2023 A rollercoaster of vicissitudes!
The ups and downs
Sigh, Silas, Saheed :)
I am the master of my fate and I am the captain of my boat. While ups and downs are a part of everyone’s journey, how you face it makes you the person or artiste you are — Jubin Nautiyal
I have cleared this intro over 4 times and still don’t know how to begin, but let’s go!
“Ups and downs” sounds very usual I decided to go with vicissitudes to confuse una :). This year brought out all my shades, happy, sad, worried, vulnerable, prayerful and I’m only grateful that I could watch myself stretch to its limits and handle it well, at least, as my father said at the end “you are now a man, congratulations” and I immediately knew what angle he was coming from.
2023, was the year I learned to love my parents in many ways(I should do better telling it to their faces lol), understand them, and also appreciate them much better. I told a friend during one of my “downs”, and I said, “Mehnn I think I now understand why my dad would sometimes sit outside the compound alone lost in thoughts, life isn’t designed to be easy, and only the resilient ones would survive”.
Resiliency, yes, I prepared for worse and saw the worst, I guess I wasn’t fault-tolerant enough. I’m still looking for a direction to carefully write about these vicissitudes in a way you will connect with me, it’s pretty much a rush of emotions for me right now, but make I flow mehnn.
2023, I loved, cried, laughed, made radical and fast decisions, and made memories with so many people.
Started the year with so much calm, 2022 wasn’t a lot in terms of achievements so I felt confident that in 2023 I could surpass it, did I? Ahead ahead.
At the end of every year, I reflect and then project forward, I think about the year ending, check off my achievements, and then project ahead into the next year on how I could surpass it. This is how I measure my growth and make sure I don’t remain obsolete or stagnant. I have also learned or rather taught myself how not to bask in my wins for a long time, I call it my push-forward technique.
Moving on, I started 2023 waking up to no academic stress, good health, and steady income, but a mediocre mindset, “the first ups”. I was living average and I felt comfortable for most of the first quarter of the year, I supported my parents and siblings in many ways and I was much okay with it, no look ahead, the very unusual me. I have been wrapped in a cocoon of “comfort” that I decided to not try and push further, the usual me. Being a person of resilience (having multiple backups) the only way I could function properly, I was suddenly brought to a state of “ji ma sun” when I lost a major contributor to my income, a wake-up call.
I had always believed that financial breakthrough is strongly dependent on having multiple streams of income and having lost my major stream, a project I enjoyed working on because of the technicality, the people I worked with, and of course the pay, I felt disoriented and unstable, hence the first “downs”.
The wake-up call, Ji ma sun!
I can’t go back to earning lesser than 2022, I told myself, now that I am done with the university there will be so many expectations from me, my WTF/d (what the f*ck per day) increased geometrically. How do I cut down expenses I was already used to footing, how do I stop being a Father Christmas, how do I tell my parents I won’t be able to do as much as I used to, was I not resilient enough? I guess that was realization one.
The lifestyle cost na you no know — Crown Ozama
Realization two, my career; I asked myself so many questions, how do I go back to job hunting, am I updated enough? Doubted my expertise and experience, even if I was a known “agunaechemba” in the field. Was I going to struggle so hard to get something again? Should I leave tech and find something else to do? I think I have enough capital to start selling wigs (a joke I used to console myself, even though I didn’t laugh at it so much), so many questions I had no answer to.
It’s just the first quarter of the year, how do I tick off the things on my list, money is the foundation to ticking off things on this list, hehe, but at this point it sounded so unreal, moving to my apartment, furnishing it, getting new work tools, I sold my Alienware (the only LOML at that point) mehnnn, my phone was seeing the other world gradually, meeting increasing my parent’s allowance was immediately an “I wish”, so much panic, “it was as if poverty sat me down and told me, you you, I will kill you”, realization three.
I drifted away from friends, lost connections, got closer to God, lol and I stretched myself once again! Not being able to do what I had always loved doing, took a turn at me, anger became my best friend, I avoided spaces where I had to spend, and as a lover of “outside” I was found inside a lot, lol. I knew exactly what I needed to do, sit up!
For the second quarter of the year, I received the most rejections I have had in all of my careers, early-stage rejections, last-stage rejections, most painful ones, failed investments (abeg no be sporty lmao) and so many more downs.
I channeled this anger and Sapaciousness into something positive at the very least, I summoned the confidence to share with my parents and siblings that I had lost a major part of my income inflow and they needed to understand that I wouldn’t be doing as much as I did before, thankfully, they understood, kind of. I canceled my vacation for my birthday, cut down expenses, and focused on surviving and bagging more.
Sitting up
I went back to my drawing board (I no get) Still, metaphorically, I went back to it, aggressively involved myself in a couple of open source projects, read an average of three engineering articles daily, and also published articles bi-monthly, all these to refresh myself, polish my resume and strategically place myself for the third quarter of the year when I would aggressively push myself out again.
Spiritual wake-up and prophecy
Even though I was a regular churchgoer, I didn’t connect with God on a personal level, as a believer I understood that your relationship with God is what matters and that going to church is only a face value for your fulfilling Christian duties. I had a unique style of communicating with God, I usually look at the sky or an object I use to reference God and bombard Sky Daddy with my thoughts, my priest calls it “Prayer of gaze”, moved by emotions and remorse I channeled everything to him and hoped that he is there listening.
I made a tweet from a sincere place of my heart attached with a prayer, it was very sweet to see that people (strangers) cared, I got a lot of prayers from people I haven’t met, and a lot of people connected with the tweet also, it became a collective prayer point for everyone.
I also remember speaking to a friend about how I felt so stagnant and I needed a win to feel whole again;
She did a thing that up till now still dey burst my head, faith does move mountains. She said in two months I would close a major deal and congratulated me in advance, this was in July, take a look at the date “July 12th”, boy oh boy, indeed I did, lmao wetin be this.
I won and won big.
At the end of the third quarter, I felt a lot of joy, one that I hadn’t felt in months, I had forgotten what it was to win and I cried and crode.
I had just closed the biggest single deal ever, exactly two months, on September 12th, I got the offer and shared the news with her the next day. I didn’t take note of the dates until I had to scroll up and see that two months was exactly two months, my God, sky daddy came through and he just bundled all the lost happiness and bombarded it on me all at once.
In October I rejected a lot of offers, “na me una wan kill abi ?”, I had always dreamt of the time when I would also reject offers, refer a couple to my guys, and mehnnn I was having the time of my life.
I moved into my apartment(I no build house o), changed my devices, got a few more, contributed to charity, invested in friends, increased my parent allowances, and continued and increased my saving game, cos na who don chop fit save, me and my guys won and won big time.
I worked on exciting problem-solving projects, and yes WatchDog Open Source version would soon hit 100k downloads.
I found calmness and also became comfortable once again (clown).
Wrapping 2023, I have found easily that the theme of my year would be withstanding the multiple ups and downs, hence the title of this review, and one take-home attribute I’m urging y’all to adopt is to be Resilient.
Whilst I didn’t tick off all the projections I had for 2023, like traveling more and finding love (or maybe I did o), lmao some things come at a cost, I know that I won and won by a very large margin. Looking at these wins I’m only skeptical about this 2024, surpassing these wins would mean stretching myself beyond limits again, but then “Nothing good comes soft”.
In 2023, “we went harder than hard, this 2024, we would go hardest than harder” and record newer all-time high wins.
Cheers and Happy New Year.
