Last month, I caught Call of My Life on the last day of its showing at Odeon Greenwich. I’m generally not a fan of Nollywood movies, having spent too much money watching a couple with storylines that a high schooler could probably write better.

This one like others, had quite the social media hype. I’m a sucker for romcoms and hold just a few in high regard for properly capturing the complexities of love.

Also, I’d seen a Zikoko short film My Body, God’s Temple, starring the lead actors Uzoamaka Power and Andrew Bunting. I thoroughly enjoyed the fresh perspective it gave.

I’ll skip over the full cinema experience, the laughs and the part where I cried, and talk more about the scene that’s actually stayed with me since.

Soluchi shows up at her boyfriend’s house. He conveniently isn’t reachable by phone, and doesn’t open when she knocks. She waits at his door. After what feels like hours, he finally comes out, and honestly my eyes just about popped out of my head. So disrespectful. She asks why he didn’t pick up, he says his phone was on silent. She calls it right there. It rings loud in his pocket. Caught. She asks what’s wrong and what has she done.

He goes into this whole irritating rant about how she’s too much, too in love, and should give him the room to miss her. To let him chase her, not the other way round.

I keep coming back to that line because I think there’s something real buried in it, even if he used it terribly.

Maybe he really had been feeling smothered for a while and didn’t know how to say it, so he just avoided her instead and hoped it would sort itself out. Then he got cornered and it all came out badly, like an accusation instead of a conversation. The problem isn’t that he didn’t mean it. It’s that she had to catch him lying to even hear it.

The concept of missing the person you’re with is one I find fascinating. Most people will say they want to spend as much time with their partner as they can, I support the notion because time is really not a luxury we have.

On the other hand, constant availability calls for concern when it becomes a substitute for one person having a life separate from who they’re with. A life in terms of their own interests and friendships, that’s worth looking at.

What got me thinking, though, was the question underneath his accusation, separate from him being a liar.

“Are you too much, or were you simply too much for someone who was never going to be able to hold you?”

Those sound like the same question and they aren’t.

One is about a fixed quantity that needs correcting. The other is about fit, about the specific chemistry between two people, one of whom can receive a thing and one of whom can’t. It’s not the same thing to fix yourself as it is to just be with the wrong person. And figuring out which one you’re doing is genuinely hard, because “too much” gets handed to you like a diagnosis, when really it’s often just a mismatch. Solving the first question when the second is the only one that needed answering is a particular kind of wasted labor, one a lot of people who love hard know intimately.

This is the part worth being honest about, even though it’s less comfortable. Wanting someone intensely can tip into something that isn’t really about the person in front of you anymore. Sometimes it’s less about them and more about needing to be wanted. That’s worth naming. Not because it excuses looking past it. It doesn’t.

By the end of the film, Soluchi finds Eli. Same whimsy, same intensity, same big, full-body way of loving someone. Eli actually enjoys it. The exact same person who got called too much is to him, just delightful.

But here’s the part I didn’t expect. When things with Eli started getting real, she pulled away from him. Scared, I think, that the same thing would happen again, that he’d eventually call her too much as well. It took her running to the airport, chasing him down before he left the country, to actually let it work.

It turns out compatibility isn’t some magic fix that happens to you. Finding the right person doesn’t erase what a bad dynamic taught you to be afraid of. Being loved well doesn’t automatically undo that fear. You still have to catch yourself being afraid and decide not to run.

Anyway, moral of the story: if someone tells you you’re too much or too little, maybe don’t shrink. Maybe just go find your Eli.

The tears started to fall when the clock turned 00:00.

For 3 minutes, maybe less. The kind of gentle crying that arrives before you’ve decided to let it. It felt just like my body doing the birthday math faster than I could talk it out of it.

29 is the last one. Whatever this decade was, it is closing now. I didn’t get a say in when and how.

When I was 19, I was finishing university with genuinely no idea what was coming next. That not-knowing didn’t feel frightening then. It felt like the whole point, like the entire decade in front of me was going to be spent finding out. Like I had all the time to do so.

10 years later, I have found out a lot. I’ve lived what feels like several different lives inside this one stretch of time. Somehow I’m sitting here with less certainty about what’s next than I had at 19, not more. I thought arriving at 29 would feel like having answers. Instead it feels like having more specific questions.

Here is the honest inventory, the one I don’t put on social media.

Still not earning 6 figures. Still unmarried. Still can’t drive. Still haven’t launched my travel product. Still barely sleeping through the night.

