Category Archives: My Blog

Sticks and stones (and words) can break my bones

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It is amazing how one person can make such a difference to how you ‘see’ yourself and what you believe you can accomplish. That person can either build you up or break you down – if you allow them to.

When I was growing up, I always wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to write, to tell stories, to find out and share information. The path I landed up taking was into librarianship and so I found myself surrounded by books and information, unfortunately not written by me. But I found happiness.

In 2002, I started working in a financial institution where one of my tasks was to write a monthly report. From day one, I struggled. I was not used to working with Word and I was constantly beaten down by my manager. Even after attending a course on report writing, I was still not getting it right and up to ‘her’ standards.

I still remember her words to me, “I made a mistake in hiring you because I thought you could write. But you can’t. Perhaps you should just focus on research instead.”  Ironically, this is what I did. Fast forward 10 years and through friends who believed in me, I started a blog. I’ve loved every single minute of it. The feedback is not so much about my writing skills, but about what I’ve been writing about.

No one criticizes the occasional spelling mistake. No one tells me I don’t know how to use styles properly. I don’t get red pen scratches all over my posts. The comments and feedback are always positive and always telling me how my posts have hit a mark or touched people in a certain way.

That’s powerful and humbling at the same time.

I was chatting to a friend recently and he was expressing concern that in life, majority of people can not articulate what the want to do. People just don’t know. He went on to explain that it’s not about what ‘job’ you want to do as much as a simple ‘thing’ you want to accomplish in life. It’s up to each one of us to know what that ‘thing’ is.

It’s then that it hit me. I know what I’ve been enjoying in the last couple of months. I know what has made me happy, what has overtaken my time and fuels my thoughts all day long. I know what I want to do.

I want to write…

The day Rogeema ran for me

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Rogeema was one of the first people I engaged with on Twitter. It was a rocky start at first because, I mistakenly thought she was a guy and kept reading her name as Roger Kenny. I finally got to meet her in person when she organised a fabulous tweetup just before Two Oceans in April this year. She even managed to get Comrades winner, Stephen Muzhingi, to join us at the tweetup.

From that day, I knew this about Rog. If she puts her mind to something, you had better believe that it will happen.

So when she announced plans that she would be running a half marathon in 135 minutes in my honour, I knew nothing would stop her. Rog had read a previous blog post of mine where I openly blogged about an illness I was suffering with. She then decided that her next race would be dedicated to me. I urge you to read her story here… 135 minutes for Brony.

I’m going to be honest. From the start, I was not too keen on the idea. I felt that although I had blogged about my illness, I was not dying. In fact, further exposure made me incredibly uncomfortable. Exposed. Vulnerable.

Until 07h20 on Saturday morning that is….

I had just completed a 10km race out in Irene. Throughout the entire race, my mind was filled with thoughts about Rogeema. I thought about her blog, her training and the fact that she was out running for me. Every step I took, I thought about her.

As I finished my race, I raced back to the car to get my phone to get updates. Yes, raced. I was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion. As I saw the many tweets, I started to cry and realised just how much it meant to me, but also to her.

Rog ran her heart out! She did not manage the 135 minutes, but in my mind, it didn’t matter anymore. Her race had been won even before she started! Her time: 2:26 minutes.

Rogeema, words cannot express what you did for me. I am so touched.

Thanks also to these special people:

Morne Botha (@mohebo). I spoke to Morne at Rogeema’s tweetup. It was the most inspirational 5 minutes that pulled me through Two Oceans this year. Morne, do not under-estimate the motivational power you have.

Fadeelah Kenny (@fadeelahk) yesterday, she broke her long-standing PB by 1.5 mins! (2.19 minutes)

Hasanain Abdullah (@theworx) He heard about the 135 mins challenge and decided on the morning to join. His time: 2h16 minutes.

Vaughan McShane (@vaughanmcshane) Vaughan ran his first half marathon in an awesome time of 2h24 minutes. That totally rocks!

