I’m a lucky boy with good friends. Largely this is because almost completely by chance in 2002 (I was 19) I walked into a certain railway arch in London and entered a fairytale world of creativity, parties and connection that I’m only now beginning to fully appreciate.
After growing up in the Kent suburbs and not having, shall we say, an enjoyable time at School, I was ready for it. it was a beautiful and nourishing environment that provided me with the emotional springboard and social legitimacy to do anything I wanted. I left university, started a band and started out as a plumber. Then after 7 years of absorbing what felt like a miracle lifestyle I left London and obsessively buried myself (until that pesky pandemic) in being a performer*, starting and selling a marquee business, 2 long-term relationships, a fair bit of travel and a whole host of other things.
There was plenty of continued piecemeal reassurance that the relationships I was absent from would maintain themselves. Such was the intensity, I thought nothing would or could change. I was wrong.
As I write this in 2024, life was very different from how it was in 2002 and indeed even in 2018, pre-COVID, the same was true. I was neck-deep in my identity as a business owner and equally deep in what I’m now realising was a pretty toxic success-addiction.**
Straddling
I didn’t lose touch completely, of course. But I used to have to snap really sharply into and out of modes for the odd few weekends a year when I would reconnect with my old world. I was effectively having to code-switch*** between one world of success, business, growth and stability, and another of intoxication, connection, silliness and joy. Striking this balance of identities in my head was challenging, to say the least.
Really, I never felt like I actually WAS anywhere. My tendency to live in the past or in the future**** didn’t help here. The two worlds couldn’t have been more different culturally and structurally, but I knew part of me belonged in each one and I never saw them as mutually exclusive. I still don’t think they are really, I guess I’d just prefer to have accepted it and managed it in a more healthy way.
I certainly didn’t ever intend to transition fully away from my origins. The people were, and are, too dear to me and I consider those intoxicating events an important part of my emotional makeup. But success-addiction came out of nowhere and I was on a treadmill.
It’d been a particularly long gap when I first started to notice some dissonance. Back in 2018 I went away for a weekend’s partying and dancing with some friends. I was expecting a busy work season and this was a Big Deal to me. At the time my business was all-consuming and I was (correctly) expecting the busiest year it was ever to have. Literally double the previous year’s workload.
I’d just got into a new relationship that I was blissfully happy in and a check-in with my old life seemed like a great way to steel myself for the upcoming Summer with some of my favourite people. I was however, very struck by how different everything was being back in this context.
Inspiration
Throughout the weekend lots of things were occurring to me in what I can only describe as a stark reminder of who I was. Like a highlight of the parts of me I wanted to retain before they were eaten by my changing identity and possibly forgotten. I realised I wanted to write something and when I got home my thoughts were kindly recorded and transcribed for me by someone who understands both writing and psychology. I’m grateful to them for that.
The idea was to turn this drivel-of-an-interview into a letter to the people I was with. There is NO success for me without connections to enjoy it with and there was nowhere near enough of that at the time. The really telling thing is that I was more inspired that I had been for ages before or pretty much anytime since, but I never quite got around to finishing it. Such was my embroilment in what I thought was important.
The lessons from this hindsight were and are significant so to close that loop I’ve completed it as best I could below. This is my letter to those I love after a brief and beautiful reconnecting experience. I planned to post it on the group chat for that weekend and also send it to the other members of my Mastermind*****
The Letter
(Me writing in 2018, remember….)
Hello, wonderful dancefloor companions. I hope this finds you well.
I did a lot of dancing this past weekend. Some of the music was passable, some of it a bit shit and some of it felt like it removed my scalp and stuck electrodes onto the pleasure centres in my brain. Pretty standard stuff for a weekend partying.
My brain was on overdrive, more so than usual. So for posterity I just wanted to get down on paper a few things that were. Things that I was thinking about while dancing.
Dancing is a useful time to think. Not when you’re bored, because when you're bored you leave. And not when it's awesome, because then you're thinking about dancing, rather than while dancing. But in the in-between place. You know that place; engaged enough to stay but not quite immersed…..
These are the things that occurred to me in those in between times this past weekend.
