I Wish Mindy Kaling Gave Me Permission To Dream Much Earlier In Life & Back Door Bragging Through the Front Door

My heart is ablaze. No, cliché, my heart is working at maximum capacity,  providing infinite voltage into an electrical, nervous, giddy smile. There is a slight dusty smell in the air and the dark red velvet curtains are shoddily drawn such that I could peep at the front row audience. But, I don’t have time for them because I am too busy being a bossy 7 year old and checking if everyone knows their lines. Yes, those were the days. Those were happier days.

The funny thing is, I always knew those would be the happiest days of my life. I hoped, but never thought, I would get to write, direct and act in shows all at once ever again – so I wrung the happiness out of each skit inch by inch until the joy was tucked away safely in the corner of my soul. It was true, however, that I wouldn’t grow much into the spotlight as I would have, had I been more confident.

I think that confidence might have been given the jumpstart it needed had I seen Mindy Kaling. She was amazing for me. A woman, my own race, complexion, body shape (okay, she has bigger boobs than me, whatever) actually succeeding in front of a Western camera would have shaken my little box and made me realize I have the talent to be who I could have been; I would have let myself dream things I never dared to entertain.

Instead, when I became involved in Drama at a High school level, I graciously bowed out and dedicated myself to excelling at the theoretical side. Oh, no, don’t get me wrong, I would average in the 90s on both practical and theory. But although I was good at both, I was scared to invest too much into the practical part because I knew I wouldn’t get far with it. High school made me realize there were so many people better than me. Although I could make people laugh, I couldn’t make them swoon with my beauty; nor could I fit into a dress below size 10. It was crushing, on reflection, that I let those little things get the better of me.

I think if I had more tangible evidence of women being themselves and still being successful in entertainment that I would have felt a whole lot more confident about the situation. I saw local females bleaching their skin, taking pills to get fairer and everyone around me just being thinner than me. I was chubby, yes, but it wasn’t because I ate a tub ‘o lard on the regular, hardly, but rather it had more to do with repercussions of some treatment I had undergone as a child. Niggling little things like that can really leave an impression on your mind.

I guess I’m full of excuses, as well. I mean…rather an excuse than a failed attempt? Actually, that’s probably the most pathetic sentence I’ve ever written, hah!

But it’s okay. I know I was great. I was a top 10 finalist for the Bruce Piper Award, an annual award by the Speech & Drama Society of South Africa. I wish I would have had the faith in myself to not need a Mindy Kaling to show me the way. But, now, I am so happy and grateful that she is around. I’m so happy Indra Nooyi is the CEO of Pepsi. I’m so happy that Delphine Govender started Perpetua. All around me I see these amazing women growing into someone I would like to become – but I could never mirror them, no. Rather, they remind me of needing to be the best person I can be… and hopefully I can let some little kid out there realize she has the right to be the writer, director and actor of her own life, too. 

I Hate Horses & Pottery

I haven’t blogged in a while.

But, hopefully, the things I’ve learned in this while will set. Like a newly formed pot, I’ve learned lessons throughout my life, but sometimes I haven’t given the pot enough time to set into its shape. Cracks form, my hands get dirty from constantly trying to prod at the wet clay of ‘lessons’ and things get distorted. Then a new experience comes, I try to make the pot again and I err. I guess we will continue to make new pots until we can let the clay dry and fill our pots with sweet water – and on that day, we will thirst no longer.

It’s so haaaaaaard to do things. Life in general is diiiifficult. I don’t know what prevents us all from just locking ourselves into a padded room and laying there and never doing anything with ourselves ever…wait… *goes to google the number of the local asylum*

Let’s revert back to the age old horse riding metaphor. I feel like getting on the horse for the first time is phenomenal. Trotting around, wind in the hair, having that Black Beauty Kimye fantasy life happening is incredibly brave. So, imagine how much braver it is to get back on the horse when it kicks you off and runs away into the distance laughing at you. It’s pretty much the same feeling you have when you throw a Pokeball at Latios or Latias without having Scary Face or anything keeping them there – they just escape like lol after you get the message saying ‘argh! Almost had it!”

