Sticks and stones (and words) can break my bones

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Bo

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…

Autumn

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Bo

I’m quite schizophrenic when it comes to Autumn. On the one hand, I hate the cold nights, the dry skin, the static hair and not knowing what to wear because it’s not yet Winter. Running becomes difficult and excuses not to run become easier to find. But on the other hand, there’s nothing more majestic than driving through Jo’burg and seeing the beautiful colours of Autumn as the leaves start falling.

My Autumn has arrived with many highs as well as lows…

KK’s business trip away confirmed… going to my first Jewish wedding… a new bird feeder… my mom’s birthday… Mother’s Day… a fun evening out with work colleagues… a day off doing absolutely nothing… a sick (and overweight) dog… a stressed out family member… a best friend who continues to avoid me… a giggle about Julia Roberts… a foot massage that made me cry… a suicide of a stranger… lunch in the park with the girls… flowers blooming in my garden… the passing away of a tweep… plantar fasciitis which is healing slowly… and a 15km running race which made me realise my running mojo is returning.

Yes. Autumn has definitely arrived and as much as I think it will remain sunny forever, it won’t. Things change, whether I like it or not. Seasons change. There’s no stopping it and Winter is on its way.

I’m getting old. #fact

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Bo

I turned 37 years old in April. *OMW* This means I have officially moved closer to my forties. My age never used to bother me, but suddenly, it does. It’s as if I woke up one morning and realised that I was no longer in my 20’s or early 30’s.

So why now? Why am I feeling like this all of a sudden? What’s different? I sat down and wrote a couple of things down…

My parents are moving in to a Retirement Home.
I’ve had to book my regular hair appointment from every 6 weeks to 5 weeks as my greys are showing through quicker.
In December, I will be going to my 20 year High School Reunion.
If I go watch a movie on a Friday evening, I fall asleep. In fact, Friday evenings I’m in bed before 9pm.
I recently chose to go home and snuggle in front of TV with hubby instead of heading off to a night club with my friends.
The beautiful model Tanya Fourie, who I adored as a teenager and who is featured in the May edition of Fair Lady, has wrinkles.
My age category when I enter running races is listed as Sub-veteren. *ouch*

I guess I can’t stop the clock… I’m getting older, I just need to start accepting it. But it has made me stop and ask myself, am I growing old the way I want to? Are there things I still want to do?

But while I do this, can everyone and everything around me please slow down a bit?

Analyzing a race, slice by slice

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Bo

It was the Saturday evening after the Two Oceans race and KK and I were enjoying a celebratory supper at Col’cacchio’s overlooking Camps Bay. All around us sat other runners, glaringly obvious by the fact that they were wearing their running shoes adorned with race chip, warm K-Way running tops over their Two Oceans t-shirts, but mostly by their conversation. The restaurant was a buzz of nattering about the race. Both the half as well as the ultra marathon.

As they devoured their pizza’s, runners were recalling the start where E-seeded runners managed to slip into C-seeded pens; they were giving their in-depth analysis of the new route and whether or not it was easier than the old route; some were recalling the drummers up Southern Cross Drive, while others were gasping at how the 56km runners had survived 6 hours in the rain.

It was a minute by minute, km by km, pizza slice by pizza slice analysis of each step of the race, where they had gone wrong and what they would’ve done differently. And trust me, they talked for hours, sometimes going over the same topic repeatedly as if they couldn’t talk about it enough.

If only life was like that. If only we had more time to stop and analyze what was going on in our lives, the up hills, the down hills, the times we got things right but also the times when things seemed too tough to carry on. What pulled us through? What were the highlights? The lowlights? How did we tackle issues in our lives? I don’t think we do that often enough (or even at all?)

If only we were able to analyze our lives more regularly, the way runners do after each and every race, maybe we’d be able to stop ourselves from making mistakes, from getting hurt, we could make the necessary changes. But we’d also stop more often to enjoy the good times while we were able to and celebrate our victories. We don’t do that often enough. Runners do.