Grow (at least some of) What You Eat

For a while now, I’ve wanted to grow my own food. My first attempts were rather abysmal. I managed to kill a rosemary plant – the hardy, low maintenance herb, did not last very long under my care. I’ve persisted in my efforts, and finally can say that I’ve had success.

This season, I’ve harvested potatoes, tomatoes, marrows, chillies, peppers, carrots, peas, gem squash, mint, basil, parsley, and spinach. I’ve sprouted avocado seedlings, blueberries, sweet potatoes, lemon tree seedlings, a grape seedling and butternut. 

I have a section of the garden where I planned the space and planted the seeds. Then there are plants that have sprouted because I dug my vegetable scraps from the kitchen straight into the soil as a means of composting them, instead of going through the arduous and rather messy ‘technical’ process of composting. This, according to a friend, is my jungle garden. Both have borne food.

I spend up to two hours in the morning tending to the plants – it’s easy enough to do this in Cape Town, where the sun rises before 6am in the summer. I get on with the rest of my day and in the evenings, before the sun goes down, I collect my harvest for the day.

As someone who thought that I was incapable of keeping any plants alive, this has been an empowering experience. Over the festive season, the only fresh produce I had to buy was onions. The impact on my budget was quite significant. The bigger impact was on my sense of autonomy. If I had had no other resources, I could still feed myself. 

Living in a country that exports over 9.5 billion dollars’ worth of fresh produce a year (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1310229/south-africa-export-value-of-major-agricultural-products/) yet has a poverty rate of 55.5% (https://databankfiles.worldbank.org/public/ddpext_download/poverty/33EF03BB-9722-4AE2-ABC7-AA2972D68AFE/Global_POVEQ_ZAF.pdf), I’ve been having a hard time grappling with why it is that a country as bountiful in its produce as South Africa, has people starving. It led me to thinking about how we’ve been conditioned, over generations, to believe that the only way we can acquire food is with money. This is particularly true in the urban areas of South Africa, where the ideal is to have a job that earns you enough money to buy the food you need. 

The notion of growing at least some of the food we need has been conditioned out of us. What might have been space to grow a few veggies has been turned into paving space for parking our cars, or worse, a grass lawn. And it’s easy enough to be tricked into believing it’s better to buy the food than grow it – we’ve been sucked into the 9 to 5 work schedule that allows no time or space for doing anything that grants us even a smidgen of self-reliance.

I hope that my little food garden inspires my neighbours to follow suit, and that we, by producing some of the things we consume, can loosen the grip that having a full-time job has on our quality of life.

Just Do the Thing You Said You Would (note to self)

Let me tell you what I’ve been up to since I decided I should blog 500 words a day as a warm-up for working on my book:

1. I have started taking a language course on Duolingo. Each day I spend at least 45 minutes practicing to speak Zulu. I’ve been learning to speak Zulu’s sister language, Xhosa, since I moved back to Cape Town a year ago. Unfortunately, I have not found enough free online resources to learn it without spending money. I figured that learning Zulu via Duolingo will help me with Xhosa, and you know what? It’s been working! I’m lucky I have plenty of opportunity to practice. Did this endeavour have to start right at the time I’m supposed to be writing? Of course it did.

2. I’m designing the items I’m adding to my winter wardrobe this year. I do not enjoy buying clothes. Not because I don’t like to wear beautiful clothing, but because I just don’t like what’s in the shops. So, every season, I design and sew a few items to add to my wardrobe. For this summer I made two pairs of shorts, a halter neck dress, a strappy beach dress and a cheongsam. Isn’t now, when I’m meant to be blogging, the perfect time to think of what I’m going to sew to keep me warm in winter? Of course it is. 

3. As a maths tutor, I have a fascination with numbers. I am intrigued by the beauty of maths in nature – the ratios, the symmetry, the patterns. I’ve recently developed an interest in the history of maths, particularly in the ancient expression of units and value. Would now, when I’m supposed to be blogging, be the best time to go down the rabbit-hole of the use of the ancient Egyptian number system? Absolutely!

This is not even a complete list. There are capsicum seeds that need planting, and I might as well try and propagate the macadamia seed I’ve been avoiding planting, because I’m scared it might not grow. And my scarf drawer is a jumble again, it needs sorting out too.

