Strength to Endure: A Year of Recovery, Work, and Gratitude

Jolly Off the Year

As my year of work concludes today, I am filled with wonder and gratitude for all it has been. For so long, I have had the opportunity to finish the year on or just before my birthday; that's one of the benefits of it falling just ten days before the end of the year.

A Year of Significance

Many things make this year significant. A year ago, I was recuperating in Cape Town after radiotherapy for prostate cancer. It was also a difficult time; we had barely enough to make ends meet, but for the generosity of friends who contributed to help.

Although I should have extended my sick leave, I was eager to return home and regain some normalcy. From my experience 14 years ago, one of the signs of recovery was returning to doing what you once did: work, travel, the everyday routines, even if there was barely any strength to cope.

The Return Home

I returned to Manchester on the 30^th of December to find my home in complete disarray, and I had a house sitter for the seven weeks I was abroad. After about 20 hours of travel from door to door, I still don't know where I found the strength to run the vacuum cleaner around the apartment while keeping my composure at the state of my home, the occupant aware of when I was returning.

On the 3^rd of January, I signed on my work laptop and informed my managers that I would be back on Monday, the 6^th of January, and we would take it as we went. I did not use a paced return-to-work plan but dove straight in. Aside from the two-week break I took at the end of August into September, I have worked every single day, bar public holidays and hospital appointment days.

The Body's Remarkable Capacity

The body’s ability to adapt and condition itself to the challenges of a working environment, without what I had previously experienced, is admirable. The side effects of fatigue, nightly insomnia, bladder incontinence, and a fluctuating voice, notwithstanding, strength grew to endure and thrive.

There were times I wondered if, by the will of my spirit over the exhaustion of my body, I was doing too much and not adjusting pace, momentum, pressure, and ease enough. Thankfully, I had great support from my manager. He demonstrated much emotional intelligence and empathy as I pushed myself, sometimes being the first in the office and the last to leave.

The People in My Circle

Brian, my daily strength and support; Kola, my friend into the fifth decade; Funmi, who took me from the office at closing during the summer months; colleagues who were kind, understanding, and considerate; and the professional support personnel who listened, advised, and counselled. I could not have had better people around me.

To a stranger, they wouldn’t realise this was a man, 18 months after a prostate cancer diagnosis that required active treatment starting 15 months ago. Then, in September, the PSA readings were the lowest they have ever been. I read stories of men whose results were over 40 times the highest reading I had in March 2024.

Gratitude and Blessings

God, I am grateful for Your mercies and loving kindness.

To top it all, I still had 14 days of annual leave at the start of the month and agreed to work five more days this year, with the plan to carry those five days over into 2026. On the eve of turning 60, it has been a wonderful year. I am blessed beyond measure, and that is my testimony, for I live to tell better stories. Thank you to all who made 2025 the year it was, and there is more to come.

In the eve of the year of the Lord 2023

What is a year?

Time is a construct of a frame of reference and for us earthlings, it represents how long it takes for the earth to revolve around the sun, our sun. Any day of 24 hours of the earth rotating once on its own axis can become that point from 365 days and a bit is measured to become a year and invariably, every day is a New Year.

It makes one wonder what ushering in the New Year is all about and whether one should put any more significance to any day than another, but in our humanity and depending on the culture and how we relate to the heavenly bodies we have broadly agreed on a concept of time measurement and milestones that makes today the last day of the calendar year of 2022 AD [anno Domini nostri Jesu Christi (in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ)].

It is grace upon me

The religious and Western significance of AD is not lost on me, for it allows me to reflect on the disappointments, misfortunes, sadness, failures, happiness, goodness, mercy, strength, comfort, successes, expectations, hopes, and good health that have defined this interesting year.

On a personal level, I know I am loved beyond what I could ever deserve, and I am grateful to my lover, Brian, my family, my friends, my neighbours, and even strangers that have held me up and buoyed me through situations I could hardly have traversed alone. Even more so, my faith has strengthened me constantly renewing and replenishing where exhaustion deigns to take hold.

Gearing to God

For those who drive, gears need to be engaged for a car to move with some determination, a car in neutral will remain stationary except if it is on an incline and the brakes were taken off, then it rolls and without control might well crash into something, causing damage.

It makes me think about how in religion faith and believing in God is also one of direct and practical engagement in prayer and supplication with desire and conviction for things to happen, God does not work in neutral, though accidents do happen.

The best comes

I am thankful for my health holding strong even after a scare that had me blue-lighted to the hospital a week ago, nothing to fear, just a strain that subsided after a couple of days without any intervention. The suddenly of anxiety soon gave way to the calm of assurance and a recovery of verve and swerve.

Daily, I have reason and cause to smile, even to laugh, to praise and to be filled with thankfulness, the privations of the present being swept away in the deluge of plentiful abundance of means, favour, opportunity, adventure, excitement, and dreams coming true. Let us reach out with the purpose to enter into the jubilee of the year of the Lord 2023.

