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Bronwyn Swartz

~ Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Bronwyn Swartz

Monthly Archives: July 2018

#RacismMustFall

29 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by Bronwyn Swartz in General, Opinion Post

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I am a fallible human being and my opinions are just my opinions. I fully trust my heart though and this morning, both my heart and my mind are in coherence after I read this article on News24: https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/dont-be-scared-of-the-land-debate-malema-tells-whites-20180728

This situation that the majority of ordinary South Africans are tolerating is not only nonsense but it is highly dangerous! I think it’s time we start collectively holding our leaders accountable.

Julius Malema is an outright racist. And he isn’t afraid because we are giving him permission to be a racist. So we are also accountable. Nothing good has ever come or will come from labeling people – and he does that all the time, to gain popularity from the majority vote. He constantly reminds us South Africans of our racial difference to gain popularity for his political cause and gain.

I ask myself what tangible good thing has Julius done for South Africa? Anything anyone? One little thing? I can’t think of anything.

He stirs, using racist arguments all the time. He is very intelligent and he is dangerous. He manipulates. He knows precisely what to say to get an emotional response and he uses this outcome (or support) to further his own objectives.

Good South Africans – do we really see parallel planes in what Julius wants to do for our country and what Madiba did? I don’t. I don’t see someone that wants to build our country or is genuinely interested in the wellbeing of all our people.

I see an angry, bitter and fiercely intelligent man who has a destructive agenda. I see someone who fuels division in the country along racial lines with hate speech under the guise of wanting to relieve the suffering of the people. I don’t see someone who really cares about the people. Anyone seen him visit an old age home or a school? Raise funds for cancer or aids research maybe? A bursary for an underprivileged kid maybe? Nada… He only cares about himself and his own political agenda. He is only interested in ‘getting back’ at the ANC for mistreating him. The media gives him airtime and then he uses the unhappiness of the unfairly treated majority to openly pick on the minority. Hey…. Wasn’t there a guy in Germany in the 1940s who did the same?….

Let’s not label each other by the colour of our skins. We’ve come through too much South Africans to allow anyone to trick us into believing that is ok again to be racist. It’s not ok. It will never be ok. In our history, there are thousands who sacrificed their lives or spent years in prison in the fight against racism – Thousands paid the price – let us not forget that. What is happening now is Julius has come in an is undermining all that sacrifice by telling people that racism is ok. It’s not really racism if it Black against White this time is it, no?

Let us not be blind and let us build. What are our values? What do we value? …. Equality? – yes. Education? – yes. Decent living conditions for all South Africans? – hell yes.

South Africans let us be mindful of this – mindful of what our good core values are and let us not allow any person to use us by impressing their personal agendas on us, thereby eroding our core values. We have a beautiful country and beautiful people of all different races in our country which is precisely what makes us beautiful. This is our strength. That is the South Africa I want for my children. Let’s say an unequivocal NO to hate.

#RacismMustFall

Sunday night lazing around the fireplace 🔥

15 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by Bronwyn Swartz in Family and Friends, General

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Protected: Only human

14 Saturday Jul 2018

Posted by Bronwyn Swartz in General, Touchy-Feely Crap

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#I❤️CPUT

06 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by Bronwyn Swartz in General, My Adventures, Purely Academic

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What an insane week. 🤪 Third post 🤯 Happy, sad, exciting, scary, empowering. A proper roller coaster of highs and low. Not gonna write about it all because firstly no one really cares but secondly who got da time for dat?!

ICEL conference. Presented my paper and poster. Met new people, made new connections and reinforced established ones.

Very significantly was reintroduced to a research methodology Prof Garraway mentioned to me three years ago!….. but only now I see its value to the PhD I’ve undertaken.

Activity theory.

I probably make sense to no one but me now. Anyway. I’m feeling energized. Let’s do this. Let’s go on. NRF rating anyone?

