Blog-In-Draft

The ease of unease

Much as I usually speak of the simplicity of writing blogs, I even gave a presentation on that topic a few weeks ago, something I put together in less than 15 minutes. It gave me the impression that I probably have a good idea of the freeform blog, the professional or technical blog still requires a bit more form, function, and finesse.

Yet, this apparent ease of blogging does not lend itself to prolific blogging, then for my kind of output as someone who blogs for pleasure rather than revenue, the length of time of blogging and the frequency of blogging could pass for quite prolific. I should retain a sense of modesty.

Doing without showing

Then I think of the many blogs I could have written in the past week to mark events, observations, and opinions, yet none appeared. The thoughts formed in my head and then ones I tried to start and never completed. Brian does better, not so much as a publisher, he is an excellent writer if only he could be more confident at it. He blogs at Brian’s Point of View.

The majority of his blogs that he writes, he never publishes, he writes like an author who types out half a page of whatever narrative, pulls it out of the typewriter, scrunches the paper into a ball to throw into a basket that I bet he misses more times than he gets it in at the first attempt.

Getting beyond Blog-In-Draft

He is the master of the Blog-In-Draft, sketches, doodles, scribbles, and scratches of thought with a prospect that does not see the light of day. He is not a fantasist or a daydreamer, I have to prod him relentlessly to get him to publish and because he hardly does, when he does, I might see the blog days or even weeks after he has published.

I might even speak out of turn and get caught out, I am asking for a blog to be published and I am the one who has not been current. I still believe everyone has ideas, insights, and inspiration to write interesting blogs, if they can take the Blog-In-Draft out of their heads, type out what they have to say, they can publish and later even refine it.

There, we have a blog on the Blog-In-Draft. That is probably the more interesting thing about freeform blogging. You can write about anything and begin the conversation on something. We all have a blog in us, we just need to write it and publish it.

Thought Picnic: On the journey without alternative

Knowing yourself

You find there are times of self-appraisal and self-assessment that leads to a deconstruction of who you are to its fundamental and unencumbered state, where all you have to see is your sheer humanity in all its vulnerabilities, no ego lurking and imposing. It is like viewing yourself just before you step in the shower, warts and all without any embellishment.

In the workshop of thought, reminisce, and meditation that resides in the factory of my cranium, scarcely would I invite any to visit even if they have adorned the highest industry-standard protections to shield themselves from harm, it is a fiery and industrious space, as much as it can be calm and resourceful.

Being known

As to what kind of person I am, much of which can be exposed in conversations with those who know me very well and maybe too well to be comfortable with, I might have struck them as both strange and sometimes unserious and irreverently playful. I am not sure I need to apologise for what they already know and can vouch for in terms of what and who they believe I am.

When I set a course and I do not want to shift or deviate, I probably do not want to be distracted from what I have decided to do. Essentially, I am not a Plan B kind of person, my temperament is not suited to straddling and accommodating many options in a whack-a-mole game of chance in the hope that I hit something or something works. The future might not be sure, and neither should it be the theatre of a gamble even if choices give a dabble.

I see

There is a fight in my conscience, the need to follow my deepest premonitions and probably premonition is the wrong word because sometimes, in the midst of the storm comes a calm, a word of encouragement and assurance, the kind that tells you that first you are not alone and then there is a path where there seems to be absolutely no way.

They call that a breakthrough, it is usually not a plan, just life becoming the time when you think and say to others, I really wonder how that happened.

Beyond the wish is the heart’s desire, the pictures that have been drawn and redrawn in the recesses of that factory that you are only a hair’s breadth from seeing those things that were not as though they were in materiality and experience. All things are possible and that is just it.

It's walking and it's working - XIV

Get on up and go

There are mornings that I have woken up early as I like to do my walking exercise at dawn just as the sun is rising and the city is less busy, apart from trying to avoid meeting up with that devil dog and its atrocious owner. Then I feel, I am not that up to it, I need a bit more sleep.

