Staring at this heading of mine and thinking what this really means…especially for someone who has just written a blog about “just finishing” and more or less being the average person that she is, it is tricky to think up or write about something that is as extraordinary as this heading…

But…game on…

In high school I have had the most extraordinary English teacher, Mr Chris van der Berg…wow, he was even better than the teacher that Robin Williams portrayed in the movie ‘Dead Poet Society’…he gave the coolest assignments, gave us poetry from modern music to study, took us to the local cinema to go and watch art movies (Pleasantville was a big hit at that stage) and created an atmosphere around William Shakespeare’s plays that I still to this day can remember…I mean that opening scene from Macbeth of the witches…”Boil boil toil and trouble”…all because of his amazing ability of making a huge difficult scene into the coolest story ever. What I loved about him was the way that he taught us how to write essays especially for our Matric exams, he encouraged us to make it fun and easy for the examiner (who probably at that stage of reading already went through 200 essays) and to in a way write as if you were something else, out of the perspective of a third party. The stuff that came from those essays were to this day absolutely epic. Some of us wrote out of the perspective of a tree outside the class window…or a chair someone was sitting on, or a train that was clacking by…it was so weird but oh my word, I loved writing in the third party, it freed up your mind to just write and think outside of this crazy upside down world we live in…And I believe to this day that is also where my love for poetry, music and writing has developed.

I believe in the fact that everyone of us no matter how average you see yourself, has potential to blow your own damn mind…even if it is just once in your lifetime…and I believe the influences you have had and still have in your life, plays a huge role in finding those potentials with you and harnessing it into something mind blowing…

For instance, I did my first 70.3 IronMan event in 2013, but after that decided to not even think of doing a full distance IronMan…ja well, April 2019 saw a whole different Jeanine who finished her first ever full distance Ironman African Champs…that morning I stood on Hobey Beach in PE and thought to myself: “What.The.Hell.” and then 13hours 39min later I blew my own damn mind running on that red carped finishing an awesome race! But just because I decided to start and keep going…

We all have potential, we all have that inner voice that encourages us all the time to get off the royal ass and start now…start where you are…start with fear…start with pain…start with doubt…start with hands shaking…start with voice trembling…start and don’t stop…start where you are and with what you have…Just…start!

So this blog post today is a big shout out to Mr Chris van der Berg who saw potential in each of us… who made us see the beautiful Kings and Queens who we one day would become and beating the self doubters to the ground…thanks for believing in me!

“Captain…My Captain…”