How My Blog Made Me Rich and Famous - THE LAUNCH

I know.  That title. Audacious.  Crazy.   Arrogant, even.  

What is she thinking????

Here’s what I am thinking:  

1.   I find myself in the most amazing country that inspires me every single day. 
2.  In the past year and a half,  much to my surprise, I learned that I love to write.  Really love it.
3.  As of February, I have been very ungainfully unemployed.  
4.  For many years I have admired the hell out of people who had the courage and gumption to figure out how to make a living at what they love to do. 
5. In the Chinese lunar cycle, it is the Year of the Water Dragon.  It is a year where you are supposed to do big, bold, courageous things.   It is supposed to be hard.  If you can hang on while that dragon gives you the ride of your life, the rewards follow.  It only comes around every 60 years.  I did the maths*. I only get one.  

 

When you add all those things up there is only one place to land.   The land of rich and famous through writing.

So, you ask, does Caroline really think she can become rich and famous by writing?  And I ask, do I even want to become rich and famous?  I don’t know.   I don't know.  I don't know.  But setting my sights at How My Blog Helped Me Make a Little Money to Contribute to Household Expenses seemed a little lame and not water dragonish at all.  

So, with this post, I’m just putting it out there.  I’m jumping off the cliff.   I’m letting you know my intention is to figure out how to make money by writing.  If you know me at all, this is incredibly uncharacteristic.  It speaks of a self-confidence I don’t actually possess.  It speaks of a belief in myself that every day I must work hard to get back to, and most days I don't get there.   In fact, I am so wracked with doubts about the whole enterprise that it has taken me weeks to write this and then another few to actually post it. 

But what is spurring me to make it public is the fear that these very same doubts will push me to set my sights low, or, worse, to not try at all.   So by putting it out there, first, I am saying to myself, “Self, now all these people know.  You better take some action to make it happen or you’ll be mightily embarrassed.”    Nothing like fear of shame as a motivator.  (Please note that I am giving myself permission to fail, but not permission not to try.)

And second, I am hoping that by going public like this I will have your support.   My plan is to keep a journal of sorts about my journey to write my way to wealth and fame.  I’ll post these journal entries as blogs in a series called How My Blog Made Me Rich and Famous.  I don’t know what form they’ll take or if they’ll be at all interesting.  But I’d like to invite you on my journey.  I’ll be so happy if you come along.   

* My sister pointed out my typo "s" on the end of math.  Only it isn't a typo - that is what these crazy South Africans call it.  But not so crazy really, because it is after all a nickname for mathematics - which you'll note ends in an "s".

A Short Story in Three Very Small Acts

Act 1

Sunday afternoon I decide to invest in the next 50 years of my life (that’s right, I am living to 100) by hiring a leadership/life coach.  She does not come cheap, but I reason (rationalize) the eventual pay-off  will cover it multi-fold.

Act 2

Monday afternoon, I take Alexander for an orthodontic consult.  The important word in that sentence is CONSULT.    In other words, not one iota of work actually takes place – it is just an assessment of the work that needs to be done. 

Act 3

At the end of the 40 minute CONSULT, as I sign the credit card slip for the equivalent of 2 ½ hours worth of coaching, I reverse my Sunday decision.  Like good mommies are supposed to do, or so I’ve heard,  I prioritize my child’s needs over my own.  Alexander will have a beautiful, white, straight-toothed smile.  In ten years time, after we have paid off orthodontia bills, I will get my coach.   It’s okay.  By my figuring that means I get to live till 110.  

Footnote:  Of course that is not Alexander.  Number 1 - he doesn't have his braces yet.  Number 2 - you know how protective he is of his image. This is some random (apparently masterful) boy taken from a google image search on boy and braces.   

Green Dresses

It’s Mother’s Day.  We’re out for a hike in Klipriviersberg Nature Reserve south of town.  As we walk along, Quince comments, “Look mommy, everything looks so dull.”  I know what she means.  It is mid-autumn and the flashy, easy allure of summer is gone. But I want her to see the loveliness of nature at this time of year -- in the subtle, muted golds and greens and browns of autumn.  

