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2020, 27, Her Version of Events, letters, life lessons, Reflections,

8th June 2020

June 14, 2020 / By Oreoluwa

Hello Grandpa,

I didn’t cry today. I didn’t get sad when I talked about you with mummy or uncle Niyi and, to be honest, I almost forgot the anniversary all together. I remembered after my morning ritual of scrolling through Instagram.

Let me explain Instagram to you really quickly because it became a thing after you left: it is an application where you can share photos with captions, kind of like how you posted photos on Facebook but this is more addictive. You can be rest assured I would have opened an account for you.

As I scrolled, I noticed the date in the caption of one of my photos and it hit me that you have been gone 8 years today. I dwelled so much on the passing of time this year that it crippled me and prevented me from moving forward, but you helped me snap out it.

I remembered a line from your journals. It was an entry for your 50th birthday, the year you retired as a lecturer. You wrote that you would rather spend your days doing the things that brought you joy and in that moment of remembering you, remembering your words, it was easy to realise what I needed to do to keep living, to fill my life with love and happiness and that the passage of time is really out of my control and what matters is what I do with the time I have left.

For the first time since you left, I believe I have made peace with your leaving. I no longer have the wrenching pain in the pit of my stomach when I celebrate my accomplishments or special occasions. I have come to accept that you are a part of who I am and because I am present in all my moments, you are present too.

Coming into this place of acceptance doesn’t mean I will stop having conversations with you, sending you updates in letters or dreaming you up in a crowd but, I believe it is one of the many inevitable things about grief: it starts out all consuming and, for a while, it is the only sound you hear, the only thing you feel at the core of your being but gradually you start to recover, the consuming sound becomes a hum, something you can live with that doesn’t cause you to break down.

You have become a part of me in this manner. I see you in the things I do everyday, I remember you in the mannerisms of people around me, in my approach to a particular problem and this brings so much light into my life.

I am glad I didn’t cry today. I am glad I think of you now with a smile on my face. Missing you forever.

Love.

AraOre.

2020, 27, Her Version of Events, Reflections,

What Happens Next

May 5, 2020 / By Oreoluwa

I fear that we won’t change after this, that the clear flaws in the ways we choose to live, in how we think about others, that became pronounced in the last few weeks will become lost to our eyes when this ends.

Or will it end?

The earth is resting, it is in a state of non-movement, a state it hasn’t experienced in the last 50 years. It is finding ways to repair and recenter itself. The earth is on leave if you will, maybe a sabbatical at this point, because it hasn’t, in recent history, gone on a pause like it is on at this moment.

What if this doesn’t end?

Then all our beautiful constructs will die, like the stock markets, the paper monies we carefully keep away in banks, our precious portfolios: from rainy day funds, to school funds to company reserves. Our beautiful terms of liquidity. Insolvency will never be looked at the same way.

Will we construct differently?

Our track record doesn’t show a people that grow. What it points to is a people that place self above all. We are self-preserving; constantly placing our individual needs above others to the detriment of the earth and its other occupants.

In the end

My biggest fear is we will keep moving like nothing changed, we will go back to living just the same. We can’t even band together in this time of crisis. We are stealing resources from one another, we are still building wealth, we are still looking for how this misery favours our individual agendas.

Will there ever be an alignment?

My hope is in love, in the utmost display of it that I have seen in the health workers unwavering at the front lines of this, the children who go out of their way to put a smile on their neighbours faces, the adults that are giving their time and energy to preparing meals, making deliveries and providing us with the essentials for life and living.

We may never become a better people, we may never grow and see that a lot of things are more important than our carefully constructed product timelines and sales seasons. We may never see our employees as individuals, just numbers on a sheet.

But my hope rests still in love, in the acts of kindness that we show to ourselves and that some day, love will find a way to win.

2020, 27, Her Version of Events,

Books and Books

April 20, 2020 / By Oreoluwa

I happen to have two overachieving younger siblings so by the time I was 6 years old and my brother was 5, he had taught himself to read while I couldn’t read fluently. It then became my mum’s life mission to teach me to read and every evening, by candlelight, she would make me read to her from the King James Version of the Bible. Needless to say, this didn’t end well.

