The nature of the beastly budget

As I mentioned in my previous post, this year I’m all about making most of my finite and precious days on earth. To achieve this noble purpose, I need funding. Sponsors aren’t exactly lining up to help me out in this department, so I have to budget. For this purpose I created of my very grown-up Excel spreadsheet of budgeting doom.

Resolve: I had it

This spreadsheet, this thing of wonder, was going to help me achieve two things:

1. Settle my heaps of debt. Live and learn, right?

2. Ensure that I have money to go out for drinks at all times, including the weekend, nay, the very day before payday.

What I want to do. All the time.

I know that there’s supposed to be a savings component too, but this is a slow recovery. Give me time.

February was my first budget month, and I’ll be the first to admit that I made some mistakes:

D'oh = No dough

Mistake number one:
I used all the money I paid into my credit card to fund my frolicking. I actually withdrew the money from the account and spent the cash. No need to point out the massive fail there, kids. I get it.

Mistake number two:
I used the money I budgeted for groceries to fund my frolicking. This panned out because there’s always a dusty tin of beans somewhere in the kitchen cupboard. Not the most nutritious choice, I’ll admit, but what can you do?

Mistake number three:
I used some of the money I budgeted for petrol to fund my frolicking. As you can imagine I had some tense moments on the road in February.

Mistake number four:
I used the money I paid off on my Woolworths account (curse your tasty goodness, Woolies food store!) to fund my Valentine’s Dinner.*

In an attempt to rectify these mistakes, I made an effort to actually budget for my frolicking, which is obviously my most expensive habit. This seems like a good approach to me. It means my daily allowance is a little more, which means that I can happily frolic, eat and drive around. What more could a girl need, right?

Except…

As part of the new, improved, ready to celebrate me, I’ve identified thoughtful birthday presents for all my friends. I set out a budget for each friend months in advance and I even ordered some of the gifts already. Things were going swimmingly until I made an impulsive purchase that usurped my entire frolicking budget and then some. The result is a fair bit of anxiety about the state of my financial affairs on the first day of the month. †

Although my strategy in February wasn’t perfect, it was nice to know that I planned ahead and that I only ran out of money five days before payday, as opposed to the usual fifteen. Having said that, this month I’m missing out on fifteen stress-free, living large days that bad financial management offered me in the past.

Let’s hope I do better in April.

*The dinner was a huge success!
† Completely idiotic, considering that I budgeted for a bag, a grater and a very expensive gift that I don’t have to buy.

Celebrate good times!

For years I snorted disapprovingly at things like Easter egg hunts, Christmas and Valentine’s Day, but this year I’m checking out the beaten path.

As a child, every day was full of possibilities. The world was a large and magical place created just for me. I’m sad to admit that growing up changed a lot of that. While I’d love to say I’m the type of person who remained a child at heart, I can’t.

A Chinese Princess at the Chinese New Year's celebration

It took about a day of being an adult to make me realize it’s no picnic. Nobody’s around to protect me from the horrors of mankind anymore. War and politics and poverty and violence are realities I can’t ignore. Every day presents opportunities to fuck up. There’s a lot of pressure to be a good person, a good friend, a good citizen, successful, intelligent, beautiful and lovable. My daily routine is slowly killing my creativity and my belief that I can change the world.

Being realistic and practical are commendable qualities, but they aren’t qualities I value in my personal life. I’ve decided to create opportunities for the world to surprise me. If there’s a reason to celebrate, I’m doing it. Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day, Chinese New Year, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Youth Day, Human Rights Day, every single friend’s birthday (I’ll even throw in Hanukkah, if someone can explain it to me) will experience the full wrath of my uncontained joy. How’s that for an oxymoron?

Never too old: Dad and Santa

So far my strategy has panned out. Christmas was a lovely, mushy affair celebrated with family and friends over delicious meals. I danced in the rain on New Year’s Eve. I squealed like a piglet and bought a bunny-shaped balloon for Chinese New Year’s.

Crazy-eyed one-eared bunny balloon

Even Valentine’s Day panned out for a change. Instead of the usual dread, I approached the day with excitement. I started putting together a V-Day playlist a month before the day, I cooked pasta with butter sauce, I filled my home with people I love and I drank more white wine than anyone should ever drink.

