2018 Review
This year’s review is more of a personal commentary on how I feel than an evaluation of the things I did or that happened to me over the course of the last 12 months. For this reason, I doubt that it will be any satisfying to read.
I was talking to a friend recently about things felt and the conversation led me to something of an epiphany. Five years ago, my retentive memory was one of my biggest prides but today, I can barely remember what happened yesterday. These days, my memory comes sparingly as incomplete pictures of incomplete things. The epiphany was that somehow this was connected to my emotional state over the last two years and how my mind’s solution to avoid having to live in constant anxiety and panic was to forget. I forget everything and in that spirit, I have forgotten most of 2018.
I haven’t forgotten…
That I started the year on the phone with a person who could have been my love interest. I cannot categorically say that she was because I did not act the part. This memory is important because I found it to be a nice way to begin the year; the feeling of it. I don’t think we spoke of anything consequential.
Since this phone call, I have moved onto a conviction of romantic abstinence. I’ve found that I have too much of a commitment problem and a general panic response to any form of emotional vulnerability (except when writing to the entire internet world, that I seem perfectly okay with.) I know my fear of commitment began as an overwhelming awareness of my insufficiency but it has now grown to be much more than I can eloquently put in words. I tell my friends that I don’t see myself marrying and I expect they feel it is a joke or I don’t know what I speak of; I do know that at the moment, I do not have the slightest interest in working on my relationship with… well relationships.
I started this year dragging around with me an unnecessary amount of emotional baggage which I constantly found excuses to drop a little out of unto the unsuspecting ears of friends. Now, I’m a well-oiled machine skilled in the art of ignoring emotions (essentially, I’m empty inside) and say ‘I’m alright’ when asked how I am doing. As has been pointed out to me, this is a form of growth.
Planning is a funny thing. You start by assuming that at some time ‘t’ in the future, something is going to happen, then you make other assumptions as a result of this first assumption, either to reinforce it or to build upon it. Basically, you do all of these other things to convince yourself that this assumption will happen until the time ‘t’ comes and as the universe will have it, the thing either happens or doesn’t. If you are anything like me, it probably didn’t happen. This year, I learnt to take very seriously the act of saying ‘In Sha Allah’. For those who are unfamiliar with this phrase, it is basically what Muslims say to absolve themselves of all responsibility when the thing they plan doesn’t quite work out, needless to say that this came in very handy for me this year.
For instance, I planned to make first class results (lol that’s ambitious for someone with my track record) in my final semesters in Uni but Masha Allah, that didn’t happen. I planned to finish the first draft of a novel I had been working on but that also failed to happen. I planned to direct a short film; run a technical blog and either get a job or start a business of sort. All of these plans followed the established pattern. Those were my goals for 2018. Not a lot of things and in my opinion, not hugely complicated to achieve.
I had a separate list of resolutions and as you might have guessed, that went about the same way but not as bad. I said I was going to enter into writing competitions and I entered into two (both of which I flunked) so that went exactly as planned Alhamdullilah (insert nervous laugh). I said I was going to read at least one random book I picked up in a library which I did. I read exactly one book I picked up in a library in Yaba. I did not however become a killer product Designer, or finish my portfolio site (yet) or save any money or purchase a new macbook (or an old one for that matter or any laptop at all) or do a lot of other things I planned to do.
Not planning works about as well as planning does. I did not plan to cry as much as I did this year or to miss an exam in my final semester or to see an F in my result that almost caused me to have an extra year. I did not plan to be in as much debt as I currently am or to disgrace my integrity in my first freelance job as a web designer.
I also did not plan to work with folks from Google on a project I actually have interest in or to have made some of the friends that have become so dear to me or to have found happiness in some of the places I found it, like in running. I did not plan to run my farthest run (15km) or my fastest 10km (48 minutes) or fastest 5km (23 minutes, same run btw.) I definitely did not expect to run a cumulative distance of 400km this year but I did all of these things plus some more.
When talking about things learnt this year, asides from the other more significant and probably more admirable things I have picked up along the way, I have also learnt that planning Is not for me and I have learnt to be pretty satisfied with letting what will come to me come to me.
In the period between when I started writing this two days ago and now, I have gone from being pretty satisfied with not being particularly proactive about doing shit with my life to being ready to jump headfirst into something (anything) that I might potentially hate, just so I can get rid of this excruciating feeling of helplessness that I have felt so many times this year.
Making a living is better than simply living right?
People typically feel like I’m sad when they read these things that I write and because that is never actually the case, here’s a picture of me smiling