My mum’s sessions with me didn’t end well because I would read with my finger tracing individual lines on the pages of the Bible while she felt I should be reading without the help of my fingers, following the lines with my eyes. Thankfully, my father saved me and employed an independent party to teach me to read.

By the time I turned 7 and my brother 6, he had read through the Bible and after reading the book of Revelations, he was convinced that the beasts were coming for him at night. He would wake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and find his way to my parent’s room.

He resorted to reading the Bible because he had finished reading all the books we had at home. This marked the beginning of monthly family trips to Books and Books, a bookshop that had endless shelves whose aisles I would get lost in. At first, I stuck to picture books because they had fewer words in them and I would be done reading faster. Gradually, I lost myself in the sea of Enid Blyton books and soon started having tea parties with my younger sister.

When I turned 11 years old and my brother 10, I went away to boarding school and he stayed at home for his last year of primary school. I started having headaches during classes and I got sent to the Sick Bay where the doctor recommended an eye test. I was excited to get a free pass to go home for the weekend to see my brother and sister. I didn’t give a lot of thought to the eye test.

I remember my mum and I sitting in the reception of the eye clinic. She held my hand in hers while she looked straight ahead and whispered “sorry” to me under her breath. The eye doctor said I had Astigmatism and, apparently from the test results, I’d had it a long time. It explained why I had needed my fingers to guide me when I read. I got my first pair of glasses a week later and they helped me read faster, because everything was clearer and I didn’t need my fingers anymore. When I was 15 and my brother 14, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows was released. My father pre-ordered a copy for both of us. I remember the book was available for pickup at a bookstore called Booksville. On the day of the its global release, he closed early from work to make it in time to the bookstore and deliver the book to us that night. My brother had the first go with the book, stayed awake all night reading and by morning he was finished. I spent the rest of the day in bed with the book and by nightfall, I was finished as well. We discussed the genius that is J.K Rowling and mourned the deaths of our beloved characters. I remember the look on my parents’ faces, they were happy we were happy, with my sister chiming in the background that we were too in love with witchcraft.

My brother moved away for A-Levels and further away for University, but when he was 22 and I was 23, he came home after his degree. I had searched high and low for a particular book. You see, I never quite caught the bug of digital books. I still loved holding my books in my hands and suffering from the occasional paper cut. He suggested we visit Books and Books to find what I was looking for and my mum drove us there that afternoon. When we arrived at the location she was sure the bookstore was at, it was no longer there, and in its place was a large supermarket. My mum asked the staff a few questions to confirm we had come to the right place and indeed we had, we were told it became a supermarket a few years earlier.

It felt like I had dreamed up Books and Books, like the endless aisles of bookshelves that were my home as a child were a figment of my imagination. It was a season where everything was changing and I couldn’t trust the memory of my childhood. I would have loved more than anything to have something, anything, to hold on to from that period of my life.

2020, 27, Her Version of Events, Playlist,

The List

February 18, 2020 / By Oreoluwa

I have a desire to share my favorite love songs with the world: from the sound track for my primary school crush to my current national anthem, which I need to be banned from because of the insane number of times I have listened to the song on repeat in the last two months.

Please be nice in the comments because I believe the romantic part of Oreoluwa that is always in sleuth mood is about to be unleashed on the world.

Here goes nothing.

