The elusive office

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The freelance life agrees with me. The very real and tangible poverty aside, the hours, the work and the pajamas are simply grand. Even so, I miss being in an office. The bustle when a story breaks and being privvy to private phone calls and emotional dramas agree with my inner voyeur. I also love the daily what’s-for-lunch conversations. You wouldn’t think that’s something worth missing, but there you have it. I am a chatter, a sharer, a curious lunchtime observer.

I’m helping out at tvplus magazine this week. It couldn’t have come at a better time. Having recently returned from a surprise trip to New York (let’s all take a moment to process that), I was wrestling the Real Life Blues. The bustle of the New York streets made my livingroom office seem especially sad. It’s so great to be back in an office environment, especially because I know so many people here (relics from my ZOO days). I’m here until the end of the week, enjoying proper Internet and occasional coffees with my homie. I’m also using the opportunity to think about what I really want in life. Again.

Let’s get to it, then.

Tales from the living room

It must be said, dear readers, that while I have much to say about my experiences of the last quarter, I have very little time and energy to say it here. For those of you who do not follow me on one of my ten million social networking accounts (all of which have also fallen by the wayside in recent days), a quick recap:

At least once a year I make a significant change. When I’m lazy, the change generally involves moving into a new apartment. Last year I adopted a gorgeous ginger cat after moving into my current lodgings. In an attempt to save him the trouble of relocating (because, you know, he judges me) I decided instead to enrol for my honours degree in Applied Linguistics (which came as a surprise to most people, which came as a surprise to me. Apparently everyone thought I studied journalism. Surprise, bitches!). Not satisfied with this enormous life-changing decision and indulging my predisposition to over-commit, I also decided that I will attempt a serious, for realzies, honest to Bob, I-swear-he’s-real relationship. Easy, I thought. Love, in turn, made me soft in the head, so I thought it would be a good idea – in addition to enrolling for a degree and having a grownup relationship – to also quit my full-time employment and the comfort of a steady income for the more adventurous life of a penniless writer.

The catalyst. (herher)

These decisions, bold and fantastic as they are, had consequences. Many, many consequences. Of course, some consequences are delightful. For example: Not having enough time to study because I have too much work or not having enough time to work because I have too much boyfriend. Sadly, the list of not-so-pleasant consequences involve my hair falling out by the fistful, biting my bottom lip raw and sneaky attacks of emotion. As a result of my stresses and lack of funds, I now resemble a bald, homeless tik addict with a bad case of the weepies. (I know what tik addicts look like, because I translated an article about it the other day and because I have a mirror.)

On the flipside, I’m having loads of fun rediscovering my inner translator, especially now that I’m spending quite a bit of time studying translation theory. I’m also enjoying doing research for my honours essay. I decided to do an analysis of language usage in Western reporting on African conflicts by looking at newspaper articles from the conflict in Côte d’Ivoire. I absolutely love reading up on different methods of analysis, although I find it extremely daunting to put anything on paper.

Every now and again I’m lucky enough to do some writing for an Afrikaans publication, which I’m enjoying endlessly. I haven’t written in Afrikaans in years, so getting back in touch with the language is an amazing privilege.

I’m also very excited about my business cards, which is something only a small business owner would say. I don’t care, though, because I am a small business owner…with business cards.

It’s a bumpy ride, dear friends, and the nights are lonely. (Actually the days are lonely. The nights are okay, but it doesn’t sound quite as dramatic, see?) My to-do list includes blogging more, finding more work, being a better student and making enough money to employ someone to talk to me. For now I’ll be happy to achieve only one of the above. Let me get to it!

(hi)story

Freelancing is a great way to meet people (providing you have work, of course. If you don’t, you don’t meet anyone but your cat on its way to your bed where it takes a nap and ignores you all day). Over the last two weeks my freelance work for Die Taalgenoot gave me the opportunity to meet such a wonderful bunch of South Africans that I’ve fallen in love with the country all over again.

For my three articles I spoke to a 27-year-old Afrikaans rocker with a snor and a great sense of humour, a gay, married, Afrikaans/English/Italian couple with a love for showbiz and traditional cooking á la District Six, a no-nonsense veteran cook and author and one of her former Biology students who came to own one of our most famous restaurants without ever wanting to. I also spoke to a(nother) 20-something artist whose ambition puts me to shame.

In my interview with rocker Bouwer Bosch, he mentioned how much stories affect and inspire him. We diverged from the interview for a moment to talk about our South African tendency to use stories to make sense of the world. Of course, anyone who has heard the term ‘creation myth’ knows that stories have been around since humans developed the ability to speak to figure out our place in the overwhelming cosmos.

In South Africa’s tumultuous history our ability to tell stories has shaped who we’ve become as a nation. Horror stories from the Boer War, the Great Depression and the Apartheid years have helped us understand the human element of our history. Concentration camps didn’t hold thousands of people, it imprisoned one little boy who only wanted a piece of cheese before he died. Apartheid didn’t affect a faceless mass, it affected a friend’s father who was wrongfully imprisoned. We use stories to humanise and dehumanise, to honour or to vilify.