I bend down, and point to the meadow of tall grasses.  “Look Quince, how many shades of green can you see in those grasses?”   She is on board immediately.   She begins pointing them out.  “I want that one in my wedding dress, and that one, and that one.”  I sigh and pause for a moment.   

I take a deep breath.   And then take this on too.   “Well, which ones would you want in your graduation dress?  And I mean your graduation when you get your doctorate.”  

Puppy Diaries Day 23: Guard Puppies

It's nighttime. Bill is out of town.  Kids are in bed.   Our security alarm goes off. Often I accidentally set it off but this time I didn't. So when our security company (named very militarily CSS Tactical) calls to see if everything is okay, I say I'm not sure and ask them to send the officers out to check around the property just to make sure there are no bad guys lurking about (for my non-South Africa friends, this is all perfectly normal.. . all perfectly insane.)  So, the CSS Tactical officers come, bulletproof vests on, holsters unsnapped.  Using the secret code, they let themselves in our electric gate, and with torches drawn, walk around the garden checking every inch of the property.   I have the puppies inside so they won’t freak out.  But through the window, they see the guys walking around the yard.  They freak out. 

Once the CSS Tactical guys leave, I let the freaked-out puppies outside to investigate.  Shaka, tail high, fur raised, barks his little macho head off.   Sniffing around, barking, sniffing, gradually increasing his distance from the house, doing his own check of the property, following the trail of the “intruders”.  Peppa barks too, but from the safety of inside, her tail tucked between her legs in fear. I can almost hear her thinking, “Please, please, please, don’t let there be anybody out there.” 

Then for the rest of the night, they are jittery, startling easily at imagined sounds, breaking into duets of barking.  My eyes follow theirs out the glass door, staring at dangerous nothingness.  On edge myself,  I take the panic button down off the wall and put it in my pocket. I let Shaka out to do a few more rounds of the perimeter as the night progresses.

As I sit there on my sofa, the three of us jittery and on edge, I realize there is something wrong with this picture.  I’m pretty sure it is commonly held belief that dogs, in addition to the high walls, electric fence, and alarm system,* are a valuable addition to one’s security measures.  So how come I find myself sitting there, two dogs by my side, feeling more unsafe and nervous than I have in almost two years of living here?

Do you think it is because they are only Guard Puppies?   Please tell me that as they mature, they will learn to distinguish between real and imagined danger.    Tell me that they will learn to remain calm and collected until it is appropriate not to be.   Tell me one day they will actually make me feel more secure not less.  Because if not, the “con” column on this dog-owning thing is growing dangerously close to a critical tipping point. Tipping to what I am not exactly sure. But tipping to something not good. 

* For almost the whole time I have been here I have been meaning to do a blog about the incredible lengths we go here in the Northern suburbs to keep ourselves safe.  About how insane it is.   Maybe I haven't written it yet because I don't like to think how quickly I embraced it all and adapted to the insanity.  

The Tables Astonishingly, Disturbingly, Sweetly Turned

Yesterday, Alexander begged me to play this game that he and his mate, Tutty, invented over the weekend. You stand on opposite sides of the trampoline and throw a tennis ball at one another. The object is to make a throw that bounces at least once on the trampoline and is hard enough or tricky enough so that the other player cannot catch it and it goes behind him/her.

I’m not a very good thrower. I blame my father.  As far as I’m concerned that fell directly in his column of parental responsibilities.  But being a mature grown-up, I took matters into my own hands, and have tried to learn as an adult. I’ve studied others as they throw. I’ve asked friends for tips.  I even hired my basketball coach once to teach me how to throw a baseball.   None of it seemed to make a difference and so I still have that classic, awkward, completely ineffectual throw. I think you probably know exactly what I am talking about.

But I can catch. I have good eye-hand coordination.  I'm proud of my ability to snag a ball out of the air.

