by Vejay Reddy
Living is what you want of Life and
Life is what you achieve by Living
Life: It is Balancing Living.
Extent you want to watch ‘bees make honey’,
versus you making the ‘honey’?
Living: is about not accepting mediocracy,
Taking the bull by the horns,
Taking Life into your own hands,
Expecting no less of Life.
What is your goal to acquire?
How much of Life to Live?
by Vejay Reddy
In our
pursuit of life, the one mistake we face is
that we are waiting for Thank You's and Noddy Badges. Why should we wait for
this? We must focus on ourselves and fixate ourselves to deliver on our inner
goals we set for ourselves. When we have a fighting spirit, a tenacity to
achieve, we must indoctrinate our beliefs that no one , not anyone should come
in our way of our goals we set for ourselves. Dream BIG, select the Goals
wisely and Achieve, one step at a time.
I'm from Simpletown in Chatsworth. Came from a Simpletown family. And made simpletown mistakes. My schooling was simple,at Chatsworth Secondary School class of 1991.
Feeling intimidated: I was intimidated by a recent book launch I attended at a Exclusive Book shop in Durban. What I was intimated about was the language , the mannerism, how eloquent the author carried herself , it was all just too much. I stayed for the book review and launch. Shew, it just even hit me harder. Since I am from Chatsworth.
I eventually asked a question at the end , very end , when they almost closed the session, and I said do you mind if I ask a question. I then related my views, I felt so small and thought it is not worth it for me to undertake the journey of writing my book . However as I spoke in my simpletown words, I got a very positive feedback from the author, publisher and audience that was there! Their feedback was about being authentic and simple and easy to understand and most importantly to have the courage to tell your story that you are passionate about. Sometimes we complicate things and yes, we may win over a select few, while the core essence of our purpose is missed by the majority. Different audience requires a different approach. As with the old adage, when in Rome do as the Roman's.
Jogging very early in the morning is good for you! That is a mis!take, I don't believe that is that complete truth. Let me explain this from my lessons and experience. I jog at around 6am ALONE! However, before I jog, I wake up between 4amt to 5am and start with my work, at around 6am I start to jog and just reflect on what I was doing and what lies ahead for the day. I cannot express how powerful the energies and creative juices flow in my mind. I start to reflect and think differently. Its really a rewarding experience in both mind, body and soul. I reflect in my young days in school, I should jog from my home to the local highway, +- 20 kms, okay I am lying, I was young then it seemed like 20 kms, it was about 8 to 10kms. It assisted me tremendously with my mental vitality.
Writing a book is most therapeutic. No amount of physiological therapy can come close to the value in personal introspection you get from writing a book. At times I just smiled at myself at awe in regards to connecting the dots and not realizing the alignment of my journey I had travelled.
Be Authentic in your writing. This will serve you alot. Since when you write authentically you appreciate how the dots connect. It will then unearth and explain certain events in your life as to why it unfolded as such.
Zone Out of the noise and zone into your 'inner voice' to write your book.
Don't rely on anyone for support, just write.
Relying of others to review your draft, without paying them will never happen. They all busy with their work.
Read broader on your subject by famous authors and more importantly academics, meaning individuals with titles of Dr's or Professors. These authors will have deeper insights and research into the topics you covering.Have a voice recording of why you are writing. Its objective, intent and purpose. Replay this voice recording often as you need to so that it motivates you to continue on your journey.
No Thanks You's! No Noddy Badge! unless it is done.
Print out the draft cover of your book and when passing a book store place the cover infront of an existing book to get a feel of how your cover will sit like in a bookshelf. This gives you a great perspective of yours books image in relation to the other books. I realized my main title should be enlarged.
Always remember you are the architect, designer, publisher, marketer and everything else that goes in the life-cycle from writing to publishing to selling the book.
Follow other published, local authors and see what they are doing.
80 / 20 Rule: Dont get caught up into proper and full blown grammar and spelling on your first draft. The important aspect is to have all the creative juices, thoughts, ideas, all of this unpacked into your draft.I was eventually on draft version 42 before sumbitting my final draft manuscript to the editors. It went through another 7 revisions before we went into layout stage.
The book below is an indepth book, well worth the read, that can assist to demystify your concerns or dilemma you face.
Book: The Power of Writing it Down by Allison FallonThe thread below is from Rajiv Naranda's FB page. He wrote this piece. He had it all and it came crushing down due to an ill-fated incident. Like him or not, but the piece he wrote after his incarceration, is eye opening.
1 Car – Many Skins 🔴 🟣 ⚫
This read is for the youth to understand. I paid R2 050 000 for the car in 2013 , 12 years ago , Age : 26
When I got too busy with work / life , I rented it out for R80k per month . A guy once took it for 4 months 😄
Let’s Examine : These cars , are purchased for reasons.
