I started doing yoga a while back and I’m really mediocre at it.

I have to say this because the fact that I was not perfect the first day I stepped onto a mat after nearly twelve years came as a shock in a way that such a thing would shock someone like me. See I am one of those people who tends to be hard on myself when I attempt something for the first time and I am not 100% great at it.

I am shying away from the term “perfectionist” because it’s a word that makes me uncomfortable, it’s always made me feel uncomfortable. Even in instances when I was in the presence of people who I deemed to perfectionists I always felt really uneasy, as though they were counting every step I took just to tell me how I’d faltered in some way.

Of course I was projecting – most people are too busy dealing with the voices in their heads that they don’t even notice anyone else’s anything let alone whether or not they are planking correctly during a class. Anyway, I was telling you about yoga.

So I started doing yoga and it’s been really hard on me for a number of reasons the biggest two being the following:

I am team all in. I tend to throw myself into new things. I get all absorbed in it, it’s all I can talk about and think about for a long time and then the worst thing happens – I obsess about it so much that I want to do it every minute until I turn it into a chore. I noticed myself doing this with yoga and I am trying to stop myself from turning it into something ugly because I really like yoga. I like yoga like I like spinach and broccoli in that not only do I know that they are good for me but I genuinely enjoy them. Yoga makes me feel free, yoga makes me feel intentional (a big goal of mine), yoga makes me feel like I am doing something right and most importantly yoga reminds me to pause, take a deep breath and try to touch a higher level of myself.

I think in today’s world we all forget to stop and fill our lungs all the way to the brim and be grateful for the fact that we are still able to do that. We are always chasing the next thing; the next great job, the next opportunity, the next like, the next difficult pose, the next anything really. And I am no different. I like to run. I like to chase, I like to challenge myself, and I like to try and do more than my arms can hold or handle. Yoga reminds me that at the end of it there are only a handful of things, of values and of people that are deserving of the tight grips and tight hugs and that it all starts in my lungs. In every breath I carry my community, in every inhale I take in love and in every exhale I release love into into those who I hold dearly. So I am holding yoga very lightly, and trying my best to avoid squeezing the life out of it by obsessing and trying to be perfect.

Breathing. Pausing. Letting go. Every now and then throughout my day I have to softly remind myself to unclench my jaw. Sometimes I do it for a second then resume the clenching and other times my jaw remains unclenched for at least a solid five minutes. Either way it’s important for me because this little statement pushes me to interrogate exactly why my feet are constantly curled, why back is tightly wound and why my jaw is tense even when I am doing the menial task. Yoga is forcing me to sit, for at least thirty minutes and breathe and I appreciate that.

I appreciate being forced to breathe in an obvious way. I go through an entire day breathing but I never stop acknowledging it. I never stop to take stock on all that I am dealing with, I just sort of just deal and keep it moving. Which is raises the question of whether or not I am aware of what I am doing throughout my day or whether I am simply existing in a constant mode of autopilot. Yoga helps me pause, reflect and take stock off all I’ve done that day. And the best thing about it is that the number of times I get told to “relax my shoulders” is an extra reminder to simultaneously unclench my jaw and it’s always great to outsource.

I think the point of this post was to do what yoga is teaching me which is;

“Forget perfection, get on the mat” and I applying to that to my writing and journaling. Even if the words aren’t the best words to ever be put to paper – writing is better than not writing. It always feels good.

“Are you okay sis?” which is a reminder for myself to check in and be intentional with my actions even with my breath which seems pretty easy when you think about it but it’s actually not.

And lastly but definitely not least “not all that seems important is actually important” – something I’ve been trying to meditate on for 2019, digging deep within myself and finding what really matters.

Maybe yoga will help me with that, maybe it won’t be yoga and I’ll discover it one day sitting on my couch eating chocolate coated coconut flakes either way I am certainly enjoying breathing easy and taking stock of each day in downward dog, the world looks different from this angle.

🙂

I am on a social media break. I wonder if I can call it that seeing as how it’s been three months since I decided to cut back from social media and all it’s temptations.

Somewhere towards the end of 2018 I realised just how many of my decisions were actually adopted from someone else’s page or social media feed. The books I read, the music I listened to and the interests I threw myself into. Most of them were dictated by some stranger on the internet.

I think one of the pros of the internet is that we all have access to information. Whether it be through a trusted news sources, an article found on google scholar or a really attractive woman’s Instagram page – information is out there and with that comes the obvious temptation to consume and take it all in. The danger in doing this is that it also encourages us to be lazy in our thoughts and opinions, it allows us more room to follow and it fosters an environment where being the so-called black sheep is the worst thing you can possibly be.

I started noticing that my self-awareness was starting to chip off a bit as I deferred some key opinions to other people on the internet.