My new, improved approach to Valentine’s Day earned me some love from the Universe in general, and my friend Jian Reis in particular. Not only did I get a Batman duckie chocolate and a heart-shaped note from my friend Donnay, a heart-shaped cookie from my cousin Carina, a homemade box of homemade heart-shaped dark chocolates from my forever-in-my-heart roommate Mel, heart-shaped chocolates from my best friend Annerien and roses from Sparrow, I also got roses and a whole box full of treats (including a Batman graphic novel) from Jian!

The first red roses I've ever gotten for V-day

To add to the awesomeness, an impulsive decision to stop at Mama Shebeen’s in Greenside got me free beer (not the best idea after two bottles of white wine) and a free show with banjos! I love banjos! And better yet, the banjo was played by a bearded man! Bearded banjo man! Lots of exclamation marks!

Bearded banjo man!

Anyhoo, I shall continue on my quest to celebrate whatever I can, but the rest of the celebrations have a lot to live up to. And so, to Easter!

Unique? Maybe not

I’ve been back at work for four days and I’m finally excited about 2011. I haven’t blogged in a while, but I have a good reason. Recent structural changes in Medios means that Wordsmyth as a department won’t exist anymore. While I’ll write for Medios on occasion, I’ve been promoted (or something) to client liaison manager. On Monday one of my favourite writers Carina van Heerden will take over the majority of writing and PR responsibilities.

I considered commiting blog suicide (again), but I just can’t do it. I figure, seeing as I’m not just a writer anymore I can use this blog for all sorts of other things, like talking about my new job and complaining about my love life. Okay, so maybe I don’t have a definite plan yet, but I’ll get there.

We (by ‘we’ I mean Medios, but I don’t really want to say it for fear that someone might think I’m punting Medios when all I really want to do is write about this thing I read) recently got commissioned to produce web copy and a catalogue for this rad new client called Liv’ In. I’m like a little kid in a candy store about this client! I won’t go into it right now, but I’d like to mention, just by the by, that this client supplies this, this and this, amongst other things. I’ve already spent next month’s salary and bought birthday presents for everyone I know in my head.

I’m in the process of writing company descriptions for each of the product ranges, which is proving to be quite the challenge. As always, I rely quite heavily on the Dictionary application on my Mac, which has a righteous Thesaurus feature that makes my life a whole lot simpler. What I found interesting and what I’d like to share is the note on the word ‘unique’. I’m glad I read it, and I think it’s something every writer should note.

WORD NOTE
unique

This is one of a class of adjectives, sometimes called uncomparables, that present special problems. Among other uncomparables are precise, exact, correct, whole, accurate, preferable, inevitable, possible, false; there are probably two dozen in all. These adjectives all describe absolute, non-negotiable states: something is either false or it’s not; something is either whole or it’s not.

Many writers, though, get careless and try to modify uncomparables with comparatives like more and less or intensives like very. If you really think about them, the core assertions in sentences like War is becoming increasingly inevitable as Middle East tensions rise,Their cost estimate was more accurate than the other firms’, and As a mortician, he has a very unique attitude make no sense. If something is inevitable, it is bound to happen; it cannot be bound to happen and then somehow even more bound to happen.

Unique already means one-of-a-kind, so the adjective phrase very unique is at best redundant and at worst stupid, like audible to the ear or rectangular in shape. Uncomparable-type boners can be easily fixed—War is looking increasingly inevitable; Their estimate was more nearly accurate; He has a unique attitude—but for writers the hard part is noticing such errors in the first place. You can blame the culture of marketing for some of this difficulty.

As the number and rhetorical volume of U.S. ads increase, we become inured to hyperbolic language, which then forces marketers to load superlatives and uncomparables with high-octane modifiers (special?very special?super-special!?mega-special!!). So, a deeper issue implicit in the problem of uncomparables concerns the dissimilarities between Standard Written English and the language of advertising.

Today’s “Advertising English,” which probably deserves to be studied as its own dialect, operates under very different syntactic rules than SWE, primarily because Advertising English’s goals and assumptions are different. Sentences like We offer a totally unique dining experience, Come on down and receive your free gift, and Save up to fifty percent, and more! are perfectly OK in Advertising English, but this is because AE is aimed at people who are not paying close attention. If your audience is by definition involuntary, distracted, and numbed, then free gift and totally unique stand a better chance of penetrating their awareness—and simple penetration is what Advertising English is all about. The goals and assumptions of Standard Written English are obviously far more complex, but one axiom of SWE is that your reader is paying close attention and will expect you to have done the same.