Often, I do levitate myself off the bed by the force of will and get on with it, because I am left needing to get that 10,000-step threshold in the reckoning or I feel I am losing something. However, I do not beat myself up, like for instance, in April, for the last 6 days I barely got 5,000 steps done daily because I was a bit indisposed, however, since I had more than the 10,000-step average for the month by the 20^th day, it was not that bad, it just pulled down the average for the year.

Just pressing on regardless

The walking exercise that I began in late July 2020 is a lonely and individual activity that requires some discipline, dedication, and determination, I want to believe that somewhere in my lazy bones, I have some of all that. I get up, come rain or shine, in the light or the dark, feeling strong or weak and get out to do the steps.

For a while, I was seeing no effects, my weight stuck up where I never wanted it to be, I could not for the life of me understand what else I had to do, I was not going to go down some dieting route or get into the gym to find muscles in places I never knew they could exist. I was focused on the walking, keeping at it and convinced that eventually, something would begin to show. Observations by my boyfriend during our video conversations did not convince me of the expected changes.

Improvements are showing up

However, in the last 6 weeks, things have shifted, I have gone from the highest weight that the scales have truthfully displayed to losing over 8 kilograms. I am not at the best weight I attained in October 2020, but I feel it might soon get there and better.

When I started walking, I barely made 3,000 steps in a half-hour, now, I easily breach 4,500 steps in 30 minutes, though I do not think I can make it 5,000 steps, even if Brian has suggested I walk like one of the cartoon characters in Scooby-Doo, at first I thought he was referring on the one of the four-legged variety, but it was one of the bipedal females he was alluding to that I first thought was Daphne, but he meant Velma. He says he can’t keep up with my walking, even though if he stood by the Eiffel Tower, his legs might just dwarf the edifice.

The statistics are an impetus

In general, I can get my 10,000 steps done in 75 minutes, I have even managed 64 minutes, which is good going. Today, I stayed in bed and then for my late lunch break stepped out for just over 11,000 steps and then after a post-work nap, I added just over 18,000 steps leaving me with around 500 steps to hit 30,000 steps, so, I went for a quick stroll down that street and back to get that number done.

The way my health app breaks down the statistics of my activity gives me an idea of how well I am doing, the times when I could do 7 kilometres in an hour seems to have eluded me, I barely get a kilometre done in 9 minutes. However, getting my heart rate up for intensity is good and I try to work within the aerobic and anaerobic range, the cadence is usually around 140 steps a minute, though my eyes almost popped out when I saw 174 steps a minute this evening and then 177 steps a minute in my earlier walk. I must have been gliding or floating on air as I rarely get 160 steps a minute for my morning walks.

As a creature of habit, the morning walk has a route that yields just over 15,000 steps in 1:50 hours or less and that is before I start work at 8:00 AM. Even without an accountability partner, someone to imitate, or the urging of a coach or mentor, I can say more confidently that it’s walking and it’s working.

40 days in walking mess

More walk than talk

I would be the first to tell you that not every day of the last 40 since I started my walks around Manchester as my exercise routine has had me excited and rearing to go, for I have been tired, the weather inclement, and the drive expired, yet, I have persevered.

This evening, after a night of barely 4 hours of sleep, I wanted to fall into bed after work and dream, and snore and enter the realm of deep sleep for longer than I had managed before, I could not because I felt my walk was important and I only had to make my 10,000 steps.

Numbers up and down

In that time, I have done 657,850 steps and my recorded exercises have stretched over 446 kilometres, but those are just figures, my figure according to Brian is changing, not that I can see myself, though last week I found I had lost 4 inches about 10 cm off my belly and I am today, exactly 6 kilogrammes lighter.

I guess the greatest feat in all this was on the 5^th of September when twice I managed sub 8-minute kilometres, even to my surprise at 7’56”, I am not looking to break records, I am happy with keeping it under 9’30”, though I can consistently keep it under that. I will keep at it, I think just by the results, it is a good investment in both health and wellbeing at 54.

