HEARTBREAK CLUB

To be unceremoniously dumped is a terrible thing to have to go through. One minute its forever afters, the next its my bad, I thought you were somebody else.

Would I much prefer waning affection than the aforementioned? Nope. I hope to deal with individuals who know what they want and what it is they're feeling before offering me a roller coaster ride of emotional angst and crazy. 

In the midst of 3 separate how could s/he conversations friends have asked me how? How does one carry on and move forward? I initially thought that the plea wasn't so much targeted at me as any kind of "expert" but more like the question was being put out to the universe and that it was mere coincidence that on all 3 x occasions I just happened to be the person on the other side of that receiver. But then I thought, my heart has been DEVASTATED enough times for me to have an unfortunate command of the subject. I'm a little too well versed if you ask me.

One of the greatest advices I have ever received post break up was, "Carry yourself with grace." Unfortunately there is nothing elegant about how I deal with heartbreak. The process has no smoothness or elegant movement about it whatsoever and as much as I try, thats when I can even manage to remember this wisdom, I have failed. Dismally. My process is usually filled with denial, pep talks, partying, reinvention, weight loss and a lot of booze. It is filled with random outbursts, that have resulted in severe social culling as my inner Angela (Why Did I get Married) wrestles itself to the surfaces and constantly says and does shit that I cringe at whenever I have had to go through the torment of reliving those memories. 

The experience usually stops me dead in my tracks, I feel the memory washing through and over me. I stand rigid, eyes squeezed shut hoping to quell it somehow but the overwhelming ratchetness of my actions are so powerful, they break through all resistance and I am forced to watch my Angela possessed self throw my name away. *sigh* Heartbreak and alcohol make one hell of a mixture. 

All this preoccupation, the partying and the empty and forced encounters may give out the impression that all is well when really it is not and I think thats possibly why I found myself at a loss on all those 3 occasions. So, no this does not end with a revelation that propels me to any kind of expert status but I have been hurt enough times to have received some really great advice. Some of which I have taken and others that I regrettably did not. I would like to share those with you and especially with my 3 good friends if they're reading this.

1. The first rule of heart break club is talk about it. If you can't afford a therapist, share your load with a sensible & trustworthy individual. It could be a good friend, your sibling or your parent. If you don't have one of these get a journal rather. Terrible advice will change the course of your life and you will see FLAMES.

2. Do not drink while nursing a broken heart. You will do something foolish.

3. Carry yourself with grace. Sometimes you'd be well within your rights to act a fool because of the douchebaggery way you were treated but you will be haunted. Trust me.

4. Severe heartbreak and near death experiences. Fewer things have the ability to shake you to the core and have you revaluate your life. We all need a little reevaluation from time to time. Use the angst in your favour. Let it be another thing that you overcome as opposed to the thing that brings you down. 

5. After much hype I picked up a copy of Eat. Pray.Love. A regrettable decision but I did find a gem that has stayed with me since. Elizabeth talks about not allowing herself to fall apart because doing it once would be giving herself permission to keep falling apart over and over again. The mornings when it was hard to get out of bed, I thought of that. I fought back wanting to just sob my little heart out holding that relevant truth as close to me as I could. Its not always necessary but I think you know when this type of advice is relevant. When I was eventually strong enough. I put it aside and did what we've all been told to do.

6. Cry and cry and cry and then 

7. Stop crying. 

8. When its hard to get over someone don't be so hard on yourself. Some people you don't get over just like that, you just keep living without them with until the old adage "feels like a lifetime ago" becomes applicable. Time will do what it always does. The unbearable becomes bearable, you forget and you'll move on and not because you are fickle but because you deserve happiness. "Get yours" elsewhere.

9. While trying to "get yours" try not to look for it in other peoples arms and pants. Take  time out from opposite sex.

10. Any suggestions?

Feast!

Love Ethic

I've often heard that we're lucky to fall in love once let alone twice in a lifetime. If I think about the number of times that I have truthfully claimed to love someone, I'm looking at 3 times bitten. Because of this I casually started questioning not only the truthfulness of such statements but that of my heart as well. Have I really been inlove "that many times?" I wonder, what do phrases like the great love of your life even mean when I take into consideration the fact that I'm only 30 and still unwed. Is it possible that some or all of the loves that I have felt were inferior somehow. This is not an obvious question for me  because i dont' neccessarily think that a forever makes a love great. There's the obvious assumption that this alleged great love of your life is the individual you choose to settle down with, whatever settling down would mean for you. But then I think of those couples who, though happily married, cite another lover as their great love.