Now that you’ve read this wonderful piece of information, here’s my song for the week. Enjoy!

Shut up! It’s Christmas!

I know all the cool kids hate Christmas, but I absolutely love this time of year. I’ve been getting uphill from the hip and hipsters alike, so I thought I’d write a Christmas Declaration to silence the haters.

First of all there’s the weather. The days are balmy and beautiful. Everything is more alive. The sky is a particular hue of deep blue that makes me feel like I’m part of something great. I spend days floating in the swimming pool, watching clouds change shape, listening to my heart beating. Nothing seems important or scary in that state of weightlessness.

The warm December breeze carries with it the smell of roses in bloom, of freshly cut grass, of braaivleisvure, of youth and happiness. My mom’s house smells of cinnamon and ginger, of roast beef and coriander, of mustard and caramel, of her perfume and dad’s shaving cream. If I sit very still I can smell cigarettes, dried orange peel and diakenpilletjies. The mornings smell of toast and butter and sweet jam, the evenings of red wine. I carry the smell of dust and droplets on my own skin and I forget that I ever have to spend days cut off from the pulsating vitality of everything around me.

December demands commitment to exposed skin and emotions: bare feet on wooden floors and wet grass, bare shoulders to the sun, eye contact, honesty. It requires leaps of faith and offers all the familiar comforts in return.

And then there’s Christmas. While religious celebrations marked the holiday when I was growing up, these days the holiday reminds me to take a step back and appreciate that we’re all still here, still alive, still okay. There’s a sense that anything is possible. While I appreciate that this feeling is probably the result of way too many Christmas miracle movies and watching Love Actually about fifty times a year, I don’t care.

My dear friend Anesta, Santa and me

For 364 days a year I have to face the fact that he’ll never love me the way I wanted him to or that I’ll probably never become a recording artist. I have to pay medical aid and insurance, I have to get up way too early, I have to wash dishes and shave my armpits and ensure that I get enough iron in my diet, I have to scrub the toilet and deal with period pain.

What is so wrong with taking one day to dream of something unlikely and incredible? Why on earth wouldn’t he show up smelling of soap and adoration, carrying a giant red box containing a puppy and his undying devotion? Why wouldn’t my carol singing lead to a recording deal? Why wouldn’t this year be the last year I’d ever have to worry about taxes or gaining weight or my parents’ safety? Why can’t I have a miracle? It’s Christmas!

Daily Maverick Gathering: The unasked question

Khaya Dlanga‘s speech at The Daily Maverick Gathering caused quite the stir. After the session I could hear his name all over the lobby. I could almost see giant pink marshmallows where bloody, veiny human hearts usually beat. A new acquaintance sidled up to me to discuss his inspirational speech.

Khaya’s speech was fantastic and I don’t want to take away from that. It was heartfelt and lyrical and beautiful. It was full of that special kind of African music that tends to soften the hardest of hearts. I’ll post a link to it at the end of this post. It’s worth the read.

However, being under 30, Khaya’s speech left me feeling panicked. At first I thought it was because the South African youth was plucked from a global setting and scrutinised in the nude in the unforgiving light of expectation. I was actually going to ask him about his opinion on the South African youth in a global context, considering that materialism and general shallowness seem to be symptoms of our times. Unfortunately the schedule didn’t allow for a Q&A. I would still like to hear his thoughts on the matter.

Later I realised that wasn’t what upset me. To be completely honest, I wondered if Khaya was talking about me. I am a 26-year-old South African, so technically I was precisely whom he was referring to, and yet my ancestors didn’t die or even fight in the struggle. While I’d like to whistle a tune and stare nonchalantly into space when the subject arises, we have to face the fact that there was a reason for the struggle. I’m a middleclass, white, Afrikaans-speaking person. I might as well paint a scarlet letter on my shirt.

Afrikaner

I’m bourgeois by birth, the privileged minority. The amount of community service I do, how multi-racial my group of friends is and the amount of time I spend in Soweto isn’t going to change the fact that ancestrally speaking, my historical point of view isn’t at all the same as that of the majority of my peers. Am I less entitled to the fruits of the struggle than those whose parents fought and bled for our liberation? Am I (and others like me) still part of the South African youth Khaya was referring to?