Why do I keep doing this to myself? I teeter a tightrope, tipping between disappointment at not doing what I set out to do and satisfaction with the other things I’m doing. At some point (like now) I know that the imbalance will increase and the threat of falling into my safety net of imposter syndrome will become a reality. What usually happens then is, I waste time doing some top-quality wallowing, then pick myself back up again, and start all over. 

I had hoped this time would be different. That I’d just get on with what I promised myself I’d do. I am eternal optimist, so I know that even if I don’t succeed with getting myself in the habit of writing daily right at this moment, whatever I’ve learned from the mistakes I make now will help me do it better next time round.

But maybe, just maybe, I should swap out the unsteadiness of the tightrope for the consistency of a good old balancing beam that’s no more than thirty centimetres off the ground. 

Other

Isosceles and Asymptote stared at the pyramid in the middle of the sorting floor. It was a jumble of the week’s discarded numbers, waiting to be categorised. Each day, the numbers rejected by the calculators would be collected by the model function, Ellipsoid, and added to the pyramidic pile. Then two members of the operations team would sort them from the pyramid into giant cubes. 

Sighing, Isosceles walked around the pyramid, counting the number of sides.

“Ellipsoid’s been taking the piss lately. An icosagonal pyramid? Really?”

“You know it’s because she’s angry that the higher-ups won’t let her collect the numbers in cones,” replied Asymptote. “It’s a form of protest.”

“What’s their problem with circles anyway?” asked Isosceles. “Is the rumour true, that they’re scared of them?”

“Shhhh!” Asymptote hissed. Ignoring the ‘No Spheres Allowed’ sign at the door, he glanced around the room to make sure no-one had heard. 

“It looks like she used the 20,21,29 Pythag combo,” said Isosceles as his gaze sought the tip of the pyramid, which almost touched the ceiling. “Nice work.”

Asymptote opened the log book to sign in and check for notes. An official letter from the higher-ups was taped to the front page:

“Please note that with immediate effect, whole numbers, rational numbers, imaginary numbers and complex numbers will go into a single category and as such will be sorted into one cube.”

“Again? You see, I told you they have a problem with circles. I’m sure they keep swapping out the whole numbers because their series starts with zero,” said Isosceles. He read the rest of the note. “And we have to come up with a name for them. Great.”

“I’ll re-organise and name the new cube,” Asymptote said quickly, to avoid giving comment on the latest reshuffle.  

Isosceles, careful not to be stabbed by negative numbers or the pointy parts of roots, clambered two thirds to the top of the pyramid and settled down to start sorting. 

Below, Asymptote had removed three of the nine category cubes, and was trying to decide what to label the one that would now house the new group.

“Rational, imaginary, complex, whole,” he wrote down on a sheet of paper. What could he do to create a new word for them?  

“Maybe we should call them Ricow numbers. Or Wimcor. What do you think?” he shouted up to Isosceles, who didn’t hear the anguish in his colleague’s voice. He was struggling to untangle a pi from a square root.

“Crioms, carroms, pants. What does it matter?” he replied.

“Cowhrim numbers? No. Ricowhi. That could work.” Poor Asymptote. He was pacing, nervous that he’d volunteered for this task. There’d be trouble if the higher-ups were not happy with his choice of wording. 

“Isosceles, stop being obtuse and tell me what to call them! None of the names I’m coming up with sound right, and they don’t have any meaning. I need more time!”

Isosceles looked down at Asymptote and realised his distress. 

“There is no category. You can name all the different permutations you want, and you’ll come close, but you’ll never reach the curve. They know what they want, but they’re not allowed to say it. So, we have to.”

“What?” Asymptote looked confused.

“We have to name them Other.” 

What Else Have We Given Up?

I have a vivid memory of the first time I saw the night sky in all its natural splendour. I was about ten years old, and my baby sister and I had gone with my dad to pick up my grandmother who had been visiting one of her sisters in rural Namaqualand. We were staying the night, resting for the six-hour long journey we’d be making back to Cape Town the next day. Aunty Mary Anne’s house was quite literally in the middle of nowhere. A dirt road tracked its way to her doorstep, and the house was lit with oil lamps and warmed with a fireplace in the kitchen. 

Namaqualand is known for its extensive, lush fields of flowers, and for days before we embarked on the trip, my sister and I spoke in excitement about seeing the carpets of multi-coloured blooms. Sadly, spring was over and by the time we arrived and just a few little patches of the famed daisies remained. 

