Be the inspiration to those that inspire you

Earlier last year I had a friend whom I showed a piece that I had been working on and was having trouble with second guessing myself as usual, so I asked for her opinion on it. She give me pointers that I realized that I had but did not put in with the piece, they somehow managed to hide in my story folder.

That then gave me the boost I needed in that moment to go ahead and distribute to the group I was helping with samples of writings, that they were going to act out in their class. My friend then gave me something that she had, it was a poem and from that I wrote a short story of just over 2000 words in 90 minutes.

She was amazed not only be how easy I made that look, but also by the knowledge I had about the place that she based her poem on. We both became each other’s inspirations, and she started taking her love of writing poems up again. She had stopped for some time because of a friend she thought was a good person and a mentor, took off with her work and publish it without her permission, under his name and took all the credit for it.

My friend never saw anything from her hard work and the guy, so that made her not to trust any person with her work. I consider myself lucky to have come across this lady and we shared those words, sadly she moved to another part of Gauteng and we have not kept in touch about writing. My bad I am that horrible with keeping up with people that only phone you back if you phone them first.

Relationships are like investments, you both need to keep putting equal time in, in order for it to grow and give you both good returns. I have a very short concentration on anything that I don’t get a return value on. I am that bad, this include family members that always expect my out stretched hand to reach theirs which is by the way always in their pockets.

But I am grateful to have been given that chance to be an inspiration to one person in my life and that inspired me to push myself even more. She got back into writing poems before she moved and the one that she showed me, was all about her husband and how his name is a big deal and not just a name.

I was again so proud that from forcing my sister to come with me to Abantu book festival last year December, where she got to attend poetry sessions and two were by Lebo Mashile, in the first she was the host and the second on Sunday she performed, and from that my sister wrote poems once more. Something that I last saw when we still shared a bedroom in our teens. The so called poem I wrote for her after we talked and she told me how EMPTY she felt because of the momentary circumstances she was in at the time.

That was very first attempted at poetry and when she finally read it, all she could say was it was so empty and loved it, and I was more happy seeing her wearing her big smile once again. Not only was it all about those that were close to me but I got a long distance mentor that I came across on Facebook, and discovered she was also on WordPress, and we kind of share similar things. LadyLebz is my virtual mentor and her posts really inspire me to keep doing what I am doing and to the best of my abilities, I am learning the journalism side of writing from her and I own thanks to her. She did tell me that I too do inspire her in the way I am able to just put it out there like I do.

It is such little gestures that keeps me going, how do you keep going in your world?