I love this country. I love living here. I feel positive about my future in South Africa, although I get a little nervous when my parents wake up with a thug in their house at one in the morning. I agree that we need to have some sort of game plan, but I wonder if the united front Khaya envisioned for us is possible without establishing my place among a small group of individuals known as “the South African youth”. If there’s a game plan I want in. I contribute to the South African society, I work hard, I pay taxes, I try to help others. If we’re picking leaders, I want to be in the running, and that means that I’ll bring my particular brand of ancestry with me. I can’t help but wonder if there will be a seat for me.

Read Khaya’s speech here.

Follow Khaya Dlanga on Twitter here.

To read my first entry on The Daily Maverick Gathering, click here.

The Gathering: Magic *

On Thursday 4 October South African online news fiends and tongue-in-cheekers The Daily Maverick hosted its first ever Gathering. 150 guests in mostly vertically striped button shirts rocked up at the Sandton Theatre on the Square (which is a theatre on the square in Sandton, in case you didn’t pick up on that) to listen to some of the finest South African minds on a number of topics.

The Daily Maverick

Coffee and awkward sussing-out-strangers before the session made me realise two things:

1. Air conditioners are like toenails – you don’t really think about them until they’re not there.

2. I should have thought about becoming a yacht designer, but more on that later.

I wanted to write a blog about The Gathering, but after a day of brain explosions I decided to write a series of blogs instead. I’m pretty confident that The Daily Maverick will post some of the speeches on its website, so I’ll link through to everything at the end of each article. In the meanwhile it’s worth checking out the Twitter stream on the event here.

Until I’ve said everything I have to say about the event, I’ll write one post per day (except for weekends, because I like to believe that I have a life).

For now I’ll send a #FF shout-out to all the speakers:

Richard Mulholland
Ray Hartley
Khaya Dlanga
Nic Dawes
Lauren Beukes
Victor Dlamini
Mike Ratcliffe
Ivo Vegter
Toby Shapshak
Stephen Grootes

Also follow:

Phillip de Wet
The Daily Maverick

That’s it for today, kids. Tune in on Monday for more. In the meantime, join the Wordsmyth Facebook group here.

* (Sorry, I couldn’t help it)

P.S. If anybody knows how I can stop WordPress from being a sonofabitch, I’d really appreciate it if you could drop me a line.

Talent? What does that mean?

I’ve been having dreams about this guy. To be honest, the whole situation is starting to weird me out. About two years ago I met Dreamboy through mutual acquaintances. On the night we met he had enough whiskey to kill a horse and I was trying to figure out if I was in love with my best friend. I don’t even think we spoke to each other. The thing is, our mutual friends both adore him. One was (and probably still is) hopelessly in love with him, and so was the other (maybe in a more platonic way, but love is love). The girl across the table was practically salivating. The fact that Dreamboy hypnotised an entire table with his presence made me take an interest.

Dreamboy - A lot like this, but different

Of course he had to be a writer. I mean I couldn’t meet a brilliant astrophysicist. Oh, no! I had to meet someone whose sole purpose in life was to make me doubt my own abilities. And he was good. Really, really, really good. He worked for the publications I wanted to work for, he wrote the stories I wanted to write in the way that I wanted to write them. It was very annoying and very impressive.

Then, some time ago, I dreamt that Dreamboy was working for our company. (I actually approached Dreamboy in real life to freelance for Wordsmyth. He really is that good.) In this dream I walked into the office, and there he was – all talented and curly-haired. Man, was I a happy camper. As dreams go he turned out to be someone else, I was bummed and then I woke up. A month or so later I dreamt that Dreamboy wanted my help. For reasons unknown he couldn’t get in touch with me. I felt helpless and woke up.

Dreams - sneaky buggers

Because I’m incapable of just accepting the universe as it is (you know… crazy dreams about people that I’ve never actually had a conversation with) I’ve been thinking about talent. I know this guy is really talented. I also happen to know that he’s travelled the world and had a pretty sweet life, all things considered. He’s educated, he’s been exposed to all sorts of stimulating people throughout his life and he happens to be intelligent. But so has a million other people. What is it about what he does that makes his work so special?

It took me a really long time to figure out that I find his work wonderful because I can see him in it. A mentor once told me if you can read, you can do anything. Dreamboy has all the skills to write a very good article, but that’s not what makes him good. His work is intriguing because I can almost hear him speaking when I read his articles. I can pick up a little bit about his interests, about the books he’s read, about his sense of humour and his background in every article.

