Reflecting on 2016, Part 1

Written on Friday 09 December 2016

Oh my word, it’s December! Seriously, where has this year gone?! Paging through my 2016 diary, I can hardly believe all of this happened in the same year.

I spent the first day of the new year (2016) relaxing at home, reflecting, and setting goals. That day I heard about the death of American singer Natalie Cole, aged 65. I felt incredibly sad, even though she wasn’t a personal friend. I knew of the hardships she’d dealt with, and I’d always loved her singing. In the first few days of Jan, I was busy practising songs for a family wedding. The wedding day itself became memorable to me for a rather unexpected reason – it was so windy, that one of my speakers blew into a man-made lake! Yup - started my year, not with a bang, but with a splash.

A few days before that, though, my daughter and I had gone to see the stage show, Singing In The Rain. What a superb production!!! It was the beginning of a year in which we’d decided we would see as many musicals as possible. It’s strange reading this in my diary now - I was without a car at that time, so everywhere we went entailed making transport arrangements, usually hiring cabs. Quite an expensive story.

The day before college reopened, I wrote, “Last day of glorious 4-week holiday!” Turned out to be my last 4-week holiday for a long time.  A few days later, my daughter started her final year of high school.

And then, on 19 January, my life changed. The person who had head-hunted me many months before for a position  for which I fulfilled all the criteria, confirmed that the position was definite; the next day, I informed our campus HR manager that I wanted to resign. After going through loads of formalities and a fair amount of confusion around my leaving date, I took my leave of College of Cape Town. On Thursday 25^th February, our campus gave me a very moving farewell, at which I bawled my eyes out, losing all composure. (We’re talking ugly cry.) What can I say? I feel things deeply. After three years and two months at the campus, I had made good friends and shared a lot of experiences with my colleagues. I’d suspected, all along, that, even though I had chosen to leave, saying goodbye would be hard. I was very happy that our English Department’s programme manager could be present.     

       

But February had also had another significant event: after 2 years and 3 months without a car, I bought a beautiful car. And what a difference it’s made to my life. Phew!

My last day at college was Monday 29 Feb (not a penny more, not a penny less), and the very next day I started my brand new job, in a brand new industry. For a while, I resented the fact that I hadn’t had a day or two in between, to gain closure, and I felt emotionally exhausted, making the change in that way.  I think I’ve dealt with that now. I’m ok. It’s what it was. Bureaucracy in the civil service is sadly lacking in logic. And life goes on. I had asked the universe, once again, for “radical, positive change”, and I knew the year ahead was going to shake any remaining tentativeness out of me.

On my first day in my new job, I had a thorough and impressive induction by HR. I knew, without a doubt, that I had left the government sector. I was happily back in the private sector. Every now and then, throughout 2016, it occurred to me that I hadn’t changed just jobs, but careers.

My daughter was very busy rehearsing for their school’s production of the musical, Hairspray, which impacted on our daily routines. Having the car made a huge difference!

Written on Sunday 18 Dec 2016

My new job found me doing a wide range of things, from sitting in board meetings to attending gigs of a big band. I spent the first few weeks establishing the scope of the job, putting my all into those tasks, and incrementally stretching myself, introducing systems that contributed to the smoother running of the project.  I felt more and more at home in the job, and was very happy I’d made the change.

I adapted to the ethos of the company, after my recent 3 and a half years back in the government education sector, and felt the excitement of having entered ‘a whole new world’. I was exactly where I’d wanted to be. Some people thrive on sameness, but I’m one of those who thrive on change. I loved being in an industry where that did not make me the odd one out!

On the last day of March, my daughter and I drove to Camps Bay, to see the musical, Sweeney Todd, at Theatre on the Bay.  Quite a different experience to 6 January, when we’d gone to see Singing in the Rain. Back then, we’d had to hire a cab to and from the theatre – a costly night out.

At the beginning of April, another wow was getting complimentary tickets to both nights of the Cape Town International Jazz Festival from our company, Independent Media, the major sponsor of the event. Seriously – how cool?!! On each night, I saw two shows that made all the crowd exposure (I don’t handle crowds well) worthwhile. On Friday it was Roberto Fonseca (Cuban, solo pianist) and Laetitia Dana (French vocalist with amazing band), and on Saturday it was Lizz Wright and …… CASSANDRA WILSON!!!!

Early in April, I also started going to the Delft Big Band Music Academy on Saturday mornings. This changed my weekly routine, and opened my life in interesting ways.

April – new guitar strings. J Yay!

April ended on a high note, quite literally, when the full-length documentary on my mother’s life, called ‘’May Abrahamse’’, had its maiden screening at Artscape Theatre, at ‘’Die Suidoosterfees’’, an annual arts festival. A product of film maker Lisba Vosloo, the doccie told the story of my mother’s life as an opera singer during apartheid-era South Africa, and how the political milieu impacted on her career. I went to both screenings, and was deeply moved.

May month found me busy working on the planning of another annual event, the Sekunjalo Edujazz Concert. Shadowing the event coordinator taught me a lot. I also got to meet the team at espAfrika. The annual concert was held on Saturday 4 June, at Artscape, with South African rising star, vocalist Jimmy Nevis as the celebrity headliner.

June itself was a month of significant change in my working life, as well as in my personal life, with the respective changes impacting on the rest of the year. All I can say, on reflection, is that many valuable lessons were learnt through both sets of circumstances, and my frames of reference have certainly grown. 

Yup.