I am just an ordinary girl, in an ordinary world who loves to share her writing with you all, so please come and check out my daily blog, you won't regret it.
I was watching a show called “Good Trouble” the other day and one of the characters was saying that some people live in black and white but we all exist in the grey.
I agree with that statement 100%, so much so that I decided to blog about it.
For the longest time, people all over the world have been taught that life goes either one way or another, good or bad, we call it “living in the black or white”. Nobody ever actually tells us about the feelings or moments that exist outside of the Black and white as if those are the only two options and that we are just supposed to accept that. We don’t have to accept that though because there are other options as well.
Most of the time we are taught that people are good, or people are bad, but we are never taught that they could possibly be both at the same time. You may have a good person that has done one bad thing in a moment of weakness or accidentally, but that does not make them a bad person, it just means that they had a moment that was “out of character”… we all get to have those moments. We judge people based on their past, but we don’t realise that their future could be so different, and they try so hard to prove that to other people that it actually makes them unhappy and sometimes even depressed and that is purely because we do not give them a chance to prove us wrong. I have realised that people read the first chapter of a book and always think that they can predict what the ending could be like that they don’t read the pages in the middle of the book, but those are the pages that count the most because they are the ones that change the book completely and could possibly give it a different and unexpected ending.
So before you judge people by the way they were in the past, rather get to know them as they are now.
It is now that time of the year where we all celebrate Halloween by going out trick or treating with the little kids and get lots of candy, or if you don’t have any kids then its time to celebrate it by going out to the biggest and best party you can find and party all night long, resulting in a hangover the next day.
Have you ever stopped to think about what the history of Halloween is, I certainly have, which is why I have decided to write about it. So, let’s dive into it!
The celebration of Halloween has 2 different origins. The first one is in a pre-Christian Celtic feast associated with the Celtic New Year. The second one is in the Christian celebration of All Saints Day (1st Nov) and All Souls Day (2nd Nov). In the British Isles November 1st is called All Hallows, therefore the evening before is All Hallows Eve.
Let’s talk about The Celtic Feast first
The ancient Celtic peoples who live in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Brittany celebrated their New Year’s Day on what would be November 1st on our calendar. The period prior to the New Year, as the year slowed down, was a time that most of the people considered to be the mystery of human death. It was believed that on the last night of the year the lord of death, Samhain, allowed the souls of the dead to go back to their homes. Souls that had died in sin, and in Celtic belief imprisoned in the bodies of animals, could be released through gifts to the lord of death, including human sacrifices. The people believed that evil spirits, demons, ghosts, witches were also free to roam around this night and could be calmed down by a feast. They would also leave you alone if you dressed like them and appeared to be one of them. Families would also extinguish their hearth fires on this evening to be re-lit from a common New Year’s bonfire built on the hilltops, which was meant to symbolize the driving away of darkness and evil with the coming of the new year. The jack-o-lantern as a means of scaring away evil and providing light may be a vestige of this custom. When the Romans conquered France and Britain in the century before and after Christ, the bloody elements of Druidic practice were banned.
Now let’s talk about The Christian Feast of All Saints and Souls
During the first 3 centuries of Christianity the Church had to operate “underground” due to the persecutions of the Roman state against her. During this time there were many martyrs who died for their faith in Jesus Christ. The most renowned of these were honoured locally by the preservation of the relics and by the celebration of the anniversary of their death, as a feast in honour of their birth into eternal life. As time passed, neighbouring dioceses would honour each other’s martyrs and exchange relics for respect, the way the first century Christians kept the clothes and handkerchiefs touched by St. Paul.
At the end of the 3rd century and the beginning of the 4th the most vicious of all persecutions occurred, and that would be the time of the emperor Diocletian. The martyrs became so many that in some places it was impossible to commemorate even the most important ones. The need for a common feast of all martyrs was becoming evident. In the middle of the 4th century, these feasts became a reality in some places.
The feast of All Souls developed more gradually, first with a monastic celebration of their departed on October 1st. This seems to have occurred first in Germany in the 900s. The patronage of St. Odilio of Cluny extended this feast to other monasteries, first of his own Order, then to Benedictines and others, from where it spread to dioceses, including Rome. It was only in 1915 that the special privilege of three Masses was granted to all priests by Pope Benedict XV.