While telling stories is a very natural activity among humans, our ability to tell stories with such emotion and colour, with so much love and nostalgia and sometimes with such good intent is what makes us such a beautiful nation. It is also what makes my job the best one in the world.

Simplicity

One of the great delights of being a grownup is watching movies on a school night. Last night’s post-dinner offering was the gorgeous Tree of Life by Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line).

The film was a triumph in many respects. Director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki tipped his hat to French Impressionist cinema through his point of view shots and the soundtrack is simply breathtaking. The film was a 139 minute visual and audio feast that possibly changed my expectations of the medium forever.

What bothered me about the film is how the story was told. In addition to the film’s unusual visual treatment, solid soundtrack and difficult themes, the disrupted narrative seemed excessive. Disrupted narrative is not an unfamiliar narrative style in modern cinema, but bothersome when coupled the film’s richness in other respects. The film lacked simplicity, which is why it won’t feature on the very important Kristia’s Top Five Films Of All Time.

In life, in cooking, in emotion, one can afford the luxury of grandeur and complication, but it takes only a basic knowledge of art to understand the great artist values simplicity. Michelangelo, Renoir, Picasso and Marlene Dumas belong to completely different movements, have vastly different styles and yet all share simplicity, either of subject, form or style.

Marlene Dumas

I am a firm believer in simplicity in writing. My belief was strengthened by a recent reading of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged – a book in which a simple concept is communicated through repetition, an inordinate amount of adjectives and structurally complicated sentences. Imagine my delight and relief when I started on Ernest Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, clean and clear in language and form, yet rich and rewarding in subject.

In my research for post I found this incredible essay by American novelist Frank Norris, dealing with simplicity in art in such a simple and effective way that I strongly encourage everyone to read it – whether you’re involved in the arts or you’re simply trying to be good at your day job.
Here’s a small extract to whet your appetite:

“Elaborate phrase, rhetoric, the intimacy of metaphor and allegory and simile is forgivable for the unimportant episodes where the interest of the narrative is languid; where we are willing to watch the author’s ingenuity in the matter of scrolls and fretwork and mosaics-rococo work. But when the catastrophe comes, when the narrative swings clear upon its pivot and we are lifted with it from out the world of our surroundings, we want to forget the author. We want no adjectives to blur our substantives.”

As always I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter. You can comment by registering on the site or tell me what you think on the Facebook page. Take that, spammers!

The theoretical zen of uncertainty

Uncertainty is the best and worst part about freelancing. I love that I don’t know what will happen from one day to the next. I feel like a child discovering a little wonder under every stone. I’m not too fond of the uncertainty surrounding my finances, but if all goes according to my master plan, I will soon be rich and this problem will be eliminated altogether.

Bittersweet uncertainty is proving to be a challenge in the day-to-day operation of Wordsmyth. Unlike my brief tango with the corporate monster I don’t have a rough idea of what will happen that day. At the office, I would have made a cup of coffee around ten. At Wordsmyth HQ, I could have finished all my work for the day by ten, I could still be in bed or I could happily be doing my nails/washing/hair.

I tend to want to do everything I need to do, my work, story ideas, pitches, social media, blogs, research and studies all at once. The minute I sink my teeth into one, I start wondering about the other.

I read a really cool article about becoming very good at something and a lot of what the writer says about our need to be constantly stimulated made my Calvinistic guilt gland swell. Since I started doing yoga (and subsequently quit but plan to start again, I swear) I’ve been fascinated by the idea of being one-pointed (that was my yogi’s official term). In yoga it refers to focusing on a single point or thought in order to keep your balance long enough to benefit from the pose.

To achieve this elusive state of single-mindedness or one-pointedness or just focus (for those who aren’t into all that esoteric stuff) I have decided on the following strategy:

1. Turn off cell phone, email, Facebook, put away all wily magazines and books that threaten to distract me from my purpose.

2. Make a list. (I love lists)

3. Indulge in distractions for short periods after each item on the list is completed.

4. Don’t eat in front of the computer. It’s such a bad habit and so unnecessary. Why I do it is beyond me.

Whether or not this plan will work remains to be seen. I’ll keep you posted, though.

Because of a pesky spam problem, I have disabled the comments section on this blog. You are more than welcome to comment on the Wordsmyth Facebook page should you feel the desire to do so.

Here we go!

2012 might be in full swing, but on this side of the real world the swinging has not yet begun. I’m kicking off with my first translation work of the year today. As any freelancer can tell you, all steady work is exciting work so my metaphorical pencils are sharpened and I’m good to go!

That said, it seems like a world of agonising admin awaits before I can really sink my teeth into the new year. My freelance career (in its infancy, but a career no less) has presented some unexpected challenges, not least of which the dreaded Internet Issue.

I tend to move a lot, so I try never to tie myself down to a particular dwelling. This means I prefer a 3G connection that I can carry around with me to a line that takes weeks to sort out and presents administrative challenges whenever the urge to relocate hits. Sadly my service provider of choice (this is not Hello Peter, so I’m not going to say that it’s Vodacom) is overpriced and I have almost zero 3G reception in my area. On any given weekday an observer might find me furiously and impotently cursing at the naked skies. I have not yet figured out a solution to this exasperating obstacle, so please feel free to suggest alternatives.

