, worshiping sunk costs, habit, refusal to admit failure,
etc.
Of course sometimes we also don’t start things because we’re
risk averse and are afraid of failure. Or we don’t know how to begin.
- “It’s not about how many pushups you can do, it’s that you’re really dedicated to something.” – Hollie
- “Are you doing shots now?” – Lilian (this was at 9am!)
- “So … how do you do this?” – Jon
- “But that’s how the world works. No one knows what’s going on.” – Jon
- “Are you injured?” “Yes.” “Then everything is normal.” – Jobst & Ellie
- “Life is too hard to have enemies on your own side.” – Vincent
- “Everyone has a plan. Until they get punched in the face.” – Mike Tyson
- “Your body was made for CrossFit.” – Kheyrne
- “You can’t out-fast or out-train crappy nutrition.” – Roland
- “Fun’s not for everyone either!” – Henry
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