Changing lenses
I’m in the main room listening to someone play tunes. It’s dark, smoky, smelly, loud and brilliant. I’m getting all kinds of reminders of what it was like being in places like that years earlier. Then something a bit leftfield happens in the set and I thought; “The people in here right now think this is really well-timed and good, but if you walked into this room now, you’d probably wonder what the fuck was going on. You’d likely think it was shit!”
An interesting reminder that observation is based on perspective.
We only really experience things through the lens that we’ve got at that exact moment in time. My life is unrecognisable now from where it was 3 years ago and my lens has changed. I'm learning and believing a lot of new stuff and it's re-framing the way I see the world and my place in it, for better or worse.
We make choices. Those choices take us places. Our perspective shifts.
Another example of this how nervous I was about being photographed in a dress and a wig at a druggy party. There’s no embarrassment or cultural dissonance for me here but I'm currently part of the faculty of a pretty high end corporate group who know nothing of this part of my life and history.
Exposing that part of myself feels unsafe somehow. Not because I would feel judged, but because I assume people just wouldn’t know what to do with that information. Integrity is important to me and compromising it by hiding parts of myself feels really odd. I know some of you know what this feels like, and I now understand that a bit more.
Wearing a skirt, and the resultant temperature shocks were an education too, cold wind is a whole new world! Also (and more sadly) the way certain people think it’s OK to interact with you simply because of what you’re wearing is an eye-opener. Again, I know some of you know how this feels better than I ever could.
Despite the discomfort, it was challenging and useful. I’m privileged to be a straight, white, CIS male with enough money to not worry day to day about basic human needs. I was raised with a measure of self-assurance too. All of these things combined make feeling marginalised fairly alien to me. Being 5’2” is something I’ve always considered to be a small window into that experience, but it’s a sliver of vision really and the above experiences mattered to me.
Overall,I don’t like that dissonant feeling any more than I suspect other marginalised people do. I'm proud of who I am, where I come from and how I got here. Denying positive and joyful parts of what makes me me goes against that. Straddling two worlds is hard when you care about both of them.
How do we parse all of this and create a pathway? My best compass is being aware of my values, a journey in itself. Learning stuff in the business world is helping me see those values for what they are. It's great. Who I am and who I want to be feels fairly certain right now but fuck me, it's confusing.
Roles and changing roles
We all have parts to play in each other's lives and if you're reading this, the chances are you're an (important) part of mine. I might be an (important) part of yours too. Together we've taught, learned, cried, loved, held each other and giggled ourselves stupid. That's important to me and I want to openly tell you so.
There were so many interactions over the 4 days. Most were brilliant and some not so much. That's fine too. I loved having the opportunity to observe and appreciate who we are to each other and equally importantly, how those things morph and shift over the years. I’m working hard to be a good version of myself, and that’s nothing without the dynamics of who I am to, and with others. You are still the hall of mirrors I choose to look at myself in.
Roles are important. You are the people who showed me first of all as a confused 20 year old that it was OK to be me and I’ve been reminded of that this weekend. I love you and thank you all for that. Even those of you I’m just getting to know. Being part of and having my formative years in that kind of culture is something I’ll always be grateful for and I can only hope that I provide the same safety and validation to others as I drift along.
I know what you're thinking; “Arif went dancing, got off his tits and took everything a bit seriously”
That may well be the case…..I refer back to the section above about straddling worlds. Never have I meditated better and done more becoming myself than on dancefloors. Apparently that hasn’t changed!
Vulnerability, Fear and Love
One thing I've learned recently is that there is connection in vulnerability. That belief was formed way back when, but not really internalised or acted upon properly until recently. I'm not naturally good at openness, so I'm making an effort to be vulnerable now and say that I miss you. I’m enjoying the direction of my life immensely but the opportunity cost of time with the people I have shared history with is, after 10 years or so, starting to hurt.
Thank you for being there this weekend, previously and the times you will be again. I valued all of the time I got to see you all, however fleeting and if I didn't see very much of you, I'm sorry.