So this is me right now. Writing again for me is scary. I haven’t done it publically for some time other than the tiny food blog I have. And I know exactly why. I stopped having faith in myself for a lot of reasons. I became more geared towards a different way of thinking; looked to driving cars (haha, pun) and shunned horses for a bit. Currently, I have a smashed car and no insurance and I’m looking at the horse like, “Please be my little pony again?” and the horse is like “No bye lol.”

Let’s pretend that little dialogue didn’t happen.

Moving on, a lot of things have happened and I’ve been terrified to restart my life. It is so easy to practise knowledge, wisdom and advice when you’re in a good place. When things are going right it is easy to dissolve into what you know to be right and to commit to the right path. It is only in the storm that it becomes hard to remember the stillness. I am grateful for my storm, because I have surprised myself. I haven’t gotten back onto the horse yet - but I have it around… been grooming its hair and feeding it sugar cubes and so forth. I want to start. And start I will. 

Perspectives, Musings & Questions on Relationships That Are Considering Using Anti Aging Cream

Justin Timberlake wasn’t really on some scandal-laden Illuminati fuelled psycho-distortional binge when he sang the lyrics of ‘Mirrors’ because, just like looking into a mirror, a relationship can be presented to the eye in one way – but be interpreted in a completely different sense. This post attempts to discuss some issues in relationships: from walking completely past the person you love, to overflowing with love, to our need for validation and a bit of other emotional gunk that I’ve scraped out from between the bricks of the dammed up walls of my heart-river. (Gaaay.)

You can be with a person for quite some time – to a point where the qualities that attracted them to you in the first place become almost commonplace. To you and your partner, both: a beautiful woman’s partner neglects to compliment her beauty, and maybe she herself tends to neglect the occasional maintenance act of waxing. It could be said that the relationship has dragged itself out until you begin to walk past your love. Or it could be said that the relationship has deepened to a point where you’re not taking each other for granted in as much as being in a deeply communal existence, where you’re no longer seeing her beauty but you’re seeing the lady beyond her qualities, and have come to value and feel her essence as a person. How to explain this… you’re not in love with her qualities or actions anymore. You just love her.

This isn’t cheap logic to use as an excuse to not compliment your partner, by the way!

Continuing on this trail of compliments comes the need for validation. A very wise guru said that we should, for our own sake and for the sake of our relationships, always assume the other person in the relationship loves you. It’s easy to come a year along and wonder whether your partner feels the same. It is hard to push for affirmation. We want this affirmation to reinforce our stance in a relationship. We want to feel wanted to know we carry some weight and that the other person would notice if we don’t come home one day. Why? Our ego needs satisfaction. Our identity, the fragment based on our partner, needs to be validated. We want to validate ourselves. What pressure to put on another person! I’m terribly guilty of this. Of paying a compliment and also wanting to hear something just as nice as back. I’m still trying to work out whether this makes me a weaker person, an insecure person or a person so vain that she needs to hear that you think that she’s just as amazing as she thinks you are (all this in addition to being a normal human being, you know) .

Just as being at the bottom of a well, almost near drowning,  is a difficult place to be at – being very much in love is an engulfing situation. A year later, still being completely fascinated by the person you’re with, the way he speaks, smiles, laughs, puts you in a position where every action you undertake and most of the emotions you feel move from the bottom of the ocean of love with such unnecessary force and immensity that it could overwhelm. One of the hardest things I’ve found is trying to control my emotions and affections in a way that are palatable, easily and readily, for my partner.

It must be a terribly awkward position for someone who has their act together to be the recipient of regular love-smacks across the torso by a partner wielding a tonne club of affection.  Where the occasional pinch once in a while may be pleasurable, controlling your club may be useful.

