I thought I’d start out the New Year with a story…
Some folk (and especially those who are new and/or who don’t know much of my personal journey) may wonder how we ended up doing what we’re doing. What compelled us to turf all our stuff? What made us ditch the debt, rent out the house, take the kids out of school… and begin a nomadic existence of travel and exploration?
Well… here’s an important part of story: I call it my Bathtub Moment.
The moment… when I knew… with utmost clarity and certainty that my life had to change.
My life didn’t need slight tweaks and adjustments… it needed to change.
As in: completely.
As in: irrevocably.
The entire trajectory of my existence needed to shift on to a different course. It needed to be different. Very, very different. And I knew… with certainty… that I could never go back.

See that miserable person? That’s me… in my studio… taken somewhere around the time of my Bathtub Moment….
It was mid-2007.
At the time, I owned a graphic design and below-the-line ad agency called COPS Creative Corporation.
I don’t exactly know how I ended up with that company. It certainly wasn’t on my list of Life’s Big Dreams (to own a design agency). I probably ended up in that position for the same reason that (most?) people end up doing the stuff they do.
I kinda… drifted there.
It just sorta… happened.
It’s like I had been swept up by the tidal wave of life… and dumped unceremoniously on a shore I’d never intended visiting.
It went something like this:
- I have a creative talent.
- I started doing freelance design work for a few friends.
- Word spread.
- More clients came along and asked me to design for them.
- Eventually, there was too much work for me to be able to manage on my own… so I hired another designer to help me – and voila! a business was born!
By 2007, the business had grown significantly. I employed 10 people (excluding myself). 8 people were employed by COPS and, on the home-front, I employed another 3 – including a full-time nanny (who cared for 2-year-old Morgan) and a full-time housekeeper.
In 2007, my life was… kinda like a runaway train. It surged ahead, full-steam… and although I knew that I should have been up front in the cab, powering the train and tooting the whistle… it felt as though the train was driving itself, and I was limping on the train-tracks, far behind the train, frantically trying to catch up.
It was exhausting and disheartening.
At the time, Nick and I lived in a large suburban home which we had moved in to shortly after we’d married in Feburary 2005. Morgan arrived in November 2005. Joah followed in March 2008.
The house (and attached cottage) was our home… but was also a studio for Nick (a filmmaker)… and the headquarters of COPS.
My company created advertising and promotional campaigns for a number of clients. I once heard somebody (I think it was a copywriter) refer to this kind of work as “rolling other people’s turds in glitter”.
And sometimes, that’s exactly what it felt like.
Sometimes, I not only disliked the clients… but I thought their products and services were horrible. Horrible and turdish. And yet – I would need to don the polite-and-enthusiastic-smile… and invent creative ways to promote said turdish product… to glitterize it… to make it more palatable to the general public… to generate sales for my clients.
(Obviously this isn’t true of all of my clients – I had some lovely clients too) – but it felt as though most of them (and certainly the large, arrogant corporations) required me to do lots of turd-rolling.
One of my largest clients was a company that owed hotels.
LOTS of hotels.
They were a big, hotel-owning company and (like all big corporations) they were concerned about one thing: The Bottom Line.
I did lots and lots of turd-rolling for this company.
And I did lots of corporate brown-nosing in their bling-encrusted boardrooms (whilst sipping their shitty coffee). I’d talk the jargon-talk and dazzle them with assurances of how amazing their next campaign would be.
Then I’d go home… and my designers and I would work crazy hours in order to meet the demands and expectations of the client.
My Bathtub Moment was, in a sense, the fruit of this particular hotel-owning client.
And I remember it as though it were yesterday…
When it happened, Nick was away on an international shoot. Nick was usually my reliable buffer when the shit hit the fan. If I had crazy deadlines, he’d make sure that Morgan was taken care of (during the evenings… or over weekends and holidays when the nanny wasn’t there).
But, on this occasion, Nick was away. For 3 solid weeks.
And during those 3 weeks, my hotel-owning client suddenly decided (at the last possible moment) that they wanted to exhibit at Indaba (a huge expo for the travel & hospitality industry, held in Durban every year).
Not only were they going to exhibit at Indaba, but they needed thousands of printed fact sheets, posters, brochures (and every kind of promotional material imaginable) for ALL of their hotels.
ALL of these items needed to be designed, printed and delivered to their flashy double-storey exhibit by 7am on the first morning of Indaba.
We had 2 weeks to pull it off. 2 weeks!!
Usually… a job of this size will take the printing company – alone – 2 weeks to produce (at a push). And we needed to first DESIGN the whole lot… and have it all checked and proofed and signed off before I could send a single item to the printer.