I also have to make work of finding new clients this year. Salesmanship is a skill that I do not yet possess, but life’s for learning, eh? If you happen to pass me pushing a trolley containing the last of my earthly possessions by the end of the year you can assume that I failed in this regard.

The freelancer's mantra

Challenges aside, 2012 will be nothing if not exciting. I’m back at varsity this year to complete my Honours degree, I’m looking forward to a trip to New York with the love of my life in April and I’m in the process of de-cluttering my home and workspace.

Here’s to 2012 – the year of the dragon, the eye of the tiger, the rider on the storm!

Sing me a dream

Roughly two years ago I had a one of those nights where my brain refused to let my body sleep. At the time I was working for a great company named Medios. My boss and I had been discussing the future of the company and similar grown-up things the day before. Coming from a background in writing, I started dreaming up a grand scheme involving a writing department that would allow us to charge for any writing outside of our normal PR and advertising retainers.

I hopped out of bed, grabbed a notebook and a pencil and started devising business world domination through copywriting. Late night thoughts tend to be a little grandiose. Of course I had no idea at the time that my late night plan would take a slight detour through the corporate world and eventually bring me back to the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do (for an income, I mean. I want to do a lot of things.)

Today I write my first blog entry in a while on this blog, not as an employee with a dream, but as an owner with a lot of work to do. My baby has grown into a toddler who tends to run around and pee on things. Like any parent I need to grow with my kid, I need to learn a special kind of patience, I need to be responsible and wise and open to criticism. I don’t expect it to be easy, but I know that this is where I need to be.

2011 has given me the space to grow into a person that I can actually live with. It has given me a push to follow a dream, courage to let love in and just the right amount of levelheadedness to take care of myself. It also left me with just a smidgeon of crazy to remind me that beauty can take me by surprise at any second.

I’m off to New Zealand in less than a week. I don’t know if I’ll blog from there or not, so this might be Wordsmyth’s farewell to 2011. Thank you, 2011. You were a bit of a dick at times, I won’t lie, but all in all I like you. I’ll leave you with one of my favourites of the year.

Merry Christmas!

Discovery!

The thing I love most about social networks in general, and Twitter in particular, is that it can keep me entertained for hours. I find everything from interesting blogs to new music to restaurant recommendations and punny jokes on social networks. I believe in social networks like Batman believes in Gotham.

Thanks to Twitter I disovered two new things today:

Numero uno: One of my very favourite local bands, Wrestelerish, released a new single. I got to listen to it, and now you can too! Click here!

I have to admit, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of SoundCloud. I often have trouble listening to tracks. Luckily the gods of local tunes defeated the devils of SoundCloud today and I got to do a couple of minutes of the old chair boogie.

Secondly, my beautiful, hyperactive, über-designer friend Minette (@minettepix) shared this link to a blog called Life, Love, Lenses. I love everything about this blog, from the name to the composition and texture of the images.

I was particularly enchanted by this image.

I could dress in black and read Camus

Happy browsing and merry chair wiggling.

Writers! Take heed!

I love blogs. I love writing them and I love reading them. At the moment I don’t get nearly enough time to do either, and I give myself a lot of flack for it. I have no idea why I put so much pressure on myself. It’s a very annoying trait which I plan to fix by drinking as much as possible.

In the meantime I’ll share this post I found this post on one of my favourite blogs, This Isn’t Happiness. Sometimes original content is just too much effort, especially in business writing. Every copywriter I know (and many, many copywriters I don’t know) is guilty of indulging in the odd cliché. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, but it’s good to be aware of the traps.

Go have a look at Top 100 Words and Phrases to Avoid.

I also recently found out that my friend Victoria Burkhart has a photography blog. Her career in the film industry means she travels all the time, and has ample opportunities to explore exotic shores through her lens. Take a little time to glimpse into her world.

Victoria Burkhart's photography blog

Winter

It’s hard to believe that we’re halfway through 2011. The year so far has been one of disillusionment. I was bitterly disappointed by a friend, the new job proved a lot harder than originally anticipated, otherwise solid relationships seem to be crumbling and my silence on the blogging front is testament to the fact that my creativity completely abandoned me somewhere between 31 December 2010 and today.

I find it especially hard to stay positive during the winter months. I seem to be living in the dark. It’s very hard to remind myself that this too shall pass, that spring will come again, that I will feel attractive and alive again, that I will write again. I always associate winter with solitude. I feel isolated and destitute when the trees are bare and small, dusty children shiver on the sidewalk.

A recent trip to Mozambique briefly pulled me from my annual emotional hibernation, took me away from the disappointments and the hardships and my wavering faith in myself. For a brief moment I could look at the ocean and recognize a little part of myself that is still very much alive and vibrant, but then I had to pack my bags and drive slowly back into winter.

I’m back again, and sleeping in my skin.

Winter of our discontent