When I picture just what  things my life should contain, I see children and a loving husband. I am commited to this vision and because getting married is something that I want for myself it is something that I will keep striving for until I chose to commit to an alternative vision of my life. I guess you could say I'm hard wired that way. With that said I will fall inlove as many times as I need to/can in order to achieve that ideal. I want to say that falling inlove is the easy part but that would be very misleading but if you're still with me, what I'm trying to express is that love/chemistry as I have sorely come to realize is the most "commonly found" ingredient of what any couple needs to effectively realize a forever after. The things that make or allow that love to reach its fullest potential are and have been the constant deal breakers. For what is love if not potential and what is heartbreak if not the potential of that love unfulfilled. I think that falling inlove is great and that's that really. I think we are all better for having loved and having been loved in someway and I'm not sure if what you feel for another person can be compared to a love you have or might have had for another. Infact instead of evaluating your past love affairs through the whom how you've responded to love in general is something I think would be worthwile to investigate. Like, what kind of relationship do you have with love. I think theres a certain value one ascribes to that affection that informs how one acts when one is in a relationship and this is regardless of who the recipient may be. To an extent, its kinda like how your work ethic is your work ethic.

 I don't believe in great loves or even soul mates *gasps*. Far as I'm concerned, you don't meet great loves, you build great relationships.

Feast!

Meet my friend ...

Ever wondered who you'd really be introducing as your friend if we put as much thought into our friendships as we do our relationships? Friendships are relationships too yet its surprising how the one often receives alot more consideration than the relationships that have sustained us through our fleeting love affairs.

When I was younger I kept a very close circle of female friends and as I got older I much preferred the company of my male counterparts than I did that of women. It wasn't that men made better friends per say because I really do believe that the gender of the company you keep is immaterial. It's instead the quality of the individual and how you engage with each other that should determine your selection of friends not their sex. But with that said there are typical scenarios that are specific to each gender that you wouldn't necessarily be confronted with with the other.

When I was in high school I had a handful of close female friends. We had tug of wars about boys and even on who was the prettiest/most popular of the group. In my much younger days there always seemed to be a "need" to identify the leader of the pack. Maybe because as we come into our own we're all more likely to take comfort in following rather than being a leader so we subconsciously fall in line when we're in the company of stronger personalities or just ones that seek out to claim that kind of position or power. Anyway whatever it was, it was definitely something I saw alot of on the playground and at sport meets and less so on campus and in the workplace.

In one instance on of my closest friends liked a boy who didn't like her and who instead showed interest me. I on the other hand was not interested in said boy. She then "turned" the rest of our friends against me as more and more I found myself excluded from chill sessions and sleepovers. They got closer and dangerously hostile. Kept up the pretense of being my friend despite overdosing on hate behind closed doors and on a weekly basis I endured some malignant scene from Mean Girls as I was insulted, always in the guise of a compliment, on what I was wearing, what I did and how I performed at school. I got tricksy, retaliating and we eventually "got passed it." But the truth is even when that phase came to pass the friendship was never the same or as sincere for me. We enjoyed an arms length friendship until I graduated. I didn't keep in touch. From an incredibly young age I got, that sometimes people, you'll note that I'm not saying women but people, like to feel kinships even if they are based on the wrong thing. Our relationships are based on common goals, common passions, common dislikes and common insecurities. I've witnessed friendships nursed more on common insecurities & common dislikes than I would have liked and early on I naively wrote off the idea of having too many female friends at one go, choosing instead to forego clicks if you will. I'd often be friends with one or two girls from existing clicks because my experience had "taught" me that the bigger the group the more inclined it would be towards drama. People can gas each other up to dangerous proportions and sometimes its best to know an individual outside their posse. To say that our behaviours are not shaped by the company we keep is, I believe, a costly naiveté. But to write off meaningful and positive relationships with a group of women was and is just stooooopid.