To cut a long story short, I worked like a rabid dog for those 2 weeks. I lived on a cocktail of coffee and Red Bull. I slept in short spurts. I paid the nanny overtime to help me with Morgan in the evenings (she bathed her, fed her and put her to bed).
I sent the work to the printing company in stages. As soon as one fact sheet had been proofed and signed-off, I immediately forwarded the artwork to the printer. At one stage, I humiliated myself when I begged my printer… (like a dog!)… literally, I begged him… with genuine tears in my eyes to “Please, please, please… make it happen, please!” – when he told me that he just didn’t think it was possible to have everything printed by the prescribed deadline.
“It has to be ready”… I begged him, “Please, it has to…”
I was really worried that I wouldn’t have everything at the Indaba exhibit by 7am on launch day – as expected. I fretted about what might happen if I didn’t meet that deadline.
What if I lost the client? And how would we pay all the bills and salaries without that hotel-owning client?
A day before the deadline, I was pacing my studio like a restless, caged animal.
I’d phone the printer.
“Is everything ready yet? Can I collect?”
“No! Not ready yet!”
The hotel-owning client was also phoning me… regularly.
“Are you on your way to Indaba?”, they’d ask.
“No, I’m still in Joburg. I’m waiting for the printing to come off the press”.
“What? Why isn’t it ready yet?” they demanded, seemingly oblivious to how much of my life I had given up… and how much turd-rolling I had taken on for them. No, wait… I wasn’t turd-rolling. For this particular job, it felt as though I had submerged myself in an Olympic-sized swimming pool of corporate poo!
By 5pm, I was starting to get desperate. I phoned the printing company again:
“Please, please tell me that it’s ready”…
“It’s off the press. We’re just waiting for the ink to dry. Then we’ll score, fold and send it through the guillotine”
“It’s not cut yet?” – I asked, feeling the desperation and panic beginning to rise like bile in my throat…
“We’re doing the best we can, Heather” – said the printer, sounding distinctly unfriendly. He had a bite to his voice that suggested that his patience was wearing really, really thin.
By 8:15pm, the job was ready.
I had packed a small, overnight bag, dropped Morgan off at her grandparents and had driven my Renault Modus to the printing factory. The staff helped me to load 10 000 copies of fact sheets, brochures and posters into my small car. The printed material engulfed my Modus. It filled the boot, the back seat (I couldn’t even see out my rearview mirror)… and it towered precariously on the passenger seat next to me.
I was worried that if I made an abrupt turn in my car, that the mountain of printing would topple over and crush me like an insect.
The weight was clearly too much for the Modus. The axles creaked… the tyres looked as they would burst under the strain – but I didn’t care. I had possession of the completed artwork. Now I just needed to drive it all to Durban (700 kilometres / 435 miles away).
With my overnight bag, 8 tins of Red-Bull and a tiny car… overloaded with printed promotional material… I drove, through the night, from Johannesburg to Durban.
Oh – and did I mention…? I was also pregnant with Joah at the time!
I was beyond exhausted… beyond stressed… beyond sleep-deprived. I drove with the windows down so that the cool night air would (hopefully) keep me awake so that I (hopefully) wouldn’t plunge myself off a ravine… or something.
About an hour in to my drive, I received a phone call. It was from the hotel-owning-client (the CEO himself).
“Where the FUCK are you?” he barked into my ear.
Just as I was about to explain… in my most polite, brown-nosing voice… and tell him that I was on the road, that the job would be delivered on time… the battery on my phone went flat.
I drove the rest of the way to Durban with the knowledge that the CEO was foaming-at-the-mouth-mad at me… expecting me not to show up on time (if at all).
Just the knowledge of this, filled me with dread.
I arrived at my hotel at 3 in the morning. It was a beautiful, 5-Star establishment and I was shown to my lavish suite by a polite porter (I had tried to book a cheaper hotel, but, with Indaba on the go, every reasonably priced hotel room in the whole of Durban was booked up. Only super-expensive places were available).
I slept for 2 hours… woke at 5am… showered, dressed, ate breakfast… and returned to my loaded Modus, only to discover: a flat tyre!
The Modus was going nowhere.
I felt that familiar feeling of panic begin to rise: “Oh crap! Oh crap! Oh crap! I have to have all this stuff at the hotel exhibit… at Indaba… in the centre of town… at 7am! It’s now 6am… and I have a flat tyre!”
