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The Over-Thinker.

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2020

2020, 27, Reflections,

January Blues

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!!!

February 1, 2020

2020, 27, Her Version of Events,

Needless To Say ….

There are two important things you have to do for me while you read this;

Listen to the song Happy Now by Kygo while reading
Please don’t judge me.

I wasn’t a believer in the term broken heart because scientifically it isn’t possible for a person to live to tell a story of a broken heart therefore I couldn’t wrap my mind around the phrase.

However, twice in the last two weeks I have gone from having this piecing pain in my chest to curling up on my rug and crying fat ugly tears; the type that sucks the energy out of you and you can’t but sleep right after.

I have learned to never do this type of crying on an empty stomach and to always have a face towel drenched in cold water on hand for the headache that inevitably follows it.

Needless to say, I fully understand the concept of a broken heart now. I know to cherish all experiences and learn to build from them but this isn’t an experience I would like to relive. I am sure I have learned all the lessons I need to learn from it and I have carefully documented them in my journal, written them on post-it notes and stuck them around my room so I never forget.

Here is the thing, I am responsible for my ‘’broken heart’’. I will attempt to explain how I came to be curled up on the floor, having the life sucked out of me.

It started with a promise for a free meal which turned to 10 follow up meals within two months. I enjoyed the conversations and really, who says no to free food?

By the third month, I found out that my hands fit perfectly in his and I should have know to snatch my hands out of his and run, instead I stayed put convincing myself everything was under control.

In the fourth month, we talked about the all the reasons sharing meals was a bad idea but we left the restaurant that night with the date for our next meal picked. I should have known to decline the next meeting invitation but by that point, all of me lived for sharing 12-piece chicken wing with him.

By the sixth month we fell into a routine: of sharing meals, sharing ideas and sharing our lives with each other. Looking back on how things progressed, there are two important lessons I learnt from those first six months;

When you know the attraction will end in tears, run! Don’t let the warm feeling in the pit of your stomach get the better of you.
Be brutally honest with yourself about the situation and make the hard decisions.

The sharing, eating meals, meeting family went on for the next few months and by the time I was ready to face reality it was too late for my heart, it had already gone and given itself away.

I found myself dreaming of my future with him in it. We went from ‘’my plans’’ to ‘’our plans’’ and from ‘’you’’ to ‘’we’’. I think what made it hard was we actually work well together, complementing each other’s strengths and weakness, it became difficult to run because it started to feel right.

In the fourteenth month, my uncle staged an intervention. He talked to me about physical compatibility and spiritual compatibility. By this time, there was no point pretending ‘we were just friends’, I listened attentively and when he was done talking, I asked, ‘’So what do I do?’’ He didn’t have a ready answer for me, he told me I was between a rock and a hard place and he understood perfectly the turmoil I was going through.

Two things he said stuck with me.

Everything good isn’t Holy.
You need to blend physical attraction and spirituality, one can crowd the other out and blur your vision but for successful long term relationships, there needs to be a blend.

I went into deep reflections asking myself hard questions about my future and all the things I want my life to be filled with. I plotted a timeline for the current course I was on and I didn’t like the places my mind’s eye took me.

My next decision was clear; unlearn back to ‘me’ from ‘us’. It was in the course of unlearning, of detangling, that my heart broke. Its strings had become too attached and weren’t willing to let go, the yanking off that needed to happen broke it into a million pieces.

So, that is how I broke my own heart and spent Christmas tucked safely in bed grieving what was, what could have been and learning to be just me again. I am not quite there yet but the experts of this type of thing say it takes times, I am therefore giving it time.

January 14, 2020

2020, 27, Her Version of Events,

A Decade In A Few Words

Today is December 1st 2019. I think this fact and the nostalgia of the ending decade has finally caught up with me, I find myself reliving memories I will always carry with me, thinking about all the incredible relationships I have formed along the way and the one thing that jolted me awake to the fact that I was living an accidental life.

I will start my reminiscing of this decade from that one event that woke me up.

At this beginning of this decade, I started a relationship with a person I thought the world of. Young, naïve Ore thought she had found ‘’the one’’. I even made a playlist for us. (I have overcome all my embarrassment so I will share the playlist with you).