So I’m playing, apologizing for my lame throws that miss the trampoline entirely, but I’m confident in my defense.   I catch some and some go past me.   Once I get the hang of it, I can pay more attention, and do you know what I see?   Alexander is taking some heat off his throws!  He is putting only about 50% zing on the ball!   

I play on, but inside I am thinking WHEN IN THE HELL DID THIS HAPPEN!!

I, the mother, the parent, the adult, am supposed to be taking something off my throws so my little boy won’t get discouraged, won’t give up, will keep playing and get better.   When did this natural order of things get reversed???   Inwardly, I am mad, and want to yell at him “Give me what you got, I can handle it!” But the truth is I probably can’t. Already, I am only stopping about half of his half-zing balls.   Alexander, wisely, doesn’t give me what he’s got because he knows, in fact, I can’t handle it. And if he did, then what?  I will get discouraged, I will give up and I won’t play anymore.   (Okay, I know this doesn't speak well of my character, but what's new?)

Alexander's patience with my ineptitude is remarkable.  But let’s be clear - Alexander has some definite self-interest at heart here.  He really loves this game and he wants someone to play with when his mates aren’t around.   It behooves him to be mindful of my fragile ego, to take care that I don’t get discouraged, to build me up ever so carefully so I will always want to play.  (Just like I tried to do with him with tennis. Except my patience with Alexander in that regard was less than remarkable.  My punishment for opposite-of-remarkable patience?   He hates the game.  But that is another blog.)

But whatever Alexander's motivation, I find this reversal of roles astonishing and disturbing and disconcerting.  It brings the future too frighteningly close.   What’s next – him cutting my meat into little pieces so I don’t choke?

I am not ready.  I cannot have it.  I am in a full on search for someone who can (in secret) teach me to throw  my own zingers, and pride evaporated, to catch.

Poets, and Painters, and Dancers. . .

I haven't really come up with a good way to preface this piece, so I decided it didn't need prefacing!  Just jumping right on in.  

I am part of a group, which we have imperfectly called the White Accountability Group, that is, among other things, committed to action white people can/must take to end the injustice of racism.  A couple of weeks ago, we came together over a weekend for a facilitated exploration of what our way forward is going to be.   Several times throughout the weekend, because race/racial injustice is a tangled and complex issue, one of us would not be able to find the words to express what we were thinking or feeling.  We came to the conclusion that for some thoughts, maybe there just aren’t the words, or perhaps not words in the English language, or perhaps thoughts that just can't be expressed using conventional conversation.

Another conclusion we came to – or really just  a reminder of what we already knew – was that core to all our work needs to be the practice of making authentic connections with other people, with other white people and with people of color.  To transcend our divisions – many of which we as human beings have dsyfunctionally constructed – by taking the risk to connect from our true, most authentic, human selves. 

The next weekend , totally unrelated, or so I thought, I attended my first Jozi House of Poetry – a monthly poetry session held at POPArt in Maboneng . The audience was beautifully diverse – in all manner of ways.  I knew a few folks, but none well (except my family which I had dragged along).  For over an hour we were transported by the three featured poets who more performed than read their poetry. 

As I sat with these virtual strangers, and the poets took us on soaring flights through the human condition, I noticed we would together shake our heads, smile, laugh, sigh in collective recognition of the world the poets painted for us.  I found the last poet dazzling.  She had no mercy for us her audience as she stroked and thrashed us with her words.   Several times I sucked in my breath, only exhaling when I realized I had stopped breathing.  At the conclusion of one particularly tumultuous ride, still coming down, we the audience could only muster a weak clap.  Our poet, so wise, said “you don’t have to clap, just breathe.”  We that represented the racial spectrum, spanned decades, men and women, straight and gay had been so taken, so moved that we had collectively forgotten to breathe.      

And it was here where my two weekends came together.  Through poetry, words exquisitely strung together liberated from rules and constraints, these artists expressed that which is not expressable in everyday language.  And these poets spoke about that which is human and universal, about what we all feel and know, and thus profoundly connected us across our differences.  