1. You’ve made it in life 🤝 You want to show your achievements . You are proud. The car was your dream car.
2. You’re absolutely passionate about cars . It’s your hobby. It's your game.You can afford it, so you got it. 🙅🏼♂
3. Business reasons . To brand and advertise. OR
4. You feel no confidence in yourself. Money & Material Items control your life. Without it you feel a weakling. 🤦♂You feel unimportant , invalidated, a small nonentity that’s screaming for recognition.💣 You need this car to shout to the world “ I am a big man. Respect me now”
5. A traumatic end to a love , work or social relationship.💔 You now want to prove you are “ better “ and that they “ lost “ out.
6. You’re deeply dominated by a material life . It owns you . You dare not downgrade, irrespective. This will make you look like a failure. You have to live up to the standard you set. 🗣 “ Hey Lani , You getting a better car next. Can’t Wait to see it. You the man "
What’s the “irrespective”. It’s most SA Super Car buyers problem.
1. They chase the purchase, irrespective of the consequences.
1.1. There is Not enough money to pay for it cash .They finance. Financing a R4.million sports Car today will add R1.4 million to the cost. Total R5.4 million .The monthly instalment is over R100 000 With Insurance .
1.2 They bank on current business income 📇 to fund the instalment. They do not have funds kept aside for this.
1.2. They make this a habit , thinking everything will be okay. 🫨
1.5. They channel most of their funds to the car instalment. When in fact he / she should be using that money for other good use, such as placing it back into business.💯
1.6. The “lifestyle” gets too expensive.
1.7. They try to sell the car after 2 years. The problem is , they owe more on the car , then the best selling price.⚠ This is due to interest , and car depreciation. They shot themselves in the foot. EG: The dealer is offering R3 000 000 for the car , but you still owe R3 500 000 to the bank. 🤯
1.8. A spiral ⬇downwards from here….leading to repossessions , interest on loans to pay , bad credit . ( Including family issues due to money ↘ )
1.9.They focused on a lifestyle more , than growing their income.
1.10. They begin borrowing money and take loans , to live up to the “ image”
I can go on and on. Priorities have disappeared.
Ultimately , this is a life of stress, a life of misery , a life of not having any control over one’s self.⛔
When you see people buying expensive cars , driving 🛞 around feeling like a sovereign🤴, know that in all realism , they are either the 10% that live pure and smart ( mostly old money families ) , or the 90% that strive to prove their status , irrespective of outcomes…
Me 👱 : I had many sports cars in my 20’s. I lived it. 15 Years ago. ( There’s a Bentley Drop-Top in my garage , covered , with bubble wrap on the tyres. Its been like that for the last 8 years. There is no time to "glay" like before. So made it a collector )
Everyone Asks When I’m Pulling Out The Super Cars Again 💭
I’m not.
I’m pulling out super properties 🏘 🏢 🏗. That’s what thrills me today .
Young Ladies & Gents. These are just material items. They bring temporary happiness. Never feel lower than the big spender....feel safer 🤝 .
Your time will come , as you earned it the hard way , penny for penny. Just make sure you can pay for the entire car before purchasing it. Dont relay on future funds. In the mean time , invest and spend on mastering your OWN self . The best investment I have made in my life ☝
✅ Worry about your character, not your reputation. Because your character is who you are , and your reputation is only what people think of you...
Its yours own it, design it, craft it
editor mistakes! short rental opportunity vs short term rental opportunitymissing the word 'at' from the sentence
building architect failures
If you feel comfortable with this no problem
I refer to my English has Chatsworth English. I am not enliquent with my words however I try. With that said. Writing the book with my own words is a proud moment for me. Certain pargraphs took 3 days to reword and rewrite, since it spoke who I was. It made me feel the book from cover to cover. A feeling I cant describe!all students salaries and personal details was emailed to all students.
Project: Complete pricing and breakdown of staff and costing was emailed to competitorEmailed wrong recipients by not deleting the 'To' recipients after retrieving the correct spelling of their names.
Chapter 1 is titled 'Drinking my Tea'
The first paragraph of the book starts of with Drinking my Tea and ten chapter's later the book's last chapter ends of with drinking my teaTea is my true source of energy that keeps me moving forward daily. Its drives my gusto!
This was indeed a iterative process
Has the storyline progressed I started to vision what the book cover would look like
Similar to the multiple mock ups I did when building my houses, I spent time researching images that will identify and summarise my book
So by a certain stage I was set in my view what the cover would look like to such an extent I did my own photoshoot with the help of my son, just to get the idea and concept out
Overtime this started to evolve while writing the book
Eventually one sharing the idea with my publishers design team , while noting, that they charge for various design concepts, they managed to pull of the photo image of what I wanted
I started to tweak the image adding elements of my own uniqueness to the image or what I wanted the cover to represent
I then decided to print the cover and one day while at the airport I took my cover and placed in EB front shelf, and took a picture of my book cover will all the other published books.
This opened up a different set of design enhancements, text size, boldness of text, Colour fonts of text
I took insights and view from friends as well, this was important
I think I had maybe 20 to 30 versions of the cover. To clarify the cover was the same, just the text, boldness of words, Capital letters vs Small letters. I was not toying with all these changes.
Even the words like 'Hustling' I had to research this word to understand its true meaning and that it will no be misconstrued in my cover
Gut feel was also importantTo the eventual result