I am glad it happened when it did because I walked away with the following realisations; I was living an accidental life, I wasn’t conscious of the effects my decisions were having on my life in the long run and I didn’t know exactly what I wanted out of life or even a relationship.

I learnt a lot about myself my personality from that experience and I understood that the first step to self-acceptance is embracing all of who I am, including all the ugly parts I don’t like, because the love I get from life is entwined with how I perceive myself.

The relationship ended, like many relationships do, but I’ll never regret any minute of it because it shaped who I am.

Okay, that is a lie. I regret that I let it drag on when I knew in my heart it was no longer right for me, I could have saved myself unnecessary hurt and pain.

I will get it out quickly; my romantic life was pretty uneventful after this point, just a few situation-ships sprinkled at different points across the decade, you can blame it on me running when things got serious or my insistent need to be interested in people I couldn’t realistically be with. The plan is to attempt to change this in the new decade.

I am grateful for my family. We are a very nerdy bunch and don’t understand the concept of having fun, but we are all constantly rooting for each other. I know regardless of anything that happens in life or how any of my decisions play out, they will always be in my corner. I took this for granted because it was my normal but through the decade, I came to realise that many people don’t have a family support system and it made me treasure mine more. In that same stride I am grateful for friendships, the old ones that feel like they have lasted a lifetime and the new ones that have formed deep roots in the short time. Even when I felt alone and isolated from the rest of the world, I knew they were always waiting to meet me halfway.

*sigh

I wish someone had generally educated me about starting a career. Any information on the topic would have been appreciated. I had the general understanding of getting a job to earn money after university. I should add that my sister and I had a plan to rent an apartment, have it designed Pinterest board style once I got a job, the fact we even conceived this plan shows we knew nothing about the Nigerian Job market and the shock that was waiting after graduation.

I studied Accounting; it was supposed to be a realistic and stable choice for my future, but I struggled to engage with the degree to see myself practicing as an accountant for the rest of my life. I had always kept journals because my grandpa encouraged me to write my thoughts because I say very few words. My journals quickly became an escape from my degree and I gradually became comfortable sharing my opinions with the world which led to me starting my first blog ‘’Our Version of Events’’ (I love Emeli Sande) on Tumblr which evolved into ‘’The Over Thinker’’ and I have shared inconsistently over the last decade. I enjoying writing and I thought for a minute that I could become a writer. I spent one year after university pursuing this and I learnt that there were a lot of holes in my skills, that it is a serious art form that goes beyond journaling and life didn’t afford me the luxury of developing my skills. I will keep reading to develop myself and hoping for when I can commit a 100% to writing and create a masterpiece.

After my one year of writing and applying to different roles, I started working as a Finance Officer at a Micro Finance Bank. I met and fell hopelessly in love with Microsoft Excel, I can’t understand how I lived before this. I enjoy colour coding my workbooks and learning new formulas. I didn’t really enjoy my job but there was a lot of free time that I spent reading and this made it bearable. At my three-month mark on the job I knew it wasn’t for me and I started applying to new roles not knowing what I wanted to do or be, just that I needed a new challenge.

My search led me to a role at Softcom/ Eyowo that I didn’t know I needed. The role stretched me, opened my mind and brought about growth in my personality and career. It helped me identify the things I loved about how money works in an organisation and hone my skill in a way I never thought possible and I get to go to sleep everyday knowing that the work I do contributes positively to the society.

Some things have stayed constant throughout the decade; like the fact that I want to publish a book one day while I work on that I have chosen to keep sharing on ‘’The Over Thinker’’ (please pray I become consistent). This year we launched a podcast (it feels like I birthed a child), I started writing book reviews on Instagram because there are some things you can never quite shake off, and talking about books, thinking about writing one and sharing my opinions are things that are always going to stay with me. Oh and I moved from Lagos to London, it is the hardest and most exciting thing I have done in my entire life and I will share more on my experience in the coming year.

In the spirit of living intentionally, I am currently working on a list of five things I want to achieve by 2029. It feels weird writing it down but the way the last decade flew by I am sure I will be writing another decade recap in no time. I am thinking deeply about the things that matter to me in the moment and will always matter, those are the only things that will make it on the list. I am hopeful that by December 2029, I shall write in another decade recap that all the things on my list have come true.

Here is to a glorious 2020 and may the odds ever be our favour.

January 1, 2020

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