2009 was a particularly rough year emotionally and work wise as we were busier than ever, so my personal life suffered, and yet, like every other SME out there, we were trying to manage cash flow and capacity. The long and the short of it is that we emerged stronger.

The time has now come to acknowledge the fact that what I started on a whim a few years back, is now a fully fledged agency with office space, staff and fantastic accounts. Nicole, my business partner, and I have been lucky in the sense that we have always had the luxury to take on the clients that we are passionate about. Be it cause based PR or cutting edge online campaigns, we love what we do and we do what we love. Corny, but true. (And we work bloody hard for it.)

The next logical step therefore was to open a Jo’burg branch. I have been coming up so often, that making the move made sense. Some of our biggest clients are based here as is most of the business. Cape Town has served us well in our incubation phase and will continue to do so for many years to come, but expanding to Johannesburg is progressive evolution.

I love The Big Smoke. It is true I have had to leave the love of my life, my home, my team and my safety net behind for a few months, but I anticipate it will do us all good. I find Joburg vibey and challenging and I love the social scene, the art, the business rush and even the beauty.

My biggest challenge, apart from locking down additional business, setting up an office and recruiting the right people in just three months, is to get to know myself. It’s no surprise that already within the fist two weeks I have been caught up in the work and the rush sparing little time to do what it is I should be doing – figuring out Cath. The last four years have been dedicated to everyone but myself, so I am planning on being more than just a little selfish with my time.

The Ted video below featuring Elizabeth Gilbert talking about nurturing creativity moved me. I often get so bogged down in the detail and the to do list, that I forget to stop and acknowledge the things that drive me and make me happy. It’s easy to forget and even neglect ourselves. If you believe in a soul, I can only describe it as not allowing your soul to follow its true path. For that you have to stop and reassess. Expand your boundaries, try things you’ve never done before, challenge your inhibitions and be still with yourself – something I find the most challenging of all.

I hope to grow into a stronger, happier, more balanced and a hopefully more clear and focused individual. One that knows what she wants from life and isn’t afraid to go for it. One that doesn’t just operate on auto pilot because it has served her so well in the past. I know it will take longer than 3.5 months, but that’s okay.

Watch the video, you won’t be disappointed.

Elizabeth Gilbert – Nurturing Creativity

• The half drunk cup of tea that Parri made me for breakfast.
• My unmade bed because when I left home, Bono was still curled up in kitty heaven.
• My diary that only ever sees a black pen and is covered in tippex blotches because I don’t like scratching out canceled or moved appointments.
• My moleskin MANGO notebook with meeting and strategy notes in the front and ‘to-do’ check boxes in the back. All in black.
• My personal notebook with scribbles, poems, addresses, notes, thoughts, rants, hearts, tears, unused postcards, ideas and funnies.
• The four half read books on my bedside table that all fight for attention and equally lose out to sleep.
• My unused gym bag with my canceled membership card, asthma pump and extra hair bands.
• The collection of samples I collect from magazines that never contain enough to travel with and hardly ever get used at home.
• Last week’s Heat magazine which my maid is yet to claim.
• The photo library on my Mac. The ‘Random iPhone Photo Collection’ is the best.
• The emails in my ‘Personal Folder’ that I could never bear to delete.
• The letters and post cards my mom writes me in which she shares her life, always waiting for me to return the favour.
• My unfinished paintings and stuffed paint box.
• My cookbooks filled with post-it tags marking recipes I still want to make.
• My cat, goldfish and the people I love who all hopefully share the common knowledge that I loved them more than life itself.

One thing I do know they’ll find is that I am wearing clean knickers.

1. When I go out in Stellenbosch I feel ancient (and superior).
2. I pay rent, bond, salaries, car repayments, VAT, tax, life and health insurance, levies, medical bills…
3. My ten year reunion has reared its ugly head.
4. My friends are all having kids.
5. I’m buying anti-wrinkle cream.
6. I more often than not prefer staying at home with a good book or a movie instead of going out and getting smashed.
7. The kids at my baby brother’s school call me ‘tannie’.
8. I am no longer asked for my ID when I order a drink.
9. I don’t enjoy loud music.
10. Admiring hot 2o something year old’s makes me feel creepy.

*Sigh.*

That said, she was recently interviewed by her best friend in a ‘friend-on-Friend’ interview and although the angle was enough to make me gag, the truisms that unveiled in the glossy pages of the latest Elle struck a chord.

When asked what the theme of her life was, she responded: “Love and choosing to stay in the room when the going gets tough”. I can think of at least 9 people for whom that quote would hold true.

I was once asked to describe what I loved about one of my best friends. With ease I listed random facts and revealing insights that are inherent to who she is, and that result in me loving and respecting her deeply. If one were to assign a definition to real friendship and true love, this quote would more than suffice: (Knowing) “The details of what a person is like at their most relaxed, when there’s no unfamiliar face in the room, when silence is completely comfortable, when there is no one to impress or convince and nothing to defend.”

And if there is one thing we should all be reminded of on a regular basis, it’s this: “I’m not one aspect of the human experience – noone of us is.”

X

In reality the Johannesburg zoo is more organised than I am right now and I’m 99% sure that’s not a good thing.

All efforts to stop, think, evaluate and plan my own life – as opposed to those of my clients, family, friends… – have failed dismally and all I’m left with is one question:

“How the f#ck did I get here?”

The miraculous thing is that here is pretty damn good. I’m convinced that a mixture of sheer luck, naivety and chutzpa is what has brought me to this point, which is great, but imagine what I could do if I actually set my mind to it.