Over the last months, life has felt like a routine. One I have simply woken up and had to go through regardless of where my head was at.

There are so many things I want. What I actually have less and less of is time to get to all of them, and 30 being closer than it’s ever been makes that shortage feel less abstract than it used to.

My father asked if I’d thought about an MBA, the last time I was in Lagos. I have, plenty of times. A good question over the usual, “When are we meeting who you’re marrying?” Except thinking about doing an MBA and finding the time for it are two different exercises, and I don’t currently have room for the second one.

At the start of 2026, I created a list of goals I wanted to achieve. 8 months into the year and I’m not even halfway through them.

I know the markers I listed are the tired, borrowed ones, the ones I didn’t choose so much as absorb. That doesn’t make them stop mattering to me at midnight on my birthday. Knowing a deadline is culturally or personally manufactured doesn’t fully unmake the feeling of missing it.

Not to minimise what I have actually done this year.

I showed up a lot as best as I could, all round, when it mattered. I have worked like capitalism suddenly became cool. I let my friends in closer, and they stayed anyway. I let go of things I wanted badly to hold on to, which is a harder decision than it sounds like from the outside. I said things out loud that I would have swallowed a few years ago. I’m learning slowly how to actually ask for help, instead of hoping someone notices I need it. I learned to treat myself with more gentleness. I have been deliberate about having fun and letting loose. None of this shows up on a checklist. All of it took more out of me than the checklist items would have.

Underneath all of it, I have also been tired.

The specific tiredness of feeling like you’ve had years and years to get it right and you’re still getting parts of it wrong. Still making bad calls alongside the harder, better ones.

I went to Greece in May and tried scuba diving, which I did not expect to enjoy as much as I did, for someone who cannot swim. For a while underwater, none of reality mattered at all. Maybe I just need to learn how to breathe through everything I expect from myself the way I learned to breathe down there — deliberately, one measured pull at a time.

That’s closer to what I actually want out of the year still in front of me than pretending I have it figured out. Most of the schedule I feel behind on isn’t even one I fully chose. It’s borrowed, absorbed from other people’s timelines without my noticing I’d picked it up.

I’d rather be behind on a life I actually designed than on time for one I didn’t. While I’m not there yet, 30 is going to arrive whether or not I’ve sorted out all the things I want by then.

What I have is smaller than that and more useful. A pride in the fact that I am liking the woman I am becoming, the way 19-year-old me would have.

My lashes were gone. Not permanently.

I’d had to take out my falsies because the glue was making my eyes water through the night, swelling shut by morning. A health precaution, not a choice. And yet standing there, staring at the eyes I have had my entire life, I felt like I was looking at a lesser version of something.

That feeling lasted about four seconds before I caught it.

So I finally discovered false lashes.

The kind that make people stop mid-conversation to ask who your lash tech is (Mai on Deptford High Street really knows her thing). The kind that make your eyes look like they were designed with intention. Women were complimenting me constantly — even without a full face of makeup, they’d say, as though my eyes had graduated to a higher tier of existence. And I loved it. I won’t pretend I didn’t.

But what I didn’t notice was the slow recalibration happening underneath all that. My baseline was shifting. My face unadorned was quietly being reclassified in my own mind, from the original to the diminished version. So when I first saw myself in the mirror between lash sets, my instinct was genuinely startled. Who is that?

It’s a strange thing, to become estranged from your own face.

This year has also been the year I have worn the most makeup. On Sundays to church, mostly without fail. There have been mornings I arrived late just because I had to squeeze in applying the blush first. The facial enhancement couldn’t wait. Church apparently, could.

The irony is that on Wednesday service, I show up completely barefaced. Same church. Different face, depending on which day of the week God gets me.

I’ve been in relationships with people who were genuinely indifferent to all of it. Men who would wake up next to me — no makeup, no lashes, nothing — and think that was when I was most beautiful. Then I’d spend an hour getting ready and the response would be a mild “you look nice.” Not unkind. Just indifferent. Like they’d seen the original and couldn’t understand why I was offering them a copy.

Lately, I have been seeing a conversation repeat itself on social media. It goes something like this:

And I understand the impulse. There’s real pleasure in being well-groomed. There’s confidence in it. But I keep snagging on the logic underneath. The idea that your best state is the maintained, manicured, augmented one. That the unvarnished version of you, the one that existed before the appointments, the products and the upkeep, is somehow a lesser state waiting to be corrected.