Now let’s not forget about Halloween during Christian times
The conversion of Celtic peoples to Christianity did not dampen their enthusiasm for the pre-Christian year-end custom of feasts, bonfires, and masks, and New Year’s Eve costume parties. The proximity to the developing Christian feasts of All Saints and All Souls resulted in an attempt to move the celebration to the evening before All Souls, when children would go door to door receiving treats for a promise of prayer for the dead of the household. This attempt to associate the Celtic remembrance of the dead with the Christian memorial failed and the celebration remained a year-end custom, though Halloween remains mainly a children’s feast.
With the massive emigration of Irish in the last century the All Hallows Eve customs of costumes, jack-o-lanterns and trick or treating, were transported to North America. Scary costumes remain the historical norm for Halloween, though the advent of more sinister and violent times has encouraged many parents to take a gentler approach. Today many families, and even parishes, host parties, often with costumes of the saints, the poor souls or famous Catholics and other elements which re-enforce the Christian side of Halloween’s origins.
I hope you enjoyed my post and found these facts to be as interesting as I thought they were. I certainly didn’t realise how much history there really was.
So it has definitely been a while since I last posted on my blog and I must say that a ton of crazy things have happened to me.
In April I decided to take a leap of faith and I resigned from Jozi Padel to venture into a new career called Tumbling Tigerz. At Tumbling Tigerz, we work with kids between the ages of 2 and 6 years old and we travel to different schools around Joburg, a very tiring but rewarding job. We do obstacle courses and games with them that work on their hand eye coordination and improve their motor skills. This job has definitely taken me out of my comfort zone a couple times due to the fact that I have to drive a lot and often very far distances, the reason why I say this is taking me out of my comfort zone is because I am a very anxious person especially when it comes to driving far distances and so therefore I tend to stick to my little bubble.
After working at Tumbling Tigerz for about 3 months, I decided that I needed to resign because of reasons that were out of my control. Even though I loved the job so much, it just was not the right fit for me. I then decided to accept a job at Match Padel in Cedar Square…. I guess all roads lead back to Padel. It has been a completely chaotic ride for me, but I have no regrets.
After leaving Tumbling Tigerz, I am now only working my shifts at Match Padel and I am actually really happy there, I like the people I am working with and I like how organized everything is. I work a lot with the court coordinating, tournaments, socials, coaching etc…
So that is basically what my life currently looks like and even though it has been tough lately, I am very grateful to be where I am.
Thanks for reading my post, catch up with you soon xx
To say that it has been a while since I last posted would be an understatement.
For the last 24 years of my life, I have been living with my amazing and supportive parents, I have loved every second of it and now that I have made the decision to venture out and move into my own place, I have realised just how much I actually relied on them, and I can probably say that I took it for granted. I now live on my own in a beautiful and perfectly sized apartment in Lonehill.
I have now been living on my own for just under one month and it has been going really well so far… I have had my ups and downs but then again… who doesn’t. My favourite part of it all was the moving process, buying all of my furniture, painting the apartment, moving everything into it and cherishing those last few days I had with my parents, because even though I love living on my own, I do miss them dearly.
I have learnt a lot of things over the last month, responsibilities like; doing the dishes, washing my own laundry and drying it… thank God for the invention of the Tumble Dryer, cooking my own food (haven’t exactly nailed that one just yet, but I am working on it) and keeping the place clean… there was a night where I had a lot of ants and let’s just say I am very thankful for ant traps.
Not only did I learn household responsibilities, but I also learnt a lot about myself as a person. I learnt that I am actually capable of doing a lot more than I ever though I would, and I have also slowly but surely been gaining a lot more independence and I think that is my favourite part of living on my own. I now know that even though I do love being around people, I do not have to depend on others because I can take care of myself and I think that is a very important lesson for everyone to learn at some point in their lives… some take longer than others to learn this lesson, but that is not always a bad thing because everybody learns their life lessons in different ways and different paces.
