HI THERE!!! Long time no write, hey?

So guess who rediscovered his blog! This is freakin fantastic. I haven't posted on here in more than a year. I am most probably the worst blogger in the world. However, thank God Google is trying to take over the internet because since I can remember my G-mail account's password, I can apparently sign into every major website, which makes life so much easier, I won't deny it.

But I digress (and sound a little bit like a Google ambassador don't I?).

How much have changed in my life since my last post. More importantly how wonderful for me to see how it has changed by reading the old posts. In this regard I don't think that modern technology is such a terrible thing. It gives you the opportunity to go and look back at your life and evaluate where you are and where your heading. Did you move forward or backward or have you gone absolutely nowhere. It is as if the Internet has given us an opportunity not only to record our lives but also to evaluate if we like where our life is going. God Bless social Media!

But I digress again (part of being ADD I guess).

My life in comparison to a year and a half ago is so different that I struggle to believe that all those essays were my life once. I have a new job (again) and I am truly happy! Life is good! I know I don't have any followers or any of those type of things on my blog but I feel it vital to get all of this information out of my head. So if you (by the very off chance someone is reading this) will allow me the next few paragraphs to be incredibly selfish and egotistical and let me explain to you what happened in my life in the past year and a half (in a quick narrative, I promise, this won't be a Lord of the Rings type journey you have to go through).

Life has gone all over the place with me. The last time I wrote on this blog was in November of 2013 when I started a new job in Winburg, Free State, South Africa. A small little town in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by game farms, and agricultural areas, where the people that live there looks inbred and the town itself has lost all of its once gloriously beautiful Victorian appeal. There in that small little area of the world between grunting gnu's and all sorts of Impala I was trying to patch things together. My life at that point in time lost a lot of its original shine and splendor. Things were spiraling out of control and I was in a horrible place in my life. Drugs, alcohol and sex wasn't playing a very positive and progressive role and now looking back at it, I don't know how I got myself to that point to start with. Maybe one day I will share on this blog exactly what happened to me and maybe that will give me an opportunity to figure it out for myself, but right now this is not vital to the story. The most important thing to take from this is that my life was falling apart and I (luckily) had the brains and courage of my convictions to realize that I need to get out of my circumstances and make a change. And what a change it was. I left everything I knew behind and moved 100km away from my friends and family and decided to go forth. 

Working at Boschrand(the lodge I managed in Winburg) was in my opinion the beginning of getting my life back in a relatively straight line(well as straight as it would go for a gay guy). It was there that I realised that things are going to change. Just before I decided to try and get rid of all the shit that caused my life to skyrocket into disaster, I was studying a degree in Social Work. I will for the rest of my life regret this decision. I spend 5 years on the degree... and I am so upset that I couldn't have rather spent that time doing something that I loved, something that ignites passion and fire in my soul. I did Social Work professionally for all of a year before I realised that it was slowly killing me inside. Removing helpless children from their abusive parents is not the type of career I would recommend for... well... anyone... Social Work sucks. 

Originally Boschrand was suppose to be an intervention in my life. Something to help me figure myself out. I had the utmost full intentions of going back into Social Work when I thought the time was right. The crisis came in when I realised that no time would ever be right for me to go and do Social Work. The scariest realisation in my life, trumped only by the time that I figured out I was gay. 

What now??? What will I do??? I have no other viable options, I am not trained to do anything else??? How will I live??? 

That is when I realised that a career change is in the works... and nothing could have prepared me for how fast that would happen. 

The answer came to me one night whilst I was sitting on the deck with an African Sunset framing the horizon. It was sitting there, waiting for the bliss of night to come, drinking a glass of red wine, that I finally figured out what it is that I am gonna turn into a career. It was so obvious that I can't understand why I didn't do it earlier. Hospitality!!! Since the day that I finished High School I have worked in Hospitality... and I was good at it!!! My God! It was the most obvious decision. So I went ahead and researched the shit out of my new career and very briefly attempted to become a Flight Attendant... That was a joke. As is life there were a bunch of thieves making promises that was never kept or met and me being the idiot that I was resigned from my job prematurely cause I was going to get a job so easily and make a new life and there were unicorns and rainbows and musical numbers... and then it all crashed and burned in an explosive quality reserved for Michael Bay movies.

Cutting to the point, after 3 months of being unemployed (and living with my parents, the lowest you can fall) I found purely by accident the most amazing job in the world. In a matter of a week my life became a James Bond Martini; Shaken not Stirred. &Beyond Mountain Lodge in KZN phoned me on a Monday morning for a telephonic interview. The Thursday I drove the 900 km to Phinda Private Game Reserve for a working interview, the next Tuesday I got the Job, the Wednesday I officially started. A whirlwind... In a matter of a week I literally uprooted myself from everything and everyone I know, every comfort zone that I have carefully constructed for myself and moved to the middle of nowhere. I now live in the bush surrounded by Lions and Elephants and Leopards. I basically live in the darkest of Africa where the King of the Animals walk freely on the road. How insane is that... My life is every American Clichè about Africa.