The flaw in the system is that I am unclear on what ‘it’ is and my ongoing existential crisis (let’s also call it ‘it’) is definitely not helping. I have tried acknowledging it, ignoring it, writing about it, bitching behind its back, crying about it, drinking on it, hiding from it and laughing at it, but it seems intent on sticking around. So now I’m trying to put up with it.

In this vain I am making a concerted effort to find, and wisely utilise, ‘me’ time. (Which is why I went to the zoo yesterday and it was great!)

If there is one thing I am sure of, it’s that if I had a mini-me around, none of this would be possible. I am therefore eternally grateful that for now my plan has failed.

As Parri sometimes says: “Toe kom die zoo verby en die band speel.”

It does make one think about the persona you portray to the world though, and for the past few weeks I’ve given the concept of ‘fitting-in’ a lot of thought.

What really solidified it for me was when I discovered on Friday night that I’m clearly still hung up about not fitting in at school. Being 27 I honestly thought I’d moved on, but listening to the fourteen year old recount her school yard gripes, I realized I’m no where near closure.  (And I still won’t be attending my 10 year reunion for fear of bitch slapping a few deserving idiots.)

Where people fit into the world is often defined by their thinking, their belief system, cultural upbringing, sexual orientation, gender, level of education (or lack thereof), political views, life view or even their sense of style.

Being a grown up affords one the opportunity to choose the worlds you inhabit, yet despite this knowledge, I’m still often  amazed by the places or people I find myself fitting in to (or with).

Take Betties Bay for example: at our beach house I belong. I’m part of the memories and when I’m there the world makes sense. Going in to the neighbouring town of Kleinmond, however, is a culture shock – my accent is markedly different, my dress sense worlds apart, my car sticks out like a sore thumb and the locals seem to come from a different planet all together.

Still, I feel at home. I accept the town’s quirkiness  – like The Lord’s Gym and Ietsie Nice – and forgive my fellow Afrikaners their idiosyncrasies and bad dress sense.

But fitting in is more than that. I know I fit into my job.  My group of friends (as diverse as they may be). My life. Like knowing the person you say “I do” to is the person you are willing to spend the rest of your life with.  That said, sometimes you meet the curve balls who you’d never expect to get on with or even form close relationships with. They are the ones that unexpectedly fit like a Tetris puzzle piece in a level 10 game which amazingly you manage to master without even trying.

For some fitting in is natural. For others, not so much. I have quirks, I don’t fit the mould, group think isn’t my thing and very few people know what to do with me. I am however not what I appear to be – no one is.

What I do know for sure is this: if you find the places, people and spaces that fit, you should hold on to them – they are the ones that add meaning.
So this is me holding on tight.

I was inspired by a billboard I saw in Pisa for a website called playlife.com. Check it out, it’s kind of cool (especially the jumping off the boat naked part).

Playlife.com billboard

Someone who is not only playing life, but also exposing it is a guy who wishes to only be referred to as JR. I read an article about him in a recent Marie Claire (yes magazines still have a place in this world) and got goosebumps.

I quote: “They usually appear overnight, as if by magic: gigantic portraits of women on the sides of buses in Sierra Leone; adorning walls of shanty houses in Brazil’s most dangerous slum; on a train in Kenya; and on the bottom of an empty pool at a Liberian hotel from a pre-war era when hotels had guests and pools had water.”

Completely untrained, JR, formerly a graffiti artist, took up photography after finding a camera on a train. Now he chooses challenging themes, takes amazing shots, blows them up, pastes them in the most unlikely places and moves the world.

His gallery: the world.

http://jr-art.net/

There it is, play-life in action.

My parents split when I was 13. The three preceding years were scarred with screaming matches, long drawn out silences and uncomfortable meal times until the point when my dad moved out and Wednesday became our day. Prior to that we moved four times and spent six months backpacking through South America.

Post dreaded ‘D’, I went to boarding school where I sufficiently rebelled, was duly gated for three semesters and henceforth grudgingly allowed to take the bus to school. End 99, both mother and daughter split the country faster than you can say Matric exemption – mom moved to the land of roll-on lawn, while I ventured West to the US of A.

In science one is taught that every action has an opposite and equal reaction. My reaction was to wipe anything pre-1994. Sure I remembered key events, playground wars, secret hiding places, details of homes we lived in even before I was two,  but no faces, no expressions and only very few family activities.

And now, as I page through the happy snap account of momentous occasions and family picnics, I’m filled with a longing to revert to age three and start from scratch – to be rid of the rage.

But we are who we are because of our experiences and although this trip to Europe has finally cemented for me that there is no point, I’m glad to have the memories back.

He believes love is best defined by describing what it is not. For example, love is not cruel.

His view on friendship, is that it is love.

My definition of love, taking into account that there are endless permutations – watch Love Actually if you don’t believe me – is that you love someone when they make you want to be a better person. As always, and that’s why he’s a ‘five’ friend, he modified this view to ‘they make you want to be a different person’. Different in the positive sense, because there is no such thing as better or worse when it comes to people. (I’m still sitting with this one.)

What I realised, is that I know I love someone when I simply cannot imagine existing in a world without them, and often I have to look at the negative space to best define that love.

On the friendship front I am lucky to have many people who I cherish, enjoy spending time with and love. But the friends I love the most are those with whom I can be me in my entirety and vice versa. They are the people who I don’t mind sharing my k*k days with and who share theirs in return without me minding for even one second. They are the people who I can call at two in the morning, who I can go months without seeing, yet never miss a beat when we reconnect.

And although there are more than five, these are the people I can count on my one hand – my ‘five’ friends.

‘Five’ friend and I concurred on a few points over cocktails:

1. Love is conditional, no matter how hard you try for it not to be
2. Love makes you see people in the best possible light
3. Defining it often detracts from the magic
4. It’s a mutual feeling