This has been a wonderful week for me. I have come to understand my career in a way that I never had before and that has made me immensely happy. I have been receiving clarity on all things in my life this year and I have been patiently waiting for when it would arrive at my career. It finally has but not in the way that I had thought it would.
I have been off air for the past 4 weeks for personal reasons and in the midst of those weeks some amazing things have happened. I have been pushing for my big break in sports radio for quite some time now. I’ve felt ready for years and the breakthrough just didn’t come. I’ve had encouraging interviews and conversations with people who have the power to hire or at least recommend me. I’ve had several promises made to me and been assured that I would be next in at major stations but nothing came to pass and honestly, I got to the point where I started doubting my ability and considered packing everything up and quitting because it wasn’t paying off. I often hear about paying your dues and I’ve wondered how you know when you have. I look around and often see people I think I could be better than, people who have been around for less time than I have being further than I am in my career and I thought that perhaps my account was still in arrears. I’m an overthinker by nature and tried to figure out how much more I had to pay until a friend told me that there wasn’t an objective measure, that it’s a feeling and it isnt wrong to feel your payment at the level where you are is completely paid in full.
I’m not looking for approval or justifying what I’ve done thus far when I say that my career is 6 years old. In my mind, I am really good at what I do. I strive for excellence every morning when I have the privilege of stepping up to the mic. I’ve been told I’m good, by listeners, colleagues and higher ups in radio. But I’m not complacent enough to think I’m complete as a broadcaster. There’s always more to be done and there’s always ways to improve. People around me and the people I’ve worked with know the challenges we face in community radio and I reckon I have shown remarkable consistency all things considered. I’ve given everything I have been able to give to radio. But I don’t think for a moment that radio owes me anything.
A friend of mine always tells me to trust the process, that the Universe will lead me to where I need to be. He doesn’t know but I often get frustrated with that saying. I kept asking myself “can’t the Universe see that I’m better than that guy on that station?”. I’m learning to let go and I’ve come to trust that everything will work out as it should. And about 2 weeks ago, quite unexpectedly, the moment in my career that I’ve been hoping and praying for these past 2 years had finally come. I got a call to come in for an interview at a radio station in Johannesburg. They have some of the biggest and best names working for them and it would be a dream to work with them. I knew from the beginning that I would impress them. I’ve been on the sidelines, waiting for the moment that I’d get a call up and play in the big leagues. I had no doubts and it didn’t come as a surprise when I got an official offer a week later.
Before the offer came, there were only 2 things I had to consider in my mind. That was the fact that the station I would be joining has a smaller audience than the one I broadcast to every morning but it wouldn’t matter because it would be a chance to introduce myself to a new listener demographic. The second was money and how much they were willing to compensate me for my services. In the interview I was asked what I expected my salary to be. I find that question so tricky and difficult to answer. You don’t want to give a number that will price you out and turn them off you and you don’t want to give a number that falls well short of what they could pay you. I had a minimum number in my mind but I didn’t give a straight answer but I did tell them what I expected to be able to cover with my pay cheque and especially with the cost of moving and setting up in a new city.
The offer fell well short of what I expected. I wanted X amount and they were willing to pay me only a third of that. I shared the number with my inner circle. This could be my dream move, and the one that I wanted for years and the people closest to me know that I wanted it badly and tried to be supportive and offered suggestions on how to get by with that amount thinking that I would take it but I had turned it down immediately, even before I had told them about it. I did wonder in some moments if I had made the right decision and if I wouldn’t regret it at some point. Moving to Joburg is my dream after all… The station called me again later in the week and offered me the job AGAIN. It was on the same terms but they told me to consider a few things – that I’d be working 4 days a week, for 3 hours a day and that would give me plenty of time to get a second job and if and when I did, they wouldn’t stand in my way.
Knowing radio though, nobody who cares deeply for what they do and wants to produce the highest quality does only 3 hours worth of work a day and you can be certain that within the first month, you’ll be called in as cover for someone else either at short notice or at awkward hours. The 3-hours-a-day 4-day-week idea would’ve gone out the window very quickly.
However, I thought that perhaps I should consider it this time, I mean how often do you get offered the same job twice? I figured perhaps that I was really meant to take it so I asked for some days to think on it before giving them a decision. I talked to a friend mine who works at a commercial station about it. Now when the offer was made the second time, I was also told that it was an industry standard price and even told that some people get paid less. My jaw nearly dropped to the floor when my friend told me that what I was offered for a month is what he earns in a week. I knew for certain then that I wouldn’t take it.
I’m not afraid of going to the big city and “hustling”. I’ll knock on every door and attend every audition that I have to. The one advantage of having been in community radio for as long as I have is that you develop resilience and persistence. You learn to be resourceful, you think of hundreds of ways to get in and you lose the fear of rejection. I could take the leap easily but I came to a bit of clarity and realised I’m not a person who takes anything just because it is offered to them. In the media space, I expect that you need to have a number of jobs at the same time to live large or maybe 2 or 3 to live comfortably but even with that, I expect that your primary job should take care of your basic necessities. This offer didn’t do that. I also realised that I’m not a climber who is concerned only with moving up the ladder. I could’ve taken it easily. It would have done wonders for me, socially, to be talked about in sentences with the names that work at the station. Credibility by association and the studio time spent them wouldn’t have hurt my career either.
I’m not regretting my decision one bit and I don’t think I will either. I have to have faith that another offer with more agreeable terms will come. The reality is that apart from making the kind of money that I want, I love what I do and I already work with amazing people. They are the best at the level that we are at and I am privileged to broadcast to our wonderful 30 000+ listeners every morning.
The latest bit of clarity I received is that my job, my career doesn’t define me. For the longest time, I thought it did. But now I know that it’s a medium through which I can express myself and share my passion with the world and connect to people. I did things completely out of my character trying to get to the level I wanted to be on. I reached levels of desperation trying to force my big break and plummeted to unimaginable depths of depression when I couldn’t. I forgot that I am the one who created my career and that I did it out of love. Somehow, somewhere along the way, I became a slave to it and developed an unhealthy obsession with it.
I’ve since learned not to force it. I still want to be counted amongst the best at what I do and I want to go as far as my abilities and opportunities can take me. I’m thankful, though, that I know now that my career doesn’t make me who I am, I am not its slave. This is my career, I am the one who created it. It belongs to me, I don’t belong to it. I love it and I know I will make it wonderful.
Mawandinho 