A rose by any other name...still as sweet?

It's never easy to admit that Superwoman's having an off day, but alas yesterday afternoon my cape had to be hung in the coats closet. I felt it necessary to put emphasis on the possessive pronoun because some people might be tempted to have such blasphemous thoughts of there being another Superwoman than myself. Well now you know.

I'm so good at compartmentalising my life, the daughter, girlfriend, sister, employee and friend very seldom meet unless of course dark alleys and bottles of hard liquor are involved. Seriously though I don't know why my mind does this but the relationships I have with the different people in my life are all very distinct and almost from different personalities altogether. I'm an obedient daughter but my parents know better than to reprimand me for whatever transgressions they believe me to be guilty of without an airtight case. I'm sure they remember nostalgically the days I used to nod my head in compliance and be on my not-so-merry way.

I'm a laid-back sister, my siblings know to come to me for advice, and they know I don't blow my top with them. I'm a paragon of sisterly virtue. I spoil them when I can, I push them to do their best, I encourage them, I'm what commoners reverently call awesome.

Then there's the attentive efficient employee, the doting albeit hot-headed girlfriend. These are the many facets to my personality, sometimes I convince myself that I have so many faces because I'm complex but in light of recent events (there are no recent events it just felt like the perfect place to put that phrase) I've come to realise that I'm brutally simple. When I'm speaking to you, you will absolutely feel like you're the most important person in my life at that moment, most probably because you are.

I don't know what I'm saying anymore. This was supposed to be about Superwoman now I'm coming across as some decrepit superhero with a wet cape, not a good look, "so I put on my make-up put a smile on my face and if anyone asks me everything is okay..." My point is the daughter doesn't know the sister and neither of them know the girlfriend. I have many faces, I wear many hats, yesterday the balancing act was too much and I was one person. I was exhausted when I went to bed because the employee thinks the daughter is a little too headstrong and the girlfriend thinks the sister is too virtuous.

Sleep came swiftly and I answered its call immediately. Today I'm back to juggling hats and everybody is none the wiser. Usually people struggle with people judging them. How do you reconcile your spirit if the judging is within?

Employee

Sister

Daughter

Friend

 



Textually challenged

Hi my name is Nono and I use Facebook and twitter ALOT. I've been an avid Facebooker since 2007 and the appeal it had for me was connecting with old friends and cementing relationships with current ones. However as with any well planned party a few gate-crashers managed to cheat the system and I was probably high off my growing popularity in my social media sphere, I began accepting people I didn't know, people I would never know. At first I used to make an effort to chat to my new digi-pals then I just lost interest, I'm very fickle (or whatever being a Gemini is about). So my friend count just kept increasing and all these people whose lives I had no interest in were appearing on my timeline talking about what they were planning on getting up to on a given day, or who they saw and what they thought about who they saw.

I then had a rare moment of clarity to reflect on the bizarreness of my relationship with all my social media non-friends and I went on a deleting spree. My finger is still a little crooked from all that clicking. Then I began working at Soul Magazine and I needed people to be the sources of my articles and because I now had no strange people on my friends list, only people I knew, people who wouldn't help me with a story if I begged, bribed or blackmailed. Then the vicious cycle of accepting people I don't personally know began again, but at least this time they were helpful. So I studied people's status updates and based on that decided who to approach for what.

I no longer have standards when it comes to accepting friends (on Facebook) but a few of my real-life friends put a bit of weight behind this statement, but still I love. But every social media slorebag has to suffer for her sins; show me a girl who hasn't had a relationship proposal from a stranger sent to their inbox and I'll show you ten who have! Just yesterday I received a "I wld love 2 date u" last week: "Gorgious how are you doing today?" err is that the same as gorgeous? Same week: "You have such a sexy bum wld luv to touch it" and so it goes. On the basis of these brave brave men not knowing how to write they fail, I assume their not knowing how to write is directly related to not knowing how to read because my profile clearly states that I am in a relationship.

I'm still debating whether or not to go on another deleting spree, but if I do who will be the willing guinea pigs for my journalistic escapades? I think until the time comes when my friends allow me to tell their stories, interesting alcohol-fuelled ones might I add I am resigned to a life of accepting friend requests and being textually harrased via inbox.

25 reasons I am so awesome

1. Anele and Ayanda Tshabalala are my sisters and best friends. Blood sisters!!

2. I love fried onions. I put them in everything...well except for cereal and cake and ice-cream etc but they go in everything else.

