👟👠 Listen up... #we're live (#98)

Hi ! Welcome back. Hope you’re enjoying the weekend. Today I am writing about old memories, empty-nesting, podcasting, influencing, and movies that are just too long  - Eve D.❣️

Not sure if you even noticed, but I didn't send a newsletter last week. No real reason or excuse, except that I had Friday night plans, and there was just no time to write one. The world kept on turning, regardless. And I taught myself a lesson: do what feels right, don’t force arbitrary rules on myself, breathe a little. Which also means that going forward there will be weeks when I write, and weeks when I don’t. We dance to the rhythm of life!

What I did this week (and last):

You’d think that since I can catch you up on two weeks of shenanigans that there’d be a lot to write, but … no. Here’s a quick recap of things I can remember:

🍣 Food wise: sushi buffet (big hit!), dinner at friends’ (met a new couple), dinner at my sister (Zac approved!), a couple of breakfasts with G and a good breakfast with Laura.

😁 The dinner at friends had a particularly fun moment: at the end of the evening we were winding down over dessert and whiskey, and the new couple asked me what I do. A question I dread, because I do a lot of different things, and I hate being identified by a soundbite. But I blurted out something or other, and the woman stared at me and said…”hold on a second, are YOU Eve? From rehealth? Hold on!” and she pulled up my LinkedIn profile on her phone and said to her husband “THIS is the woman I told you about”. Then she showed me a Whatsapp she had sent to hubby back in November to “check out her work”. (He didn’t, ha ha!). So that’s the first time I was “recognised” for my work by a stranger. (For a second, as I saw the hint of recognition across her face,  I thought she was a reader of this newsletter - not sure how I would have felt about that.)

🎙️ Work wise: Well, I better get used to being recognised in public because I am about to become an influencer 😆 . (Just kidding, I wrote that line just for my kids, so they could howl with laughter). But…I did host my first mini-video-podcast! (!!!) and hope to be doing a whole lot more of them. More on that below. 

💐 Leisure wise: I read, I hiked, I barely gymed, read a bit (finished A little luck which was a quick read, and I did enjoy the writing style even if the storyline seemed a bit unrealistic and contrived to me).

Memories of a time long past…

Remember a while back I told you that a friend of my parents’ wrote a book about his experience of leaving communist Poland and setting up home in South Africa? And that my dad was mentioned in the book? Well, I am reading the book (slowly) and will reflect on it in future newsletters, but I have found the relevant excerpts about my dad: 

It made me laugh so much! That is totally my dad. He 100% would drive 150km in a 90km zone, and not think anything of it. Now my kids know where I get my driving style from lol. Also, this: 

(Small sidenote: my dad wasn’t really ever “in the food business”. He had trained as a lawyer, but knew that that would not get him anywhere in communist Poland. So he got chef training so he could buy a restaurant, make some cash. He quickly sold it. He was then a private entrepreneur in Poland, which was most unusual in a communist country, but still somewhat tolerated. When he became too big for others’ boots, he knew he could be in trouble. So we literally escaped Poland from one day to the next. My dad then used his chef “training” to get a contract in South Africa as a refugee, but that was just subterfuge. His plan was to come here, get his legal status, break the contract and go out on his own. And he did! With zero English, but a hell of a lot of attitude!)

Reading these excerpts about my parents made me think of two things: 

1. How our lives are reduced to soundbites. My dad lives in my memory, for sure, but those memories die with me. My kids did not experience my dad, and any stories about him are just that…stories, of minor importance or relevance to them. My kids have stronger memories of my mom, but her presence in the book was reduced to a simple mention of name (and not even her name, but a nickname she detested). And guess what? That will be how our legacy ends up too. Our thriving, our struggles, our determination to “make a difference” etc etc…it will all be gone in a flash when we are gone. Our best bet at legacy is to leave awesome kids behind. My parents obviously scored on that one, and I’m not doing a bad job myself. Seriously…we should spend more time on just having fun. 

2. Reading the book and my parents’ mentions made me think that maybe I should try and put down something on paper myself. I have hugely emotive stories about our time moving from Poland, via Austria, to South Africa. Stories that still, to this day, make me tear up when I tell them. It’s tricky, though: I’m not a very emotive writer, for one, and the characters of my stories are very complex people (paradoxes!) who will struggle to be reduced by pen and paper. There are two choices here: either tell the story through facts only, or tell the story through characters but risk their wrath. I’m fascinated by the role (and responsibility) of a memoir writer, and have written about this in the newsletter before. Maybe I will try to write something, see how it goes. 

I also went down the rabbit hole of old photographs. I could easily spend days doing this because we have so many (physical, printed, old) photos, and I really need to find a way to somehow preserve them (digitally and physically). Here are some photos of my parents, the author of the book, and the actual car mentioned in the above excerpt!

Also, I found this photo of me. I want that body back!!!

