Short one today.

At the beginning of the year, I maintained a remarkable consistency in “silent mornings”. Every day, I would wake up and spend the first 2-3 hours of the day without any input. I would avoid looking at my phone, listening to music, or even reading. Normally, that was when I could get my best writing done too.

The year then turned faster, busier, less routine. The silent mornings ceased. Now, as the year winds down, I’m content to have rediscovered them. Silence makes room for the type of thinking that will pull at a thread of an idea. Without noise, it’s easier to follow the thread.

My writing muscles are atrophying the less frequently I use them. Somehow, staying on top of this newsletter was easier amid excursions into Patagonia, cow-feeding sessions on a Brazilian farm, and swinging from a hammock over the Amazon River than it is staying put in Buenos Aires.

That chapter spent flitting between destinations was probably busier than my current state. However, my life feels richer here in Buenos Aires despite my considerable drop in stimulating experiences and adventures (which might explain my correlated dip in writing production).

A busy life does not beget a fulfilling one.

It's an absolutely packed Ferg’s Focus.

I wrote an essay that’s been bubbling for a while. French playwrights are slandering cowards (I thought it was ironic, too). We’ve got thieves dropping in from rooftops in Buenos Aires like it was the 1001st Arabian night. There exists a game like rugby only played on horses.

No flowery intros this time—let’s get into it.

Much like my routine I describe in this edition (or rather lack thereof), my appetite for writing will disappear for weeks and then resurge in full at a moment’s notice.

I don’t believe in creativity striking. The best writers are the ones capable of sitting down without fail day over day until something slightly better than dribble hits the page.

Likewise, I doubt any of those illustrious writers has ever turned down the rare blessing that is… when inspiration strikes.

Today was one of those lucky days.

When I first started Ferg’s Focus, I redacted parts of some stories that I considered too vulnerable to share publicly. Moreover, as I continue with my life abroad, I find myself less-inclined to post about my experiences. I prefer the privacy, and there is something valuable in keeping memories for myself (a practice modern society is on the brink of losing altogether).

Contrarily, I enjoy writing for and stimulating the thoughts of those who take the time to read my pieces. That internal back-and-forth spurned me to finally put down on paper a thought that I had been previously unable to translate into words. What resulted is one of my rawest essays to date.

This Ferg’s Focus edition inadvertently turned into an ode to Buenos Aires. While I didn’t plan on it, I certainly do not regret it. May it forever merit its praise. Routines don’t seem too common around these parts, but I have found a loose one nonetheless, granting me the structure to write once more.

Winter is setting in down south. My nomad friends are departing for warmer weather. The leaves have turned golden and now catch the autumn sun in colors unseen by me before. The swarms of mosquitos are surviving amid 8° Celsius (46°F) temperatures. Life is good.

I’m finding new thrills in my permanence. Piecing together bus routes on disconnected backroads and haggling for the cheapest street eat have been replaced with piecing together a social life in a city with limitless opportunities and shopping around for a decent-priced cut of beef. Forging stronger foreign language capacity has given way to forging stronger relationships. Perhaps this is the novel experience left unsatisfied by my nomadic chapters. There’s still work to do though.

I’m a recovering vagabond after all.

Most of us have become well-trained at “saving time” but at the cost of knowing how to spend it.

Someone who spends all their free time building time-saving systems rarely knows what they will do with it once saved. Worse, they don’t even understand why they began trying to save time in the first place.

Time is indifferent to how efficiently we construct our days and is a resource that will diminish at the same rate no matter how much time we vainly amass.

Best not to delay spending it well today.

Learning is not as simple as just reading or watching an interesting piece of information. If it were, then consuming as much information as possible would be the ultimate goal—a belief that a certain sect of the productivity-obsessed community preaches. This is incorrect.

The means to a result are more important than the result itself.