When did natural become the before photo? And why is fixing it this expensive?

I watched The Substance last year and couldn’t stop thinking about it for days. A film about how far a person will go to stay young, to stay beautiful, to stay relevant to a standard that was never going to hold still. It’s grotesque and extreme, and completely on the nose. The reason it works is because the logic it’s satirising is one most women recognise. We just live it in smaller, quieter increments. A lash set here. Manicure appointment. A Sunday morning sacrificed there.

I want to be careful not to be hypocritical. I’ve had Invisalign — months of quiet, unglamorous pain to straighten my crowded teeth. I’ve had laser eye surgery for Myopia. These things changed how I looked and how I felt about looking. I don’t regret either. But I notice they sit in the same general territory as the maintenance the internet says is non-negotiable. The line between correcting and enhancing is blurrier than we like to admit.

There’s a word people reach for when they talk about this kind of thing: dysmorphia. I want to be careful with it, because it has a clinical meaning that refers to something far more consuming and distressing than what I’m describing.

Dysmorphia: an obsessive, often debilitating preoccupation with a perceived flaw that others frequently cannot even see.

What I experienced was lighter than that, but related. It was what happens when an enhancement stops being an addition and becomes a new standard. When the beauty fix becomes the face, and the face becomes the before photo.

I think this happens quietly to a lot of women. Not in a dramatic way. In the way that you stop leaving the house without some makeup done, and then one day you’re in your own bathroom at 9am feeling somehow incomplete. In the way that a photo of your own face doesn’t feel postable unless a filter has smoothed it into something more acceptable.

Growing up, I didn’t always fit the beauty standard. I was slim, very slim, before my body filled out. Family, strangers, other people made sure I knew it wasn’t a compliment. I was called pànkèré, a cane. A blackboard. The kind of nicknames that are designed to make you feel like your body is the problem. I was asked why I don’t eat, even when I was at the peak of a weight gain diet.

Then puberty arrived. My features filled out and almost overnight, boys who had looked straight through me suddenly discovered I existed. The attention was genuinely confusing. Not because I didn’t want to be seen, but because nothing deeper about me had changed. And apparently that had been the whole point.

Now that same body type is what everyone is trying to achieve. The slim waist and the lean frame is aspirational now. Influencers are selling it. Ozempic is being prescribed for it. The exact shape I was mocked for has become the thing women are paying to get.

I’ve been considered pretty for most of my life, but that sentence needs the full picture: I have also been mocked for the same body in a different decade. Growing up, people told me I should enter pageants. They told me I should model. They still say this, which I’ve learned to receive gracefully. But the thing is, that consensus existed long before I knew what any aesthetic enhancement was. Before lashes, before contour, before I had any vocabulary for the beauty industry and what it would eventually try to sell me.

The validation predated the intervention, which means the intervention was never the source.

I don’t have a clean resolution to offer here, and I’m suspicious of essays that do.

What I have is this: beauty is random.

It is cultural, cyclical and deeply, almost comically inconsistent. The thing that gets you mocked at 16 becomes the thing that gets you envied at 28. The body you were born with goes in and out of fashion without your permission.

Two weekends ago, I wore a full face of makeup to a friend’s wedding. Proper, deliberate, the whole thing done by a makeup artist. I looked in the mirror and found it interesting how different I looked. Better, even. And yet at the end of the night, I couldn’t wait to take it off.

Defining yourself against something that arbitrary, staking your sense of self on a standard that will simply change again, that has already changed multiple times within your own lifetime, is not discipline or aspiration. It’s just bad logic.

I’d be damned if I am the reason I am uncomfortable in my own body.

I’ll be sharing some other writings on Substack, kindly follow here.

Lagos has a way of pulling you back. I was there last December and already thinking about leaving. I was counting down the days until I was back in London, and I remember feeling strange about how excited I was.

Ibadan was home for most of my life. Then Lagos, it still is in some ways.

The roads are familiar, the food is familiar, the people are familiar. But somewhere along the line, familiarity stopped being enough.

I felt like a cheat for having such strong missing for the space I have curated for myself abroad.

The life I had built there. My routine. My space. The freedom of deciding at 9pm that I wanted to leave my house and simply leaving. The version of myself that existed there.

Nobody really talks about this part of immigration. Nobody tells you that one day home can start feeling like somewhere you visit. Not because you love it less, or you suddenly become ungrateful, but because you quietly built another life somewhere else. And now both places demand something from you that you can’t give.

