Category: Family and Musings

Research and writing

If you want to write a good book, you need to know something about the subject matter. This sounds silly and obvious, but it’s not. The question to ask is when do I know ENOUGH about the subject?

Enough to teach a 4 year old? Enough to give a speech? Enough to pass the exam?

The search for enough is the most fruitless search and it never ends. Research never ends. We need to be able to handle that truth if we want to be an expert at anything.

Rather focus on the process itself. The contribution to the culture. You need to enjoy the research and creation process, rather than obsess over the result being enough of anything.

Easy to say, hard to do.

Happy Wednesday chimps.

The Weekend Jungle

Weekends turn our house into a jungle. For some reason as a family we fall into chaos – dishes build up in the sink, toys scatter around the house. The garden is no better.

This weekend was particularly bad. At one stage the house and garden resembled the Amazon, and there were two doors that wouldn’t lock, leaving our house vulnerable to…..well to anyone who may have wanted to walk in.

The jungle also compounds. As things get more chaotic, the effort required to bring it back feels greater and greater, and so you just put it off which leads to more jungle creeping in.

But slowly, once the children were asleep, we managed to clean up. I managed to lock up the doors and we escaped the jungle just before bed time. It was a close call though.

Happy Monday chimps.

What is it for?

Designers will tell you over and over – if you are creating something, the question that should come up most often is “what is this for?”

This applies to all creative pursuits whether it is writing a paragraph, cooking a meal, or fitting a bathroom sink. Any choice you make needs to have an answer if it is to work and avoid a clumsy creation.

So what’s this blog post for? It’s for expressing myself, for practicing my writing and for spreading ideas that I think will matter. And for community – for finding people like us who do things like this.

Happy Wednesday chimps.

3 things a day

Here’s a thought experiment – if you could do three things for an hour every day to achieve your goals, what would they be?

Personally, if I could exercise, read and write each day for an hour, it might make a huge difference.

However, today was not so productive. If you took today as a representation of my long term goals, you might think that my life goals are to get fat, to buy as much new tech and apple products as possible and to write emails.

I’m getting good at those three activities.

Tomorrow is another day. I plan to carry on reading my book about interior design and well being, to write the blog and to do some sort of exercise.

Happy (late) Tuesday, chimps.

Designers on Instagram

Good design can help you escape your own personal jungle. These are some of the cool people I follow on Instagram for design stuff:

Studio Dylan Thomaz: @studio.dylan.thomaz – interior design in Cape Town SA with a focus on happiness through design.

Tone Alexander Design Studio: @tonealexander – Interiors and gardens designed locally here in Cape Town.

Fern & Roby: @fernandroby – Industrial design and Audio (speakers and turntables mainly) and beautiful furniture made in Richmond, Virginia, USA.

Happy Tuesday Chimps.

Writing habits

Do you remember the first time you fell in love? Of course you do. Kind of like discovering chocolate for the first time, you just wanted more and more.

My first proper relationship was notable in that it was mostly long distance. Soon after we met I went overseas to study and decided to pour my heart and soul into keeping the relationship going. And a writing habit was born.

We were prolific. The amount of words written in letters, emails and text messages was at an almost Shakespearean quantity. Every single day, for months on end. Quality was highly questionable, but quantity was admirable.

This laid the groundwork for blogging and writing regularly for the rest of my life to date. I’m thankful. Thankful for the habit, thankful for this blog, and thankful my current relationship is in person.

What are the origins of your habits?

Happy Monday chimps.

Oops.

After some valuable consultation with my friends and family, i have realised something: I don’t know much about humans. 

Sad, but true. Let me explain, dear reader.

I have been pretty excited lately about my new ‘pivot’ towards highlighting and fixing a problem which I know exists: The Jungle Of Life. All of my posts on chimpwithcans.com are inspired by the jungle of life around me. As I wrote yesterday:

Clearly, not many of us live in a real jungle or rainforest anymore. However, the metaphor of everyday life becoming a tangled jungle works in my head. The writing, podcasts and projects I become involved in will be focused on disciplines that can untangle our personal jungles. Disciplines like Creativity, Design, Psychology, and Negotiation. Also, the image of the “Chimpwithcans” clear of the tangled jungle and free to listen to music resonates with me

I love the above paragraph. It excites me and fills my head with ideas for future projects.

Where I went wrong was to think that this only applies to husbands and fathers. Besides cutting my potential readership and market roughly in half, I was completely missing the point by focusing so tightly on my own experience of “The Jungle”.  The encroaching jungle of life is a human problem. We can all, each and every one of us, benefit from the disciplines I mention above.

Maybe this should have been very obvious. But like I said, I don’t know much about humans.

Also, my wise owl of a friend advised me not to add a PROJECTS button if there are no projects to show. So I’ve removed it until the projects take place.

Happy Friday, Chimps.

Chimpwithcans.com updated

If you are a regular reader, you’ll notice several updates on the site – a new background, colours and catchphrase. Also – if you click the menu/widget button top right, then you will see a “PROJECTS” tab to click on.

This is part of the new focus and purpose of chimpwithcans.com. A little explanation:

“Escape the jungle” – this is what I want the site to help people with – married husbands mainly, but also anyone who’s interested.

Clearly, not many of us live in a real jungle or rainforest anymore. However, the metaphor of everyday life becoming a tangled jungle works in my head. The writing, podcasts and projects I become involved in will be focused on disciplines that can untangle our personal jungles. Disciplines like Creativity, Design, Psychology, and Negotiation. Also, the image of the chimpwithcans, clear of the tangled jungle and free to listen to music resonates with me 🙂

The projects are going to be updated as they become completed. This might take a while.

Let me know what you think! I am excited and enjoying the rather ‘revelatory’ purpose that has been distilled in my mind.