There have been so many other new things that have happened in my life, but if I added all those things in one post then it would be a never-ending post. I will update you more in my next post.
Thank you for reading my post, and don’t forget to “keep calm and carry on”.
I hope you are having a fantastic week and an even better day.
I have been asked by a couple people to share the reason why I started blogging in the first place and it is actually something that I have been wanting to write about for a while now and I just haven’t gotten to it.
My passion for writing started when I was in high school, I used to write little stories for my English teacher and then he would mark them and tell me what I could improve on, because I actually wanted to initially be an author, I am still trying to write a book but it is not very easy.
I used to always want to be a professional Tennis player, but when I realised that dream was not going to come true I had to start thinking about what would come next for me, I always had an interest in writing journals and like I said little stories and the more I did this, the stronger my passion for writing grew and I realised my dream job is to be a Journalist. I was very prepared to be a Journalist but unfortunately my English grades were not high enough. For a while I was really upset about this because the thought of writing as a career was so exciting to me.
One day, my mom recommended to me that I start writing a blog, it isn’t the same as being a Journalist but at least this way I can still share my thoughts with everyone in the best way I know how to, and I can interview people on different topics and still be a writer even though I won’t be getting paid for it, I thought that sounded like a great idea because the payment was not the only reason I wanted to do it, I just wanted to share my thoughts and stories with people and if I can motivate people in anyway then that is a huge bonus. So, I took the plunge, and I started this blog, and I am beyond happy that I did because this blog has become my baby and is the way I can express myself in a healthy way.
I wrote an article once about The History of Easter and a lady from Kickass Bosslady magazine liked it so much that she actually wanted me to write for her magazine, I mean what are the chances of that. So I wrote a couple articles for them for quite a long time but unfortunately I no longer do that.
So that is my story of how and why I became a blogger. If you ever have a dream, don’t let people tell you that you cannot achieve it because there are always ways to achieve your goals and dreams, all you need to do is think outside of the box.
I hope you have had a great week and have awesome plans for the weekend. I had the best week I have ever had in a very long time. On Tuesday the 19 September at approximately 09:00 in the morning, my nephew was born. As most of you already know, I have a soon to be 5-year-old nephew already who is the absolute light of my life, I am so happy that he now has a little brother whom he already loves with all his heart, and I have another nephew who I love already. My heart is now split into 2, one half is for Ryley and the other is for baby Oliver.
The reason why the title of this post is called “Unexpected Passions” is because I have recently taken on a new activity which has very quickly become one of my ultimate passions, this activity is pole dancing. The reason why it is so unexpected is because I have always been a pretty conservative and private person, but I have always been so fascinated with pole dancing that I decided to give it a try. At first I was hesitant because like always I was worried about what people would think, but then I realised that I don’t really care what people think, if I really want to do something then I am going to do it and I am so happy that was my mindset. Nobody actually judged me at all, most people were surprised but a lot were also impressed because pole dancing takes a lot of core strength and well basically all the upper body strength you have. My confidence has als0 gone up a ton.
If you every want to do something whether it be in relationships or hobbies, you must never let the judgments from other people keep you from doing what makes you happy. Most of the time you won’t be judged by it at all, because people actually surprise you by being impressed with your bravery to actually do it.
Remember… you only live once.
I would like to end this with a quote by Mae West ” You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough “.
Thanks for reading my post guys, don’t forget to regret nothing, enjoy everything and be happy.
Its been a really long time since the last time I blogged and I must say, a lot has happened in my life. I have been wanting to make this post since April this year, but every time I sat down to write it I just did not know where to start, but today I woke up and decided that it was time I start posting again because I miss sharing my life experiences with all of you.
On the 29th March I made one of the biggest decisions I have had to make and that decision was to leave my job at Africa Padel at The German Country Club. For those of you who have read my blog posts will know that the job I had there meant everything to me and I loved it so much, and as with all things there comes a time when you need to move on to different experience, I will forever be thankful for the things that they taught me. Luckily for me I was only unemployed for 2 days, because I went for a job interview for a different Padel venue called Jozi Padel and not only got a job but I got a job as the Junior manager and now also the coach. This job is definitely a much better fit for me and there is ample space for growth and I love the vibe here, lets just say this was the best decision I have ever made.
