When I started to write this piece, I was feeling a bit blue. Initially, I thought I was not going to publish this at all, but, as true and faithful as God is, He showed me the light and I decided to proceed with the publication of this, as the purpose of the blog is to show people that I am only human and that God picks me up when I feel down and out. The days leading up to Fake-it-till-you-make-it-day AKA my Birthday (in April and shortly after the Easter weekend) was rather interesting. My outlook on life and how quickly time goes seems to be changing as rapidly as the wind and tides change. You see, for a long time, even before reaching the age of 40, I have been realising just how short our time on earth is. Watching the movie The Intern with Robert Dinero and Anne Hathaway in the leading roles, made me realise or rather recap this even more.
The movie starts with Robert Dinero as Ben, a 70 year old retired widower, telling this modern, online business, why they should hire him as a senior intern as advertised. He talks about his wife who had passed away three years earlier, how tough retirement is when you have nothing to get up for and how he coped with being retired and alone. He decided to have an attitude of getting out of the house in the mornings to be at the local Star Bucks at a certain time daily. That gave him purpose.
Now back to my life, that makes me think of what we perceive to be the distant future. The reality is, it is closer than what we can ever think. Just yesterday I was 21 years old. In the blink of an eye it is 21 years later and I am celebrating my 42nd birthday. I still cannot seem to get over the fact that I am getting older. I really had this thing in my mind, when I was in my twenties and even thirties, that I don’t think I will ever get THERE you know? Grow old, because it is just so far away and so far in the distant future. NEWS FLASH to all the twenty-something-year-olds reading this – life happens, time goes by! You will age, you will get older. Your kids will leave the house and start their own families and lives without you as their primary care-giver.
2023 marks the year that I know my husband for half of my life. Say what now? Yes, read that again. I have known my husband for HALF OF MY LIFE! Old people know people for half of their lives! Not me! In my mind I am still a 20-something year old. In my mind, I am still 24, still have dreams of becoming fitter and more toned, doing things that my heart desires rather than what pays the bills.
I still have all these plans and dreams, some of which, seem to be ridiculous at this age – the one of becoming more toned for one, seems to be the most ridiculous of them all, yet, I am religiously following my dream, going to the gym three times per week now. I have come to a point, where I am realising that One Day may just not arrive for certain goals I had set for myself unintentionally at a very young age. Having a more than hectic first quarter for 2023, ending up with Vertigo, which is stress related, just makes me weigh up everything in life, especially the work-life balance that I am trying so hard to achieve. I think my biggest wish or goal rather at this stage, is to not be exhausted when it comes to the birthdays of my family members, including my own.
You see, being a Chartered Accountant in business is very stressful. The demands to keep all the balls in the air are just becoming more hectic. As times change, the workload increases. Systems change and every “little” additional thing that we have to send to authorities, effectively adds about 15 to 30 minutes to our already overloaded work schedule. For years I could not figure out why we could just never get ahead with our work. Then it struck me. It is all these changes in systems, things that authorities just expect to happen, without undue interference or hinderance from our side.
Not even to mention the impact that load-shedding has on running a business. We lose internet signal at times, having to live without cell phone reception and internet connectivity for a few hours up to a few days at times (in the extreme cases, which, thank goodness, does not occur frequently. But it normally happens at a critical time). Everything is online you know. Then you cannot do your work. You cannot send e-mails, cannot submit returns. It becomes a frustration.
Anyway, I am NOT here to sing a moan song about the stress of my job, because, at the end of the day I chose my day job, not the other way around. So, I have to make peace with that which I chose to make a living for myself and my family. Back to the day before my birthday. It is Monday evening, 10 April 2023. I am a bit teary eyed, because man, turning 42 felt worse than turning 40. My husband tries to encourage me before we go to put the kids to bed. Lying next to my daughter, now 9 years old, I was silently crying to myself. She turns to me and asks me what is wrong?
Next thing I see, she turns on her bedside lamp, looks me in the eyes and asks me why I think I feel this way. This to me, was so mature for a 9-year-old. I continue to chat with her, telling her that I feel like a bad mother. I feel like I am not nurturing enough, not showing sufficient sympathy and empathy when they are sick or not feeling well. I feel like my impatience is making me a bad mother. I even ended my sentence crying, saying that I am not like her. Because, man oh man, she has a nurturing personality. Something that does not come naturally for me.
She answers that statement by saying that when her tonsils were sick, I took her to the hospital to have them removed. So, I am a good mother. When I responded saying that I did not show much sympathy and empathy with her with the pain, because I got cross with her for being stubborn and not drinking her medication like she should have, she shrugged her shoulders, saying “Such is life.” We continued the conversation, I continued to say that I feel bad that I cannot give her everything that her heart desires. She again answered me with “Such is life. I cannot get a new game on the cell phone I play with every day.”
When I heard these very mature answers from my 9-year-old daughter, I realised that I am doing something right somewhere. All the Ethics training and Tall Trees analysis of my own personality, EI Activator courses and all the other stuff that I do rather than just boring work-related training (this training counts for CPD points by the way), made me realise that it is not in vain. It is starting to pay off. Even if I still have a mountain of training to catch up on, something is working somewhere. I am contributing to the next generation. Trying to raise children with responsibility, accountability, empathy, sympathy, humanity, nurturing habits. I don’t think I always do everything right, but, when I have a day like that and end it off with a conversation like this with my daughter, then I know I cannot call my birthday Fake-it-till-you-make-it-day. Because in reality, I am not faking it, I am actually making it.
All the Glory be to God always. For the instincts He places within us as parents. All the guidance He provides through His word. For being able to call myself a child of God, being so privileged to be chosen by Him first and having this ministry to share with other moms out there, who may be feeling the same emotions and issues than what I am feeling. We are going to be ok. We are making mistakes as we go along, but that is human nature. With God by our side, we cannot help but bear forward and Make it rather than Fake it till you make it. Here is to all the moms out there, feeling like failures! You are not a failure and you are not alone! God is always with you and all those other moms around you, who seem to have it all together, is fighting just as hard to keep on keeping on.