I should feel lucky. I know that. Lucky to have options, lucky to have experienced different versions of life. I am grateful, genuinely. But gratitude becomes complicated when it sits next to uncertainty. When it sits next to the quiet, persistent feeling that you do not fully belong anywhere.

The UK does not exactly want me. Every visa renewal, every immigration headline, every policy shift is a reminder that my stay is conditional. That I am here on someone else’s terms. Nigeria does not feel like an easy answer either because wanting stability, safety, and predictability should not feel like asking for something unreasonable.

So I exist somewhere in between. Too settled abroad to fully return. Too temporary abroad to fully belong.

Somewhere in that in-between, my dreams changed too. Or maybe they did not change. Maybe they were quietly replaced.

When I was younger, adulthood looked different in my head. Bigger somehow. Less practical. Now the conversations sound strangely familiar — work harder, earn more, start a family, buy a house, buy a car.

Maybe there is nothing wrong with those things. But sometimes I genuinely wonder whether these are my dreams or simply the dreams that are available to me now.

Moving abroad has a way of shrinking your imagination. You spend so much time trying to secure stability that eventually stability becomes the dream itself. I catch myself planning futures that feel sensible rather than exciting. Achievable rather than desired. I do not know when I stopped dreaming forward and started dreaming safely.

Even travel, which I love most is not entirely free anymore. I move quickly through places, not because I am in a rush, but because I am afraid the access will not always be there. My passport has limits. The windows open and close on someone else’s schedule. So I collect the experiences while I can, and somewhere underneath the excitement is a low hum of urgency. The feeling that I am racing something I cannot name.

A lot of the conversations I have been having with people in my circle revolve around what the next options are for us. The US seems unrealistic. Canada sounds cold and competitive. Ebube mentioned we should start learning French. Just to have better options. South Africa denied my tourist visa with a vague explanation.

Sometimes being an immigrant feels like constantly interviewing for the right to exist somewhere. And the exhausting part is not even the paperwork, the uncertainty, or the moving. It is the feeling that you are perpetually trying to convince the world that you deserve a seat at the table. That you are worth the trouble.

I pour myself into work. I contribute as a resident. I follow the rules laid out for me.

So is it really too much to want somewhere humid and safe, somewhere I can take walks at night, earn well, cycle through without looking over my shoulder, and eventually build something that feels like a good life — with community around me, with people who are not going anywhere?

Maybe what I am really asking for is not a place at all. Just the feeling of being fully settled. I am still waiting.

You should know Ed Sheeran is my favourite musician. It feels befitting to listen to Hearts Don’t Break Around Here while you read.

I attended two weddings within 48 hours in two countries in April and therefore, I consider myself a professional wedding guest now. I utterly love love and the joy of seeing my friends find the love of their lives is one which I can’t place a value on.

Flying across the ocean to experience their unions reminded me of the value of community. We really cannot do life without a solid support system and people.

Anyway, here are some of my thoughts on marriage since I now have adequate certification as an attendee.

I.

We don’t give enough credit to how much luck is involved in finding your person. What are the odds of finding someone that you click so well, at the right time, in a matured emotional state, that you decide to make it a lifelong thing? Having been a participant in romance over the years, I am genuinely shocked at the games people are still playing. Trading genuineness for fleeting frivolities and dishonesty in place of good intentions. The older I’m getting, the harder it is for me to navigate. I simply cannot believe there are people who are not doing the hard work on themselves, and need to be asked for bare minimum things like communication and intentionality. I wish everyone involved good luck, we all need it.

II.

Bring back personal proposals! Proposals are starting to feel templated and look the same. I think it is so sweet to add the personal feel that shows you know your partner truly when you are asking them to do life with you. It is the one moment that leads up to the rest of your life and should be special. One of the best proposals I’ve seen is one in which the guy made a custom Disney-styled cartoon to be shown in a cinema he was in with his girlfriend. The cartoon had characters that looked like the two of them, illustrated over six months.

III.

For an event that requires so much planning, weddings go by fast. I looked forward to the two I attended and counted down for months. We woke up, got dressed, showed up at the ceremony, danced and it was pretty much done. What I think matter are the memories created at the event. I say I want a small wedding, literally one where I’m sat at the same table with the attendees where we can talk, laugh and dance together easily. A private commitment can be just as meaningful as a large ceremony. The grooms also need to be more involved in the whole ceremony. So much attention is placed on bridal planning that it leaves the groom out as an active participant. It’s so important to have a ceremony that is actually what the couple want and enjoy, not just a placeholder to satisfy family. You’ll look back at that day with either happiness or resentment at how things could have been.