Thankfully… mercifully… my cousin was also attending Indaba (she and her husband own a lodge in Limpopo and they were also exhibiting that year). I phoned Clare, explained my predicament and her husband, Michel, drove to my hotel… helped me re-load all the shrink-wrapped parcels into his van… and helped me deliver the whole lot… ON TIME… to the hotel-owning client’s flash double-storey exhibit.
After off-loading the trolley… I sank down on to the floor in a daze.
It was at that moment that the hotel-owning CEO arrived on the scene (the one who had sworn at me on the phone the night before… and who had since left a number of threats and choice words on my voice-mail during the course of the evening).
He was striding, red-faced, down the aisle… followed by a small cluster of worried-looking, note-taking minions. Upon reaching his exhibit, he stopped abruptly… glared darkly at me and turned his attention to the mountain of neatly-stacked printed material that I had delivered. Realising that everything was there… on time… he glanced back at me, delivered a curt nod, spun on his heel, and left.
No “thank-you”, no acknowledgement… absolutely nothing.
I was simply the hired help – and I was expected to do whatever it took… to deliver the goods. If I had plunged the Modus off a cliff-face in the middle of the night… and died… his biggest concern would have been whether there were enough salvageable pamphlets for Indaba.
Michel dropped me back at my hotel.
I went to my suite, put on some music and sunk into a very hot bath.
I so desperately wanted Nick and Morgan with me. I wanted them in that hotel room with me. I wanted to lean against Nick and feel the reassurance of his warm hugs. I wanted to scoop up my baby girl and just BE with her. I wanted to see her beautiful face. I wanted to listen to her laughter.
But, I was alone in that tub… in that big, 5-star-suite.
Exhausted… stressed… and alone (well, not entirely alone… I had a baby boy growing inside of me, at the time).
And THAT was when my Bathtub Moment happened.
I started to cry… as in howl-cry.
Big salty tears plopped into the steaming bath water… and I howled some more.
And then I started to QUESTION.
“Why am I here? What am I doing? Why am I doing this work? Why am I putting up with these turdish clients? Why am I running this business? Is it WORTH it? Is it worth the humiliation? The stress? Was this my dream? Did I even want this? If I didn’t want it, why am I doing it? Is this all there is? Is this what life is supposed to be like? Is it possible to escape this? Is it possible to change this? Is it possible to dig myself out of this hole? Is it possible to re-imagine and re-design my entire life? …”
Deep down, I already knew all the answers to the questions that I was spewing out. Deep down, I already knew what needed to be done. The Bathtub Moment was simply the first time I had articulated it to myself… the first time I’d given myself permission to feel… and dream… and to decide that I wanted something else for my life. Something different.
And so, right there, right then… I decided.
Just like that.
The decision was made.
—————-
After I had returned from Joburg… after Nick had returned from his shoot, I told him what I wanted to do.
“I want to shut down COPS. It’s just killing me slowly. And the stress is not worth the money I make”.
Nick agreed. And that was the end of that. I closed the business. Shut it all down. My staff found other work. I phoned all of my clients and told them they’d have to find a new design agency. We sold the computers. Shut down the shop. Paid the last of the bills. And just like that… it was gone.
COPS Creative Corporation was no more.
And just like that… I had the freedom to decide: “What do I want to actually DO with my life?”…
And… I think… I’m only just beginning to figure out the answer to that question.
Thanks for reading!
Holy $hit. That’s quite the story. Glad you made it out alive.
Bwa-ha! Me too! 🙂
Sigh. All of life’s most important moments happen in bathtubs… at least in my world… it’s where the real soul work gets done, don’t you think?? As always… I love it.
So true…! Bathtubs: place for thinking and processing and much-needed time-outs alone. *sigh*
Heather, this is great reading! I didn’t know your story, but now that I do, I am really so happy for you that you made the leap! What a wonderful legacy for your children…what a wonderful gift to yourself and your husband.
Thanks, Deb! I’m happy too… and feel so much more *me* these days. 🙂
You were in a terrible place and those are the best rocky bottoms to push off from. I know, having faced a few rocky bottoms of my own.
Sometimes, when pushing off, there is no time to steer (I have the image in my head of someone pushing off from the wall of a large room in a zero gravity environment – just shooting off and then realizing, hang on.. I am going to just keep on bouncing off other walls unless I find something to grab on to).
I wonder sometimes what you are seeking or chasing and I hope you find it on your adventures. I have been your sister for a long time (almost 40 years!) and I have watched you looking under rocks and behind things your whole life. Careers, projects, ideas, businesses, charities, inventions (and for a while, diets)… they satisfy you for a very little bit as you are always looking behind them for something, for what? For some sort of ultimate rush or satisfaction, some completion or end point? Do you remember how dad did that? He would buy things – boats, cameras, holiday homes and then not want them when he had them. You do not buy things, but you collect things – memories, ideas, experiences, but you don’t hold them long before searching for new ones. What if you lived for 200 years and visited ever town and city in the world and ran out. What then?
