Live your truth

Picture: At the end of September last year, this entire plant was as dry as the little sticks showing on the top right hand side of the picture. I refused to give up on it, because I suspected that, with care and patience, it could be restored to its former state of health and beauty. Looking at it thriving now, I'm so glad I did.

01h40

So here I am again – that same intensity that fuels my songwriting, keeping me awake long after my gig. Thursday was one ‘helluva’ day! I can’t believe so many amazing things happened on one day. Well, maybe they’re just amazing to me, but still, what a day! A special day, filled with firsts.

This morning I had my 6th life coaching session, and a few things emerged that promise to guide me towards greater focus and commitment, as well as to take me on a slightly different path towards one of my main goals. I love the way the life coach sifts through everything I’m saying and identifies patterns of behaviour that hold me back, as well as ones that propel me forward. I am particularly amazed at how long it’s taking me to break certain immediately-identifiable self-sabotaging habits. It’s astounding how tenaciously I’ve clung to some of them! The most important thing is to keep using the strategies that work, and to discard the ones that don’t.

Afterwards, I went to an internet café in our area - a clean, pleasant, low-priced place - and sent off an e-mail I’d been trying to send for a few days.

I spent a good part of the day practising for the gig, and put a lot of effort into selecting my songs and writing up my set lists.

Later in the day, an invitation from a surprising source, and one which I’m eagerly anticipating.

And then the gig – wow! Two good friends of mine, Diana and Vangie, each pitched up with a group of friends, and stayed for the evening! Both of them lead very full, busy lives, so I felt humbled and astounded that they’d chosen to spend a whole evening at a place where I was playing! That immediately made my night, and I enjoyed the experience of singing to people who liked my music; in honour of them and their loyalty, I did a few more originals than I’d planned to, which changed the flavour of my night considerably. Songwriters should sing their own songs, period. I feel more alive and authentic when I’m performing my own stuff. Every cell in my body glows and smiles, and I feel like I’m doing what I was born to do.

During the break, I met a musician – percussionist, Daniel Bloem - who played a few songs with me on someone’s djembe, towards the end of my second set, and it was really exciting. Interesting chatting to him and finding him to be a very cool person, different, anything but shallow and materialistic, a breath of fresh air.

After my second set, one of South Africa’s guitar greats, Steve Newman, took to the stage and played like the wizard he is. Oh my goodness – his dexterity and intensity took my breath away! It was like being enveloped in a cloud of sound, sitting about two metres from him while he played. He used a few different guitars, one of them really tiny, called a soprano guitar, which he said he tunes to C sharp, so it’s a really high-pitched range of sound.

Later the same morning – after a deliciously restorative sleep:
As I reflect on this and so many other things happening in my life, I am more excited than I could possibly put into words about the direction in which my life is heading, with increasing inexorability. There’s obviously still an element of ‘insecurity’ - for want of a better word - because my employment situation is not settled, but at the same time, a whole new realm of existence is emerging, and I’m discovering that there are strongly viable alternatives to the 9-to-5 scenario. In fact, I sincerely hope never to need that kind of employment again. As time goes by, I’m becoming clearer as to what and whom I want to proceed into the rest of my life with. Stale aspects of my life, the ones that have been holding me back - and holding me hostage – are suddenly glaringly dysfunctional (as I suppose they’ve always been), and I’m finally able to look critically at them and be absolutely okay about leaving them behind. It’s so liberating! Shoo!

What works for me is to replace things I’m discarding with healthier alternatives. I find physical exercise helps put a lot into perspective. Whichever way you go about it, the best investment you can make is in your health, because what’s the use of being part of a generation that’s likely to live beyond 90, yet you’re facing your last 30 years being lived with ill-health? It doesn’t make any sense to me. I fully subscribe to the “healthy mind in a healthy body” tenet.

So, exercise has become firmly established as one of my non-negotiables. A second priority for me is regular, serious music practice. Tomorrow I go back to working with my tutor, which I'll do once a month, and that’s something I’ve really missed for the past few months. The discipline of working on my own, though, is something that arose from my having to stop lessons when I was retrenched. That alone has been an amazing journey, where I now find myself exploring material to perform that previously I might have shied away from, or might have tackled in a more conventional way. I can feel myself slowly becoming more courageous, less worried about what people think, and a whole lot truer to myself.