My dismay at the lack of flowers was overshadowed a few moments after we arrived at Aunty Mary Anne’s house. In its quaintness it lacked a modern convenience that made me more than a little nervous. It had no toilet inside, and nature calls had to be taken in the outhouse, a few metres from the back door. The thought of using the hokkie during the day was scary enough. The outside was so immediate. A rickety wooden door stood between me with my pants down and the rest of the world. The chirping and buzzing of insects going about their business, the woosh of wings of birds flying by, seemed to be happening right inside the little wooden cabin with me. 

But worse than that was the prospect of needing the toilet at night when everyone was asleep. So, of course my bladder woke me up in the dead of night. I woke my sister up, asking her to accompany me because I was scared. She was so much braver than I and got up, not even flinching at my request. I followed her outside.   

A few steps out, my sister gasped. My stomach clenched with fear. She was pointing at the sky, unable to speak. I looked up. We were standing in a dome of the biggest and brightest stars I’d ever seen. Slowly, we twirled and took it all in, my need for a wee momentarily forgotten. From what seemed like the edge of the earth, up, up, up, and behind us back to the other edge of the earth, all we saw was stars. It seemed unbelievable that I couldn’t reach out and pick one.

My body reminded me why we were outside in the first place, and I ran to the outhouse, leaving my sister to stare at the enchanted sky. I regret rushing her back inside as soon as I was done and wish we’d taken more time to savour the magical sight.

What a pity that seeing the night sky in all its beauty is only possible when we travel to somewhere remote and untainted by the ‘progress’ of modern life. What else have we given up in favour of supposed advancement?

She’s Writing Again!

With my first book finally published (self-published on Kindle https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B9ZN5967 ), I’m itching to start the next one. Ideas have been swirling in my head and I’ve started writing notes, but I’ve not been able to settle down and really start. It occurred to me that I have to do my daily warm-up of 500 words again, just like I did way back when I started writing the first one. So here I am, hoping that the process that helped me last time will have the same results now.

I started working on my last book way back in 2014, and thanks to a few life-changing events, it took be seven years from the day I started to when I finally published. This time around, I’m trusting that there isn’t a series of dramatically disruptive episodes that bring my efforts to long periods of inertia. Just like last time, I’m giving myself extremely tight deadlines, and I am asking the universe to allow me the space to stick to them. 

The benefit of committing to blogging 500 words a day is that it forces me into the habit of writing consistently. Last time around, the exercise also presented challenges when it came to subject matter. While I liked that I found myself paying more careful attention to what was happening around me, I worried that I was looking too hard for meaning in certain things, so that I would have a steady flow of things to write about. This time around, well, I’m aiming for a mix between commentary on what’s happening in the world, and articulating what’s happening in my mind. I’m curious to see how the topics I write about unfold.

So how did blogging help me with my last book? Two things stand out the most for me. I found that writing a wide variety of content unrelated to my book put more material in my armoury of knowledge, meaning that sometimes things that I would otherwise have had to do research on were already familiar to me. The other advantage was that the blogging was writing practice and a lesson in avoidance of certain technical mistakes. What I corrected during the editing process before publishing the blog posts, I avoided doing when working on my book, or I recognised and corrected quickly as I worked.

I can already feel both the excitement and the trepidation building up, as I commit to not only blogging every day, but working on the new novel. I have so many things I want to write about, but I’m nervous of how many personal things to share. (Ooh, a good topic for a blog!) With the book, I wonder how I will overcome the scary and all-too-familiar experience of staring at a blank page and not knowing where to start.

In the meantime, though, watch out. I’m already thinking of how to turn the fact that two butterflies accompany me every morning when I water my vegetable garden into a 500-word essay. 

I Sing No Victim Song

About a month ago I was enjoying the coverage of the Emmy awards, especially seeing Abbott Elementary receiving acclaim for their brilliant show. I loved the first season, and the second season is already a great hit, so I am thrilled that they are getting their flowers.

The most moving part for me was when Sheryl Lee Ralph accepted her award, opening with a powerful rendition of a verse of Dianne Reeves’s song “Endangered Species”. The words, delivered with power and conviction, sent goosebumps down my spine. The following lines in particular, resonated with me:

I am an endangered species, But I sing no victim song…

The words reminded me that we have to put way more effort into changing the way we engage with the ‘stop playing the victim’ folk on social media. This is a common response from beneficiaries of colonialism to people expressing how their families have been affected by oppression and subjugation. I often look at these statements and wonder, how would I respond to that? It’s such a clever way to stop you in your tracks in voicing your anger and discontent, because who wants to be known as being in a state of victimhood?