Why is everything so hard? Why are there so many rules? Why can’t we just be? Why are there invariably so many nuances and over thinking traps to fall into? To respond, does doing everything the way you want it to always lead to happiness? Say for example, you are an early riser. And you like to practice the cymbals every morning. You do this every day on your own path and you expect your partner to wake up and praise your playing. But instead you’re dating Father/Mother Time and they tend to rise when the clock hits noon. You’re going to be in an unhappy position. Thus, consideration of loved ones and the impact of our behaviour on their happiness would be a logical facet to factor into our daily decisions.

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t be yourself. If it is in your true nature to rise early, by all means do so. And occupy yourself with an activity more considerate of your partner’s need for slumber. Ideally, however, you would want to be with someone that would enjoy the clinging of the cymbals regardless of the time, place or sleep depravity. Right? Who ends up waking up with you is something you can control.

Something I’ve yet to figure out, though, is what the ideal is when it comes to hobbies and passions. I would love some input on this, as I assume it varies in different relationships as people hold these things close in a number of different degrees. How important is it for you to participate in your partner’s hobbies? For example, let’s say there’s a typical man: wholly interested in soccer – watches every match, has a fantasy football team, tracks players from their waking moment to bed. And there is a female who enjoys flower pressing – selecting the flowers, preserving them, musing over old albums of flowers and such. She has little to no interest in soccer. He has little to no interest in flowers. But they’re both really important to the individual.

I suppose if she lived in hope that he wouldn’t make her watch every single match, and if he lived in the hope that she won’t make him identify each flower by texture in her book –there wouldn’t be an issue of fairness if they both decide to not involve the other in their hobby. The problem that arises, though, is when she secretly hopes he would view and appreciate her work in a way similar to him wanting her to watch sport with him, it’s a question of sharing worlds and wanting to form such a world together. Tricky, hey?

On the other hand, it is critical to maintain an individual identity in a growing relationship. So by the individual pursuit of hobbies, their individual personas are strengthened and thus the fraction of their happiness that is dependent on their partner grows smaller. The smaller this fraction, it can be said, the greater the overall happiness in the relationship because there is no ‘need’ for the other person. It is a warm, tingly, “I want you, with me.”

What do you think?

When things grow into comfort, I think, they take on a special sense of intimacy. A night in with pyjamas and tea, sitting at a desk and your partner chilling in the other end of the house can be just as emotionally fulfilling as a night out on the town dressed up head to toe. Comfort shouldn’t be scorned nor devalued in relation to specific appreciation – but where there are gaps in that appreciation deficiency, I feel, it’s a chance for you to work on your own self esteem: “I’ve been with this person for a year, they must see something amazing in me. Why do I doubt this and demand to hear it from them, when they’re free to walk away tomorrow if they really wanted to?”

And if my relationship ends tomorrow or next week, you guys will all think I’m an idiot with unfounded opinions  - but I feel that I have learnt an immeasurable amount in this past year. Immeasurable.

Old Lady Personality Seeks a Retirement Home.

Some people …

No, most people …

People in general…

An increasing number of people …

No, who am I kidding, let’s not hide behind generalisations this time, I, personally, hate being alone. I’m assuming that I’m not the only one (because rarely is anybody ever the ‘only one’ to do or experience something). I also applaud anyone who can relish their own company and space – those who can be perfectly content not being juxtaposed to another breath – because it is something I entirely can’t seem to do… much like I can’t play a musical instrument or ride a bike.

I know exactly why, too. I find myself to be insufferable. I know who I am, and I don’t like my own company. My mind is shared by the personality of a fuddy duddy 100 year old boring lady whose hobbies enjoy jigsaws and crossword puzzles, tea of all sorts (yes, tea can be a hobby) and hating things. Sounds like delightful company, no?

So, being alone forces me to invite said old lady over for psychoanalytical tea, where we have impetuous words over every fragment of existence (some call this over thinking) that can, at times, be entertaining. But most times I wish she would just shut up.

I guess this syndrome is exacerbated by my workaholic tendencies and my cramped apartment: where I work until I cannot anymore and I pace until I simply must sit. Those 20 minute delays in texts and hours of waits between company passing through my door force me to entertain myself. How. How do you entertain someone that doesn’t really like to be entertained, especially when she is in a mood ?  I try to please her constantly but somehow she shrugs it off.