Just my thoughts on this. There is no right or wrong way to live life, perhaps you do not want an anchor – but I might believe that more if I did not still see you reaching out for something.
I would like to see you happy in your skin enough to enjoy wherever you find yourself, to stand still long enough to know for certain that even without excitement and change, the world is a pleasing enough place to live in with those you love.
I push… I search… I collect… I question… and I seek, simply because it’s who I am. I find joy in all of those things. It gives me pleasure to collect… to invent… and to journey.
I love exploring down new roads… peeking around the next corner… collecting little knick-knacks along the way… keeping scrapbooks and blogs and treasures.
I’m not at all discontent while doing this. In fact, I’m probably more content than I’ve ever been in my life.
For me… questions don’t need to be *answered*. Just the questions alone… turning them over… pondering on things… changing my mind about things… imagining different outcomes… that’s what I truly enjoy.
I don’t like being stagnant or static. I don’t like sameness. It’s just who I am… and, as you know, I have always been this way.
For a long time, I felt as though it was *wrong* to be that way. And most of my misery and struggle came from trying to be someone I’m not… trying to fit into a mould that other people felt was “better”… or “right”.
I’ve stopped doing that now.
For the first (possibly in my life)… I have come to embrace this aspect of me. I have come to accept it and enjoy it… and I have stopped trying to *correct* myself… stopped trying to be more *normal*…
I LOVE collecting memories, ideas and experiences. It’s who I am. I’m a collector.
And I enjoy every moment. I certainly don’t feel a feeling of discontentedness… I’m not trying to fill up a leaky bucket or an empty hole. I am happy and content with every moment… and DEEPLY grateful for this life.
I don’t need *solutions* and *answers* and *truths* to be happy. I am happiest on the JOURNEY… happiest while finding new things to discover.
I’m happy while reading a book in a coffee shop. Happy while drawing… happy while nuzzling my kidlets… happy while looking at the smallest flower or inspecting a bug that happens to crawl across my book…
There is wonder to be found EVERYWHERE… and this delights me!
The world IS an exciting place. It’s been an exciting place for a while now. Travel and adventure is GREAT and exciting – and I love it… but I don’t *need* it to happen all the time, every day.
The thing that makes me happiest (apart from spending quality time with the people I love)… is simply the FREEDOM to be who I really *am*… without trying to be someone else.
And it is this freedom that I have… finally… embraced.
PS: the “search” that I mentioned at the end of my blog post had to do with career stuff. What do I want to DO? There are so many things that I love doing… writing, illustration, blogging, photography, storytelling, production design, music, etc… so it’s a bit of a task to figure out… career wise… which direction to launch. That said, these 2 months have been a Time-Out for me… an interesting time for me to just *be*… and for that process to happen organically (rather than me trying to force it). I also don’t mind if the career aspect of my life ends up being very multi-dimensional… again, it’s just who I am. I’ve NEVER been a One-Thing-Only kind of person… and I’ve made peace with that now.
You are the most wonderful writer …SO emotional…a great reflection for Nik and I as we face the dawn of another year where our resolve to do things differently has reared its MAGNIFICENT head …love to you
all xx
Again, thanks, Brenda! And hope this year has all kinds of exciting things in store for you guys!! x
Enjoyed this…and I can relate on so many levels! Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to you too, Alisa! Enjoy this new season of life! 🙂
Brilliantly written – laugh out loud funny and wonderfully inspirational. I am stuck in a similaf situation myself. If only I were as brave as you.
Thanks! Although, I don’t see myself as brave… I think if I were brave, I would have left the situation sooner than what I did. I think it eventually just became unbearable enough for me to say: “I just can’t DO this any more”. And… then I didn’t. Thanks for connecting. 🙂
I don’t know how I stumbled across your blog but I am SO glad I did. My husband and I have been discussing this since the end of last year and I have absolutely no idea where to start. I’m so flippen scared! How do I feed the kids (I’m currently the soul provider for my family and have been for the better part of 14 years)? I will now hungrily devour every bit of info and advice you have hear. You are my hero. 2016 will be the year where our family breaks the mould and ventures out.
Wow – what a beautiful response to my post… thank-you so much for connecting and for your lovely words. I don’t have all the “answers” – but I also KNOW that there are always ways… means… solutions… to be able to live life on YOUR terms. And – YES – I stand with your goal to make 2016 “The Year”… keep in touch – and, again, thanks for connecting! 🙂
What is the “something different” that you are now doing? I am in the rat race—mostly out of necessity—and I hate every single minute of it. Help! ????