When we express the hurt and pain, the resentment at the status quo, when we talk about how bad things are and why they are so: firstly, we have every right to do so. And secondly, when we speak of the events that have had a traumatic effect on our communities, on us as individuals, on the environment, on where we are in the world today, make no mistake, we are not speaking from a place of victimhood. We are speaking from a position of power and strength. And when the troll armies come out in force and tell us to stop playing the victim card, we have to nip their attempts at projecting their own victimhood on us, in the bud.

The fact that we exist at all is a testament to the power of our ancestors. The fact that we are here to make sure this discussion is taking place, is a testament to their fighting power and their determination. The fact that we are alive and are able to remind the descendants of the perpetrators of brutality, murder, rape day after day of the atrocities committed in their name is a testament to our, and our forbears’ power. And we do it using the very tools they hold up as trophies of their success – on mobile phones and computers and laptops using electricity and the internet. We ain’t no victims, darling. 

So, the next time someone tells you to stop playing the victim, let them know that you are speaking from a place of strength. Let them know that you mourn the victims and remember them in your prayers, and they shall never be forgotten. But you, in your power, claim your space and your right to define how you wish to navigate this world we have been thrown into, created by people who have defined their worth only in terms of physical possession of things. You are in a unique position to pluck from their ill-gotten advancement what you desire, and discard what you deem irrelevant. You and your ancestors have been unwillingly dragged into their vapid quest for material possession, so the next time they ask you if you’d prefer to live in mud huts, you tell them that your use of their ’technology’ is your way of claiming back the opportunities that were stolen from your forbears. It is your reparation. 

And while they do mental gymnastics trying to figure out which useless trope to try and diminish you with next, you continue cheer on your favourite soccer team. Choose your next Gucci bag. Use your Mont Blanc to sign your next employment contract. Buy that farm.

Because you are no victim, baby. No matter how hard they try to convince you that you are.

How do you keep your head above the ground when it is constantly being pushed down?

Not big pushes, you know? Gentle nudges in a downward direction, often not noticed because they are small and imperceptible. If they used a rubber mallet one would almost be grateful, because you’d feel the pain of the pounding and know that you are under attack. Instead, because the nudges downward are so subtle, you barely register them, and you dismiss your intuitive feeling that danger is close by in favour of holding onto your peace.

But these gentle nudges down have a way of gnawing at your sense of self without you realising that it’s happening. A comment here, a sigh there, a sideways look, words spoken in a discussion you were not meant to hear – all meaningful, but not meaningful enough to qualify as evidence of something tangible. 

Until you realise that it’s happening to you, you’ll oscillate between feel slightly off-balance and completely doubting yourself, and you won’t quite know why. The evidence in front of you tells you that you are competent, worthy, capable, lovable, and deserving of happiness and success. But there’s a part of you that does not fully believe it.

You’ll look for a wide variety of ways to ‘fix’ yourself – alternative medicine, yoga, anti-depressants, and they initially will appear to have a good effect. You’ll breathe a sigh of relief that the solution to your downwardly spiralling feelings lies firmly within your control. As long as you put in the requisite effort and take the requisite pills, you will be okay. Because it’s something you are doing wrong that makes you feel like you’re not quite enough.

Soon, though, the magical solution loses its effectiveness. You’re back to feeling down. Then you discover that behaving in a way that makes people comfortable does the trick. You make great efforts to be the ‘nice’ person. The likeable one who is always there to help. The one who goes out of their way to solve the crises of others. And it feels good and rewarding. But, in the moments of silent reflection, the feeling of ‘not being good enough’ comes back to haunt you. You give this condition a name. You call it ‘imposter syndrome’.

At some point as you mull over the current state of your state of mind, a thought creeps into your head: This is not me. This is happening to me. 

You’ll give this possibility some attention as you contemplate the reasons for the current fogginess in your head. The anger, or sadness, or lack of motivation. You’ll start to catalogue all the mini moments of downward pushes and consider if these might have had any effect on you. You’ll tell yourself that they did you no harm, because you dismissed them as soon as they happened. But you’d be wrong. As you start to list all the teeny tiny, imperceptible pushes downward, you start understanding their compounded effect.