This of course doesn’t happen to all of us; some of us have the ability to see social media and the rest of the internet for what it is – a big blue ocean of information whereby careful discernment is necessary prior to drinking from the fountain. And I used to think of myself as one of these people until I started noticing some changes in how I made decisions big and small. I’d walk into the bookshop and I’d reach for books whose covers I recognised from my social media feed. I’d deliberately search and listen to music I saw propped up online as revolutionary and I’d never really stop and ask myself if I really enjoyed the melodies, what about the words? The meaning of the song? Was I truly listening or was I finding noise to fill my mind. I saw myself skim through articles, jump to the end to confirm an opinion I’d already seen a few minutes before on my twitter stream. It became a lot, I was wondering if there was any semblance of authenticity left in me. I needed to find that out for myself, I needed to discover what I liked, what my opinions were and whether they would stand solidly without the backing of followers and faux friends.

I needed my mind to get lean. I wanted small decisions such as “which music should I listen to” and big decisions such as the decision to cut down on animal products to be more mentally strenuous. I wanted to work for my decisions, I wanted to be intentional in my consumption and most importantly I wanted to create in a way and space that did not have outside opinions seeping through the cracks and killing any chance of authenticity.

I wanted a lot and I needed a break and so I took one.

As I get a bit further in my break I hope to write more on the benefits I am experiencing from spending a bit more time inside my head, with my head calling the shots and making big and small decisions autonomously.

For now, I just wanted to write this down for myself, and anyone else who needs it, just a small reminder to get me through on the days when I am wandering and I miss the quick fulfillment that comes with over consumption; a reminder to take a breath, ask myself why, to look within myself, find the answer somewhere deep in the pits of my intuition and make an intentional decision from there.

I love shoes. I’ve always loved shoes.

When I was a kid my mother told me that all women have to make a choice between a love for shoes, a love for clothes and a love for handbags. She made it quite clear, choose one love of your life, stick to it or be doomed to eating noodles and beans for the rest of your existence! And I made my choice right on the spot, I chose shoes.

Of course I’d given it some thought and my love for shoes was just the reasonable one. With clothes I would see my body go through changes with age – some I’d love and some I’d hate but they were all bound to happen (and they did). Handbags never stood a change because anything that requires to be carried around with me at all times just sounded like a little too much effort for the very minimal return of carrying around my stuff – also I was a kid so I had no stuff, so a handbag seemed a little pointless. Whatever my reasons were, I chose shoes and it has been all roses and bunions since then!

The older I got, once I sort of decided what kind of life I’d be living I sort of started seeing myself living my happily ever stiletto life! I wanted them all! Open toed, closed toed. Leather and suede. Funky colours and bland colours. I wanted them all. And for a minute there I thought I’d have them all, I thought I’d wear them all and I thought they’d step into a room and boldly pronounce to anyone who doubts it that I had arrived!

I remember how I beamed when I saw women in stilettos walking along the corridors while I was a student in my all stars. I’m pretty sure that each time I saw a black woman in a pair of high heeled shoes I’d instantly hear the “Girlfriends” theme song play in the background and it was glorious each time. It was almost angelic and spiritual each time, until December 2017.

By December 2017 I’d been working in my first “professional” job for a year. I’d sort of started to move towards a deeper self awareness that forced me to challenge all my decisions in an almost catastrophic manner. Catastrophic because I saw myself do an overhaul of who I was and what I thought was important – from my work, to my friends, to how I was perceived, to what was real and to, yes, my very weird relationship with all material things and what I thought they were telling the world about me.

I was nervous in December 2017. I was going to start work in a new environment the following January and I really feared about not fitting in and my likability. It’s funny now that I think about it – how I’ve always wanted to be liked because I grew being told I was unliked, unapproachable and one time I was told I was an acquired taste. The thing about being young is that it is definitely not cool being an acquired taste. Even the young kids who present this sort of hipster, nonchalant personality want to be liked. Literally everyone wants to be liked, it’s human nature – we are at our core social creatures and likability plays a big role in that whether we admit to it or not.

So, back to my shoes – I was standing in a shop, with friends and I was buying shoes to help me fit into this new environment that I was worried I wouldn’t fit into and I somehow ended up buying these blue, pointy (yup, with my flat feet, talk about ambitious) snake print shoes that I deep down knew I had about 1% chance of making it through the day with both them and my feet in one piece. Chancer!

In that moment as I paid for a third of those shoes (did I mention that I was lay buying the shoes?) I felt my gut give me a confused look and an angry nudge saying “This isn’t you! This isn’t us! Who are you doing this for?” Of course like any good people pleaser I proceeded with the transaction, went off on holiday and proceeded to forget about the shoes until my next monthly payment was due – well at least I tried. Then time came for the payment and nothing moved me towards the store. Then another month. Still nothing. Then came phone calls from the shop assistants telling me how I was going to lose my initial payment and still nothing. I think the fact that I had to lay buy the shoes should tell you that I am not the type of person in a financial position to be letting money go all willy-nilly but at this point I’d like to believe my real self was calling the shots and putting an end to the madness and because of that I never actually went and picked those shoes up.