3. I didn't know I wanted to be a journalist until after matric.

4. I'm a committed Christian. God's been too good to me for me to be any other way. I don't, however, believe in the Church.

5. I hate seeing misspelt words. Before I went for anger management classes I had been known to hurt people over this.

6. My, punctuation is. dodgy 'but I welcome: the judgement.

7. My left eye can't see without the aid of glasses. "Blind as a bat" is an apt description of me.

8. I like telling people I'm married...cause I am.

9. I had my first taste of alcohol when I was 12. It was a sip really then again in tertiary. Such a badgirl!

10. I love sports.

11. My biggest character flaw is that I'm neurotic. It's really bad, I stress over the smallest things and I've even mastered the art of passing on my nervous energy to whoever is unlucky enough to be around me at that time.

12. I am a bad judge of character. Absolutely terrible, but you don't seem too bad.

13. I'm a closet vegetarian. The intentions are there but the body is weak.

14. I can't fall asleep unless I've done a bit of reading.

15. I'm very tolerant and open-minded about people. Discrimination isn't in my vocabulary.

16. My mom left us when I was 5. I thought she was going to town...she never came back.

17. I was painfully shy when I was younger. Then I discovered humour and hid behind that, so when I crack jokes (often the self-deprecating kind) non-stop it probably means I'm covering up.

18. I can't sing but I was in the choir from grade 4 to Matric. I'm persuasive.

19. I learnt how to swim, unaided, in grade 7.

20. I'm annoyingly ticklish.

21. I don't eat Oats or Weetbix.

22. I LOVE pizzas and pastas. I'm convinced I was Italian in a past life, maybe even a part of the mafia because that's just how awesome I am and we all know organised crime is cool.

23. I'm self conscious about my eyes. When people are talking to me it comes across like they're boring me. So not true it's these small eyes.

24. I love hard. One of my many imperfections.

25. I love music. I can't dance, I can't sing, I can't even hum but I love music.

Forgive me father for I have...molested little boys.

Catholics are contagious. Before people cross themselves let me clarify. I believe it's common knowledge that since the beginning of time (no, really) Catholic priests have been molesting alter boys, but still young boys scramble for this "coveted" position, I'm reminded of a sacrificial lamb being sent to slaughter. The church publicly abhors this conduct but I feel they don't do enough to separate the wheat from the chaff with regards to their Priests. I can only imagine what it must be like for those young boys to be violated by someone the community respects.
A few weeks ago I was watching Steve Harvey's "Don't trip He aint through with me yet" where he poked fun at the church and on a more serious note he said he feels that a lot of the Priests and Pastors sitting in a confessional waiting to absolve Christians of their sins should be the one's doing the confessing.

To further cement this point I just read an article on a blog about Bishop Eddie Long and his alleged abuse of young boys in his ministry. This makes my blood run cold, that grown men do this and all while hiding behind religious garb. It reminds me of my cousins’ funeral this past weekend where I was particularly moved by the service and the man officiating it. On the way home after the funeral my Dad and me were discussing the funeral then he says "the only thing I had a problem with was the MC". I was confused because I thought he did a pretty good job. Then he elaborated that the man had recently been suspended from the Church and this was his first official Church task since he came back, and the reason for his suspension was that he had been accused of paedophilia!
Now keep in mind that this man lives in a rural town, he's a man of the cloth and he's married. But he was tempted successfully, now he'll always be the man who sodomised so and so. You can't get your good name back after that. When people ask me why I don't believe in the Church, this is one of the reasons. Besides the homosexual nature of the crime, and it being an "unAfrican" thing to do, you also break the spirits of these young boys; change and forever distort their destiny.
I know God forgives and loves his children because his capacity to love is incomprehensible. My aunt always says "behind the collar is a man, never forget that" and I tend to forget when his sermon moves me. If I was sitting in God's chair Heaven would be a lonely place I'd be sitting behind a NO UNAUTHORISED ACCESS sign and you my dear paedophiles are unauthorised...but I forgive you.

Now off to hell.

Give us us free!

I haven't blogged in a while. You missed me. Well if you guys can pretend Ne-yo's straight then you can pretend you missed my ramblings.

I've been busy dealing with office politics, family politics, seriously Juju you think you know but you have no idea! The biggest thing that has been going through my mind lately is that my dad forgets that I'm 22 years old and to his frustration I have interests that go beyond the walls of his house. Since I've started working at this expansion project I've received numerous invitations to go out with my colleagues but there's something in my dad's psyche that prevents him from being able to let his daughters have age-appropriate fun. So getting him to let me go out is like pulling teeth.

