STUDIO83

I grew up obsessed with being the youngest, most successful South African filmmaker, novelist and media mogul. The vision of myself wearing a power suit and stark white All Stars on the cover of Fortune haunted me. Really! I was obsessed with making my mother proud; rolling into the driveway with a spanking-new hot car, giving her thousands of rands to renovate her house, and going on fabulous holidays around the world. The anxiety of being a success kept me awake at night. Opportunity came easily to me, and I took everything without putting much thought or effort into it.
I was obsessed with reading up on successful people and calculating the age at which they had their big break, they age at which they got married, they age at which they had their first baby. And every single time, I was way behind schedule. But the older I got, the more disappointed and less motivated I got.

This imagined pressure and immense botched plan had me believing I was a complete failure. I had become incredibly self-critical and not very self-aware. I would never believe it when people told me how talented I was. My knocked self-esteem had me running blindly through the world, constantly depressed, and not very productive. But things never stay the same. At some point, my luck ran out and I was faced with just me. I can’t say when it was that something shifted in my head. There was no lightbulb moment – more like a string of epiphanies and litres of tears.

Perhaps it was the wisdom that comes with being older and realising, from experience, that my approach to life was just not working. Living in contempt made me realise that I had forgotten myself. I longed for the strong sense of self I had in my early 20s, even though my ideas of the world then were pretty juvenile.

In my late 20s, I have somehow found my lost self of sense, but I think more about the work I do and why I do it. I am learning to have respect for my craft, as well as my ability to do it. Most importantly, I am learning that that there is a time for everything. I can’t quite say what success really is, or if there does exist a universal meaning for it. I do know that pursuing it can be quite daunting and not ‘attaining’ it incredibly dissapointing. I have replaced, by default, the obsession with being successful with the burning desire to tell stories, good ones at that.

I don’t know if I’ll be a media mogul, or if I’ll ever be able to go on fabulous trips around the world with my mother. All I know is that the journey has taken centre stage over the destination, and I am getting a lot more sleep at night.

Writer / Karabo Lediga    *taken from Redirection Issue