So I’ve been really useless at keeping the blog flowing. It’s been six months since my last post.

I’ve been busy! I swear!

I’ve been writing a bit I guess, but nothing here which is supposed to be a legacy of thoughts for my kids one day, so this is me telling myself to shine up, and promising to be more regular.

I may have been quiet but I have not been idle! I penned two stories for our local surf mag Zigzag, one about Casey Grant which i also posted here, and I just wrote another one about that insane swell we had, the one that turned St Francis bay into a Mexican point break. The mag only comes out in a few weeks, so I’ll put it up after.

So much going on besides work and raising two toddlers, here is a quick debrief…I’ll try do it in one breath:

Deep inhale…Ace Ventura style:

In December I had an awesome holiday in Seals, the waves cooked and I surfed a bunch then it stopped so I had to sit still and which was very hard cause the last time I was there was with Jess so I had to deal with some stuff, had some tears, and had one very large night with my little brother Josh which I cannot remember the end of, but when I woke up I was best friends with Derrick Watts from Carte Blanche, which was cool but I was missing a beautiful girl called Kim who I was falling head over heels for so I flew home for New Years and we partied with her family and friends and a rhino and drank till the sun came up, it was the best new years I have had in years and I smiled a lot then I went back to work and surfed when I could which wasn’t much but then found a gap to go to Mozambique for a weekend which was amazing and the waves were amazing which my new girlfriend who had never dated a surfer didn’t think was so amazing but we had a jol and drank beer and watched the sun go down over a beautiful lake with some friends, and laughed, and then I surfed again the next day, which inspired me to enter the RVCA Jbay Open trials, which was a long shot, but all you rad people voted me in so I got chance to go up against the top guys in the country and I lost early and my legs were too tired to walk up the beach but had such a blast and then went back down to Cape St Francis to see meet my niece Mila and my brothers and sister and cousins and parents and it was very cool…..

Dramatic exhale.

All in all good stuff! Fun stuff!! Kids are doing great and we have been busy! My hair grew long and i got a fuzzy beard. My friends hate it and say i look like a Neanderthal, or blonde Jesus, then I tie it up in a bun and they get really mad, but that’s okay cause I’ve always wanted to grow my hair long and look like a hippy. I am amazed at the energy and passion I have for learning and hunting down new projects. I thought much of it was a knee jerk reaction to losing Jess, a sort of a way of distracting myself, but it seems to be a new way of life for me and I’m very grateful for that. I’ve got some big ideas floating around in my head and I’m hoping I can turn them into reality.

So as I keep mentioning (probably because I’m embarrassed to think people actually read this) this blog is a place where my kids can come back and read everything that was going through my head in their early years, and as they grew up, it might help them understand the decisions I made that might seem crazy years later (hey guys, pack your bags we are movin to indo!!) but it struck me recently whilst watching some incredibly old footage I found in my garage, that it’s a great place to tell them about themselves too. Where else am I going to keep all these funny as hell little movie clips, stories they tell, and other awesome little things they get up too. So I’m setting a reminder (part of my new weeks resolutions), every 3 months, I’m going to write them both a post, documenting the nonsense they have been getting up too, sometimes it might be stories, sometimes just pics or videos. It may seem trivial or stupid at the time, but looking back in twenty years its going to fill me with kinds of fuzzy warm stuff… after watching the stuff I found, I realized how fast it all goes. if I’m lucky enough to live that far, I may as well be smart enough to make it count.

Speaking of making it count, I recently won a battle I have been waging unconsciously for 16 years! The DSTV disease!

The single biggest waste of time in my life since I moved into my first apartment, watching reruns over and over and over and unable to pull myself away. I finally disconnected DSTV for good, partly cause I can’t afford it, but mostly because it’s a load of repeating crap! I almost never saw anything new and constantly got sucked into movies I knew exactly how they were going to end.

Useless.

Anyhow, I upgraded my internet to an uncapped line (half the price of DSTV) and created a YouTube account, now I follow a bunch of my favourite channels YouTube accounts and every day I have fresh content that is relevant to me. I watch through my Apple TV and its crisp HD. Discovery, Nat Geo, Science channels, Vice TV (so good) WSL (surf stuff) all my favorite companies, brands magazines have YouTube channels with cool content, TED talks, come on!!! the smartest people in the world talking about their passion, craft, science whatever, in 20 min digestible chunks, for free! Every day! I cant get enough of it!