At the start of 2015 I decided to, for the first time, make a New Years Resolution. Just one resolution, and it was not to lose weight or quit smoking. It was a very simple resolution and one of the most difficult to attain. My resolution for 2015 was to be happy... Plain and beautiful in its simplicity, that was my biggest aspiration... 

I am very proud to announce that my one and only New Years Resolution I have ever made has come true.

Life is good. Life has a shine to it that was previously difficult to see amidst all the shit that was hanging in the air, among all the depressive thoughts, between all the drugs and sex and alcohol. Life has returned to a state of equilibrium and happiness.

After having read some of my previous posts I hope to change the impression that I believe I have made. I hope I will get to redefine myself. It is an opportunity that rarely happens in life, but it is an opportunity I hope will happen for me. I would love to share with the world this version of myself. A version that is happy and excited and passionate. A version that I like. A version that I want to be.

Watch out world... I am back...

Great expectations...

I said it once before in a blog that I wrote somewhere on this page... In sound of music, Julie Andrews left the convent after unceremoniously having been informed that being married to God and faithful to him and him alone is not necessarily destined for her life. She stood in front of a cross and I think half prayed half convinced herself, that "When God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window..." Never have I experienced that words to be more true than on this last week in my life. During this week so many era's were closed off, and so many new and exciting phases have started.

Last weekend I had the honour of attending my father's last sermon. Beautiful and filled with the beauty of God like only my father were able to preach the His. It was truly an experience and I am thankful that I did the effort of driving the 900 km home to see my dad say farewell to the calling. It was sad though to witness this. My father has been his entire life so devoted to the Man Upstairs that I couldn't help but feel a sense of betrayal at the hands of God to just make my father stop doing his job. It was at this specific moment and slightly blasphemous thought that I guess God interjected and reminded me that we are but alive and well and willing by His grace. I spoke to my father about this and his words to me were words of hope and promise and excitement for now he ventures into another era and he gets to feel young again (at the ripe old age of 65...). I cried, but it wasn't tears of sadness because of the closing of an era, but because I was happy for my father to have had such an amazing career and have walked with God in a way that I don't think is ever destined to happen to me. So now... they are uprooting fourteen years of memories and work and are now moving to a new town where I truly pray that they are still to be loved and cared for by our heavenly Father.

However, as amazing as this was, this week was climaxed by an even more significant experience in my own life...After having studied for 5 gruelling years, having sweated and cried and bled social work and all it's shortcomings, after having been told I am not really equipped to be a social worker, after removing children from parents who are not supposed to have the right to bring children into this world and after struggling for years financially... I have finally gotten a job... Yes ladies and gentleman, writing here is the new manager of Boschrand Game Lodge in Winburg, Freestate, South Africa..

WTF!!!!

I know! After 4 years, and roughly R 120 000-00 and all that shit that I just mentioned, I get to go and manage a 4 star game farm... and yet, I am not saddened by these turn of events... I look at it with great expectation. My dearest friend and colleague sent me a BBM on my moving day proclaiming that he is as excited as a teenager with sex and that he can't wait to have me here.  I allowed my imagination to run free and with this came so many beautiful ideas that I would like to implement here.

I think that this will be good for me. To be here. To be creative. I have worked long enough in this industry to know that I excel in it. I prayed the other day and I told God, "I have no idea what Your plans are with me, but I am willing to go with it."

So here I am. I am sitting watching the sunrise over a view that I have yet to understand is mine to wake up to every morning... and my heart is sad about having left the people I know, but my soul is like a little child bouncing against the walls, excited over this new adventure that is about to unfold.

Let no one ever tell you that smoking is bad for you....

Let no one ever tell you that cigarettes are bad for you...

It may be that cigarettes cause a morning cough and yes it may be that emphysema is a result of tobacco use, but the thought process of an individual when aligned with a burning fag is unquestionably one of the most valuable aspects of cigarettes that are not to fall to waste. Cigarettes are less fattening and less addictive than Coke I might add (the cool drink not the drug...)

Why this sudden defending of smoking you may ask? Well, it was this morning with a lit smoke in my right hand and a cup of ambition in my left that the wisdom fairy came and bestowed on me some logic... And fortuantely for the little queen that I am, one of my gayest of idols has already made a tribute to this post when she sang; "What's love got to do got to do with it?" (You sang that in you head didnt you? Haha, I knew it)

He's off his mind... it's over with him.

Stop it and bare with me...