I hear you – and I know what it’s like to live in (and hate) the rat-race.
I think – for us – it was a series of baby steps. Teeny, tiny changes with a larger goal in sight. We began with downsizing our monthly expenses. We got rid of things like gym contracts, expensive cell phone contracts, accounts at clothing stores, cable TV (and – as it turned out – once the TV was gone, we became so much more productive with our time). We downsized a very expensive medical-aid scheme to “hospital plan only”. We decided to home-school our kids (not simply because of the money-thing… but because we decided that we wanted to prioritise family-time, travel & memory-making over all the other “stuff”).
Slowly… we poured extra money into renovating our home (to make it rent’able and to be able to generate an income). Then I shut down the life-sucking graphic design business… sold all the computers, desks, what-not… and by then – our monthly expenses were really low (only one car between us – paid off). Then we rented out the house for a year – and travelled extensively during that time – (partly following my husband’s on-location shoots… and partly following our own path).
During that year (and since)… I – personally – eventually had the TIME… and the *SPACE* to figure out what I TRULY wanted out of life (which was – I must say – SUCH a huge gift. Just to have the time and space to figure things out without massive pressure & expectations). And it was during that time that I had my “Hat” epiphany… wrote & illustrated a book… crowd-funded the money to print the book… and now (with the book printed) – the money is starting to come in and support my (VERY) different — and very-very fulfilling career of author/illustrator… which is who I really am – and what I *REALLY* wanted to do – right from the start (before I got all caught up in the rat-race, hoop-jumping, people-pleasing thing).
I know that it’s not the same for everyone. I know that everyone has different challenges… different circumstances… and life – or any kind of solution – is never any one-size-fits-all. What worked for me – may not work for your. But – I think that there were a few vital elements of our Big-Shift that *had* to be in place and that… I think… would be true for anyone.
The first was The Questioning. My bathtub moment was the FIRST time I thought: “Hang on… what is happening here??? What am I doing? Why am I here? Did I even want this? And if I didn’t want this – then WHY am I doing this????”
I don’t think any change can take place when folk just don’t ever get to that (uncomfortable) place of VERY honest questioning.
After that initial “bathtub moment” questioning…. the questions continued (and I LET them continue). There weren’t so many “answers”… and I kinda made peace that I’d have to embark upon a journey to find those missing answers. And that was a process – not a “quick fix”.
The second vital element after The Questioning… was The Decision. The Decision (or rather – series of repeated decisions – because you need to make them every day)… was: “I want something DIFFERENT. I want something MORE”.
I think only once we’ve TRULY DECIDED that we are dissatisfied with the status quo and we “want something MORE”… can we move forward towards the next step…
Which was: Charting a VERY DELIBERATE course.
It was no longer acceptable… (and I just could NOT do it any more)… to just “drift along”… and “survive”… and “get by”… and “make do”… and “just put up with it”.
I just could NOT do that any more.
So we decided to set some VERY deliberate goals. We already were very certain about what we did NOT want out of life… and we knew what was NOT important to us…. but we hadn’t really pondered on what WAS important. What DID we want out of life??
For us… we knew that we wanted to travel. Extensively. We wanted to live semi-nomadic lives. We wanted to invest our money into making memories and creating beautiful experiences with the people we love the most. We wanted to be able to earn a living from anywhere in the world. We didn’t want anchors. We didn’t want to be tied down. We didn’t want same’ness and routine. We both wanted (NEEDED) to be making money doing something that GENUINELY interested us. Nick already knew what that “something” was… but I still needed to figure that part out (it took a while – but I got there!).
Once we had set some very specific goals… (ie: Goal One: Drastically downsize debt & monthly expenses. Goal Two: Renovate and Rent out House. Goal Three: Book tickets to USA for Road Trip & take kids to Disney World)… etc… we began taking the teeny-tiny baby steps to get there (which brings me full-circle to the top of my reply).
I know that this reply probably seems so… I dunno… *fickle*… a few little words typed out in a blog comment – about something so life-changing as… CHANGING the course of our LIVES. I can only say… that it’s a journey. And I think that – just by writing your comment – and by expressing your deep dissatisfaction with the Status Quo… you have ALREADY taken your first steps into the new and exciting realm of possibilities. Something DIFFERENT… something *MORE*. BEST of luck to you… and feel free to stay connected! X
Thank you so much! Scary but likely worth it. Now, to just figure out what I want… 🙂