Wishing you a very Happy New Year, the best is on its way.

For a better year

Perspective is focus

For a long time, I have abandoned the idea of New Year resolutions as they box you into a corner of aspirations that never meet expectations and you are on a downer after that, beating yourself up about the seemingly unattainable pretending to the easily achievable with a large deficit of unnecessary angst and regret.

As I have 10 days from my birthday to the end of the year, I do at times contemplate a few things; an assessment of the year past, much gratitude for how the year has gone and a few thoughts for what I want to do in the year coming.

Emotions cloud space

Recently, there has been too much emotional traffic in that slip of the year, birthday into Christmas, into anniversary, into New Year and all it entails, I have hardly had the quietness of time, mind and space to do anything, I have been on a roll that to attach any significance to any day might well be counterproductive, because you start reckoning and find there is nothing in the reckoner.

There is a process of acculturation that is going on in two hearts, a kind of understanding that a clash of two cultures brings with it considerable baggage weighing down on immediate plans, the lodestar, and the centre of it all is the commitment we have to each other that we are learning to grow in more considered and enduring ways, this is a long-haul business.

Pandemic changed world

What is quite evident from the way the pandemic has strangled opportunity and accessibility is the failure of global leadership to arrest its hold. If only the world had Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and Gordon Brown for this pandemic as we did for the global financial crisis, rather than Donald Trump and Boris Johnson in the United States of America and the United Kingdom, I believe we would have had a better grip of the pandemic and less impact on our lives.

We are where we are now, we need to make the kind of choices that help through the situation so we can eventually take advantage of the circumstances. In my view, the world of work has changed so considerably, remote working is part of the deal and the ability to shift the home to any place on the globe is very much on the cards. In the world of talent and expertise, try as politicians and employers may, the national boundaries and domains would have to diminish in favour of the virtual world. This might even feed into the much-vaunted metaverse construct.

To the better

It is what I hope to exploit better and fully for the next stage of my career which is closely linked to crucial domestic arrangements and other things that would emerge from it. I find I have not done enough of a lot of things that I need to do more of; reading, listening, learning, travelling, exercising even loving, it has been crazy, and I have just pulled through by sheer grace, grit, grunt, grasp – anything that has given me a hold.

What is always a work in progress is the quest for a better me, that never stops and looking at the year ahead, there might just be things that change for that to happen. I cannot seem to switch my mind out of countdown, I guess that is how time works; at one point you think you have a lot of it and then, you have little left. Without promise but holding on to faith, hope, and love, 2022 will be better. I can work with that.

Thoughts that closed my year

Slowly letting time crawl

My last three long holidays in the sun were 17, 19 and 16 days respectively and they all seemed to be well gone before I knew it had really started.

About 6 weeks ago, I finally booked my Christmas holiday for 18 days now extended to 19, however, I decided to condition my thinking not to anticipate such as to allow the days to my holiday rush by because that would make my holiday rush by too.

So, each day as next Wednesday arrives would be a full 24 hours of day and night until my holiday begins as 48 hour days – I really do believe my conditioning would allow my holiday to feel long, relaxing and fulfilled.

I had already phoned ahead at the hotel and the manager has prepared for me the absence of stress and the presence of ease that I am so accustomed to.

Closing the year of 42

Meanwhile, I also closed the year today, for about 12 years I have endeavoured to close the working year on my birthday if it falls on a weekday or the last working day before it, if it falls in a weekend.

This time, it is a Sunday, I sometimes try to think about the next year in the last 10 days of the year but I do not think I would exercise myself too much – I have had a good year and I am hopeful that next year would be better despite the upheavals that surround us.

Roll over payroll

One other area where my conditioned thinking came in handy was I finally decided I wanted to concentrate on what I professionally do; my payroll company had been an unnecessary distraction with their levity, incompetence and unprofessional activity.

Much as I tried to make them understand that my reasons for using a payroll company was to allow me concentrate on my core competences, their activities were heaping stress on my ordered existence – I finally decided the situation was untenable and the moment I began to think about getting another payroll company to act on my behalf, I was already feeling better.

Back to square one on my terms

I put in a request and informed the payroll company that they would either be brought in and told to polish up their act or I would be assigned a better organisation – yesterday, I was contacted by a new organisation – back to square one, but now, I lay down the rules of engagement. I am not half fussy; I just like things to be right.

The fact is stress is caused by the things you cannot bring under control or the things you allow to fester beyond tolerance – my patience was tried to the point of distraction, but this was something I could seek to control and bring under control.

Once the wording of my email conveyed the idea that I wanted to concentrate on the work I do for my client rather than bother about the pennies turning in pounds that fail to land in time in my numbered Dutch account, I had persuaded my client of a better perspective and sunk into meditative repose – the days are long and refreshing, even so shall my holidays shall be long and relaxing.