Growing up I've also entertained varying types of friendships. What I looked for in people varied depending on my short term needs. I had friends who I partied with, friends who I spent my downtime with, friends who challenged me and friends who inspired me. Finding a friend to offer all of this was and still is a very rare thing. I have come to realise and appreciate that true friendships are indeed special and irreplaceable. They are hard sometimes, take some effort and some really difficult conversations but they deserve the same care, effort and respect that we give and expect from our love affairs. Just this year I was "dumped" by a friend of mine. People come in and out of our lives all the time, I get and accept that. Its ones prerogative whom they want to spend or not spend their time with as it is their right to end any relationship but this particular break up niggled at me for some time. I basically had to catch clues that the friendship was over, the not returning calls, not responding to messages, exclusions from certain events and AHA! I later thought but wasn't this the equivalent of "dating" somebody and then having to catch clues that its over. Thats a social no no right? Maybe they have different rules. Maybe.

At the very least past my early twenties I thought that the one thing that people I had invited into my inner circle had in common was loyalty and respect. It is always disappointing to find out that what you've shared in confidence to an individual is used to strengthen their bond with another. When you become the common dislike and or the common insecurity but it happens. I try to understand it and tell myself that it happens because we are naturally critical of each other which we should be and I get how ugly that can become when you add esteem issues into the mix. I think positive criticism builds us and through our meaningful friendships gets us to where we need to be but criticism can take a nasty turn and become scathing, mean and actually says more about your own character than it ever will the person you are criticizing in the first place. I also think that friendships that cannot be positively critical are a waste of our time. Friends who cannot take criticism are doing themselves an injustice.

I dislike getting criticism but some of my more resilient friendships are with the individuals that have checked me. I have even fought to keep some of these friends around.

So lately I am mindful of who I call a friend and I am as equally aware of the responsibility and privilege it is when somebody considers me and introduces me as their friend.

Feast!

THE WKND SOCIAL APRIL EDITION CANCELLED

Friends,

Due to the weather forecast looking bleak for Saturday 20th  of April THE WKND SOCIAL APRIL EDITION has been cancelled..

As much as it was incredibly disappointing for us to have to cancel April's event, we, the rest of the ladies and I, just couldn't visualise ourselves hosting a sub par event at a contingency venue for you guys. However this does mean that we will make it up to you by making sure that THE WKND SOCIAL MAY EDITION, taking place on Saturday 18 May is wildly fun and amazing.

Full refunds can be obtained for all ticket holders, by emailing info@quicket.co.za 
before 16:00 on Monday 22nd April 2013, with the subject line: THE WKND SOCIAL.
Unfortunately refunds will not be actioned on emails sent after 16:00 on Monday 22nd April 2013 

However, if you are free on Saturday 18th May 2013, and are curious as to how we are going to make this up to you, please drop us an email on info@thekwndsocial.combefore 16:00 on Monday 22nd April 2013, with the subject line THE WKND SOCIAL MAY EDITION and we will reallocate your April edition ticket to THE WKND SOCIAL MAY EDITION, which will be an indoor event so that Mother Nature can't touch us.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused and we look forward to hosting you at many events to come and thank you for the continued support.

xoxo

Hello Again

So it's been a while since my last post and true to the relationship cliche it would seem that I had temporarily misplaced my priorities to tend to those seeds. Well not completely. I've thought of posting every week and have even sat down a couple times to write but the process was difficult. The question that sat with me through out all my musings was just how much of my personal life did I really want to share on this platform. I found that the attempted posts were about what ever "issues" that may have been taking place in my own relationship and that obviously made me anxious. My posts have always been personal but now it felt like they would even be more so. A natural evolution a part of me thought, one can't be musing and talking about hypotheticals, theories and past relationships forever at some point some honest and public scrutiny on the present would naturally take place as well. My impulse was to want to protect this new thing. Protect it from unfair criticism and undue praise even. We all know a single moment or share doesn't define people and their relationships but how many of us have made biased judgements towards our friends and their relationships because of one or a handful of moments. Passing judgements is what people do and I didn't want to subject my relationship to more then its fair share of attention, negative or positive and so writing became hard. Even after my partner and I agreed to some guidelines I remained hesitant.

