Owning my time

It’s the 31st of December and tonight will be my first night on a mountain after summiting Mount Kilimanjaro. As I write this, I am sitting on the very same bench that once convinced me I could do it. The bench where doubt softened. It feels poetic - ending the year where courage first whispered, try.

My 30th year has been nothing short of dreams coming true. The wild ones. The painfully scary ones. The I could live like this ones. And for that, I am deeply grateful.

March arrived heavy. We cleansed our spirits after my grandmother’s passing. My grandfather wasn’t there to administer the process, and that absence was a brutal kind of truth. Ugogo akasekho, kusele thina sodwa manje. 

It affirmed something I had been avoiding - it was time to adult. Truly. To create a life so intentional that my future grandchildren could carry my name, my values, my joy, the same way I am hoping to carry MaZondi’s. Legacy stopped being a concept and became a responsibility.

April marked her first posthumous birthday. I was drowning in work, gasping between deadlines and expectations. Something had to give. So I resigned.  Firmly. And I committed to that decision in a way that felt both terrifying and freeing.

May was my first full month as a freelancer. For the first time in a long time, I rested without guilt. I owned my time. I woke up slowly. I breathed. And just like that, my only goal for 2025 had already been achieved - freedom over my time.

The rest of the year was simply me living. I went to the club more than ten times, danced without rushing home. I travelled to the Karoo for a festival, felt small under wide skies. I returned to Splashy Fen, and somehow, the fourth time was the best time. Music, mud, laughter - life in its most honest form.

I wanted this to be a long blog. But it doesn’t need to be. Because after February, I simply had a good year.

I am living in consistent joy. I am living the life of my dreams.

To the mountains, the universe, neDlozi lakithi — ngiyabonga.