IV.

It is genuinely disturbing how much “contentification” of weddings for social media has been normalised. I am all for having photo albums to look back at. But these days, it is so hard to be a full part of a wedding because everyone has a camera or tripod shadowing the couple just for content. Good luck to you if you’re not sat in a position that allows you see the ceremony. There are some wedding moments that are so vulnerable and intimate that they should be revered as that and kept private. Social media also creates this reality where people compare their weddings and marriages to curated highlights online, which creates unrealistic expectations for the ceremony and the union.

V.

Love is not the sole requirement for a marriage. For the longest time, I foolishly thought love was enough to make a relationship work. Learning with age that there are more important factors involved — personal values, faith, finances, physical attraction/chemistry, conflict resolution, communication style, longterm goals. These logistics can make and break even the strongest love. Marriage does not fix relationship issues either. If anything, it amplifies them. Existing communication issues, mismatched expectations and unresolved conflicts don’t disappear after a wedding. To be candid, some people are better suited to different relationship structures or life paths, but social pressure pushes marriage as a default goal.

VI.

I’m somewhat scared of the dynamics of the loss of autonomy that sometimes come with marriage. In a girls yapping session I was in recently, we talked about the concept of joint accounts in marriage and it was one thing I had not given much thought. I find it so important to have my own money that I think completely combining my funds with my partner is one thing that I might need adjusting to, or some leeway which allows me to have personal savings outside of the joint finances. One lady mentioned it feels like proactively planning for when something goes wrong. I see how it could read that way, but I will hate a situation where I have to run all my expenses or purchases by my husband just because, and vice versa.

VII.

The idea of “the one” is overrated. There are likely multiple people someone could build a good life with. The success of a marriage often comes down to choice, effort, and timing, not destiny. The one is whoever it is you are committed to making things work with.

VIII.

The concept of 50/50 is one of the most irrational concepts that has been propagated. It is fundamentally more important to be with someone who is simply kind. As a woman, I think it is just impossible to expect that a man will go equally with you in a marriage, especially if you’re planning to have children. Personally, I think the man should do more than provide. You can’t split finances, but leave chores and childcare up to the woman. I saw a tweet about a man who paid his wife a salary over the duration of her being out of work after having their child. The heavy intentionality of regarding her doing childcare as an actual job. A man should not consider taking care of his children as “helping his wife”, while the wife is equally working a 9–5. The days of a man being the sole provider is not sustainable anymore, he will simply burn out.

There is something about watching people you love make the biggest commitment of their lives that holds a mirror up to you.

What do I want? What am I willing to build? What am I no longer willing to settle for?

You can come close to making that commitment, and even if it doesn’t go that way, it teaches you more about what you actually want than anything else has.

These weddings reminded me how rare it is to find the right person, how much intention a good relationship actually requires, and how much of the noise around weddings has little to do with the union itself. I don’t have all the answers. But I am asking better questions. Marriage is not a destination, it is a choice you keep making.

Love is worth it. Just with the right person.

Back in 2021, I went viral on Twitter for a video response for Zikoko in which I called Jesus a fictional character. It was mostly a dark joke, the kind of humour I enjoy.

Over the next 24 hours, I got both praise and backlash. Praise from atheists and agnostics who were happy to spotlight the absurdities of organised religion. Backlash from Christians, including some close friends, who felt compelled to defend their beliefs. I was called uneducated, attention-seeking, and several other things that made it clear the joke had flown clean over some heads.

A few years later, in a plot twist that still amuses me, I found myself coming back to Christianity. Not just in a private-faith way either. I actively serve in church now, in the projection unit. The irony is not lost on me.

Somewhere between life happening, loneliness, gratitude, and quiet longing, I realised I wanted faith again. Not performative faith. Just something real enough to hold me, and honest enough to survive my questions.

And no, returning didn’t switch off my brain. If anything, it made the questions louder. Which brings me to the question I get asked, in various forms, by people who are somewhere in the same tension I have lived in:

“Can you be a thinking, questioning, unsettled person and still have faith? Can you hold belief without checking your whole self at the door?”

