Richard Wright: Keeping up with the kids. Not Gupta.

By Richard Wright

I find it hard enough to keep up with myself, let alone the Joneses or the Naidoos or even the Guptas – especially the Guptas, those guys seem to be everywhere. Just the other day I read a New Age newspaper and there they were again. Go figure. All I have is a WordPress site.

I seem to run from plane to plane and back again. And when I look back, I can't seem to remember who the Joneses are, let alone which town they call home.

Thank God I still recognize my kids, but I could swear that they had more teeth the last time I saw them.
Who has time or energy for Mr and Mrs Jones?

Mrs Jones just got the latest Land Rover for her birthday. That's lovely, but I spend more days in a rental car than my own, and can't remember on which level I parked at the airport. You tell me which is more important to me.

I do think that Mr Molefe has a gorgeous new home in that estate in Joburg with the sewerage pipe running through it.

I'm just grateful to count the number of nights that my girls share my house with me in a month.

I keep planning for the future. I keep endless mails. The ones I fully intend to revisit, because I need time to digest them, and act on their contents.

I mail myself website pages too, to read later, you know…when I have the time. I make notes on the books I need to read, and have kept more recipes than I have days left on this earth.

But I already have a pile of books on my bedside table, and a pile of laundry in the wash basket. Quite frankly I reckon it should be more important to read the books than do the laundry. Tell that to my boss when I pitch up at work in front of an auditorium full of people wearing nothing but Cry The Beloved Country.

Yes I still haven't read that one.

You see it's all relative, this keeping up thing. I don't have the time nor energy to care about other things, because I'm busy surviving my own chock-a-block life.

I get up each morning and marvel that I get paid to do what I do. And actually, that's more than enough.

I know who my best friends are, and don't give a hoot where they live nor what they drive. But I do know what it sounds like when they laugh.

I'll get to read the books one day or maybe not.

But right now I need to get home in time to prepare for the arrival of the tooth fairy tonight, and that's more important than anything.

Keeping up with the kids.

* Richard Wright is a business trainer for Pam Golding, elite athlete (Top 20 in Ironman SA) and occasional blogger for his own site doingitwright where you'll find more insights in a similar vein.