The pace for 05/09/2020

Nigerians, I hail you

29 years already

I wrote a blog exactly a year ago and ended it with the paragraph below without telling that other story. I do not this blog would be the space for it either, it would probably go into my story, if I get the inspiration, motivation and will to take it beyond the chapters I have already written.

On the 30^th of December 1990, I left Nigeria, on Nigeria Airways flight WT808 running almost 3 hours behind schedule. I had £15 in my pocket and a future ahead of me. That is another story.

Blog - My last 4 weeks in Nigeria, 28 years ago (The business angle)

I wonder why I commemorate the 30^th of December, it has been 29 years since I left Nigeria, it is strange that if work commitments had not necessitated my travel to South Africa in 2015, I would never have set foot in Africa since I left.

Gone but not done

Like I would normally protest on Twitter, my having left Nigeria that long ago has not meant a disengagement from the country of my forebears. I cherish and guard my Nigerian heritage jealously as much I try to be informed and well acquainted with issues and events therein.

The contention with parents, relations, and friends is whether I can be persuaded to return for a visit. I have not convinced myself of the sense of security, safety, or comfort that this would afford me. Until I can get that sorted in my head, I can categorically say, it is not on my agenda.

Blog - Nigeria: You'll keep hearing from us in the diaspora

The retiree then

We can only hope that the man who has negotiated for himself the best retirement package of his generation and peers soon moves on to a sort of retirement home. Our witness of his first regime in the 1980s is what ushered in the Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, the annulment of the 1993 elections and then Sani Abacha.

Whatever his plans were then appeared to be a systematic regimentation of Nigeria towards a North Korean style of socialist control of not just the systems but the minds of the people. Whilst we were not barred from leaving the country, the message was we shouldn’t. It is without a doubt that Muhammadu Buhari has some animus towards Nigerians based abroad, maybe because much as we can criticise him, we are beyond his junta-inspired grasp. [See the blog below.]

Blog - Nigeria: President Buhari, get to work and honestly, shut up!

The retiree now

Meanwhile with his 1980s mindset, he rules the roost, retired of ideas, policy or direction much as we can recount that after he exited national politics he was involved in no activity until he rekindled his entitlement to leadership that he fought for thrice before winning. The people beguiled with the spectre of integrity that doesn’t appear to radiate beyond the man.

Now, he lives in the best residence gets the best medical attention in London that flounces off to at a whim, flies in a presidential jet arriving in countries where all courtesies to a head of state are a diplomatic necessity whilst the country teeters on the edge of incomprehensibility, the youth unable to adequately plan a future in their country of birth, they are leaving if they can.

Nigerians, I hail you

Yet, I must commend those who have found ways to thrive in that environment, but there is another wave of the Exodus like those of my generation who left about 3 decades ago and they are not planning on returning.

In my view, you can make a success of your life anywhere in the world if you have the drive, the ambition, the skills, and the sheer determination, by God, we have spunk. Many leave Nigeria and get to live their best lives. I just hope we have enough people left to really take the country forward, even those of us who have left, pray constantly for a better Nigeria.

Thought Picnic: Pushing beyond the difficult things

For the third time

In the weekend, I was out to my third viewing of the Imitation Game. There is something about that story which even if it somewhat deviates from the reality has come core lessons, at least for me.

Much as I knew how the story developed, it still felt like I was watching it for the first time and I really had no time to explain to my friend why I had a notepad and was taking notes during the film.

However, as the plot thickened, I found myself taking notes quite different from the notes I took at the second viewing of the film.

The making of men

As the film depicts, Alan Turing had an uphill task getting his ideas across, beyond bureaucracy and officialdom to realisation. His tenacity where many would have been frustrated and have given up is something that led to a number of questions I scribbled into my notepad in the dimly lit cinema theatre.

• When you are up against it, how do you retain the confidence that what you believe is right and true?
• What gives a man the courage of his convictions?
• What gives a man the will to fight against the odds no matter how they are stacked against him?
• What does it take to rethink a strategy when much has been invested in a solution that does not appear to work?

Challenges we face

These are questions we have probably never asked ourselves but we have lived and experienced through striving, determination, faith and much else, to come out on the side of the good answers and success.

