“Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back.” ― Harvey MacKay I became accustomed to treating the hours in my days like spare change in my jeans pockets… a somewhat “easy come, easy go” type of approach if you will. Eventually (life happened) and that changed. Staring at the orbit of a teabag in my morning cup of ceylon while my phone pinged with notifications, it suddenly dawned on me, I am not running out of tasks or “to do’s” - that list just never seems to dwindle… but I am running out of minutes that actually feel like mine. The quote I shared at the beginning of this post from Harvey MacKay pretty much puts it in a nutshell and lately the looping of those words in my mind has become less of a quote I am reciting and more of an internal compass I am beginning to follow. The older I get, the clearer it is… time doesn’t need a lock to be stolen. It just needs me to look away for a millisecond. Safe to say that I think there are seasons we pass through in all our lives when every message feels urgent, every invite feels compulsory, and every disagreement was an arena just waiting to be filled with a gawking audience. We step into comment threads like gladiators, we let other people’s panic and mayhem colonise our diaries as well as our internal dialogue and we donate Saturdays to obligations that leave us feeling hollow. These days, I have begun to ask myself questions before saying yes or doing anything… Does this “cost” more than it gives? If the answer is yes, then I pay with a shrug and walk away. I used to think “no” was a door slamming, when in actual fact, it is just a gate to a much more peaceful garden. I guard my free time now, because it’s scarce. I combine things on purpose. Chop onions whilst listening to a friends voice note. Stretch calves while the kettle boils (okay that one is totally a lie, haha!) Turn the queue at the shops into people watching theatre - that is practically involuntary for me, if I am honest… but if I “must” be somewhere anyway, I try to lace it with something that feeds me. It’s not efficiency for efficiency’s sake,it is more like “life quality control”, lol. I have also stopped acting as if my attention is “free” confetti. There is a cost to every click and every conversation. Some people add spark and energy to my days and others arrive with little grey rainclouds over their heads and then expect me to stand under it, alongside them. Do not get me wrong… I don’t hate the cloud carriers, I just refuse to be their umbrella anymore. If something will drain me later, it costs extra now. That “extra” is a pause. A breath. A “do I actually want this?” If the answer is lukewarm, it’s a no. Lukewarm is just cold waiting to happen - true story!!! Mark my words! I now keep little “jars in my head”... Must. Matters. Might. “Must” keeps the lights on and the body fed. “Matters” includes relationships, creative work, and the walks that marry my thoughts back together. “Might” is everything else. Guess which jar used to overflow? Guess which jar now gets the leftovers, lol! Empty minutes are not waste, they are the oxygen we ACTUALLY need! Notifications are polite thieves. Most things can wait an hour. If it’s truly urgent, they can phone again. Gatekeeping my focus is not rude, it is realistic responsibility. The most incredible shift through all of these little “tweaks” is how light life feels when you stop feeding the wrong fires. More laughter, more room for people who show up with curiosity instead of drama. None of this means my agenda (or life) looks like a spa brochure. I still juggle every second of every day and I still drop balls. Some days, even my best self forgets to set an alarm for something important. But I am learning to spend time like it is invaluable, which it is!!! Every choice says, “more of this, please.” or “less of that”. When I spend it on things that align with my values, my time starts sounding like me again. If there is one thing I know now, it is that time does not hand out refunds. We don’t get shop credit on wasted hours. What we do get, though, is a choice… every single day, about where our attention lands and who or what we spend it on. And that choice shapes the ENTIRE texture of our lives!! The minutes we guard, the “no’s” we aren’t scared to say, the moments we choose to actually live in instead of scroll past… that is the sh!te that builds a life which feels like it belongs to us. Not borrowed. Not drained. Ours. Yours. Mine! #nostr #freedom #life #thoughts #writing #blog #people #time #self

Petrichor 💚 #nature

Good Morning 🌷☕️💛

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. - Ernest Hemingway 𝐒𝐚𝐥𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡. I have met all sorts of people in my lifetime thus far. The ones who arrive in designer shoes and shades and the ones who barely have a pair left to their name. Some with passports tattooed in ink from every corner of the globe, and some who have never even left the street they grew up on… and if I am completely honest, I have been a few versions of some of them myself. Life has an interesting and mostly “unexpected” way of dragging you through some raaaather interesting wardrobes, and sometimes you only realise after the fact that you were trying on someone else’s clothes altogether. As a kid, it really did not matter. Choices were about as simple as whose house you were playing in after school, or what snack you could smuggle down your throat without your mother finding out. But adulthood demands something else entirely… a different set of gears altogether. I remember being 20 years old, sitting in my own office, with a secretary and a client list that felt far too heavy for my still growing shoulders. One minute I was playing pool with friends in some dingy underground pub who thought college was optional, the next I was in meetings where people wore ties tighter than their smiles. Talk about chalk and cheese. For most of my life, I have worn the shoes of a business owner. And anyone who’s laced up those particular shoes will know, they pinch in all the worst places, lol. They will grind blisters into your spirit and yet… they will still be the very pair you would never trade, because when they fit, they make you stand taller than you ever thought you could. They are brutal and often unforgiving but they are oh so rewarding, and they are stitched together with an incredible concoction of love, exhaustion, pride and passion! Taking a moment to think about where I was, where I have gone, been, currently stand and where I am going…through all the phases and moulds I have had to squeeze into, the people who have ALWAYS mattered the most to me are the ones who couldn’t care less about labels, boardrooms, or social hierarchies. The salt of the earth. Humans who don’t need to announce themselves with fancy titles or a new car smell. They arrive exactly as they are! Sometimes with nothing more than an old jersey and a story that could break your heart but somehow makes you laugh instead. And I love them for it. “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.” - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Those are the people who have lived enough to know that being “cool” is often just being cold. They are not polished or pretentious. They have had bad luck, made messy choices, picked themselves up and carried on anyway. There is a depth in them that you will simply never find in a filtered photo or a penthouse brag. I don’t care whether we are raising a styrofoam cup or a crystal glass. The drink goes down the same way, and the blood running in our veins doesn’t change colour depending on the container. If I am honest, I find the other lot exhausting. The ones with their brand identities stamped across their foreheads, rehearsing stories about how wealthy their friends are (note: not they themselves, their friends). Those are the ones who will vanish the moment your chapter doesn’t suit their narrative. They will pretend they don’t know you in public, because, heaven forbid, your existence comes with “special features” like actual feelings or a setback. No thanks - you can keep them! Give me the unpolished ones. The ones who have learnt to laugh at life’s curveballs and curses, lol. The ones who know that substance is born from scars, not selfies. The world doesn’t spin smoother because someone is wearing Prada. It spins because of people who keep showing up, battered shoes, tired soul and all. And I will take that kind of company any day of the week. Because when you strip it all bare, those are the people who will show up for you. The measure of life is not in what you own, but in how you have lived it and who you have lived it with. “At the end of the day, people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.” - Maya Angelou #life #real #thoughts #self #expression #writing #personal #blog

Hey @mrecheese 🧀 - Just thought I would let you know that I have been around the crypto space with my art for more than a minute. As well as in real life. So how about you stop being a total jerk off to newcomers here.

IamWoman - Collection | OpenSea

A 1/1 original portraits NFT collection created by the Capetonian born South African designer and digital artist who sports the pseudonym “Strawb...

Been here like a minute and already all the asswipes are crawling out the corners.