This really is a long rant about my year. I mainly wrote it for myself, but hell, if you’re bored and or looking for something to put yourself to sleep then go ahead.

I know that I’m not alone when I say that 2007 was a tough year. It seems to have been the most difficult year for most people in my life. More than just a mid-twenties quarter-life crisis, people close to me have dealt with ending long-term relationships, relocation, career decisions, death and personal trauma. I’m happy in the belief that 2007 was a year to break down walls and create a strong foundation to make 2008 a phenomenal start to good times ahead.

I’ve divided my year into the following sections:
Career
Death
Relationships
Friendships
People leaving
Spiritual / emotional growth
Creative Writing

Career
I started the year with a lot more responsibilities than anticipated. A number of unexpected changes suddenly left me running Musketeer Records in Joburg. I took on all my new-found responsibilities with vigour and am confident that I managed them pretty well. I was able to raise Fevertee’s profile significantly and signed my first band, The Dan Wilson Mark Huggett Project. Yet I did become a bit despondent about my hard work not paying off. My one-man-army approach clearly wasn’t working and I’ve had to revaluate the way I do things in business. Seether’s new album saved the year with incredible sales and the kind of media support I’ve always dreamed of, it really was a pleasure to launch the very appropriately named ‘Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces’. We already have 5 titles scheduled for release next year so things are looking up for Musketeer, although I am keeping an open mind towards broader career opportunities.

Death
I am no stranger to death, I’ve lost more than my fair share of close friends and family members since a young age. Although one would think that you eventually become less effected by it, I’ve found that the death of someone close just always gets me thinking about all the people I’ve lost in the past.

I lost two good friends this year.
Merron Martin, is an old friend from school-days. He lived in a digs with my Durban mates and always had philosophical debates with me. Merron is one of the purist souls I’ve ever known and his death sums up his life. Surviving a helicopter accident, Merron re-entered the wreck to save the pilot. His heroic act didn’t save the pilot, but it did cause his lungs to fill with smoke and ultimately his death. He was such a wonderful person with so much to contribute to the world, he will be missed.

I met Eugene Welgemoed when Seether toured SA with Metallica in 2006. Sharing a room with that crazy mofo meant that I got to know him pretty well in a short space of time. Eugene was instantly lovable and left a mark on everyone that had the pleasure of meeting him. His death a few months ago came as a massive shock and the wave it sent through the country proved that he was definitely more loved than he ever would have known. I wrote a note about his death and the confusion it caused; Fallen Hero.

A number of my friends lost family members and loved ones. A prominent couple from Wartburg was murdered which had quite an effect on everyone from the community. My family’s domestic worker, Betty, passed away. She was always such a jovial person and such a wonderful part of going home for holidays. Someone that meant a lot to me lost two important people in her life and although I never met them, their deaths had a profound effect on my life. I suppose I learnt that there’s little to make losing a loved one any easier to bear, whether you’re trying to make it easier for yourself or someone else.

Relationships
I’d like to think that I’ve come a long way since my teenage years where girls ruled my life. Sadly they still seem to have far more control over me than I’d like.

I started the year living the dream as a single male with a sports car. Much to my surprise I had more female attention than I’m used to. And although it was all very innocent I found myself having the best rainy season my love life has known. Despite meeting wonderful women it took me some time to make a conscious attempt at a relationship. And in typical Paul fashion… I took the hard road!

I fell hard for an emotionally unavailable woman and with a girl behaving like such a boy, I ended up behaving like a girl. Stuck in a constant battle of on-again-off-again theatrics I developed a real worthiness problem and let my head get the best of me. We somehow skipped all the joys of starting a relationship and went straight to the breakup. It took me a while but eventually I was able to stop being manipulated and blaming circumstances, I really appreciate all my friends that put up with my months of heartbroken whinging, you were all right from the start, but I had to take the journey to reach the end.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and I certainly became far stronger than ever. I have a lot of confidence issues to deal with but I’m doing my best to convince myself that the next woman to let me love her will be a very lucky gal!

Friendships
This year brought a whirlwind of challenges for my circle of friends. The most difficult part being the breakdown of so many relationships around me. The majority of my friends that were in long-term relationships at the start of the year broke up! I found myself stuck in the middle of good friends and hated every second of it! My neatly organised social circle was completely disrupted and I had to fight not to chose sides (or have them chosen for me). As much as my friends have all tried to be civil and not make their problems mine, it still sucks being the ‘child of divorcing parents’.

I have also made a lot of new friends this year. New circles have opened up through some pretty bizarre channels and I’m happy to have more exciting and interesting characters in my life.

People Leaving
More good friends moved overseas this year and that really sucks. My sister Laura moved to the UK. She has always been a wonderful support for me and when I went through such a kak year it was horrible not having her around. I didn’t realise how much I missed her until I saw her later in the year, it was brilliant to spend time with her and catch up.

Spiritual / Emotional growth
I reached a point in the year when my confidence and self-worth was stripped away. I’m no stranger to a poor self image, it was like I simply revisited the damaged 17 year old I used to be, the last time I felt this way I didn’t deal with the issues and ended up with unbearable acne. Now at age twenty-four I was not going to go back into that self-loathing woe-is-me attitude.

I made an appointment with Liz Connacher and went for my first Reiki session. I’ve always preferred alternative healing methods so Reiki seemed like a practice worth trying. My first session with Liz was mind-blowing, I went in looking for ways to make me stronger for the girl I was infatuated with saving but we hardly focussed on that at all. Instead we worked on childhood issues and really uncovered a lot of stuff I had always ignored. I started seeing Liz regularly and did a lot of work on myself, discovering that people need to sort their own issues out and I need to let them do that.

I may have freaked out a lot of people with my endless deep-talks and hippy philosophies, but I’m still the same fun-loving guy that can laugh at himself.

I still go for the odd reiki healing and am very pleased with how far I’ve come. From 10% to 90%, all that’s left is my confidence and belief in myself. I’m surrounded by people that praise me, it’s about bloody time I start listening to them!

Creative Writing
The most powerful thing to come out of my sessions with Liz was a new found passion for writing. I was inspired to write about a beggar that I always passed on the way to work and got a great response to my poem, The Broken Boy.

In a reiki session soon afterwards Liz opened my base chakra (one that deals with creativity) and I spewed out words and words. In 5 months I wrote over 50 poems and while a lot of them were no more than emo letters to the girl that hurt me, I was able to write about a lot of things that bothered me. It became a wonderful therapeutic release. A lot of people questioned me about the way I shared such personal thoughts with the world, but it really didn’t bother me. Once I write something I need to release it, and once it’s out there, I can actually let it go.

One of my favourites that I wrote this year is School of Life, a poem about the irony in the lessons we learn. You can learn the most incredible lessons from the most unwise teachers; I suppose one can only hope that they will find a teacher strong enough to school them.