I find myself watching much more interesting and relevant subjects, less nonsense that I could actually careless about. If movies and series are you thing, streaming sites like PopcornTime (naughty but free) and Netflix will take care of your needs. Time is valuable, if I’m going to watch something it better be fresh!

All this free time on my hands and suddenly my brain starts working again! I started searching for stuff that really makes me tick, and stumbled onto this little gem.

Wait but Why.

You are bound to have come across this blog already, the guy is practically famous now….  its hard, there is so much content in your face every day, what is actually worth the time it takes to click… regardless, this is another opportunity to get involved… if you want to have some very relevant and complex issues explained in a way that makes you feel that you actually understand… this is for you.

My poor friends and family, I have bent their little ears off with all of this, the only person who has shown equal amount of interest, is my little boet, Josh, which is awesome when we finally get time to talk, then we can bend the shit out of each others ears. W.B.W is my current school for thought, it’s the site that has given my brain the best work out its had in years, hell, maybe ever! I have simply not come across anybody who can break down extremely complex and important subjects in a manner that makes them so easy and fun to digest.

Here are some of my favourite posts…

Elon Musk. This guy…. wow, ever want to feel insignificant in your achievements, just check out this chap… current projects… changing auto industry from petrol to electric, re-invent energy consumption on a global scale and remove humans need for fossil fuel, oh and colonize Mars…. all of which he is progressing fairly nicely with… and he is from South Africa too. You can read it here

A.I ….did you know that there is some crazy stuff happening in this world right now, really really smart people are building really smart things. It’s all very exciting if you ask me, and nobody sums the very complex subject up quite like Tim Urban. If you not interested to read any further , consider for the following for a second … there is a reasonable to fair chance that in that the next 20 years they will develop technology so advance that you will become immortal… it’s quite likely actually. Blow your mind here

His one post is about life weeks, and he offers you a new perspective by visually breaking down your life into weeks on a graph…. this is what it looks like….

0 years to 90 years, each square is a week

Not THAT many weeks are there… are there….

You can read the post here, but the summary of what he is getting at is the value of every week, if you are lucky enough to live a full life… look at those squares… there not that many of them! So he suggests adopting a new weeks resolution, instead of a new years resolution… I’m sold!

If you are not sold and you think what a load of crap, I’m just going to wing it… maybe you want to have a good laugh instead… read this one, on procrastination. I cried, I really did, so funny, that monkey runs my life.

I’m still really into this whole teaching my kids valuable life lessons around their school hours and stuff, and welcome any links, ideas, info you might be keeping to yourself so your kid becomes clever and mine doesn’t… I always love the few weeks after I post a new blog and the people who reach out with info, suggesting things I might like and stuff to check out, its my favourite part of all of this. Please send any forward thinking progressive online teaching stuff you may have come across!

So that’s all the good happy stuff, not much room allowed for the rest. I’m sure those of you who have followed our story are wondering how I’m seeing somebody already, and how I’m starting a new relationship whilst still dealing with the loss of Jess. I’ll be honest, because really what else is there to be, this is me, there is no point in softening things up for anyone.

The truth is I don’t know, they are completely different paths yet inexplicably intertwined, the one has nothing to do with the other , yet they couldn’t exist without each other. Losing Jess was an experience that has changed me as a person, the world has a harder edge than what I would have believed before,  less romantic than it all looked a few years ago for sure. I’m still an idealist, even though I carry a wound that reminds at times to be a realist, the idealist still wins. It’s a choice.

There is a song that goes, “it’s better to feel pain than nothing at all, the opposite of love is indifference“.

I embrace my pain for Jess because to understand the great heights of true love, you must experience the pain of loss, you’ll never know you’re at the top until you’ve touched the bottom, that old chestnut. That pain only cements the value of what we had. I feel the same today as I did the day she died, it will never change. I will never get over it. That’s not how it works. But I will never live in the middle , indifferent to love because I am afraid of losing someone again.

I have so much love still to give, and lucky me I found an incredible person to give it too. Not even she will ever understand the role she has played in getting the three of us back on our feet. Nothing is forever so grab it while you can and hold on tight until it is ripped away.

So here’s to love! and making the most of life! and cancelling DSTV!

Peace and love from your hippie friend Simon.