I think you can. But it requires being honest about something most Christians won’t say out loud.

To be a Christian in modern times is to live with ambiguity, paradox, and questions you can’t resolve — why suffering exists, why children die, why a loving God permits what he permits — and to keep showing up anyway.

The Bible is a library of texts written across different eras, cultures, and contexts. Some people argue it was written by ordinary men. Christians believe it was God speaking through those men. Either way, you still have to interpret it, and interpretation always involves choice.

You might not call it “selective.” You might prefer “discernment,” “context,” or “being led by the Spirit.” Fine. It’s still selection. Even the most Bible-believing person is choosing what gets emphasised, what gets explained away, and what gets treated as timeless instruction.

Deuteronomy 22:11. You shall not wear a garment of different sorts, such as wool and linen mixed together.

I’ll wait while you check your clothing label.

Christians easily explain away some Old Testament laws as “for that time” or “for that covenant,” while treating other parts as permanent moral law. Fine. But even that is still interpretation. The separation between what’s timeless and what’s cultural is not self-evident in the text itself. It is a decision believers make.

And it gets even clearer when you look at the early church. In Acts 15, the apostles met to decide what requirements to place on non-Jewish believers. They did not dump the full weight of Old Testament law on them. They chose not to burden people unnecessarily. The early church was already making editorial decisions about what applies and what doesn’t.

So when people act like faith is simply “follow the Bible”, I want them to admit what’s really happening. There is always human judgement involved. There is always a centre.

The uncomfortable truth is most of us want a faith that affirms our values, even when it inconveniences other people. That’s why it is so easy to smuggle personal ideology into the gospel and call it holiness.

Anyone can pick a verse and contort it to fit their convictions. It becomes dangerous when they preach it loudly and recruit other people to parrot it, as though God’s voice sounds exactly like their bias.

When I say I am a selective Christian, I don’t mean I pick whatever is convenient. I mean I choose an interpretive centre. I decide what carries the most weight when I study the scripture, and keep Jesus as the compass.

Jesus was asked to summarise it all. He did.

Matthew 22:37–40. ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

Not some of the Law. Not the convenient parts. All of it.

Paul echoes the same idea:

Galatians 5:14. The entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’

Micah said it differently, but with the same weight:

Micah 6:8. Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

That is my framework. Not because it’s easy. Loving people who live nothing like you never is. But it’s what Jesus actually taught. Everyone has a hierarchy, even when they pretend they don’t. What you prioritise in faith eventually shows up in your character, and in how you treat people.

What does your faith make you become?

This is where the conversation gets uncomfortable, because it forces you to look beyond what you claim to believe, and into what your belief produces.

I’m a feminist, and I have rolled my eyes during more sermons about submission than I care to admit. The popular version of the message often sounds like: women follow, men lead, and that’s the God-ordained blueprint for a good marriage.

It’s also interesting how submission is often preached with confidence, while the parts about love, sacrifice, gentleness, and accountability sometimes get reduced to decoration.

Yes, the Bible talks about submission in marriage, but it also says:

Ephesians 5:21. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

That line changes the entire framing. It disrupts the one-way dynamic people love to sell. It forces a mutual standard. It demands humility from everyone in the room.

Because it’s not just marriage sermons. A lot of modern Christianity has become obsessed with policing other people, especially around what is considered acceptable. I’m not claiming I agree with every modern choice people make. But faith shouldn’t produce cruelty, arrogance, shame, or an urge to control.

At some point, you have to ask what the fruit is.

Jesus gives a test for this: you recognise a tree by its fruit. So I pay attention to what someone’s faith produces, not just what it claims.

Verses are not character. The fruit someone’s faith produces in the people around them is the real measure.

I also apply that test to myself. And honestly, I don’t always pass it. I listen to music my church would side-eye. I go to raves. My personal life has chapters that don’t align neatly with what is preached on Sunday. And I still show up. Not because I’ve resolved the tension, but because I don’t think faith requires me to pretend it doesn’t exist.

There are moments when my faith makes me defensive, or quietly judgmental, or more interested in being theologically right than in actually loving the people in front of me. That framework — love as the centre, the fruit as the measure — is aspirational. I am not exempt from it. I am still growing into it.

That is the difference I’m reaching for. Not a Christianity that has all the answers, but one that keeps asking the right questions of itself.

So can you be a thinking, questioning, unsettled person and still have genuine faith?