For the many challenges I have faced in my life, probably the cancer diagnosis of just over 5 years ago with the possibility that I only had 5 long weeks to live if the treatment did not take, was the hardest.

Yet, having celebrated my 6 birthday after this episode in my life, I feel that something in my personality, my character, my beliefs, my persuasion and my relationships took me from the toughest and seemingly insurmountable issues of life and death to a new lease of life.

A necessity for hope

Most important to our journey of life is the necessity of hope, that ability to see beyond the clouds and know that in the daytime it is always sunny, even if the sun is obscured by the clouds. We must know as nature teaches us that no matter how long the night might be, the day will surely come.

Our hope must be measured with a clear perspective too, an understanding of where we are, what our priorities are, what our goals are and what we need to do to retain purpose and expectation.

We need a grounding, a foundation, something that gives substance to our expectations through work we have done before in study, in vocation, in experience, in knowledge or some broader development of our human nature.

In other words, we should be wary of the draw of vacuous optimism founded on myths and delusions like building castles in the air. Be taught, be mentored, read, learn and be open to things well outside your comfort zone, so that when the going gets tough, you are tough enough to get going.

Decade Blogs - Babatunde Rosanwo - The Market‏

The Decade Blogs

This is the first of blogs written to celebrate my 10 years of blogging, my friend, Babatunde Rosanwo has honoured me with a piece about the market and life as a market place of many interactions of decision, determination, discrimination and discernment.

Blog - To Celebrate My Decade of Blogging

In this, I find a story, one I had never written before, for when we lived in Kaduna, my mother too did have a market stall.

@Rosanwo is his Twitter handle or you can read his blogs here.

This is Babatunde’s story, please read on.

There are many routes leading to the market
Depending on your mission to the market
I dreaded going to Oja Oba (King’s Market) with my mother
It was a confluence of all manners of men and women
From the rich who bought the produce in bulk
To the average ones who came for their daily supplements
Those who came for the leftovers stretched across the market
Yet the was a constant buzz and noise across the market

I wondered why my mother spent such considerable time at the market stalls
Greeting the sellers and exchanging banter
I thought we should buy from the first stalls and leave
I would often look away to catch the expressions of the market
Intrigued by the alabarus (market porters) who labored to make a meaning out of life
My mother would insist that I accord everyone with greetings and courtesy
I wondered why it was so difficult for her to make up her mind
Why do we have to move from stall to stall, from bargain to bargain?

I would wonder where my father was at that moment
The one who worked all day was saved from the theatre of this market
The contrast between his alakowe (academic) office and the market
The contrast between our modest home on Ring Road and Oja Oba
I wondered what my father would make of this market
Would his job afford him the daily encounters of engaging so many people?

My mother said the market had many reflections
That one day I would understand that life itself is a market
People come and go but the market remains
I would have to bargain to get the best of the market one day
The bargains would determine how far I go
Some spend the whole day at the market without a bargain
Some spend just few minutes at the market with the best bargain

Again, I asked, why have your stalls inside the market?
Why not at the entrance to catch the customers as they arrive
My mother laughed at me, she held me in her arms
She said one day I would start my own journey in the market of life
I would never be satisfied with the first things that come my way
Neither would my first love end up as my wife
There would be days I would love to curse the market
And there would be days I would love to bless the market
In all, the market remains part of me

Now I reflect upon those days with my mother and our sojourn to the market
I look at the journey I have embarked on in life
I am no longer satisfied with the first bargains I have made
Sometimes I am confused
Sometimes I have cried
Sometimes I danced away my sorrows
Sometimes I have made poor bargains based on my poor judgment
It has dawned on me that life is a market
That my father had his own version of the market in his alakowe way

I don’t know if I am lost in the market
I don’t know if I am making the best bargains
I don’t know if the tinned tomatoes are better than fresh tomatoes
I don’t know if cooking with olive oil is better than my mother’s palm oil soup
I don’t know which route is best to leave the market
I don’t know if the market even knows I am here

The only thing I know is the market is still open
I am still looking for the best bargain
One day I will exit the market
I shall be gone but the market shall remain

Thought Picnic: My very own Psalms

Channelling David

I sometimes feel like the Psalmist when he wrote the psalms of despair and desperation. I wonder to myself, can I take any more of this?

