Unmoored

I've found there's been something nagging at me over the last year. I could never quite put my finger on it. I come home each day, feeling agitated, with an urgency to leave and do something, anything. I just can't be idle. Is it because I get energy from people, and constantly need to be around others? Is it to distract myself from boredom? Or perhaps because I don't want to be seen as lonely or boring? I find that the good times, where there's lots going on and endless plans never quite last. They ebb and flow. No matter where I go, from Cape Town, to London and now San Francisco, it all ends up the same way—bored, a little unfulfilled. I find myself feeling some amount of anxiety for the weekends: what to do with all that time?

You know, I never used to think this way at all. Back in high school, I spent much of my time alone at home, in my bedroom, tinkering on music production software, playing guitar, hell, even trading. I found endless ways to fill my time. My internal world was so rich. And there was a sort of mischievous pride in having so much satisfaction at something I wasn't told to do. I recall vividly sometime in 8th grade walking haughtily down the corridors because I had just started sinking my teeth into music production. It was my first taste of pouring myself into something intrinsically driven. And it felt just so damn good, to be the author of my own life, to work late into the evenings, losing track of time. It was genuinely electrifying in a way that I've never experienced before. No one could take that away from me, and it sure as hell felt good.

Things changed after high school though. I left the bubble that was home, not that it was a bad bubble, but there was just suddenly a lot more freedom to explore other aspects of life that I had neglected prior. And perhaps that I had just fallen out of love with the things I had preoccupied myself with before. But I had become so dependent on having that one other thing, beyond my duties, that I quite quickly relapsed. There was a specific moment sometime early in that first year of university where I hit a low point unlike any other I've had. It was a lot happening at once: unrequited love, high on painkillers after getting my wisdoms out, getting rejected from all the American universities I applied to (and which I constructed my whole future around), but most importantly, feeling unmoored. We had these university assignments for our computer science class that would circulate once every 2 weeks and you were able to see how many peers had submitted before you. I stayed up until 6 in the morning one night during the midterms, dazed on the meds: 1st in the class. Wow, you should be so proud of yourself. But there was really nothing else going for me other than doing well in class, and I knew it.

When I got back from the midterms, I promised to do something, anything, that could be my own again. The university advertised some machine learning competitions that caught my interest. Oh ML, so fancy. That first competition was more about just keeping busy, but then one led to another, and before I knew it, I was again sinking myself into the work, finding meaning and excitement doing it. Like, how cool are you reading about Fourier Transforms late into the evenings. And as I built momentum, I grew increasingly confident and bold to throw myself at more work. I started exploring software engineering and stumbled upon some startup opportunities. Huh, how cool would that be? To get to professionalize something I'm enjoying and finding fulfilling. You might think I write this in a foreboding way, but honestly, it worked out pretty great. I worked mostly as a solo developer on all these projects, which gave me a great degree of creative freedom and autonomy. And because it was separate from my primary responsibility, my studies, it felt like a bonus—something I wasn't obligated to do, purely self-driven.

Then fast-forward to adulthood. I made my way over to the UK, and was naturally unsettled, scrambling to find places to stay in London, trying to build community again, while also grappling with life after school. Being in a new, exciting city, and having no existing community, I thought to myself that the priority should be experience and socializing. So weekends would come around, and I would feel an urgency to try fill it up with whatever I could. No one was going to make plans for me, so I took it upon myself to make things happen. Those things, music production, guitar, all became secondary. Really, they just served me when I was younger because I had nothing better to do with my time. So god forbid I find myself at home doing nothing! I must be doing something wrong then, not being proactive enough, or not interesting enough that others would want to make plans with me.

Look, don't get me wrong, there was nothing wrong with this, even though the way I describe it leans negative (probably just my state of mind right now). Nor do these things need be mutually exclusive—the intrinsically driven creative work and extrinsic experiences. But without a creative outlet, a sort of 'me thing', I found that an uneasy emptiness started filling up in me. There would be some action-packed weeks, and it felt pretty great, but those times never quite lasted. It would all ultimately land up the same way: alone, without much to do, and feeling an anxiety for the world to happen to me.

When the opportunity to go to San Francisco came up a couple months into living in London, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, it could be an escape from London; maybe the city's just not for me? But on the other hand, I was faced with a burning question: what if it turns out to be the same experience you had here? Can you live with that? What does that say about you? So when the time came to leave, I made a promise to myself, "to not make the same mistakes I made in London." What mistakes? I rationalized it as having not tried hard enough, or at least not in the right way. I do in truth get a lot of energy out of socializing, but I felt I always kept it surface level by never committing to any one thing, and letting connections evolve.