So Tina Turner flashed into my mind this morning whilst trying to gather a little bit of brain activity. This song (which is quite annoying I might add when stuck in your head) popped up and started an infinite loop in my already chaotic brain. Trying to explain my brain's way of thinking will require a scientific study in which probably even the theory of relativity will be declared null. Due to a course that is not quite clear to even myself I concluded, after starting on Tina, that one does not in fact marry for love...

It's atrocious!!! How dare you blaspheme like that!!!

Calm the fuck down. I do have a valid point that goes with it...

Firstly I want to get one thing quite clear. I believe absolutely and resolutely in the sanctity of marriage. I support marriage and I myself would like to get married someday. However, with Tina Turner echoing in my head, I did manage to figure out for myself that, in order for us to get married it takes more and NEEDS more than just love as fuel.
Take the following into consideration: When one get's married to another person, one commits oneself to a LIFETIME with that person... This is not a choice to be taken lightly...

It feel to me sometimes that people forget about the lifetime part. We all love people in our lives and we all have people that we want to keep in our lives forever, and that in itself is very noble, but are you willing to alter you future completely for that sake?

People nowadays have a terrible tendency to get married very young and early... The worst excuse for this I have ever heard was when a woman told me that she wants to be a young and hot mom... I nearly fucking died. When getting married one says that you are willing to create a life with someone other than yourself and then STICK TO THAT LIFE that you have created... Sounds a little more intimidating now doesn't it?

Creating this life is not easy... Creating this life involves having a financially secure and steady future. To raise children in a house that is filled with love. To take care of these children you so desperately want and to ensure that your spawn isn't one day the spawn of satan...

So here's my problem... Why do we get married to the first person we see because we "love" them? Love is not the only factor that we need to keep in mind when vowing to another person an entire life of commitment. We are vowing to stick to someone even when there is no money and no good times... we vow to stay with that person even after they have angered us. We vow to stay with that person when they are no longer capable of taking care of themselves.

Therefore, I do not care if I am called a snob for wanting a life partner that has a degree and ambition or someone with a steady head on their shoulders, cause at the end of the day when I get married and it has to be forever, why would I force upon myself a life of misery and unhappiness. To make such a life altering decision I will not settle on second best, when I owe myself everything.

Maybe I am a bit snotty for feeling this way, but considering the divorce rate all over the world, I think more people should start thinking like this. At the end of the day, or the marriage when it comes to that, there are more people involved than just you...

And to think... All of this started with a bloody smoke break...

I'm scared...

I was over-thinking everything again this week and for the first time my thoughts actually scared me. I sat there in total shock when I realized; I understand why people commit suicide and I further more understand why people would become heroin junkies.

Completely shocked out of my own mind I had to retrace my steps when I started to completely fathom the dangerous ground that I am treading on all of a sudden. I figured it out after I went through some of my old blogs. This blog was created subconsciously I think for me to understand myself better. In all of my blogs I am negative and don't sound like a person that is happy. I had to face facts here... I am completely and utterly depressed! I have lost ALL control over everything and is right now caught in a swirling mass of debris that was once my life. I've got now aspiration, I'm blaming all my problems on external sources. I am silently and quietly loosing my mind.

God... When did this happen. I was driving in the car a little earlier trying to figure out why and when did this happen... and I couldn't. Did this happen because I wasn't taking responsibility for anything in my life? Either of my jobs? My degree? My own self control?

And then it sunk in... The complete and total comprehension of why people will go so far as to commit suicide. It all just disappears. All of the guilt, the stress, the feelings of fear and paranoia that anything will go wrong any minute, just simply goes away. Here I had to stop myself. I've never even thought about suicide. Except for a small self-mutilation phase I went through in High School, I have generally always been in control and in a state of mind where suicide was the least of my problems.

But it felt very inviting I should add. The knowledge that once it is over, you never have to come back to this disgusting and disappointing world where heartbreak is the order of the day. I don't know what waits on the other side of this life, but even if it is just an eternal sleep... that would also be all right.

The same goes for heroin addiction. It takes away all thought and feeling and in those precious few hours that you are tripping your skull out of your body you are at absolute peace. Everything is tranquil and everything is calm. There is no evil or heartbreak or anything in that moment... but here is the saddest and most ironic thing, when that trip ends... it all comes flooding back... and after that incredible moment of clarity it must feel AWFUL!! to be brought back to this world, where life quite simply sucks. Hence the addiction. Just to feel again that the world is at peace that everything is calm, collected and tranquil. That nothing in this world is a danger to you or your eternal soul.

God what an amazing feeling that must be... I don't think I remember a life before the stress and fear and guilt. I don't think I remember anymore how it feels like to have everything in your life in order and calm and silent.

