When I was at my lowest……. I wrote This

Am I fit to be an inspiration?

That’s the question I ask myself a lot and I do not know if I have found the answer yet but what I know is that I am quite close. Someone said to me “You inspire me” and I did not quite understand why and how I could be an inspiration to anyone when I am neither working nor studying. Since I am an inquisitive person, I had to ask this person what he meant and he told me that I hustle hard and from the talks he has had with, he concluded that I have direction and drive. I know you are going to say that is just one person’s opinion and you will be absolutely correct, so I am going to let you decide on your own whether I am worthy to be an inspiration.

C Malesherbes says “We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of the as impossible “and Gale Sayers says “I learnt that if you want to make it bad enough, no matter how bad it is, you can make it”. These statements inspire me and I live by them. One person who really inspires me is my best friend Proficience who unlike me did not get a chance to enrol at an institution of higher education. In our matric year we attended a career expo and she won a marketing bursary, but when it was time for her to register the company kept giving her stories and eventually started ignoring her and the other students. She did not give up and now she has recently completed a retail internship and has registered with UNISA to further has studies. Patience and perseverance is what has made her the person she is and I really admire that about her, hence I find inspiration in her.

I haven’t had it easy; you know life has really showed me that things don’t always work out as planned. When I was in matric I had everything all figured out and I worked hard in making show i came out with flying colours. You know there is this belief that intelligent people should do everything right and people always expect you to always know everything. I got to say that getting to the top needs much more that intelligence, there are other factors involved, for example, finances to further your studies.

I completed my matric in 2009 with high hopes of being a Chartered Accountant and I had everything all figured out, the plan was to register at The University of the Witwatersrand, of which I did and I was enrolled for 3 majors and one of them was Accounting. 2010 went by and the results came out, but they were not looking so great, I was hurt and confused. What damped my spirits more was the fact that I had no finances to continue with my studies and for a while I was really stressed. I resolved to go on with life and not worry about things I can’t change, so I did promotion after promotion until I got a full time job in August 2011. Things became better and I believed that there truly was a light ahead of the tunnel, hope spiralled inside me. Before I go any further you know that when your plans get ruined, you struggle to get a way forward because your plans were changed for you. According to the calculations I did in High school, I should be in Wits University doing my 3^rd year in Accounting, but that is not the case. However I have not despaired, I still see myself doing just that, maybe not now, but I see myself there.

Things not going my way made me realise that I was in the real world now and not some kind of fantasy where everything worked out just the way I want it to work and that plans can always change and that you need to at least have a back-up plan. Back to August 2011, I worked with really nice people, but I was on a quest to further my studies and so I applied for financial assistance and applied at Wits again and got accepted again. I still couldn’t get financial assistance because I was not “needy enough”, so I couldn’t register again and that almost drove me to wall and the loony bin. Have you ever wanted something so bad that you feel like a piece of you is being taken away every time you reach out to get it and when you are so close, someone cruelly takes it away from you? If you have then you know how I felt. I didn’t want to talk to anyone and I left home for a while and stayed at an aunt’s place so I could clear my head and I resigned from work because I wanted to think straight. You might think I am a fool for resigning, but believe me I needed that so I could be able to write about it today without the pain I felt then.

I soon got over it and I don’t think anyone or anything can hurt me as much as this “School “issue does.  I hope that I didn’t paint a picture that suggests that I miraculously got over this by myself, because I didn’t, I had my family and my one true friend, my best friend. A friend who believes I can do anything, if I told her that I want to literally move a mountain, she wouldn’t laugh at me, but she would encourage me to do it. That is how much faith she has in me. Fast forwarding to the present, I am looking forward to registering part time studying Accounting science and I work part-time and do modelling as well. I have got so many plans and some of them I cannot reveal just yet, but I am very excited.

At the beginning of 2012 I told myself that I want to do a lot of things that I have previously deprived  myself of, for instance I want to put myself out there and let the world know that there is someone who answers to the name Vuyiso who has got a voice and she wants to be heard. I have never liked to rely on anyone to make my dreams come true and that is why I am facing challenges and opportunities hands on. I am going to follow protocol and do things by the book to get to where I want to be. To me it is not about how fast I get there, but it is about eventually getting there. Now that you have enough information you can decide whether I am worthy to be someone’s inspiration and if not then hey it’s not a train smash. I am might not be where I want to be, but I am going to get there, it’s just a matter of time.