I ❤️ CPUT

Dr Basitere…. chasing your tail #JustSaying. Eng Faculty Rocks

Beautiful Daniela…. truly one of my giants – allows me to stand on her shoulders

Make your own kinda music, sing your own special song

03 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by Bronwyn Swartz in Family and Friends, My Adventures

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Even if nobody else sings along…

36937008-AD67-42B5-A422-9E8CAF05D7CD

Bronwyn 4.0

01 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by Bronwyn Swartz in General, My Adventures, Touchy-Feely Crap

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Guilty, ashamed, embarrassed because I don’t have a boyfriend. Common sense in 2018 says that is absolutely ridiculous – but my reality is my reality.

To even type that makes me cringe, but also causes a lump to form in my throat and water to well up in my eyes. To face my truth is the path to growth and more than wanting a boyfriend, I want to, need to grow.

See life is good for me. Really good in fact. I have two healthy, loving and quirky kids. My minions are a constant stable source of joy and inspiration.

I have a promising career that is on an upward trajectory.

I have a great family. Supportive and loving.

I have a super set of friends. Funky, cool, supportive and genuine. And even besides my friends just in general, I am well liked and very popular with many people for just being authentically me.

There are probably some people who don’t like me, but I’m really not bothered by them. I am not destructive… those that don’t like me most likely don’t like me because they are insecure. And that doesn’t even matter to me. I really don’t need everyone to like me to be happy.

So I am happy most of the time because I am purposeful and loving.

So then Bronwyn why are you unhappy other times….. the single biggest reason is because I am single. Truth. Ugly embarrassing truth especially given all the beautiful things that I’ve just said about myself above.

And my nature, my core, my heart tells me …. you know what Bronwyn, unhappiness sucks. I don’t want to be unhappy. What can we do to stop being unhappy those times that we are, she asks herself.

After much meditation 🧘🏾‍♀️ I started believing unhappiness doesn’t go away by trying to replace it with a source of happiness.

I need to start a movement in my heart and mind by letting go of my unhappiness first. Softening to the emotions causing unhappiness. (Emotions = the overwhelming feeling of sadness materializes occasionally when I’m alone, that is also the symptom of my unhappiness) Once I’ve softened and stopped resisting them, I can then see the root cause. (First I thought the root cause was just loneliness, but with deeper guided meditation I considered all other possibilities, and the truth is I am ashamed of my single status).

This is interesting and slightly weird because a while ago I realized and fully accepted that I am not single because I’m flawed or broken. There is nothing “wrong” with me. I just am because I am. I also actively work towards loving and looking after myself – fulfilling my own needs. Treating myself with tenderness. And I also realized that single people are discriminated against. So I thought that I was in fact being wary and mindful of not accepting labels.

But an incident that happened this week permitted me to realize that despite my common sense, despite my personal growth and knowing what is logical and what is right, I still carry residual shame and embarrassment for being single.

A colleague labeled me as ‘single’ this week. Instinctively I wanted to tell the woman to fuck off. It was a big deal for me. Hhhhhhmmmm trigger much ….yeah it was. Instead of getting cross I should have actually just politely asked her “Why is it so important to you to refer to me as ‘single’ so completely out of context?”. But I didn’t, I just quietly got pissed off and in my own mind I labeled her as stupid. Tit for tatt…. gosh am I really 40 years old already?

I did that because I’m sensitive. But the truth is I am not going to change the way that the world thinks. I am not going to change the way that society was conditioned… the very way that I’ve been conditioned. In October last year I realized the reason for me having one rebound relationship after the next in last year and the year before was because of a misaligned value due to this very conditioning. Even though I worked towards changing the actual value I never realized that I have to work towards not feeling ashamed too! That just wasn’t common sense to me. I fixed one impact of that conditioning. It never occurred to me that there were other impacts too. And I just discovered another one.

So now, after all this analysis it’s time to let go. I’ve admitted my feelings and I’ve not judged myself. Comforted myself, now I must let go of what no longer serves me. And I want to accept what is because damnit I don’t have energy for any more unhappiness. I feel like smiling. My heart wants to beat strong.

So this is what I’ll do. And then, flowing along with the current of this river of life who knows what next uh, who knows 😁

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