But why should I care what another may or may not think about my relationship some of you may ask.

I care because my relationship, our relationships are special things that we value. 
Imagine someone telling you chest of gold was in fact filled with lead. We want people to recognise even respect the value of our most precious things. I think we have all grown resilient in this regard because we've had to but to have someone co sign your happiness or the value of your precious thing is an incredible affirmation that we've learnt, some of us are still learning, to do without. A shame really, because as people we aspire to be such relatable and inspiring beings. We want people to see beauty where we see it and feel joy when we feel joy.

I care because it matters and because it matters I took a breath but now here I am ready to share, to laugh, to muse, to bitch and obviously to love.

Feast!

I REMINISCE: THE STORY BEHIND THE WKND SOCIAL

With less than 2 weeks before the 4th edition of TWS I'm amazed at how far we've come and how far we still have to go. By we, I'm referring to Stephanie O'Connor, Vuyiswa Mutshekwane, Nothando Moleketi, Boitumelo Mohale, Thithi Nolubabalo Nteta and I, Nandi Dlepu. It's no wonder we've dubbed ourselves The Collective. Having known each other socially for years how we got here is something I'm sure we've taken for granted but honestly, it was nothing short of serendipitous.

Stephanie and I officially met early 2012 at the Neighbourgoods Market. By the end of that evening we had discovered that we were kindred spirits but it was our love for food that really clinched the friendship. She told me about her mango salsa and I my signature gnocchi dish and quiet frankly we started dating. Hahaha! Our first date was at a quaint little spot tucked away at the Shepherds Market in Craighall Park, called Modo Mio. We vibed and spoke just about every single night since then and for months to come. So for somebody I had only known for a short time we become really good friends really quickly. I told her about how I wanted to have luncheons, spaces where like-minded people could throw down, hang out and just enjoy good conversation. In fact thats how this blog even come to be.

We organized our first Sunday lunch at her place and without even realizing it the concept of good food and good people was born but it would take a couple more months before we'd even think of opening that up to the 'world'.

Fast forward to September, a handful of lunches later and Steph and I get to talking about the brunch movement cum day parties in New York. She mentions attending one back home called Everyday People and begins to sell me on the idea. Her sales pitch included "finally something relevant for 28 pluses to do in JHB." With the emergence of the various food markets in and around Johannesburg I was sure that the market was ready for a foodie type event. I thought, throwing in the day party component made the whole idea even more bankable. So Steph and I started planning our first event. Shortly into our pre prod and workshops we thought it wise to look for either a chef or an established foodie to help 'legitimize' our endeavor and that's when we approached Nothando Moleketi of Foodiefix. I'd met Thando maybe close to a decade ago in my living room nogal! But that's a story better left untold. Right Thando? tltltl. Thando and Steph were also friends so it felt right that we weren't approaching a stranger with our project.

True to the saying, "there's no new thing underneath the sun" I remember Steph calling me to say that Thando was not available to work with us on this project and that she was infact already part of another group planning their first event around the exact same concept, a brunch cum day party event! I remember the panic as Steph and I considered the implications. We all came from similar social circles so we'd essentially be targeting the same market, most likely reaching out to the same dj's. I was out of words while I paced up and down the office parking lot. Well I lie, there was one word I kept repeating over and over again, "Fuck."

It turned out we both were planning our first events for October. Fuck. We both had short listed the same venue for our respective launches. Fuck fuck. I'm not sure who from the other group decided to call a meeting between us two but I can truly say that was a chess game move. Rather than deal with a possible competitor the group, Thando, Thithi, Vie and Tumi suggested we merge. Honestly, I was skeptical going into the meeting. From the 2 of us to 6 women?! You know what they say about too many cooks. But I kept an open mind and we met at The Foundry in Parktown North to hash things out. Just an hour into the meeting my skepticism was gone and while we were still technically debating the idea in my head I was already in the future tryna work out the best possible group dynamic. I was in and covertly sent Steph a message during the meeting saying so. Another thing we had to consider was that the 4 had just broken away from another female initiative and coming in I needed to be sure that this wasn't something that could possibly happen to us. I believe the 4 felt the same. Nobody starts out on any venture only to have to withdraw just as nobody starts a relationship thinking it will end but these things happen. Thankfully they had come out with a handful of learnings from that experience. Learnings that they were all frank about. Learnings that informed their consequent decision to merge with Steph and I.