So drug addicts? Suicide idealists? I understand what you feel and I understand why you would want to go that far... Because eventually, the soul will have to give in... and break or splinter into a million pieces and then what? According to the Buddhists we don't have a soul... we ARE a soul and we have a body. So why let your soul break, when it's easier to just get rid of the body?

My mind is a mess... My life is a mess... and I'm trying desperately to remember the cause I am fighting for and more importantly... WHY I'm fighting for this cause?

Life can be scary sometimes... I guess this is my test... great let's add the fear of losing to my already delicate little word.

I'm scared... and right now?... the fear is winning.

The sniffles...

My little girl is sick!!

Well not my biological little girl but my godchild! and she and her mom lives with me so it is as good as my little girl!

Shame, poor baby woke up with the flu a voice of a 50 year old woman that has been smoking for 40 years and a cough that makes her entire little body convulse. Since I mostly work nights, mommy (and my best friend) asked me whether or not it would be possible for me to babysit our little girl while she has the sniffles.

But, and this part I'm still trying to understand, I'm getting texts every 20 minutes going

"How is she?"
"Is everything all right?"
"How's her cough?"
"What does she say? She feeling better?"

To which I repeatedly reply

"Everything is fine. Cough is gone, she playing around on the computer."

And then after 20 minutes we do the whole dance all over again. Does this ever end? Make no mistake I understand that as a parent all you ever want and all you ever think about is the well being of your child, but does the paranoia that comes along with being a parent ever dissipate? I know there are many parents in this world that doesn't care enough about their children, I'm a social worker with enough clients to know that this is a fact, but I think we should be careful to not move over into the other extreme.

It just scares me to think that might one day be me!! I think I would be a great father, I really do, but I'm frightened when I think about the fact that I will become a paranoid mess whenever my child comes up with a cough, or has to go on a play date. Is it possible to care so much about another person, even if that person is spawned from your loins, that they totally and completely possess your life?

A love that great? Does that really exist?

When was the last time you did something for the first time???

I read on 9gag.com tonight something that made me think about life... The post stated:

Makes you think hey?

This made me think... Are my firsts over? I mean I've had my first kiss, I've lost my virginity (wasn't fun or any good for that matter), I've had my first boyfriend, I've gotten my first degree, I've jumped of a cliff and survived (gorge swing)... My heart was broken for the first time... etc.

So is there anything left in this world? Are all the exciting things over? At 24 years of age is there nothing exhilarating over in this world?

I received the answer tonight..

No.

I had a first tonight! After another irritating and annoying night at a job that I despise with all of my being, I went with a friend to our casino. When arriving their I was first frisked by a short and hilariously dressed security guard. I'm sorry, but how am I supposed to be intimidated by someone in  a red penguin suits with a top hot that went out of style somewhere in the same time that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated! That is like a challenge! "Please try and steal something cause trust me you wanna see me run in this!"

Anyway, absurd uniforms set aside, we went in and I was greeted by a gazillion brilliant bright lights and was overwhelmed by the sound of falling coins. There I stood in the middle of the casino floor surrounded by the sound of money! So I got myself a casino card, and played on a machine a game that I still don't understand and very quickly lost R 200-00...

Yip, my luck has not changed yet.

Even though I lost, I realized with a big ass smile on my face, that even though I had no idea what i was doing, I had a first again!! For the first time in my life, I actually sat at a machiney thing that goes 'ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding' and gambled! I lost R 200-00 yes but I lost R 200-00 of my own money... FOR THE FIRST TIME!

Make no mistake I have no intention of going back and losing any more money. But it was riveting to do something for the first time again... and it gives me hope... there are many firsts still to come... They might be small and pass you by unnoticed, but they will still come.

Well... Should probably get to bed. But felt this was a post worth sharing.

So when was the last time you did something for the first time?

Maleficent hope...

So I woke up this morning to a very fascinating and interesting dream lingering in my head... and a little disturbing I might say. I dreamed about hope and the loss of it. my dream explained to me that hope is not necessarily such a great thing. Though I can't remember the exact setting of the dream I remember there was something with regards to an orphanage there.

But then I thought about it. Hope is the experience or the feeling that things will turn out for the better. So, thus the believe that everything will happen the way that it is supposed to. However, in my experience that is not always the case. Life is not fair and life does not give to us what we are suppose to receive even though we have earned it.

Hope creates dreams and aspirations within is from a predisposed notion that something good will happen to us.

But here I state my question... What happens when that something good does not happen to us?

Take for example the job that would have changed my life should I have gotten it. I was sad and disappointed and crushed to the ground. My dreams and aspirations that I had became null, and as a result I spend the rest of that incredibly disheartening day shoving junk food in my mouth. So in effect hope resulted in a negative aftermath.

Conclusively... is it healthy to hope for the best? Since it so happens that hoping can end up with you shoving junk food down your throat and a big ass which doesn't fit into your favourite jeans anymore...