By nature I'm a home-body, so I was never a troublesome child who ran from home or any other such delinquent inspired behaviour, which is why I don't understand his reluctance to let me go out now. I lived for three years away from home, if I was going to get up to anything suspect it would have been done already. He is of the staunch belief that everyone is out to corrupt his daughters..."I don't know how to tell you this dad but I'm the corrupter"! He'd probably pass out if I said that to him but I don't understand parents who keep their children so "protected" from the outside world. I understand restrictions, I understand rules, even limited freedom makes sense to me but if that spills over into the life of a young adult it just breeds curiosity.

My colleagues go out for drinks regularly, I'm not a big drinker but I do like to hang out with them socially, it does wonders for the work relationship. My dad needs to subscribe to my forward thinking mentality...or I need to move out. Decisions decisions.

When I grow up

I remember when I was I was in Grade 6 I read a Sidney Sheldon book about this young ambitious and naive woman who was taking her baby steps in her law career. On her very first day in court, she was part of the prosecuters research team, she was set up by the crime boss on trial to deliver a package to the state's primary witness. The package was a canary with its neck broken. Obviously a play on the "sing like a bird" adage. The witness refused to provide the state with any more information so the case was dismissed and the crime boss was back on the streets and she lost her job. The bad guy wins.

But then the tenacity of this fictitious woman, Jennifer Parker was her name, broke down doors and she built her career victory by victory. Anyway this isn't a book review it's about how this book changed my life. I've always had precocious reading tastes because in the same year I read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The difference between the two however was that Pride and Prejudice didn't make me want to be a strong-willed social climber even though it may be the reason I've always expected romance to lean towards story-book perfection. Sidney Sheldon's book made me want to be a lawyer, no debate, no trial just pure conviction of what my calling in life was. So what if I wasn't argumentative, who cares if I hated paper work. I wanted to be Jennifer Parker.

My dad was wary but delighted with my choice of career, as far as he was concerned he was raising a future lawyer. English has always been my strongest subject in school, I didn't understand what my teachers meant when they said "Your daughter is such a good reader Mr Tshabalala", I was flattered but I was also thinking "well that's useless". So when I got to matric and had to seriously consider what career path I was going to take, taking passions, talents, and strengths into account I figured I'd make a shockingly bad lawyer. So the only thing I could think of that I was good at besides athletics and sports was English and how much I loved to read and write. So I figured Journalism was my safest bet. My dad was gutted! From imagining the six-figure salary a lawyer could command to a dishevelled underpaid journalist he tried to convince me to convince myself that I didn't want to be a journalist.

I didn't. because a journalist is supposed to stick things through to the end right? Whatever. So I crossed borders and settled in Durban in pursuit of my dream. Jennifer Parker still lingers in the crevices of my memory because journalist or lawyer, man or woman, good reader or not everyone needs the drive which came so easily to Miss Parker.

Sidenote: She ended up dating the crime boss who set her up. The inspiration I drew from her was very selective. No crime bosses for Nono Parker...err...you know what I mean.

Daddy and the journalist...is that pride I see?

 

Clash of the Titans

I understand the need to fight for what you want. I understand the need to rally together to effectively get your message across. I even understand the need to raise your collective voice in the quest to be heard. However when lives are lost because your cause is more important than your calling I cannot nod my head and defend you in a group of disdainful observers.

I am of the immovable opinion that teachers, doctors, nurses and police officers should make a healthy living. No debate. These are the people who protect, teach and heal the nation, how can you justifiably pay them peanuts and expect them to perform to the best of their abilities. Granted it shouldn't be about how many zero's are on the paycheque but you can't ignore them either. In my humble often misguided opinion, public servants, if you will, should enjoy the security and comfort that they so readily give to their fellow countrymen.

Because I am a delicious paradoxical woman with a delightful Gemini centre I am prone to changing my mind at a moment's notice which is why I am not on the fence with this issue I am very clearly on either side depending on the time of the day.

When lives are lost, education deprived and criminals are running rampant I quickly hop over to the side where people are in an uproar at the flippant way the strikers are treating the people who need them. The City Press reported about a woman who brought her sick child to hospital and no one paid attention to her. In the SABC 3 news on Friday a woman was being interviewed on the side of the street in the thick of labour pains but no one wanted to help.

Who do you blame in an instance such as this? A stubborn government or a disgruntled employee? One thing is certain, the tug and war that they are playing with the citizens will result in them snapping. Someone, somewhere, sometime once said "When two bulls fight it is the grass that suffers the most".