We hit the ground running, locked off a date and started finessing the model for TWS which at the time was still without an official name. Do you have any idea how hard it is to name an entity with 6 different individuals?!?! So early on we decided that when it came to all decisions all that was needed for a go ahead was 4 votes. Everything that has since gone into THE WKND SOCIAL has been put to a vote. We stay democratic. Or at least try very hard to keep it that way.

Here are some of the names we considered before finally going with THE WKND SOCIAL:


Offline
Fat Kiss 
Fat Smooch
Collective
Downtown Social 
Social Book
Social Saturdays!
EverythingInBetween
Sweet Talk
Sweet Life
La Dolce Vita
AllThingsNice 
Mosaic 
Throwback
Downtown Feast 

*cringes* uhm some of these names were terrible! I am real glad we went with THE WKND SOCIAL. Because of the 90's inspired soundscape of our after party I particularly liked the throwback feeling to the name. 

While working frantically between all our other obligations and responsibilities one of the ladies got an invite to another brunch cum day party. Fuck. The event was a week before our own. Fuck fuck. After an understandable amount of panic and some investigation we concluded that because their target market was different to ours that there was not much to be concerned about. It was the same day as str crd and frankly nobody we know would organize their event the same day as str crd. Friends who attended a portion of the event confirmed as much. Nuff said.

While still working out the model and overall vision of the events, before the merge, Steph and I were on a Skype call with her Brooklyn homie Dj Moma of Everyday People. I recall him telling us how before EDPL was even launched in Brooklyn that the brunch movement was already underway in the meat packing district as a result he couldn't attribute their success to them being the first to do it. I remember thinking "There's no such thing as an original idea just original people." A quote I had picked up a while back. The key to any success story is not just the idea but the individuals behind it. How the magic of those particular set of skills, personalities and karma can individuate that idea or experience and give it value.

2 weeks before our launch event our promo teaser is finally released. With it our tumblr and Facebook pages go live. Invites are sent out and tickets are available online. We only sell a couple tickets the first day. I decided to hold out on the curses and trust that as Johanesburgers always do we will sell a lot more closer to the event. We did, in-fact we sell out brunch tickets early into the 2nd week of ticket sales and on the day the day party reached capacity. We were happy and sooooo relieved. We also quickly realized that the real work had also begun. Now we had customer expectations to manage, we welcomed feedback from the first event and with each event we strove to make THE WKND SOCIAL experience better for our friends, new friends as well as for our very cool yet nameless consumers.

Like I started saying, we're less than 2 weeks into our 4th edition and our first event of the year so thank YOU for the love and support. To our partners and sponsors, thank you. To our dj's thank you, thank you and thank you.

I hope to see you at the next THE WKND SOCIAL. Regrettably brunch tickets are already sold out but you can get your tickets to the after party here.

See you then.

Feast!

A little something something.

Guess who was 'spring cleaning' the other day?
While going through old letters, photographs, slips, ticket stubs, hospital bills, tax documents and the odd birthday card I found this. A little something something I wrote nearly a decade ago. 

So, from 23 year old Nandi to you I'd like to share Untitled. (slightly edited from the original piece)

I caught a cab back home that night and I was feeling elated.
I thought of your words as I took them whole in my mouth.
I let the energy of your being hit the top of my palette and let your flow ruminate just to savor your potency.
And I swear, I could not only taste each syllable, your pitch, tones and inflections but that every ample curve of your consonants and vowels were secret codes that only I could decipher.
The 1st word of the 2nd verse, the 3rd last letter to the first word in your 3rd verse and the 1st and 2nd letters at the end of the 7th word of your 5th verse
You spoke to me.
From your soul sprung a stream of words that I had bottled away so long ago
Your words nourished me.
I took long and languid sips of love, of hope and of rhyme.
I caught a cab back home that night feeling all kinds of stupid drunk.
Thinking that that smile of yours had definitely gone straight to my head.


I think I may have written something about when we eventually started dating.
Yep, we dated. After all that inspiration a girl had to see what was good. Hahaha!

Feast!