Do I even feel safe writing what I’m thinking? That’s a conversation in itself. I’m increasingly concerned with what people think of me, which is new. There’s strength in showing vulnerability but the consumption of it is optional. Interesting though, that we feel the need to explain / legitimise it.
In any case, I believe that openness is good, I believe that I’m not very good at it and I believe that people respond and connect when people are vulnerable and open.
So what is this mostly about? Essentially, these are some things that are in my head and the best way that I can thank everybody or respond to my experiences is to lay out the things that I thought throughout the weekend. It’s how I know to be postive. I’m sorry I don’t do this more and that I don’t tell you all I love you enough.
And FYI, the music that apparently took my head off and put it back on again is called Fidget House.
With Love,
Arif x
How does it feel now?
It’s amazing to have access to this stuff, kinda like a letter to my present self. I’ve actually written letters to myself and posted them to be received in 6 months, but never 5 years.******
One thing that was interesting was seeing my core values popping up. It was about this time that I first started to get my head around what mine were and what they mean to me. Other people’s values and core pop up too, they can’t help it. You just gotta watch for ‘em.
I got a few interactions very wrong that weekend and that’s what really struck me about evolving and changing relationships. Some who I was very close to upset me accidentally, but quite deeply and I’m not sure I dealt with it tremendously well at the time. I’ve long since reconnected with those people and discovered that what I thought was a disaster was clearly a very different experience for them. It’s not necessarily a value divergence. People are all in their own movie where they’re the star. I’m getting better at realising that and remembering that lenses are relative. A passing thing to one person can be a grenade to another. Especially when substances are involved.
We also go in and out of each others lives. We all change, hopefully we can meander together but that’s not always the reality. The trick is to always allow for things to meander back across each other and not permenantly break. When you know people for 20 years, this is the way of things.
Observing people growing and changing as we get older together is really fascinating. Younger people flit around, footloose and full of wonder whilst older people tend to prefer the group. I remember when I was more of a flit-ter. I now have to work to try to push comfort zones and lean back into that a bit more, it’s where the random magic often lies. But we can’t stay the same - we become leaders and educators. We learn and teach in work and life. It’s the natural order of things. Arriving at an age where you’re doing both and experiencing them in parallel for the first time is really interesting.
So what did I learn?
Takeaways
1 - Don’t rest on your laurels. Relationships need work. Although this was a few years ago it’s now, a few years later, after a couple of really difficult life events that I’m feeling the pinch again. Fortunately it’s not too late and it never will be as long as I stay aware.
2 - Snapping in and out of contexts has it’s good side. It’s challenging but there’s magic in the contrast. The rewards of striking that balance are worth the effort of keeping life interesting.
3 - That said, straddling two worlds in extremis is something I never want to do again. It’s fucking exhausting and I’m only now realising the cost.
4 - You can dislike a thing about a person then later find value in exactly that same aspect of their character. Why does it change? Because you do and it fits (or doesn’t) for you at the time. Don’t judge. Everyone is on their journey. Including you.
So there it is. For those people specifically, but anyone else who cares also.
Until the next one,
Axx
* I also started this blog
** If you think this term is bullshit, I’m totally OK with that. But according to WAY smarter people than me, dopamine is dopamine, baby. And it’s my lived experience that this is a real thing and the only addiction that the world rewards you for. If you feel a bit sicky in your mouth, try it as synonymous with the term ‘workaholic’.
***I’m aware of the origin of this term in anti-racism and I honour that use. As far as I’m aware it creates no mutually exclusive appropriation to use it here but if you disagree, especially if you are actually a person of colour, I apologise for any offence felt.
****Mindfulness is tricky and I now realise how important dance floors were to my still-forming brain. I was meditating. Nowadays its binaural beats rather than breakbeat. My mental health is nothing like as robust as it was then. Make of that what you will.
*****Part of my entreprenerial career was hanging out with other business owners paying eye-watering amounts of money to talk about our businesses in posh hotels. It was an incredible experience and one of the best things about that time. Connecting properly with people who had REALLY different social backgrounds to me and creating a real team and a real support network. I loved it.
******This is now a part of an annual practice for me and I can’t recommend it enough.
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