We are at the end...or perhaps the beginning?

Well this year has been hard work! They don't tell you this when you're grazing your knees or eating sand but the older you get the tougher the years become. 

8 days into 2013 I surprised myself by making a list of "resolutions". I have to say looking back at that list fills me with gratitude and pride. God has definitely been good to me this year. Could I have done better? Most definitely! Was I as bad at keeping the resolutions as I thought I would be? Not even remotely. So perhaps it is safe to say that I have changed my mind somewhat about resolutions...

TIPS 

What I will say about resolutions is be vague. I'm not saying be complete obscure just don't get bogged down in the specifics. At least that worked for me. If you say to yourself I want to lose exactly 12.39kg this year and I wont be happy otherwise it becomes a little more difficult to maintain, not to mention unrealistic. However if you say I'd like to be healthier this year, you'll able to achieve the same thing without beating yourself up about it or worse still hurting yourself in the process. 

Which brings me to my second point - don't pressure yourself. Yes it is good to set goals you want to achieve but no it is not okay to make yourself feel awful if you miss the mark. Missing the mark is practically human nature so cut yourself some slack. 

Thirdly tell someone about it. This advice was given to me in my second year of university and I have seen it in action more than once this year. If you share a goal you are trying to achieve you are more inclined to stick with it because not only would you disappoint yourself if you don't, you run the risk of disappoint those you've told. So tell someone, preferably someone who will hold you accountable or who you wouldn't want to let down. And even if you end up not sticking to it to begin with, there is added motivation to get back on track.

And finally have fun with it. There is no reason why your New Year's Resolution can't be you indulging yourself a bit more. We often see them as an excuse to break bad habits and perhaps that's what put me off to begin with. You can break a bad habit at any point during the year. If your liver was failing you wouldn't put off your no-alcohol diet till the New Year. So make it something light hearted, for your own enjoyment. 

I hope you guys have a safe, blissful and exciting entry into the New Year. God bless and keep you. See you on the other side!

P.S. 

I still don't know what to do for the holiday and I have 2 days off work! Any ideas? Also what will you guys be up to?

Montage...They told me it would be 9 to 5!

During my last school year part of the curriculum for one of modules was to produce a magazine. We called our variety magazine Montage and I was voted editor. I figured a lot of people on here wont get to read the magazine. So over the next few weeks/days/whatever, I'll publish the articles that I wrote in the magazine. I hope you enjoy it and as always your feedback would be great.

They told me it would be 9 to 5!

If you’ve made it this far my assumption is that after the all too exciting university phase you plan to work. Some of you already have to divide your attention between a full time education and a part time internship or even a full time job. You guys more than the rest will understand what I’m about to explain.

Over the holidays, I spent some time with family and I remember asking someone when their next holiday would be: “about the same time next year.” He said it with such frankness that more than the fact that he only had a week off each year I was worried that he had become immune to it.

Remember Dolly Parton’s 9-5? No I’m not that old. My mother had a taste for country music. It’s one of the few Dolly Parton songs that stuck with me the whole time.  A part of me always looked forward to when I could work my 9 to 5 job then go home afterwards to have dinner and relax with my pet parrot or goldfish. I always told myself quite proudly that my work would not invade the rest of my life; I’ll never take my work home. Needless to say, that was before I realised the real meaning of being a journalist or any type of writer for that matter. The first rude awakening came last summer.

I got an internship for the summer and in my interview I was told by my boss that I’d have to work from 9 to 6. Not too bad, especially considering that they were quite lenient with us about our lateness.  It didn’t quite hit home then but I found myself being constantly tired. It was a short internship so before long I had forgotten the experience of having no time for myself.

Then in September I started another job. This one involved me working with someone in a different continent and time zone. This meant that sometimes communication was irregular. I was back to working hours that varied quite drastically from the 9 to 5 I had envisioned. To add to that I started another internship at the start of the year and my body was beginning to give up on me.

It creeps up on you. Suddenly you realise that your work files have become furniture, you’re having takeaway dinners in front of your TV and you had so little time to feed your goldfish it died. Your life revolves around work and sleep and very little else.

The 21^st century work culture is much different than the picture Dolly painted for us isn’t it? There is almost no escape thanks to the internet, smart phones and all the other clever ways your boss can find you if don’t pick up their calls. Gone are the days where your location, salary and type of job determined how much time you spent at the office. A PR consultant talking to our class about the possibility of an internship with her company was quick to warn us about trying to work while school was in session: “you start at 8:45am and you don’t finish till about 6:50pm.” Even scarier is the fact that office walls no longer mark the boundaries of where work stops and life begins. As long as you have a phone and a laptop you are almost always working,

So what do we do? Mummy and Daddy won’t pay the bills forever so we can’t quit before we even start. Unless you’re going to be working for yourself or for someone who offers you flexible hours, you can’t dictate when you want to work. I have one suggestion because it’s the only thing that has ever worked for me:

“Chose a job you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”-Confucius

The Holiday Entries: Christmas Day-

It's funny to me sometimes how adversely I react to going back to a place that was home for my first 13 years. It's even funnier still how little of the place itself I remember. I've got the whole "Nigerian in Diaspora" thing down to a T it seems. The sad part is that I don't particularly feel at home outside of Nigeria either. I think I fit perfectly into the category of what a friend of mine calls Confused Global Citizens; I manage to be simultaneously from everywhere and nowhere all at once. 

