2018: The good, hard and the bubbly.

"The importance of getting older is wisdom"
As heard from the rapper Vblaiz

In some hours the year would end and we'll all jump into 2019. Not surprisingly just as the year ends I'll turn a year older. What have I learned this year? Here are some of the lessons and experiences this year and I'll start with the bad ones.

This year someone I really cared about made a bad choice. A teenager getting pregnant is not really a cool thing, not under any circumstance. This incident really hurt me and I felt as though it was my fault somehow. It took a while before I had some relief. I never got to talk to her through all of it, yet the guilt was severe. I can't really think of any lesson here yet, maybe the lesson I should take home is this "what is not my fault is not my fault".

This year I relocated to Jos on a semi-permanent basis. I learned what it meant to live in a divided city ravaged by conflict and hatred from my stay there. I realized that when there's no peace there's little you can do, and there's no peace without justice. I hope to write extensively on my experience in Jos someday.

It was this year I had what I suspected was a heartbreak. I had terrible night. I can't afford another one biko.

Now the good stuff I did or learned this year:
I made new friends in the course of my program. I learned to enjoy the simplicity of life. I also read the profound wisdom of Mark Manson as solemnly espoused in the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F.

I had always underestimated myself. I actually rate myself high but there were a lot of things I thought were out of my reach.
Case in point, someone called me to ask me to help his relation get admission. I thought 'this guy must be high or something, I'm the wrongest person to ask this'. Some days later I enter a place and lo and behold they were collating admissions and i thought 'omg look where I am'. Unfortunately the relation in question had terrible grades.

On another occasion, I applied for a scholarship to please someone, I was surprised to find that I was subsequently invited to the interview. I didn't get the scholarship, but it helped readjust my mentality.

Oh, and this year I realized I had school children. It was a very pleasant realization as I didn't remember being anybody's school dad in my school days. 9 years later, I'm school daddy to several boys and girls.

One of the biggest lessons of the year is to bear with people and understand their struggles. Not judging people harshly but rather helping them become better people.

Some of my clearer realizations are enumerated below.
1. You may think some people have forgotten you but you are just being ignored.
2. You may think you are ignored but you are just forgotten (sadly).
3. Misjudging which of the two is being meted unto you is a sad thing.
4. Not knowing which exactly is being meted to you is the worst.

This year has been good, it has also been hard no doubt but it was also bubbly. What I'm taking into the new year is more bravery, and aiming for the top. We shooting our shots way out of our league. Not at the duchess but at the Queen. We are covering all bases and moving forward.