10.11.2026
All those art galleries and artworks. All those books. All the films, plays, performances. Chased and chased and chased. Why?
People ask me how I can go out so much after working, studying and exercising all day. How do I not get tired? Why can’t I just sit at home?
The fact is that we did not do anything when we were kids and growing up. There was nothing. Just the odd film at the cinema. I am playing catch up. When I started working after my PhD about five years ago, having had to give up on pursuing a career in research because of institutional racism, I decided that I would pursue life. I would forget about books. I was greedy for life. I was thirsting for life and for culture. And this is not to mention the intensity, the obsessive way I will pursue each and every one of my interests, fit everything in.
I travelled all over London despite studying for an Art History degree and working every day of the week, sometimes more than seventy hours a week. The greed for life gave me energy. The thought that I had spent all of my life working and working and working, denying myself time for the things that I wanted to do, to see and to experience (for what?) I no longer waited for other people to come with me. I went to things by myself. I accepted no limitations on getting these experiences, of enriching my life. I pushed myself to be everywhere.
I felt like a billionaire. I felt that I was living the life of a billionaire. I had free travel. I had free tickets for most places. I was going to exclusive events, meeting the cultural elites in the country and the world at some of them. This was the life.
But there is one regret. In going to all of those places, in being involved in the cultural life of London in a way that very few are, I never made any friends. Part of the attraction of chasing culture all over London was to meet new people, fellow minds. The dream from when I was a child, of being in a salon. My reader, there is no salon. There is no one. I walked about in a bubble.
Nowadays, I often go to cultural events with my best friend and my girlfriend. I have found those that I can take with me. There are other friends that occasionally come too. My best friend and my girlfriend are equally as greedy for life and culture as me. But yet, no one is able to keep up with me. Everyone takes turns coming out with me but I go out the most out of everyone I know. Everyone is always amazed at how much I fit into life. How is it possible? They forget the hunger. The hunger of never having had it to have it now.