All My Life by K-Ci and Jojo – You will have to thank my mum and uncle Demola for introducing me to this song, and music in general. When the realization of having feelings and what not hit me, the lyrics of the song felt like the only thing that captured everything I was feeling in that moment.
Two is Better Than One by Boys Like Girls – This song is on the Boys Like Girls ‘Love Drunk’ album from 2009. The album has got a song for every stage of love, from the tenderness that comes with falling in love to the heartache of lost love, and it is worth checking out. This song is on the list because I spent most of life believing love, with its component parts, was a fantasy and this song started the process of changing my mind. Shout out to my brother for knowing his way around torrents and downloading the album.
The Only Exception by Paramore – This song sums up how I feel about relationships; all the walls I have built to shield my Jell-O heart from melting, how I walk out from behind my walls when I am sure a person is an exception to all my many rules and my Jell-O heart is willing to take the risk of melting because it can’t afford to watch this person get away.
Where I Sleep By Emeli Sandé – “Except this is us and this is love, and this is where I’m home…” I love the idea of having a person I feel completely comfortable with, a person that is home on sunny and rainy days. Because really, everyone needs a home.
Please Keep Loving Me by James TW – I think James TW is one of the most underrated artists but we will get into that on another day. The song reminds me of all the things that can go wrong because I am who I am but in-spite of those things my heart is on my sleeve and loving is what I hope to keep doing.
Still Into You by Paramore – Love can start feeling familiar after a while, like a constant that no longer sparks excitement. But this song recounts important moments and captures the feelings in those moments. Maybe we need to stock up on those almost perfect moments to get through the hard ones in between.
Put It All On Me by Ed Sheeran and Ella Mai – “I need a strong heart and a soft touch”. I enjoy every line of this song and I have listened, sang along and danced to it an embarrassing number of times. It is just about having a home, a place to rest after the world has battered you.
Grow As We Go by Ben Platt – This song reminds me of a line I wrote in my journal a few months ago: ‘’Love is active, it takes up its own life form, always evolving, to treat it as static is to bring about its death’’. I believe we are evolving individually and life is boring alone, so why not evolve with another? Ben Platt captures this perfectly in this song.
Happy by Morayo and Johnny Drille – It is just a happy, feel-good song that usually makes me dance and yes, I dance on very rare occasions.

I am sure you have enjoyed the embarrassing debut of my romantic side. Again I ask, please be gentle with her.

I have included a link to the playlist and also included other songs not listed above that I enjoy listening to!

YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJwhC1-37_4c3SQXPzajoktbRYXObxIRW

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/user/oreoluwaabidoye/playlist/4Ut4FwIPQmknARBc9WqU8N?si=BOb8Y-7oTp6AFxAAvAxd-Q

2020, 27, Reflections,

January Blues

February 1, 2020 / By Oreoluwa

I have consumed a lot of material about what people want to achieve in the new year and how they intend to achieve these things. I know I should just type ‘new year resolutions’ but I have always hated the phrase, the pressure that comes with it and the January blues that many of these ‘resolutions’ don’t make it past.

I had the most insightful conversation with my friends this afternoon, one of them shared about reading a woman’s post on goal setting after a personal retreat with God in which she proposed treating our goals as commitments. This expounded in my heart, I had finally found the right definition and explanation for ‘new year resolutions’.

I love that at the start of November my mind goes to reflection. I start putting together things I achieved in the year, the things I didn’t and understanding the excuses that I gave myself for not achieving them. This activity transcends into December.

What follows in December is I buy a journal for the new year, to write about the things that I will be taking with me into the new year, the things I set out to achieve that I might not complete or even do at all and new things. What I love about the end of the year is the opportunity to reflect, to take a look at what is working and what needs to be cut out.

In my reflective state, I wrote a document highlighting the following areas that most of our lives revolve around;

Spirituality
Finance
Personal Development
Career Development
Relationships

For these five areas I asked myself what I was doing right, what I was doing wrong, what I should be doing better, and built my 2020 commitments around my answers to the questions.

What I have learnt about this process was summed up in one word this afternoon: ‘commitment’. My list of things to achieve, or goals (whatever you may choose to call it), is a commitment to do better, to take important steps that will lead me down the path of the future I have envisioned for myself, to build a future for myself.

I wrote my final ‘commitment list’ on January 1st and talked over the list with my Accountability Partner with my sister tribe. This is the first time I am deliberately building accountability into this process and having people who will pull me up when I am down, call me out when I am slacking and get me going.

A Commitment List is something I understand and can get behind. It is also something I look forward to working with and through this year.

In the spirit of accountability, I will share the three things I am committing to it when it come to The Over Thinker Community.

To publish at least three blog posts every month.
To write at least two book reviews for the Instagram account every month and post more photos (I don’t want to put a number to the photographs, let’s play it by the ear).
To release Series 2 and Series 3 of the podcast before the end of the year.

Do share what you are committing to in 2020 in the comments and again, I wish you a Happy New Year!!!

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