Happy New Year!

Hello!

I trust my wonderful readers made it across the time-borders of 2013/2014 safely. Well let me take this opportunity to say "Welcome to the New Year" from Phase Rant!

This year I have some big plans and goals that I want to achieve personally and professionally. As always I want to take you along with me but this time things are about to get a little more serious and hopefully a lot more interesting. My goal for Phase Rant this year is to have my readers (though you are few and far between) get to know a bit more about me through my 'work'.

As you must know from my bio I'm current a journalism and communications student. To God's great glory I am now in my final year of undergrad and although I won't be lunging straight into professional journalism when I finish, I would like to flex my writing muscles a bit more in that sense. I plan to do this through a series of interviews that will posted on this blog.

The plan is simple. 12 interviews with 12 people I know (either vaguely or personally) who I find inspirational, over the 12 months of 2014. The first is coming next week in the form of a young gospel rapper so stay tuned. Also in the pipelines is a Valentine's day blogpost collaboration with Museboxxe who has left the nest of Blogspot for the wilderness of Tumblr and Wordpress.

Be rest assured that my irregular Rants will still be featured on the blog. I'll also try to classify things in a way that'll be easier for you all to navigate.

Well it seems that I have my work cut out for me! I hope you come along for the ride.

See you soon! 

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?

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.