Many years ago, an astrologer I hold in high esteem said to me:
“Live your truth, and the universe will support you.”

I can’t believe I had to walk such a long, convoluted path before I fully understood the emancipatory power of those words.

Double exposure (Written 6 March 2011)

Picture: A cropped version of a picture taken at a music practice at Katilist Theatre, in Observatory, Cape Town, in 2008. Came out as two photos in one shot, and I love the effect.

As I continue along this incredible part of my journey through life, I can feel myself growing and changing, and the realizations along the way are not always easy. Self-awareness, looking into that mirror and taking a good, hard look at everything about myself, is not always fun and exciting. Along with my recent breakthroughs, daily successes that seem to be propelling me towards my goals at an alarming pace, I’ve encountered some challenges. And this is how I know I’m changing: I know that I am directly responsible for everything in my life, both the wonderful, affirming successes as well as the challenges that have cropped up and have the potential to undermine my successes or derail my resolve and enthusiasm.

Part of the clarity I’m gaining, as I progress through my weekly sessions with life coach, Inez Woods, is that I’m starting to identify patterns in my life. I can now clearly see how decisions I made in the past impact on me and complicate my life now, and the consistent theme is: whenever I handle something in a way that is not empowered, not accountable, not facing an issue squarely and truthfully, not bearing possible/inevitable consequences in mind - or let’s say whenever I do the ostrich thing - I can be sure that that particular matter will not go away quietly – it will come back and complicate my life when I least want it to.

So what’s the lesson? For me, the lesson is that, no matter how uncomfortable or unpleasant, even embarrassing, something may be, I have to deal with it like a responsible adult, address it humbly and honestly, tie up that loose end and move on. When I don’t, I might delude myself for a while (often years, in my case), but it ALWAYS resurfaces and when I eventually get round to sorting it out, it’s a lot messier, and it blocks my personal energy to the point where, if I don’t address it and sort it out, I can’t move on with my other goals.

What am I talking about? Sometimes it’s something like not having called a company to explain that I’ve been retrenched, and watching ‘helplessly’ as my debit orders “bounce” month after month, and sometimes it’s more personal, like an ambiguous relationship that’s been going nowhere for years, but because it’s sort of worked in other ways, I’ve just let the niggling things slide.

A line that Oprah Winfrey says comes to mind, and I know for sure that it’s never too late to tie up a loose end in my life: “When you know better, do better.” There are many reasons why we all do what we do, and I gain strength from knowing that everyone is on some kind of journey, that we’re all generally figuring things out as we go along.

Today I give thanks for the people in my life who’ve known me for many years and who love me. I give thanks for a subset of that group, the ones who accept that I have a set agenda for myself that doesn’t always fulfil their expectations, and who love me anyway. And I give thanks for new people coming into my life, at a very exciting time for me, who in different ways are adding their energy to my life, fuelling me along my journey. I choose to believe that there’s always a reciprocal energy flow, and in this case, I sincerely hope I am enriching their lives as they’re doing mine.

Utterly amazed

Today was amazing - I had my 5th life coaching session with Inez, spent about 2 hours tackling some clutter in my house (yes, Operation Unclutter is still alive and kicking!) and went for a 70-minute walk with my best friend. I'm so proud of our walking regime! I think we must've spent the past four years talking about walking for exercise, and here we are, in our third consecutive month, walking briskly for just over an hour at a time. In a good week, we manage three walks, and she usually does a long weekend one. My alternative is swimming, something I hadn't done for the whole of February! On Saturday, I went down to the gym and got into the pool! How does one describe that feeling of utter relief and bliss? It reminded me of the first time my jeans fitted me after I'd had my baby - ooh, the sensuality of that well-worn denim against my skin....! Slipping into the water, I felt like I'd come home! Maybe in a former life I was a water creature. Haha - I'm definitely one now!
All I know is, when I'm submerged in water, I believe, with every cell in my body, that absolutely anything is possible.

