Its only day 3

I said it was going to be a long road and boy was I right. I know I am still being vague about all of this, but to be honest I have seen so many failures when it comes to my battle against the bulge that I would hate to prove that self doubting part of my mind that it was right so I am going to give it a chance to start working before I start waving banners. That said - why this post? Well to say by golly its DAY THREE and I survive. YAY. So its a bit of a self congratulatory diary post that I can smile about once I am done. And I will be done and I will succeed and by God some of you will be celebrating with me over a whisky ;-) #OverAndOut

Its going to be a long road

Those of you who know me will know I have always struggled with my weight. I haven't been a yo-yo weight person, instead a gradual climber, where the weight leeches onto me and slowly (but surely) engulfs me. I have lost almost half of me once and now, after having my second child and stopping smoking resulted in me gaining just about every ounce I ever lost, I have to start all over again. Don't kid yourself it is soul destroying. Devastatingly so. Not only do I not fit into any of my clothes but I weep quietly to myself when I see pics of this person who is clearly not me - not to mention mirrors. I avoid mirrors, like fallout friends, I avert my gaze when there is a mirror just about anywhere near me. Its the nonchalant - pretend they aren't here gaze... Which is just as damaging as it gives you a false sense of what you think you look like - as opposed to what you now actually look like. I am not one of those comfortable fat people. I am not the embrace who you are and be happy with what you have person. Nope - I don't drink that koolaid. I do not like myself like this and no matter how many people tell me: "But you aren't THAT fat"... I want to dropkick them. Ask my horse George - I don't think he likes the heffalump on him. So today is the very start of another journey. And boy have I been on a few. But let me tell you when I decide to own a journey I will own it and it will be epic. Meal 1 of at least a 6 months journey ahead of me and I am feeling excited and nervous and highly motivated. I also tend to fail if I do it alone. I need someone to hold my hand and tell me its going to be alright. So I have a new someone now and I am not going to tell you just yet who she is. But in time I will. So this blog isn't for the masses its for me. I am not going to put it our there. I am going to merely, like a canoe on a river with a slow current, glide it onto the water and watch it be my guide for my journey. I hope to provide updates - use this as my own opinion poll and ultimately give myself motivation. This one is for me! So wish me luck.

When did marketing get lost?

I have been holding off on penning these ramblings. But I just can’t anymore. So here it goes – I might lose a client after this – but it is going to have to be a chance I take. When did marketing start relying on PR to develop its strategies? When did marketing start relying on PR to define its target markets? When did marketing decide that PR needs to do all of its research? When did marketing get lost? Now as a PR I am all for being left alone by the marketing guys and being allowed to get on with my job. In fact I am really good at inventing the opinions of the executives I work with and I haven’t had too many of them complain. But I am more and more being faced with a dilemma that is sending my blood pressure skyrocketing and making me question my sanity and my perceptions of my very profession. Over the last couple of months my briefs have been less a brief, and more an instruction to create, to invent and to establish. Heaven help me if I say I don’t know – or if I ask if they do. Now I promise I am not being melodramatic. Surely it is my job as your PR to expand on your marketing message? To unpack the delicate fabric of your research, your target markets and your go-to-market strategy, and then put these in words, take them to market via media (social and traditional) in carefully packaged content that speaks to YOUR marketing plan? So why is it that today there is no plan? The content has to be made up. The opinions invented. The markets guessed. I have increasingly been put on the spot for not delivering. But I have to ask some questions. Ok what would you like me to deliver? Do you have a campaign we are running? What stock do you need to move? What are your highest sales targets for this quarter and what products / solutions must we focus on? Who are your main partners? What market would you like to reach? But instead of answers I get more instructions. Yes we are tweeting. Yes you are on facebook. No there weren’t 500 likes on your post but we can see that 300 people viewed it. Oh you think likes are the only way to measure this? Yes we are distributing those press releases we are inventing because you haven’t told us what you want us to say. No the business press aren’t interested in speaking to you. Ok you want me to make your brand sexy to the business press. Oh you want a blog. Ok no problem – who must the blog speak to? Ok you have no idea. Oh you want me to create the blog. Ok so you want me to develop a technical platform from which you can blog? But you must be able to drive the blog traffic to your website. Yes I am sure your design / Internet people can make that happen. No I don’t think your company should get a “free” blog you are a known brand who should be able to afford developing a blog. Excellent you have three people who can write and want to blog. Sure we will edit their blogs. Can you send them to me? Three months later…. Why haven’t you started our blog? *beat head on desk* It gets worse. And I can go on. And I will. But not today. I have to quickly go and write something on a technology I didn’t know you sold, for an undetermined target market and you want it to have a business slant. But before I go please help me understand. Has marketing lost the plot? When did we start to put the cart before the horse? And most importantly … Have I lost my mind? - C

Crash boom bang

There is no nice way to explain how you feel when your world comes crashing down. Its a dark and lonely place that is accompanied only by the deafening silence that is your own guilt as it rolls around the recesses of your shattered heart. I think I may have hit rock bottom... A place so desolate that I cannot explain how I got here - or how I am going to get out.