Keri Delport (@kez_delport)  Ironwoman. Need I say more!

Adele MacCannel (@MissyMac77) who was running with a friend doing his 400th race! *gulp*

Leigh (@Leighwatermouse) Official cheerleading squad which is sometimes more important that you can imagine. Thanks for your support and kind words!

About Rogeema: Rogeema is an electrical engineer by profession. She is also an ardent karate-ka and is currently at the level of 2nd dan black belt. Her true passion is developing people and helping them reach their full potential through business, investing, sport, spirituality, personal development and education. She is also active in her community as a human rights activist and serves on the Western Cape committee of Mensa as the editor of The Tablet (quarterly e-zine). I know Rogeema as a runner. Her PB for a half marathon is 02:19:36.

But best of all, Rogeema is my friend!

What I’ve learnt so far as a newbie blogger…

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Okay… Big news!

I’ve taken the plunge and bought the WordPress URL for my blog. This means I am the official owner of the http://www.keepingupwiththewalkers.com web address. Yahoo!

Since starting my blog in July, I have been overwhelmed by the amazing support and the interest shown in what I have to say (3 000 hits in such a short time). It’s been such fun and I thought I’d pause and just share with you some of the lessons I’ve learnt so far.

Number 1: Speak to other bloggers. Read other blogs.
Some of the best advice and support I got was actually speaking to other bloggers. They are so willing to share what worked and what didn’t work for them and gave me some awesome tips and hints. It also helped checking out other blogs and finding the ones I enjoy reading.

Number 2: Spell check. Then check your spelling. And then spell check again.
Do not rely on spell check. An epic example is where I was blogging about a serious issue and wrote ‘lunch’ cancer instead of ‘lung’ cancer. Trust me, it was a few days later before someone told me and by that stage, over 40 people had read the blog post. I wanted to die of embarrassment!

Number 3: Experiment. Play around. Learn and grow.
I was so nervous when I changed my WordPress template. I thought that if I changed it, people would not ‘recognise’ my blog. How silly. It’s more about what I’m blogging about that (hopefully) makes people want to read it than what the site looks like. Besides, change is good and my blog should reflect the changes in my life. (check out the manual I bought! Totally screams geek but I’m learning so many cool things!)

Number 4: What I think people are interested in reading… is not always what people read.
My biggest surprise was the day I posted 13 arb photos from my holiday. Not thinking that this would even interest people, I had over 400 hits. And some blog posts which I did not think would be that interesting to people have received so many comments and stirred up so much emotion.

Number 5: Make sure your boss knows about your blogging schedules.
After some clever research, I realised that by publishing my blog in the morning and evenings would ensure maximum traffic, especially since these are the times when Twitter and Facebook are most active. So I prepare my drafts in the evening and then schedule them to go out at different times. The problem is that my colleagues (some of whom subscribe to my blog) would receive my blog and think I am sitting at my desk all day blogging. I’m not… (Although I am constantly writing my thoughts in a little moleskin book which I carry around with me everywhere! Nerd alert!)

… and the biggest lesson I’ve had to overcome is …

Number 6: Exposing myself is tough.
It’s a funny thing. I somehow don’t mind strangers reading my blog. But when I get comments from family, friends and people who ‘know’ me, I do feel incredibly vulnerable and exposed. It’s as if they are getting insight into parts of me with the added benefit of actually knowing me. It’s weird to explain. I feel as if I am opening myself up when actually, I tend to be a pretty private person and do not easily share things (sometimes not even with KK).

I can’t tell you how much I am enjoying blogging. I still have so much I want to share and talk about and learn… especially now that my training for the 2012 Two Oceans half marathon has kicked into gear. *goosies*

To all of you who subscribe to my blog, thank-you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to read my blog posts. I love sharing my thoughts, dreams, fears and joys with you!

Ps: @HayleyM_ thanks so much for inspiring me and your support. I love your blog! (everything inbetween)