The title of this post kept on ringing through my head this weekend.

On Friday night, I was in a car accident that rendered my car useless and left me seriously injured. I had equipment worth thousands of Rands, but thankfully it was safe. When I should have been at home resting and recovering, I woke up and scurried off disheveled to my shoot scheduled for Saturday morning. I was standing for 7-8 hours almost, manning 2 cameras, while I covered the show. My face was swollen and my body aching, crying for mercy. But I couldn’t get any cover for the show at such short notice; who can you get at 6am the morning after your accident?

I was so tired and things were all over the place that I had to cancel yesterday’s shoot for the “Girls Night In” corporate shoot. I’m thankful and deeply appreciative of my team whom understood my situation and shifted everything to yesterday.

So yesterday, I went again to the competition, after waking up incredibly stiff, sore, and exhausted. I stood for another 8 hours, rushed back to my flat, got ready for the second shoot, and shot for another 3 hours. I’ll write about that in a separate post.

I did it. And when I was smoking a quiet, still cigarette – thanks, Keisha – in my balcony, I then started letting the aftermath of the accident and my present personal situation to wash over me.

I had to stop a few times during the evening shoot for breaks as my body started giving in. But I pressed on and we finished.

What I really needed early on last weekend only came at the end. The same sentence repeated in varying degrees of loudness and different settings from Siza: “you’re strong.”

I needed to hear that. Because I wasn’t going to let this weekend pass, with all the equipment booked and hours of producing in clocked.

Very few understood this, even those closest to me, but I couldn’t give up having come this far.

Against all odds.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 7th, 2009 at 1:50 pm and is filed under General notices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.