You notice them as they happen and give them more attention. You recognise them for what they are. What good is yoga going to do you under these circumstances? How many pills will solve your problems? What other remedies are there for your general feeling of discontent? What do you do now that you know that the discontent that festers within you is not directly as a result of your own actions?

You’ve figured out that something is very wrong. But what do you do with your newfound understanding?

Life is a series of stories

I’ve been teaching my grade one to three students a simple storytelling technique since the beginning of this year. Answer the following questions, and in doing so, you will be creating a story:

1. Who is in the story?

2. What is happening at the start of the story?

3. What goes wrong?

4. How do they fix it?

Every Friday is story writing day and over the past few weeks, my students have started to remember the questions that need to be answered, and have started to, at varying levels, understand what I am asking them to do. We’ve also used this format for writing summaries of stories we have read in class.

This morning it occurred to me how much these four questions represent the essence of daily life. Are we not characters in our own stories and in the stories of other people, either playing minor or significant parts? Is there not that moment where a scene is set and then a challenge or problem is introduced?

In the middle of helping a grade one who was in a story of his own – everything was fine until Teacher told me I have to write a story – I realised that our lives are a composite of stories – characters; a scene being set; a problem arising; the problem being tackled in the hopes that it can be solved.

I saw the enthusiasm with which another student tackled the task: choosing characters, changing her mind. Choosing the setting, and gleefully changing her mind once more. I was impressed with the ease with which she solved the problem of creating a story, with the excitement and the light-heartedness of her approach.  

The experience lifted a weight off my shoulders. I was seeing that the fruits of my dogged insistence that this format of storytelling be learned over and over again until it was understood and properly implemented. And I was given a different perspective with which to view the things I have been experiencing in my own life. Every challenge or episode can be seen as a story; a small part of the bigger picture that has a beginning, something going wrong, and a resolution of sorts. 

Instead of seeing my life as a constant battle, I saw it for what it is. In an overall upward trend, there are regular ups and downs. With each challenge being dealt with as it arises, the trend continues upward. Each low is met with a higher high, which keeps the trend in an upward trajectory.

Today I was reminded by my students that the best way to tackle difficulty is to push forward and do what needs to be done anyway, no matter how uncomfortable it feels to do so. The discomfort doesn’t last indefinitely. And I was reminded that playfulness is an essential part of problem-solving. It feels counter-intuitive to be playful in approach when things are going wrong. But sometimes it’s a brief respite from the heaviness of a difficult situation. And other times, it leads to imaginative and out-of-the-box solutions. Either way, it’s doing something good.

What does ‘500 Words’ actually look like?

The thought of producing 500 words for an essay assignment can be daunting. It’s a bit like someone handing you a pumpkin seed and saying, “Hey, I need you to turn this into a fully grown pumpkin, and you’ve got 500 words to do it in.” Unless you’re Cinderella’s fairy godmother with a magic wand lying around, it’s not going to happen very quickly. But by thinking of your essay assignment as a seed you’ve been given, and the final product as a fully formed pumpkin you will produce, you’ll be able to allow your essay to grow in stages. 

First, let’s break 500 words down. Most essays require an introduction and a conclusion, and the juicy bits are in between. At the most basic level, we can divide our word count into chunks of 100:

100: Introduction

100: Paragraph 1

100: Paragraph2

100: Paragraph 3

100: Conclusion

But what does 100 words look like? The first paragraph of this article is exactly 100 words long. It actually is not that much, if you think about it. It contains four sentences, explaining what this article is going to be about, and how it can help you with your essay. 

Whether your assignment is descriptive, narrative, expository or argumentative, it’s going to start as a seedling and grow. The introduction sets the scene. It lays the ground and shows sprouts of what is to follow. It should intrigue your reader and make them curious as to where the vines of your introduction lead. An introduction that adequately lays out what is to come is also useful to you as the writer. If, while working on the body of your essay you feel like you’re losing your way, re-reading your introduction should remind you of what your original intent is, and set you back on track.

