Tag Archive for: Divorce

Building a New Life

I’m currently re-reading “The Illusion of Money” by Kyle Cease

I highly recommend it to anyone who is trying to build a creative career in the 21st century. It’s full of wisdom and insight.

While re-reading it earlier this evening I came across a passage where he says:

“An architect can’t build a brand-new hotel right on top of an existing old one – he needs to demolish the old one, clear it out of the way, and prepare ground for the new one……”

He’s not wrong. At all. 

I’ve made difficult decisions in the past 4 years. 

I walked away from my marriage. I no longer live with my daughter who I love more than anyone else in the world. 

I’ve struggled and continue to struggle as I navigate changes and build the life I want to. 

A new life, one that is better would result in a different story. One very different to the story of my past life.

Thing is, I’m not sure if I’ve managed to kick my addiction to the old story I’ve become attached to about my old life. 

Sure, a tonne of bad shit has happened to me in my past. Hell, I’m writing a long form fictional story based on my past and I routinely find myself upset and triggered when revisiting past memories and events as I mine them for artistic gold. 

There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging the past and the bad things that happened there.

But that past is full of very negative and unhelpful stories and narratives I accepted about myself. Those self limiting beliefs resulted in low self esteem, constantly putting myself in incredibly harmful and abusive situations, whether that was jobs, bosses, friendships etc. 

It’s hard though, and I don’t think I’m alone on this. When hearing negative and abusive shit about yourself becomes so common from the people around you who are supposed to love and support you, you’ll internalise those toxic and destructive beliefs. 

But those beliefs are out of sync with who I want to be. 

I’m currently experiencing blocks, obstacles in the way of me becoming who I want to be and building the kind of life I want. A life full of creativity, joy and love. 

I need to work on eroding those beliefs, consigning them to the dust bin. A new house is eager to be built. I need to resume demolishing the old one first. I thought I was done, but I’m not. 

I need to work harder at demolishing the old building. 

I need to work harder at laying the old stories I tell myself and believe to rest. 

Only then will the obstacles I currently face in my artistic and creative journey melt away. 

How I Wrestled My Ego to The Mat (And Won)

I cut ALL my hair off. Shaved it to be more precise.

That must sound like the most ordinary thing you’ve read in a world saturated with Internet think pieces. 

Tell anyone who’s known me for a good chunk of my life that I just shaved my head and they’ll choke on their cornflakes.

Let’s jump around coz linear narratives aren’t what I’m here for, not today at least. 

During the Covid-19 crisis, I’ve been sitting here, like many of you watching my bank balance dwindle, with no income in sight. I took a break from that soul-crushing past time to open up my e-mails. I received a message from my hairdresser to say they’re shut until further notice. Problem is, my hair grows faster than a field of weeds drowning in horseshit. 

No one can cut my hair, and even if that weren’t the case, I now can’t afford it.

Let’s jump timelines (again). 

I’m no stranger to shaving my head. I used to shave it during college and the first half of my undergraduate degree. Then I grew it out. All of a sudden, people told me I look great. One cousin told me I look “100 times better”. Women started giving me attention that I wasn’t used to receiving. Shit, even my grades at university improved. 

For the past 15 years I’ve been paid compliments about my hair. I’ve (questionably) attributed my positive turn in life down to having nice hair. 

Hell, even my ex-wife said she wouldn’t have given me a second look with a shaved head (what would that timeline look like???). 

Now, I’m not the most religious Muslim. I have a complicated and tempestuous relationship with my faith. I can (and will) explore that with you another day. However, despite the seesaw relationship I have with Islam, I’m fascinated with it.

There are pilgrimages called Hajj and Umrah, major and minor pilgrimages respectively. Men are required to shave their heads as part of the Hajj and Umrah. To me, it symbolises the shedding of one’s skin, renewal, and rebirth. But also, the humbling of the ego.

The past 3 years as my divorce painfully edged towards the finish line, I’ve known I need to honour this ritual. 

I began reinventing myself ever since I broke up with my ex-wife and filed for divorce. That work has never ended, I now realise it’s a lifelong process. However, my divorce finally came through in late January this year, it took 35 arduous months. When I opened up the e-mail from my solicitor I wept profusely. Tears of gratitude. Tears of joy. I’d kept so much inside and it poured out, literally. But I refused to cut my hair. 

It’s taken a pandemic, isolation, a shortage of eggs (seriously, we’ll revisit my love of eggs again and again) to make me explore my relationship with my ego. 

The Covid-19 crisis has forced me to become more pragmatic. Breakfast is now measured. When I have eggs (they’re worth more than gold bullion right now), I just have one, not two. Like you, no doubt, I’m having to figure out how to make everything last, including money, food and my sanity.

Pragmatism has its place, especially given the constraints that you and I are currently living under. But my ego, that’s something I’ve wrestled with for most of my adult life. The past 3 years I’ve known that shaving my hair off is a necessary and unavoidable spiritual and symbolic step. Yet a combination of fear and my ego has gotten in the way. 

I’ve become attached to the attention my hair has received and started subscribing to the belief that my relative success in life has come down to my hair and me “looking good”. So much so that I’ve become addicted to the validation and I fear that my life may revert back to how it was before, when I shaved my head. 

It’s a limiting belief and the only way I can move forward and live a fuller life, a life that is free from dogma and fear is to kill any such belief. In this instance, it requires me to cut my hair. 

So, I charged up my clippers and hacked away until there was nothing left. It was fun. It was humbling. 






I had to wrestle my ego to the mat. Luckily, I pinned it’s shoulders down for the 3 count. 

The Best Time To Start Writing Is Now

I’ve been putting off writing this blog. The idea for this blog first emerged early in 2017. It was going to be called “Finding Haroon”

Back then seismic shifts were happening in my life. Namely:

1.) I admitted to myself that I had mental health issues and sought professional help.

2.) I ended my 10-year marriage. Not an easy choice, but a necessary one. 

3.) I rediscovered my identity as an artist. Namely as a writer. 

I wanted to document my journey. It didn’t happen. 

The past 3 years were turbulent. I went through numerous mental health breakdowns. I suffered financial hardships. I moved house 8 times, each move added to the already towering pile of trauma I’ve accumulated since I was a young child. 

Also, I procrastinated. I didn’t write because even though I wanted to write, I did not view myself as a writer. 

That wasn’t my identity. So, my actions, or lack thereof, aligned with that lack of self-belief. 

But that changes now. 

I ended my marriage 3 years ago, but the divorce was not finalised until late in January 2020. My divorce weighed on me. 

Thankfully, I’m now free of that mental block.

I want to write. I want to create MY life. The one that I choose. Not a life that others have chosen for me. 

This life involves writing, it involves telling stories. I want to share my joy, pain and everything in between. 


I am Haroon. 

I am a writer. 

I am an artist.

That is my identity.