What came after that was a lot of re-examining and trying to figure out what’s the big deal about shoes anyway? I mean you wear them, spend your whole day in them but are they the kind of thing that would improve ones likability? Like really? If I am honest I really thought they would. I thought that if I had the right kind of shoe that was bold enough, shiny enough or important enough it would go a long way in making myself endearing to all these new strangers whose opinions I valued way over my ability to walk in an upright position. And in all honesty none of it matters, none of it should matter and I wish that right at this moment I was 100% convinced that it doesn’t matter but I know to a certain extent it does.

We are seen or not seen purely based on how we look and most of it makes absolutely zero sense. The resulting emotions that come after this is that we justify who we are, why we are and why we should be seen based on things that make absolutely zero sense and to be honest I wanted to put an end to that in my own life. Actually “want” makes it seem like it’s a choice, what I mean to say is I had to put an end to the monkey chatter in my head that is constantly telling me what I need to acquire in order to be worthy of my place here on earth.

Don’t get me wrong, if you feel lovely and empowered and enjoy a good stiletto then this statement is in no way directed at you – this statement is directed at my former self. A self that clung onto things that never quite presented a true version of herself. That’s who this is for. It’s not an anti-consumerism post, nor is it a call for people to walk bare foot like back in the day before fire was invented. Nope, I am not advocating for anyone doing anything that goes against their true self. Honestly this isn’t even about shoes, or clothes or even handbags. This is purely about me; about me examining the weight I had been placing on things that aren’t even important to me. This is a post to myself, from myself, to remind myself that I am valuable and worthy as I am. This is me, standing in the mirror of the internet at 29 shouting as loudly as I can that: I AM ENOUGH, I BEEN ENOUGH AND I WILL STAY ENOUGH!

So I’m my journey towards never being in a situation again where I feel crappy for buying something I know I have no use for or a position where I am going against the core of me to make myself more likable; I have decided to chip away at the rubble that’s cluttered in my mind over my lifetime about what makes me worthy and sometimes, like today, that means walking past a pair of shoes People Pleaser Nthabi would have had to have and feeling absolutely nothing but relief that that craving is gone.

I’ve decided to go back to writing, or rather writing on a blog as I’d like to think that even when I’m not writing I’m writing. I am both delusional and optimistic like that. Anyway I’ve decided to go back to writing for myself – myself because this will be on a blog that happens to be public but I will make no intentional effort to make any of my blog posts public. This is a decision I took today when I realised just how much pent up creative energy I have that I am not expressing in anyway – well at least in a healthy way. So it’s locked inside me, banging against the marvel of my mind asking to be let out.  Unfortunately for my right brained self the  thing about being in the sort of work that I am in  is that there is absolutely no creative outlet. I mean sure you can colour code your excel workbook and maybe wear a fun top here and there but at the core of it, it’s really rooted in being technical and having zero creativity. Which is great news because the last thing the world needs is another financial crisis because a few number crunchers decided to get creative with the numbers.

So here I am, someone who should really be writing doing everything on a day to day basis except writing. It gets quite frustrating.

I started this blog with mixed intentions. The first intention was to obviously write – something which comes very naturally to me. The second intention – the part where it all went pear shaped – was to get my writing “out there”. Please note that this is in no way a knock on people who get their work out there, I am eternally thankful to those people. Through their writing I’ve learnt a lot about the world, myself and whatever else happens to exist in this very vast universe. I’ve learnt to be empathetic through reading, I’ve learnt how to make quiche and many other skills I would otherwise have missed had it not been for people willing to be out there and if I am being 100% honest I still very much have ambitions to be out there but I just need them to be latent right.

Where it goes all wrong with me trying to be out there is that all of the fun of writing gets replaced by a very dark and unnecessary fear of failure. When I write for outside consumption I lose focus and my very view of the main thing. I forget that this is something I enjoy and something that I’ve literally been doing since I was seven years old when I wrote a story about a dog that got carried away by a giant bubble. All that leaves my memory, all I have left is fear that I would never have if I was writing simply because I have no other option – my business is to write.

So I’ve decided to cut the clutter and monkey chatter by writing for myself. I’m going to start by writing what ever delights me, for me, in my own space, at my own pace and try my best not to get in my own way. I hope that in doing this I’ll be calmer and all the pent up creativity I’ve had will finally get a chance to step out and dance in the sunshine with the type of freedom it deserves.

And so with that long introduction (or rambling) , I would like to welcome my one and only reader – Nthabiseng. Welcome, I hope you will join me as often as I pen something on this here little blog. And I hope you have some fun while you’re here.

🙂