The 300 words in the body of the essay can be divided in different ways. After all, some things take more words to say than others, and you may have more than three main points to make or events that take place in your story. This is where the main growth takes place. The leaves need to develop along their vines and the flowers need to be strong enough to form the fruits of your essay. Remember, the end result is a fully grown pumpkin. Dividing the body of your essay into one paragraph per idea or event makes it easier for you to see where more watering needs to take place, or which part of your essay is getting too much sun.

The conclusion is where you show off your fully grown pumpkin. This is where you remind the reader of where you started, perhaps choosing to state what your original intention was. You then go on to revisit the journey of growth that led you to your final product, making sure to re-iterate the main idea of your essay. The end result will indeed be satisfying.

Happy planting, happy writing and happy growing 🙂

Why I’ve Sucked at Success

I’ve been fighting Imposter Syndrome all my life. It is only recently that I learned what has been holding me back from true and proper success, and that it actually has a name. I thought that I simply lacked motivation to see things through. Starting with the decision to not accept a merit scholarship to attend university in the US (not a decision I regret, by the way) to not completing the edits on a book that was accepted by a publisher ( a decision I very much regret), my life has been peppered with “almosts”.

At some point I realised that I had a deep subconscious belief that I didn’t have the right to be successful. I did the groundwork to figure out where this subconscious belief came from and after much soul-searching, meditation and shaking my fist at the sky, I saw that my feeling of unworthiness was mainly attached to two things: my lack of tangible identity in South Africa, and a questioning of my right to success when so many people suffer a lack of it due to unfair systems. I have been loath to talk about the identity part, because I belong to a diverse group of people who were thrown together and told we are all the same. I am loath to talk about the crisis it brings me because no matter what I say about my perceived fragile identity, in whatever context and under whatever guise, I will be mercilessly criticized. And since I suffer under enough of my own criticism, I’m not sure I’m ready for more. But the bottom line is, under my upbringing under Apartheid, subconsciously I believed the lie I was told, the lie I was indoctrinated with, that I am not good enough. I can claim a certain amount of success in my understanding that there is enough space for all the achievements to exist, and that despite this, we are limited, for various reasons, in our capacity to access them.

But today I had a breakthrough in my understanding of how the myth that I am not enough has been perpetuated. There has been a slow build-up to this moment of personal revelation. Tiny bits of truth have been thrown at me over the years, but thanks to crafty indoctrination that led me to believe that it is simply not possible for me to be worthy of remarkable success, it all circled around a realisation that as much as I have told myself that the prejudices against me were untrue, deep, deep down inside, I still believed them.

I remember being genuinely shocked when my cousin told me that I am the smartest person he knows. I was perplexed when my sister who is studying for her doctorate told me she regularly tells people that she is the sibling with the degrees, but I am the sibling with the brains. My boyfriend keeps telling me how I am “objectively, smarter than most people.” The parents of my students regularly let me know the positive impact I have made on their children’s confidence in their abilities. My yoga teacher has hired a ‘social media content expert’, yet I am the one who rewrites her copy so that it properly passes on the message and connects with a wider audience. Just the other day I used the word ‘psychosomatic’ correctly in casual conversation and was congratulated for it. Over and over again I have received confirmation that I am good at whatever I do, that I am smart and intelligent. And yet, I haven’t quite believed it, and I have played it down.

What I realised today is that I have grown up in, and am living in, a system that celebrates mediocrity in order to maintain the status quo of white superiority. When I look at the industries in which I can make an impact, I see how I have been demoralised by not finding a way to compete with people who are given a chance by the virtue of their skin colour – whether I am better at them when it comes to completing the task at hand or not. There are gatekeepers in the content creation market, in advertising, in publishing, who have established a network that ensures that their own are taken care of. In South Africa it is the reason why food production is owned by people who started their enterprises at the height of the Apartheid regime and still today enjoy economic success. Same with banking, chain supermarkets and everything else vital to daily living. It is the reason that the most successful businesses in South Africa, while they employ a majority of black people, are still majority white-owned with majority white boards of directors.

Please don’t get me wrong. I am not having a pity party. Rather, I am experiencing a reality-check. This is where we are. And this is why I have allowed my success to be kept on a backburner. And this is where I understand what I need to make momentous change within myself to enable my success. I need to overcome these obstacles in my personal capacity. The best-case scenario would be for me, through my own journey, to inspire others to do the same, so that they too create their own platform within which to enjoy success, instead of trying to compete in a system stacked against them.

Alright, that’s enough rambling for now. It’s time to put in the authentic work.