As I sat there, amongst all these people whose breath had been taken away by these poet magicians, I had one of those all too rare aha moments.   I know I come to it late, I know many, many others have come to this before, but I finally understood the role that art – poetry, dance, paintings, music  - plays, must play, in helping us to explore and understand and express those things which keep us separate and estranged from one another, and from our own humanity.  Spoken language, when not used with the care of a poet, will betray us by its inadequacy to cover this difficult terrain.  We must turn to art, paintings, dance, music, sculpture to help us understand how we find ourselves here, so estranged and hurt.  We must turn to art to help us complete our difficult conversations.  And we must turn to art to allow us blessedly to dwell in our connectedness.

Thank you poets, and painters, and dancers for helping us, we humans who have so damaged ourselves by our false divisions, grow whole again.   

Reliving the Joy and the Trauma - Why having new puppies is likehavingnew babies

I wrote the following during early days in our puppy ownership.   I have been so struck by how similar my experience and the resulting feelings are to the ones I had during early days of parenting new babies.  Overwhelmed, smitten, resentful, shocked, totally incompetent, proudly competent.  Below are a few that I captured as I was experiencing them.  The good news is that two weeks in, unlike with new human babies, most of these feelings have mellowed as I get the hang of this puppy raising thing.  

1)   Especially in the beginning, it all seems so ridiculously overwhelming and like such a bad idea. We jumped into this project without a clue what we were getting ourselves into.  I recognize this feeling -- I've been here before.  It is the feeling one has when you embark on a brand new venture and you are at the bottom of the learning curve - only from this early vantage point, there is no gently sloping curve in sight.  It is all a long, unforgiving line, straight up. 

2)  As I am getting ready for bed at the end of the day, I realize I have gotten NOTHING done.  Nothing that I planned on anyway.   Nothing constructive that I used to get done, pre-puppy.   For a person like me who gets a lot of pleasure (okay, maybe an out-of-proportion amount of pleasure) from checking off those “to do’s”, this is a very unnerving way to live one’s life.

3)     By scaling aforementioned learning harsh, unforgiving straight-up line, I find myself acquiring an amazing number of new skills.  Sometimes at the end of the day, the feeling of being overwhelmed is mitigated a bit by a sense of satisfaction at my mastery of these valuable life skills.   De-fleaing, de-worming, knowing which kinds of food result in what kind of poop skills.  All now nicely incorporated into my CV.

4)     I spend way, way, way too much time thinking about poop, planning my day around poop times, looking at poop, worrying about abnormal poops.   My mind has turned to poop, all clever thoughts have been pushed out.  (aren't you glad I didn't feel compelled to illustrate this one with a photo?)

 5)     I also spend inordinate amounts of time watching my babies. Watching them play, watching them sleep,watching them chew bones.  It is all extraordinarily fascinating.  In a way that no one else’s puppies ever were or ever will be.

  6)     Suddenly, things which must have been there all along become visible to my new dog-owning eyes.  Pet stores, chew toys at Pick N Pay, dogs behind every single bloody gate in our neighborhood, that insist on barking at us as we take our cowering Peppa for a walk. 




   7)     Their stuff is all over the house – and the garden.   I can’t keep order. I decide there are no systems of organization invented to manage the chaos.

   

   8)   Worry, worry, worry.  Take them to the vet or just wait a few days?   Future psychopath dog or just normal puppy behaviour?   Crate training or not?  Worry that I'm worrying too much.  Worry that I'm not worrying enough. 

9)  Differences in spousal personalities are put in sharp relief.  Suffice it to say, I am high strung, Bill is low strung.

10)  I find myself tip-toeing around when they are napping not for their sake but for my own. 

11)  I am so so so happy to leave them behind and get a break.  I am moderately happy to come back and see their smiling little puppy faces. (just kidding – of course, I am so so so happy to come back to them.)

   12)   I am awed by the brilliance of mother nature in making them so darned adorable so that no matter how naughty they are I won’t kill them.   Doubling that cuteness when they are sleeping and at their most vulnerable is sheer mother nature genius.