About 2 weeks later I made another life changing decision and that was to get certified as a Padel coach through an online course with a place called Padel MBA. This was weeks of hard work and late-night study sessions, I would study before work, after work and even during work if I had the time. When I eventually finished the theory part, there was a man named Pau who came from Spain and did the practical part with us and that was the most intense three days ever. We started early in the morning and finished late in the evening with long sessions and 5-minute breaks, it was truly an amazing experience but also very tiring. Pau was a Padel coach for 16 years. After I found out that I passed my course I was overjoyed and felt a sense of relief and achievement.
I have now finally started coaching and I am loving every single minute of it. Just knowing that I am helping people makes everything I did totally worth it.
I would like to end off with a quote by Maya Angelou “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
There are certain things in life that we are in control of, for example, who we follow on social media, our attitudes, what we consume, our boundaries, our words, our resposense and last but certainly not the least, our energy.
There are also certain things in life we have absolutely no control of, for example, the past, algorithms, other people’s behaviours and beliefs, the future, the media and other people’s opinions of me.
We always tend to make life difficult for ourselves and focus more on things we can no longer control rather than focusing on the things that are in our control. Sometimes I don’t actually think we do this on purpose, because I mean who would want to feel stressed, unhappy and not in control.
So even though it may be difficult to do, whenever you feel yourself focusing on something that it no longer in our control, just take a moment to think about what we can control even if it is 1 small simple task like eating better. If you do this, I guarantee your life will be at least 90% better.
What types of things do you find are not in your control. You can email me on kellypeep7@gmail.com or even send me a dm on my Instagram account @kellys_daily_blog
I hope you are all having a fantastic day and week.
This week has been a very busy and chaotic week for me work wise and personally as well. I have had some new experiences and I am also very busy with work now because there are a lot of people that are starting to come back to Padel now that the holiday season is over.
I think we can all admit that all of this loadshedding has become quite a big issue and people are starting to get very irritated because they cannot use internet and all of those things. We need to start seeing the positive side of things especially now so that we can keep our sanity. Now I know that loadshedding is not very good work wise as people need the internet and not everyone is fortunate enough to have generators or a UPS, but if you need ideas for powerless entertainment, I have a couple of ideas for you.
When there is loadshedding during the day you can spend some time outdoors like going for walks or even playing sports for example Tennis, Soccer and even Padel which is a combination of Squash and Tennis so with that sport you are actually getting a two in one. You can also try out new hobbies like painting, drawing, maybe starting your own blog and writing about basically anything and everything. When there is loadshedding in the evenings you can spend time with family and friends and maybe play some board games and read a good book (reading is also a great daytime activity) and if you need any lights for any of this then torches are always an option.
So, there are many things you can do during loadshedding, and I probably haven’t even mentioned all of them, so even when you feel really down and negative just try and be positive and see the good amongst all of this bad.
If you can think of any other things to do during loadshedding then just mention it to me, you can email me on kellypeep7@gmail.com or send me a DM on my Instagram account @kellys_daily_blog
Thanks for reading my blog guys, have a fantabulous day xx
The one lesson that last year taught me was that if you work hard, you can achieve your goals.
I used to be the type of person that did not have the greatest work ethic and I think that was just because I didn’t truly know what hard work felt like but now, I do understand what it means to work hard. Ever since I started working for Africa Padel, I have had the mindset of nothing comes for free and you have to work hard in order to reach your goals, because at the end of the day when we really put our best foot forwards, we can accomplish anything.
Mind over matter truly is the best way to look at things and you need to create a positive mindset in order to really be able to get what you want. If you believe that you can do something, then you generally can do it. Now I am not promising that this works for everybody but having a positive mindset does help a lot.
If for example you want to be a doctor, but it doesn’t work out that way no matter how positively you look at it, you must always keep believing and eventually you will find what you are meant to do in the most unexpected ways.
I would like to end off with a quote “Two things you are in total in control of in life are your attitude and effort”.