It may all change... Or not.

Things may all change soon... when they do, or rather if they do, will we be ready? Who's to know - but change they might. Its a healthy thing. Change. It is a very healthy thing and it is something that is so important to who we are. Picture a season without change. A day without change. A season of temperate weather all-the-time, no wind, no rain, no snow, just one rolling temperature and one rolling weather pattern. A day without change? Groundhog day!! Are we ready for this change? Yes I can honestly say I think we are. It is going to be good! Bring on the change ... P.S. This is not for my husband who when asked about change says: "No change! Take chappies"

We all care too much

The reason that we as South Africans have such definite and often vocal opinions is that we simply care too much. Things affect us so deeply that we take every word, stance and comment as a personal attack - not just against our country but against us personally. While it would be naive to believe that things don't affect people. There is no water and no duck's back when it comes to South Africans. Everything we see and hear resonates with us to the point that we feel we need to take action, or at the very least, beat our chests and scream about our discontent from the rooftops. Can we change it? Unlikely I am afraid. It has been ground into our DNA. It is what fuels our passion for rugby, our love for the rhino and our distaste with everything that doesn't fit with how we feel. You see as a nation we are born from a melting pot of cultures, interests, languages and geographies. Our shattered past has to some extent left us wanting for an identity of our own. One we find difficult to carve as we grapple with too many adult issues, such as crime, corruption and to a lesser degree the remnants of racism. Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that instead of looking for the unicorn and rainbow filled Nirvana we crave - we should settle for who we are. We are passionate, often confused and sometimes drunk. We live loud, we speak loud, we party hard, we drink hard, and we will always care too much. So we can try and change that DNA in a petri dish as much as we want but we are who we are and in the words of a close friend "it is what it is"...

Does music define you?

So I am a sucker for old music and their lyrics. A lot of my childhood memories are of hazy, lazy Sunday mornings listening to music a melancholy father would dust off out of the record collection and then put on the record player. Crackling, crisp, raw music with someone with a beautiful voice wailing out mournful lyrics about a love lost, a love unrequited, a place they longed to return to.

I always used to say that music can make you miss people you have never met and places you have never seen. What those lazy Sundays gave me is an appreciation for all music, I find my music collection bizarre and I often get strange looks for humming along to a Jim Reeves song on the radio, sounding off all the lyrics to a Patti Page classic, or singing Neil Diamond while vacuuming and Kenny Rogers while showering...

Music defines us, but it should never restrict us. As a troubled teenager I entered the alternative world, drawn to the individuality it promised, the melancholy tones of the music, the beat of a rock drum and the twang of an acoustic guitar. But that world disappointed me, it wanted me to only be what it thought was acceptable. To be part of a "goth" clique you couldn't sing along to "How much is that Doggie in the Window", and heaven forbid you actually sang the "woof woof" part of the song. So I toyed with it, but never made it my lifeblood.

Perhaps the lesson I learnt from it all was that one will always be drawn to cliques that are seemingly befitting to where you are in your life, because like herd animals we want to belong, but it is important to never give yourself completely. Be who you are and don't be embarrassed of who that is.

So what is my music to me? It is an expression, an escapism, a place where I can still go to places I have never been, cry for lovers I have never had nor lost, and lose myself in the arms of a world I have never known.

One of the all time classic songs that still bring tears to my eyes is a song called Lace Covered Window, and I can guarantee that the majority of you have never heard of it... This is how it goes:

LACE COVERED WINDOW

The Small Faces – 1967 / The Tidbits – 1968

When you walk through the world all alone

And your dreams went to ashes behind you

Then the tears in your eyes will remind you

Of a view through a lace covered window

Nothing seems very clear anymore

In your world everything is uncertain

How you wish you could pull back the curtain

Just to see through that lace covered window

See the world through that lace covered window

But you'll never know just what life has in store

What's waiting there to greet you

So pull back the curtain and maybe once more

True love is there to meet you

So you'll walk side by side through the world

No more times full of darkness and sorrow

Every day is a bright new tomorrow

When you go through that lace covered window

Every day is a bright new tomorrow

When you go through that lace covered window

Let the sun through that lace covered window

So yes if music be the food of love play on... And enjoy those lazy hazy days when you too look through a lace covered window :-)