This realisation got me thinking about all the other people I find incredible, from Beethoven to Marlene Dumas to Will Taylor to Band of Horses (the official Wordsmyth band) to the T-Shirt Terrorist to my friend Morné who made postcards about nothing. Talent, I think, is about individuality. It’s about finding a way to show the world that your fingerprint isn’t the only unique thing about you, that among millions of people who’ve had all the opportunities you had you could still make something worth dreaming about.

Advertising sales reps: Are they human?

A strong communist streak, a suspicious disposition and a psychotic hate of bad copy makes me immune to advertising. While I appreciate a clever campaign and love a good pun, there is no campaign in the world that will make me buy something I wasn’t going to buy anyway. Or so I tell myself.

Telkom’s latest Heita campaign renewed my interest in the power of advertising. The Heita billboards all around Johannesburg were stunning. The gorgeous designs (kudos to the design team!) combined with the mystery around the product made for a very good (albeit expensive) campaign. Am I changing service providers because I like Telkom’s advertising more than Vodacom’s? Hell no.

Heita!

On a recent trip to Centurion, I giggled at Spur’s Beef me up, Skattie! billboard. Did I go to Spur that night? No. Did I start eating beef? No. On the same trip I got very annoyed at OUTsurance for telling me that Bryan Habana insures with them. This guy allows 100kg sweaty, mouth guard-wearing, ball-chasing men to tackle him out of his wits. He seems to think this is a good career choice. Forgive me for not taking his word on insurance.

Trust me, I know all about your insurance needs

What irks me most about this type of advertising is that I know a single well-placed billboard costs more than a fully functional search engine optimised website. Of course companies like Telkom, OUTsurance and Spur (apparently) can afford this type of branding, but us normal folk have to resort to silly things like measuring lead-to-sale conversions to determine the efficacy of a campaign.

My annoyance with the advertising industry might be a little unfair. I’ve been promised the sun, moon and stars by advertising sales reps (the clap on both your trousers!) from all walks of life. The conversations generally follow this pattern:

Rep: “With our magazine/billboard/electronic billboard/bathroom door advertising/in-store television screens/street lamp advertising your brand will be exposed to decision makers/millionaires/high LSM/the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Our previous client We Suck saw a gazillion percent increase in sales. In short, you’re doomed if you don’t spend R50 000 today.”

Give me your money!

They always deliver this speech wearing a goofy grin, too much makeup or flat and pointy shoes with striped shirts. They overwhelm you with statistics that seem really important but don’t really mean anything, they hound you day and night, they smell too good to be human and they don’t take a single breath when delivering a pitch. Sometimes the pressure gets too much, you give in and you have to spend your evenings trying to figure out why you’re advertising in the Jolly Roger bathroom considering half the patrons end up facing away from the door.

Perfect for your luxury brand, right?

I know it took me a long time to get to the point, but here it is: Be smart when you spend your advertising budget. Forget about how many people see your advert and focus on whether or not the right people see your brand. Clever billboards will probably earn you a pat on the back from other advertising types and do wonders for branding, but the cost to sale on a billboard generally isn’t worth it.

Is it enough?

This morning the office is a disaster. Boxes of perfume obstruct walkways; chairs face away from desks; files are sprawled open in a very ungainly fashion; open cupboard doors reveal unorganised office supplies; dirty coffee mugs and scraps of paper cover every surface. A three-quarter bottle of rosy, pink wine covered in oily finger marks is oddly alluring among pizza boxes and jellybeans.

It’s hard to understand how we’ve gone from running like a well-oiled machine to a mechanical calamity within a week. I could think of about a million things and a couple of people to blame, but what would be the point?

I love coming to the office. I love catching up with colleagues and hearing about office politics and shooting the bull with Abigail. I even love it when it’s a fiasco, like today. It’s frustrating that I can’t shoulder some of the responsibility to give the people I love a breather, but it’s nice to know that my presence here makes a difference.

While Sparrow puts out fires in a meeting with Medios’ biggest client, I will unpack the dishwasher. While he tries to convince another client that a cut in the marketing budget is likely to result in a further reduction in profit, I will clear the dirty coffee mugs. While Abigail drives to the other side of town, I will refill the coffee pod holder, put water in the kettle and put the bottle of wine in the fridge. While she tries to correct a design error, I will organise a desk for the new intern. When we have a meeting later today, the two of them will come back to a pleasant office. This won’t make a difference to our current circumstances – it might even be a little silly – but it’s all I can think of to make things a little more bearable. That’s something, right?