I love swimming underwater, and I start every length with a few underwater strokes, way down at the bottom of the pool. When I've got enough breath stored up, I can do ten strokes before my lungs feel they want to burst, and then I make my way to the surface, happy to reach the top and to swim the rest of the length like a normal person. We can all pretend, can't we? Haha! And then it's time to swim back and I just can't resist going underwater again. When I'm tired, I can only manage 5 or 6 strokes before I have to surface, but that's ok. Just having been at the bottom makes my heart pound with excitement. I was hoping to do 50 lengths, my current best, but at 38 lengths my calves felt like they were going to cramp, so I slowly swam two more. What can I say? I'm Virgo, and we like round figures, symmetry. So 40 was what I achieved. Had the sauna to myself, then hopped onto the scale - numbers moving in the desired direction. Last year one of my mottos was "Time is my best friend". With regular exercise and a more sensible approach to the rest of my life, time is definitely my best friend. Nice to watch the progress.

One of the things I'm becoming aware of, at this intense, challenging time, is how much clearer certain things are becoming. As I make my way through each day of this unusual time of my life, I'm becoming much better at identifying what's good and what's not good for me. More importantly, I'm learning how to articulate it. Even more significantly, I'm not trying to please anyone with my choices. It's taken me almost half a century to get that right - I'll be 50 in 6 months' time! It ends up being a process of elimination, and what a liberating experience it is.

One of the sobering realities that emerged in my session today was how, even 5 sessions into the process, I still find myself indulging in my old habit of self-sabotage! I suppose it's been years and years of that pattern/habit, and I've mastered the art by now. I even find noble ways of distracting myself, just so that I don't do what I'm supposed to be doing. Gopal Ramasammy-Cook, another brilliant life coach, was the first person who exposed me to the phrase "fear of success" - something I think many of us carry around, in the form of one of those monkeys on our backs.

And so I continue my journey. This week's certainly had its challenges, and some things are still unresolved. But so many other things are going well, and so many possibilities exist.

Today I give thanks for my best friend and my life coach, for my children and my mom, for people who've come into my life and acknowledged my skills and experience, and have given me projects to work on. I give thanks for the lessons I learn every single day. I give thanks for past failures and what they've taught me. I give thanks for past partners, for what we shared and what I learnt.

But most of all, I give thanks for today, for tomorrow, and for all the tomorrows to come. Things are evolving organically, and I am utterly amazed at how life is unfolding!

Changing tracks

Yesterday I took a train to town, and allowed myself to be fully immersed in, and alert to, the total experience. I closed my eyes, could feel myself being lulled by the rocking movement of the train, and I understood why so many people actually dozed off en route to their destinations. Sometimes it's quite funny watching someone nod off, then jerk awake as the train jolts them upright. I've even seen a few people resting their heads on the shoulders of complete strangers. Very funny watching how the shoulder-owner reacts. Haha! Years of enforced politeness come to the fore, as they bravely bear the getting-heavier-by-the-minute head of their unknown travelling companion, grinning sheepishly when they realise you're watching them.

I've been fascinated by group dynamics for a long time, and I love observing people who find themselves having to share a space, especially with strangers. In South Africa, it's even more fascinating, as years of enforced separation - separate living areas, separate amenities, including parts of the station and carriages on trains - play themselves out in the sometimes-odd ways we have of dealing with people from different ethnic groups. Sometimes funny, mostly sad.

But a feeling I like experiencing in a train, is that sensation when the train changes tracks. You get knocked about a little, you find yourself jumping involuntarily in your seat, you feel slightly insecure, and there's definitely a trace of pending doom - what if the train were to be derailed in the process? - that passes as soon as you've noticed it. The noise that accompanies it is not a smooth sound; it is loud, arhythmical and jarring - the sound of chaos. And then it ends, and the quiet, lulling movement and sound of the train return. You unconsciously breathe a sigh of relief, unaware of the seeds of trepidation that threatened to germinate, only seconds before. You sigh, sometimes audibly, and you continue what you'd been doing before, except now you're travelling along different tracks, a more efficient route to your destination having been selected. The transition is over, nothing more than just a routine, everyday occurrence for trains.

I'm on a journey. I'm changing tracks. I think I need to read this blog post whenever I fear that the cacophony of changing tracks is significant enough to silence the music in any way other than just momentarily.