Empty-nesting…

I know I’ve spoken about this before, but I am going to be an empty-nester in about 2-3 years. Even if a kid still lives with me, they will both be legal adults and independent by then. On the one hand, I look forward to this day. I would have been a (mostly single) mother of under-18yr olds for 27 years by that point, and enough is enough. But!!! For some odd reason, when I woke up a couple of mornings ago my first thought was “imagine you wake up in a kid-free house, day after day. That’s coming soon”. And I got immensely sad and lonely at this thought. I might complain about my kids (mostly straight to their face), but I enjoy them immensely and the idea that one day I will not have them under my roof and will have to entertain myself quite frankly petrifies me. How will I not get lonely? Or bored? Or listless? This is when a good life partner and solid friends are essential. Plus, as I said in my previous newsletter, I have about thirty years ahead of me, which is a whole other life! Who knows what I will do with myself? I should be giddy with excitement at all the potential! (Especially when combined with the “zero f*cks left to give” attitude I am already cultivating).

Word by word…

Back in early 2020 I decided I am going to become a YouTuber vlogger. This was a challenge to myself because being on camera is the absolutely last thing I want to do. But, I got myself the equipment, and was excited to get started but then Covid hit and upended my plans. Except, that obviously Covid didn’t upend anything. If I was really serious about becoming a YouTuber there was no better time than during Covid…we were all bored, and stuck on watching YouTube endlessly. Literally a captive audience! So, just excuses. I have been threatening a “comeback” (yes, my kids roll on floor with laughter every time I mention this), but if I have to be totally honest …YT does sound like a lot of work for no reward. 

But! There is a compromise. I have recently gotten created for myself the opportunity to interview South African healthcare practitioners on Zoom calls, which are then turned into “Welcome Videos” on their profile listings on a healthcare directory (which I own, and which launches in April), and on YouTube. I did my first one this week and I LOVED it! I can’t post a link to it yet because I still have to shoot the intro, but here is the (most likely) thumbnail for it: 

I am in talk with brand partners to extend this into a broader scope, and I see this whole new focus developing for me, in a space right up my alley (wellness, betterment). It’s exciting, and possibly somewhat life changing/shifting. As you well know if you read this newsletter, I don’t particularly like most people, but I do love connecting with them briefly and constructively. And this podcast is a fun way to do just that. 

If you remember, a while back I did a personality analysis that gave me a ridiculously low score for life satisfaction, despite acknowledging that I was “happy” with life. I now see what this paradox means. This simple little podcast of mine has given me new energy and va va voom for life. I clearly need novelty in my life, and a tighter convergence to doing what I actually want to be doing (creating content, written and otherwise).  

Step by step…

My Leopard Trail is coming up fast. There are exactly 6 weeks to go, and I am excited, but hardly ready. I think I can manage the distance (although why I think this I do not know, since I have never walked more than 10km/day). I know I cannot manage the climbs. I am finding them super difficult, totally exhausting. Not sure what I can do about this; the exhaustion is related to my Waldenstrom, and lack of sufficient oxygen in my cells. Adjust my mental game and just take the climbs really slowly? 

A tip I learnt: If I listen to (good) podcasts while I walk, especially while I climb, my mind is distracted and the climb is considerably easier. So I will be doing that, I think. Fun sidenote: On yesterday’s hike, which was extremely difficult for me, I was listening to Tim Ferris chat to Jack Canfield, and there was a quote there “...are you saying you can’t do something, or you don’t want to do something? Big difference!...”. This came at just the moment I thought I couldn’t climb another ascent, but in actual fact I simply didn’t want to! The Universe continues to deliver! 

What I watched:  

Last Wednesday we watched Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die and this Wednesday we watched One Thing After Another (the Oscar Best Picture winner).

The Good Luck movie is about what happens when AI takes over the world, and as you can imagine it’s nothing fun (not a spoiler alert because we already all know this). One Thing After Another is okay. I actually thought it was a somewhat “pointless” movie, with inconsistent characters and I had no connection with anyone’s motive. Sean Penn was excellent though.

I have now made a firm promise to myself. Given how warped and messed up the real world is, and how much cause for stress and anxiety is thrown at us every day, when I have an opportunity to escape into a movie or a book, I am only going to choose ones that are delightful, light, funny, sweet, inspiring, cute, joyful. I am stepping away from the drama. I only choose the movie every second week, but even that is a good start. 

And can I once again ask….WHY ARE MOVIES SO LONG?? At 2h40 min, it’s a big ask for me to sit and focus on something I might not enjoy. Project Hail Mary and the upcoming Spiderman are also clocking in at 2h30+, and I just….can’t sit in a movie theatre for this long

Next week:

I have my first brand meeting re my podcast (they approached me),  more hiking and more walking, I’m going to vow to read more, and enjoy the last days of summer. 

Thanks for reading!

Want more? You can find past editions here.

Want to chat? You can email me privately by hitting reply on this email. I read and reply to all :-) Or comment?

P.S.