Stepping off the hamster-wheel and running away from the validation velodrome that is the City of London

The suspect is 5'8, bags under her eyes, running out of Google Drive storage, and nearly paid for WeTransfer Pro. How to break the "project cycle" and re-center REAL life.

* TW - suicide and self-injury *

Two weeks ago, I ran away from London to Valencia, and after three years of hyperventilating on a perpetual hamster wheel positioned towards the false destination of reaching my eventual sense of “purpose” I think I can finally breathe again.

This opening alone, made me reach for my inhaler, but without claiming to re-invent the emerging “burnt out creative moves away from their soul-crushing metropolitan city” arc, for me, the UK as a whole was a trauma pit that I just had to escape from.

Although this trip was planned two years in advance, its purpose has evolved dramatically since. So much so that my year working abroad in the slower-paced alternative to Barcelona now functions as my opportunity to desperately detach myself from the never-ending validation race and finally figure out what I actually enjoy doing as opposed to what I have been doing on auto-pilot since I was fifteen years old. 

I am about to ironically list a handful of achievements, but just let me land because there is a non ego-inflating point to it all okay? Okay. 

By seventeen years old I had published two books, led countless speaking engagements, was head-girl at a predominantly white grammar school¹ and survived the hell that is A Levels. By eighteen I had worked for Google twice, directed a play, directed and produced a film, and spoken on BBC. By nineteen I had produced multiple events across Europe and been a cog in the wheel for multiple productions. However, I did all of this whilst suffering from chronic depression, managing a s*lf h*rm addiction, surviving (by no choice of my own) a tragic (you know what) attempt and this year I nearly died donating eggs just to feel useful. 

After my second book, I clearly remember someone asking me, “Are you ever worried that you have achieved too much too early?”

Freshly eighteen-year-old me took this as a threat, a prophecy someone tried to cast over me that I had to dedicate myself to undoing, but what they didn’t know was that my rush to achieve so much so young was because I didn’t think I would be alive long enough to wait. That person struck so much dread into an already anxious child and, in many ways, established my fear of plateauing.

I have been twenty years old for less than six months and in this time I have unwillingly realised that the impending doom I was so sure would cast over me once I crossed the juvenile threshold of 18, has not yet arrived.

Instead, I have been forced to acknowledge the inescapable emptiness that for too long I have frantically tried to stuff full of artificial short-term purposes. I’ve since been forced to accept, despite secretly knowing this entire time, that no project, book, person, friend, or “UK Creative shortlist” can shrink this emptiness in size or patch it together. 

So instead of running away from this, I have run away (literally) from the centre of my validation velodrome which is London.

To be honest, I have run away from the UK in general, not because it is “bad vibes” lol, but because I have felt increasingly suffocated and trapped by this obligation to relentlessly  ‘produce’ and since I am likening myself to a farm animal, I refuse to miss the opportunity to note that every cow, once it has produced enough milk, is eventually slaughtered. 

Something about that feels poetically aligned to the trajectory of any Babylon dweller, destined to reach a burnout that you can’t simply journal or “self-care” away. 

Your body and psyche are yearning out for you to shed, to cut the umbilical between you, your “work” and the world, because whether anybody sees it or not, it and you still exist nonetheless. Utilise the full stop in your arsenal, and stop. Otherwise, there will always be more to do and your very life will end on that very hamster-wheel without ever having looked left, right, or most importantly, up.

Stop worrying about who is or isn’t seeing you and make sure you can see yourself.

That is the very point of this journey that I am at, because whether I am at home in Brum, cringing at all the little crevices in my family house that I would surreptitiously harm myself in, or in London anxiously avoiding all the people who disappeared once they saw my scars and watched me cry, whilst I chased after every opportunity possible; the undeniable truth is that my metric of value has always hinged on how much I have to show for myself and for the first time, ever, I am okay with saying that I have absolutely f****ing nothing :)

I am aware that in many ways treating this year in Valencia as the opportunity to recenter, re-discover, and establish a love for myself that is unwavering and independent from exogenous forces (wordy I know), recreates the same pressure to have something to show for myself, the product this time being a new and improved me. Therefore, instead, I am attempting to take the very opposite approach by just being, finding beauty in the mundane, feeling grateful to wake up, get washed and dressed, read on my Kindle, and go for walks in 26-degree weather in NOVEMBER (OBASHATA we give thanks!).

This journey is bittersweet, it's a process of unbecoming, managing the withdrawals from a life full of extreme highs and extreme lows. I, however, now know that I no longer want to live on a roller-coaster, because, and hold my hand when I say this, it is not so dissimilar to addiction. The comedowns are all-encompassing and the shining moments have for too long not been bright enough to make up for that. 

Being open to newness requires shedding, and completely emptying your cup in order to refill it again. 

For me, it’s time to just be, whatever that looks like and I hope this inspires you to curate your own unbecoming avenue, whenever you’re ready, because I promise no one else can do it for you.

The hamster wheel will still be there waiting for you when you tire of being all wholesome and sh*t don’t worry.

Kisses and hugs, Nubia xxx

1. Not to be elitist AT ALL, but I think it takes going to a grammar school or a same-sex school to truly know how deep it is being head-girl or boy. They put me to WORK boi, i was basically part of SLT loll.