Merry Christmas everyone!! Peace to all and joy on earth and all that gollywash. So whilst everyone is digging into overly dry turkey and carolling I can’t even leave my house. I still have no bag. I spent the day (so far) cooking for dogs I hate and who hate me And I came to the conclusion that without proper editing, i.e. deleting the majority of this, it will never see the light of day. 

I received some bad news too about a dear family friend back in Manchester and Lord knows that alone has ruined my day. I received a call that picked me up though, so I'm thanking God for little blessings as always.

Also I told Mother I wanted to go see my childhood house, maybe take some of my father’s books with me. We have no driver at the moment and letting her drive all the way there from here is like actively seeking death so I’m hopeful but not optimistic. 

The Holiday Entries: Christmas Eve-False Hope

Do you know what I titled my journal of all the goings on of my holiday?? "The Journey to Gosh-I-Wish-I-Never-Came." I have to say at this point though, that it wasn't that bad in all honesty. I learnt a lot about myself and my family. I saw Nigeria through fresh eyes like I seem to do every time I come back. I got a lot of helpful material for my course. I got to hang out with my nieces who are the most mischievous little monkeys ever. And some days (shock-horror!!) I wake up and I miss it a little. 

PS

The pictures are here not only because I spent a lot of my time in the kitchen but also because I have always found the mixture of urban and rural in Nigerian kitchens very amusing.

Mother's Kitchen.

I told my mother I don’t plan to stay in Nigeria today. Like all things in my family, it came indirectly.

“Even if you don’t plan to live in Nigeria you should keep your culture.” She dropped it into the middle of her rant like she had seen it on my face when I arrived.

“I don’t plan to live in Nigeria,” I had replied. Then I repeated it a few more times for good measure, so she would totally understand what the future would hold.

L-R. A broom for sweeping;
a small mortar and pestle for herbs, seeds etc;
a big mortar and pestle for pounding yams

Why were we arguing?? Onions and pounded yam. I didn’t put enough onions in the Akara (bean cake?) mixture which in her mind meant I didn’t know how to cook and I had no interest in cooking any Nigerian food, which obviously meant I didn’t want to get married because even a white man would be interested in my culture. 

And of course I needed to learn how to pound yams not because I would ever use that skill but because I need to learn my tradition. Needless to say I was fuming at the fact that she insinuated, more than once and not in the least subtly, that I did not know my way around the kitchen. I am less upset about the whole ordeal right now but urgh did it irk me in the moment!!

A stove and a jar of kerosene:
because having a gas and electric cooker
doesn't mean you cant start a fire once in a while.

Right now I don’t wanna stay in this country but I don’t know the future and I keep an open mind. All my plans, as vague as they often are, point me far away from this country. But God’s will be done. I might end up back here for one reason or the other, though right now I sincerely hope not.

The store where she keeps most of her food

The Holiday Entries: Small Blessings

This is an extract from Day 2. I feel the need to point out that these were all written in the heat of the moment.

I think I have my appetite back on the upside. Something about travelling takes the whole idea of food off of my mind for a while.

I really want my stuff back and I am getting even more homesick; I swear I cannot wait to be back in Dubai. I keep calling the airport almost frantically and there has been no answer. My mum keeps telling me all these things; ‘in case of next time’ she says…I am too angry to contemplate the possibility of a next time. I keep chanting ‘home is where the bags are’ in my head. Currently the bags are in upheaval which means home is in upheaval which means I am in upheaval.

I had an argument of sorts with God today and I told him that if I didn’t get my stuff back I would never come back. I feel like he laughed and said ‘you were never gonna come back anyway’.

Oh I took some pictures today. Not anything to write anywhere about. 

The Holiday Entries: Home??

I've thrown out hints about writing some stuff about my time in Nigeria but as you can see it took me a little longer than it should have. The truth I was hesitant to upload anything about it because frankly I disliked almost all of the time I spent there. 

I kept something akin to a journal for the duration of my two weeks though most of its contents are self-censored and may never make it into public viewing. So this is how I plan to work it. I'll put snippets of my journal entries on here with some of the pictures I took and hope and pray that is enough to satiate your appetites (JIA!!).

Let's start with Day 1:

I hate travelling. I think I’ve said that over a handful of times since I got to the airport and I think my friend who has the unfortunate task of travelling with me is sick of it now. But I have my reasons. Journeys never go the way they should and destinations almost always prove deceptive or painfully correct. First they had a problem with my tickets which took them all too long to sort out and led to me buying overly expensive perfumes in duty free. Then they delayed my transit flight by an hour. Then upon my arrival and after almost an hour of pointless waiting, it was disclosed to me that my bags had in fact been misplaced/left behind/or its location were otherwise unknown.

Of course my mother blamed ME for the fact that the AIRLINE misplaced a BUNCH OF PEOPLE’S bags...I can see how all that is my fault.

Nevertheless I returned “home” to mull over the fact that I had lost not only my bag but my friend’s bag that I had checked in for him. GREAT START. 

Eventually I found myself thinking that this was a sign that I should never have come. I should never have returned to the motherland after all. I truly didn’t want to come. I am in that place in my life where I am spreading roots in some place other than what most others would call my home. I am as yet undecided as to whether that is a positive or negative change; maybe it’s a bit of both. All I know is as much as I love my country and my people, my family and the few friends I still have there, I don’t think I can live in this country.