It was my first time in America, on a quiet Monday evening, and on the way from the airport to the city I make conversation with the uber driver. He's a foreigner as well, and has been living in SF for some time but says he wants out. As we're chatting, I stare out the window at the billboards: Agents this, Agents that. The uber driver's telling me about how SF feels so dead, like there's just nothing happening. It dawns on me: "Shit, you really thought this would be the right place to find community?" We arrive at my temporary housing, in SoMa, which for those folks not familiar with SF is the most sterile uninspiring part of the city (in my humble opinion). My apartment is huge, 2 bedrooms for some reason, but far too much space for what it's filled with. I look out at the high rises of Rincon hill, checkered with lights. The space, so big, yet so empty.

But the city really did take me by surprise. That following weekend, I wandered around central SF. Instead of dull high rises and concrete everywhere, I find tree-lined streets, beautiful, vibrant Victorians, bustling parks. You know what, this is perhaps the most beautiful city I've ever seen. My colleague invites me to have drinks at his place that evening. His girlfriend, closer to my age, invited her friends as well. Huh, sweet, I think. It had been some time since I was invited to something as opposed to having to be the one to make it happen. We have some drinks, head to the Mission for dinner and land up at a bar to end the night. One of the friends shows up and I find she has a really cool vibe. She invites me to an Amapiano dance class the next week after hearing that I'm from South Africa.

Things snowball from this point, meeting one person leads to meeting a couple more, and quite quickly I find myself pretty well integrated. That same colleague, his girlfriend and the friend of hers that I got along with organize a trip to Tahoe. That trip kicks of a sort of low-stakes romance between me and this other girl, with her leaving the country the end of the month. And I move into my new place in a prime spot on Dolores Street.

I mean, hell, I did not expect it to have gone nearly this well...

Well, everything kind of happened all at once. Moving seemed romantic at first, until I was left scrambling to be at home to pick up deliveries, all sorts of admin. Work picked up from 0 to 100 real fast, with me taking the lead on a project I really shouldn't have been entrusted with. All the while dealing with feelings of ambiguity in this short-lived romance which I initially hand-waved as being totally fine, nah, I can manage that. Well, the naive me who'd never dated before sure as hell couldn't. There was one night in particular, we went on a date to a cosy cocktail bar downtown that had some live music going. My arm wrapped around her, us both entranced with the music. She lies her head back on my shoulder and gazes up. The night comes to a close and I ask her back to mine. She's got an early morning so can't make it. No biggy. I walk her back home, up the steep hills. And before parting ways ask if she wants to do something else the next weekend. She mentions she's gone to Seattle. Oh. Maybe tennis this upcoming week? "Have to check my schedule." I make the walk back to Powell Station.

At this point, things quietened down, I had settled into some semblance of a routine but nothing that I was really doing for me—just passively getting by. And it dawned on me: I was falling into much the same pattern as I was back in London. Lonely, cynical, jaded. Fuck, surely not the same thing again?

A couple weeks passed and I finally got my place into a functional state. The project, after banging my head against the wall trying the same thing from different angles over and over again, came to a sort of satisfying conclusion. And I tried making peace with the fact that this girl's world didn't revolve around mine—she had other priorities and people to see before leaving—and similarly, I should find ways to make my life meaningful without her.

I had a late night at work, after a long week where we launched this big project that I'd been working on over the last 2 months. I get to do stimulating work, with the autonomy and trust to take on projects of significance. But truth be told, I just feel kind of... flat. I feel some pride, but it's just not quite sufficient. I left the evening after everyone else, hearing my footsteps echo in the corridors. I made my way to Montgomery station, earphones in, book in hand (it's just for show really). It's a Friday night, no plans, and I'm taking the muni back home. I'm thinking, shit, I'm so boring man. I try reading on the train, but I get lost in thought. Why do I think this way about quiet time alone. Why do I dread it so much, always look for distraction? I've had plenty of fun over the last month, got to experience a lot of SF and California in a short space of time. But I can just never appreciate a moment of silence. I think to myself, why not try do something for yourself for a change? Like draw, write, cook? Something less consumery and more create-y, you know what I mean? I look up from the book and feel lit up. Yeah, wouldn't that be great? I start brainstorming about things I could draw... or maybe I could even get an easel and start painting, or how about I do some writing, maybe even about this very dilemma I'm grappling with now?

I got home and went shopping to prepare a big roast now that my kitchen was finally functional. I sat at my desk—actually sat, instead of standing at the counter. Rather than heading straight to bed, I'm sitting here writing this. And you know, it feels pretty darn good. It reminds me of those years in my bedroom, the simpler days where I didn't have to wait for the world to happen to me. Where I could feel perfectly content having a quiet evening at home, getting lost in a craft, not looking up to check the time.

I can't say whether this is truly the panacea I've been looking for, or whether I keep this up or just fall back into my usual habits. But it certainly feels good to at least try.