How long? Many psalms ask, how long shall all this go on for before I expire under the weight of being overwhelmed or rise like a phoenix from the ashes of all that I ever knew that has been consumed in the flames of adversity?

Yes, that dreadful thought has crossed my mind, never dwelt on it, but driven by at just the right speed to see what it is all about – we can put a stop to all of this at once [one more pill; maybe a couple more, the slip from a high place; maybe a higher place, a long drink; maybe down a few more - if I had a bath tub I could even have more ideas] and history can begin to pen itself on the pages of the tales of someone else.

We can drift into memory captured in the capsules of time as references that once put footsteps in the sands of time – easy, easing with ease – and it is all done.

A day comes beyond all this

But we are not ones to let that take root, not if we can help it. The storms gather, the winds billow and the clouds darken but the weather is never an interminable event.

The storms will run out of fury, the winds will run out of puff and the clouds will give up the moisture that makes them dark, they will even clear out of the way for the sun to shine through in the day and the moon to light up the dark amongst the trees.

Take heart, there is a psalm that promises goodness, mercy and victory and it would not be long before melancholy is the melody of joy and happiness.

Hurdles always topple over

Running for fun

I have never been that athletic but I do remember that in my early teens I used to do long distance running just for the fun of it but never in competition.

I did try out hurdles and much as the hurdles look daunting from the starting line, they are set up to topple down forwards when hit by a hurdling error of the runner.

Hobbling over hurdles

Basically, a hurdle is not fixed to the ground as some insurmountable obstacle, whilst the best technique would glide over the hurdle without touching it, the runner would surely find out that they are only slightly slowed down if the hurdle is hit but the hurdle usually would not stop the runner in their tracks.

Even so, life is full of hurdles, but there are many who see those hurdles as big high impregnable walls of Jericho that they are overwhelmed and already defeated before they find out that it is hurdle and not a solid wall.

The big money wall

I was chatting to a young ambitious man this evening that was trying to enter business school but had been slapped with a EUR 12,000 fee as a guarantee that he would pursue the study rather than embark on other activities.

It is unfortunate, that some of those before had abused the foreign student programme by obtaining visas for study and then going into full employment – new laws have been promulgated to avoid such abuse.

Looking at the situation, I averred that it was a hurdle rather than an insurmountable obstacle, I opined that it was quite unlikely that a foreign student had deposited EUR 12,000 in the college’s bank account because that would be a greater incentive to work and probably engage in nefarious money making schemes.

A surety of confidence

My view was that the EUR 12,000 was the monetary value of a surety that guarantees that the person would make study their primary purpose whilst availing themselves of the maximum 20 hour a week working time.

This meant, if the person were able to produce a surety; a respectable member of society who knew the student, exercised a modicum of control over the student’s activities with some sort of monitoring agreement and had confidence in the student’s abilities, the fee can be waived on that recognisance.

Surety of conviction

A foreigner might not be able to produce such a surety on short notice without developing a trusting and working relationship, however, if the student in persistence and determination is able to convince a lecturer or some academic of their potential, commitment and ambition a surety might arise to allow a waiver.

The student creates a conviction that persuades the academic to provide the support to obtain access and gain a waiver of sorts.

In other words, the fee would always be an obstacle to those who do not exert themselves beyond that first refusal; it is however, just a hurdle to those who realise that the purpose of the fee and think round the issue.

I cannot say I convinced the young man of my views, but at least I gave him a perspective that made little of what once looked impossible and unattainable.

I have seen many examples of people who refused to be deterred by the big money requirement and ended up realising their dream without suffering that financial outlay – what looks like a wall, might well be a curtain, hurdles are not fixed to the ground, and they topple over when knocked, hit or just tripped over by a runner, but if you were just walking by, you'll never really find out that truth.