So, if anyone knows a good retirement home, please tell them I would like a space for my personality.

Thank you.   

495 Words Dedicated to an old Friend | or | Journey to the Center of the (Shre)Earth (haha)

As I write this I am countries and continents away from my tiny studio apartment in Cape Town. In fact, had I taken a quick jog across the southernmost pole, I might have taken a shortcut to my current place of contentment: a delightful, homely cottage by the sea in the finest, fairest, four-leaved-clover land of them all: Ireland.

Okay so I am not really in Ireland. But I know that’s where I want to be, one day. I had forgotten this quite some time ago – the power of hours home alone coupled with a carefree mind can create a powerful excavation tool for nostalgic desired buried at the core of one’s inner planet.

My planet is quite a strange one, where  - despite my persistent tendency to live in my own head – I have not visited it very often. It scares me. I’d rather drift around the stars, come back to the tangible Earth or just enjoy the blackened cosmos between my eyelids when I sleep. However, this is a problem.

How can you go on living in contentment when you’re not quite sure of who you really are and what fills the land and sea of your own planet? Loneliness is a plague that has scourged the land we live in, with the salve being human companionship and love – but how much richer would our lives be if we didn’t fall victim to the plague at all?

Prem Rawat said:

“And we are never lonely, for we always have ourselves.”

But who are we, really? A task I had set for myself some time back was to find happiness in myself and to get to know myself better. However, I seem to have subtly rejected calls from myself on more occasions than I’d like to admit. I’ve cruelly read messages from myself and chosen not to respond – how horrible must I have felt to have seen the ‘read’ receipt but not received a reply!! I am the worst.

Yet, I must say, it is not too late.

Once again, I will commit to becoming my own friend. Once again I will take up the pen and tapdance on my keyboard to type out boring blogposts to myself in a way of saying: “Hello, my friend, sorry I have been away so long – how have you been?”

 I am booking a ticket to my inner planet, naturally there is room for anyone who may like to join me, and I am going to get to know myself this year a bit better. I am going to do the things I love more often. I am going to put down IFRS now and then and let myself draw, paint, read and lay in the sun more often.

I am going to remember to breathe more often, and fill all the little gaps that people, things, my cat and clouds of candyfloss cannot fill … and I am going to fill it with my own joy.

PS

I am not going batty, nor have I been abandoned on the side of the road in a dustbin waiting for DSW to take me away. In fact, I am quite happy and thought this little identity discussion might inspire you to get to know yourself a little better this year :) 

2014: The Foo Fighters Quote Year

Oh for the love of furry baby seals and mink coats – not another blog post on the new year!! Gaah… gaaah…  *death by eye rolling*

Luckily, this isn’t about resolutions or something preachy about how this is going to be ‘my’ year (we all know that this and no other year will never belong to any one person including Disney Princesses because Wicked Witches never really die). This year I have just resolved to do just one simple thing: not quit.

It’s okay to take breaks, be derailed and not do that which needs to be done today. But I will not allow myself to quit. (“ YOU’RE THE ONE YOU’RE THE PRETENDER ! WHAT IF I SAY I WILL NEVER SURRENDER?” – Foo Fighters)

Quitting is the darndest, sneakiest dream destroyer because sometimes you never know that you’ve actually quit. Then - before you know it - a year has passed and you haven’t even made it halfway across the ocean to get those exotic spices from the land where they ride elephants, nor have you even filled that diary that was meant to help you remember the better days when you get Alzheimer’s.  You slowly slip away from the things that mean the most to you because you become lost in new adventures that slowly found their way to your doorstep – while your true passions and goals were sitting at your back door like Taylor Swift wearing fake hipster glasses shrieking “PLEASE LOVE ME AGAIN”.

So, yeah, this is the year I will not quit. I will think about quitting, yes. I will get lazy and bugger off to my cave in the mountains muttering about how I hate everyone and everything on the planet. But I will come back. And I will carry on.

Will you make this an un-quittable year?