Yes. But not the version of faith that has an answer for everything and a verdict for everyone. The kind that survives scrutiny is the kind that stays curious, that sits with tension without needing to resolve it immediately, that holds conviction loosely enough to be corrected.

That kind of faith requires humility. And humility is not weakness, but the admission that interpretation is always involved. That you are not the final authority on what God meant, and that the person across from you might be seeing something you aren’t.

I return to the framework Jesus gave because it doesn’t let me off easily. Loving God with everything I have, and loving my neighbour as myself — that is a more demanding standard than a checklist of rules.

If my Christianity makes me someone people have to brace themselves for, I have probably missed the plot.

Does your religion transform you, or does it just give you something to wield against others?

That is the question I return to. Not just for others. For myself, every time.

Selah.

Chop (verb): Nigerian Pidgin meaning “to enjoy.”

Earlier in January, my coworkers and I were talking about what we were going to use our December bonuses for.

The company had a pretty good year in 2025, and we were all waiting for the January salary to drop.

Some guy said he was putting his into his pension immediately. “Future me will thank me,” he laughed. Another colleague said she had already started looking at flights.

I had been wanting a watch for a while. So much that my Instagram stories were full of ads from different brands.

At the back of my mind, I planned to put everything into savings, which I eventually did. It later went toward moving houses.

When it comes to spending money on myself, I carry the same guilt many Nigerians do. The feeling that you shouldn't really enjoy the money you earn. Many of us were raised hearing things like, “Save your money. You don’t know tomorrow.”

The watch I wanted wasn’t particularly expensive, but I still hesitated. Even after the salary came in, I still put it off. Other things came up that had to be paid for, so I postponed what I really wanted, what would make me happy.

Moving abroad makes that mindset even stronger. I have spoken to other immigrants who strip life down to the bare minimum just to save more money. People shop at the cheapest stores, walk long distances instead of taking an Uber, buy things that are functional but not exactly what they want, or the best quality. I have stood in supermarket aisles calculating the difference between brands that cost 50p less.

So much sacrifice goes into trying to save money. For a long time, I thought discipline meant denying yourself things you want.

And I understand it. Nobody ever wants to become stranded.

But a friend once said something to me that stayed with me.

“You postpone your joy, rest and happiness for the future. A future that is not certain you’ll be there for, if you don’t take care. You better enjoy life now. Your next of kin will chop turkey with your savings!”

My watch was delivered today, and I absolutely adore it.

The metal catches the light when I move my wrist. I’ll wear it often. And every time I look at it, I’ll remember it’s the reward of my hard work, glistening back at me.

Better chop life, make life no chop you.

March 4, 2026.

We both reached for peanut butter.

Him for pistachio, and I picked hazelnut. That was how our eyes met, in the duty-free aisle at Rome Fiumicino, of all places. Our hands nearly brushed, and I blurted the first thing that came to mind:

“That’s pistachio, you know?” I said, pointing at the jar in his hand.

Like, who eats pistachio peanut butter?

He smiled, like he was already in on a joke. “Yeah, I know.”

He asked if I’d been on holiday in Rome. I mumbled in the affirmative. The start of the interaction felt effortless. Not in the stiff, performative way airport conversations can be.

His accent was familiar but not quite, Spanish-adjacent but softer. He spoke slowly, deliberately. Like he’d learned that words could be savoured.

Argentine, he said. He came to Rome often. Almost casually, he added that he played basketball professionally. I just stared for a second. I have never met anyone who said that sentence and meant it literally.

Instinctively, I stepped a little closer, like my eyes needed help measuring what my brain had just been told.

“I’m 5’9,” I offered.

“You’re quite tall,” he said.

“How tall are you?”

“1.9 metres.”

He asked if I played. I told him I used to, back in high school, nothing serious.

“You enjoy playing basketball for a living?”

“Of course,” he said, laughing.

“Do you think you’re good?”

“I try my best.”

“What does your coach think?”

“He thinks I’m alright.”

“If I were you, I’d say I was the best,” I told him, half-joking, half-serious.

He laughed again. There was something humble in him. Not shy, just quietly grounded.

Then he asked how old I was. I told him to guess.

“25?”

I laughed. “Nope. Older.”

“29?”

“What?” I laughed harder, because of the audacity to think I am that old.

He started listing numbers like he was cracking a code. “24, 25, 26, 27?”

“Yes,” I said, still laughing.

“You look younger,” he said, studying me with a kind of calm certainty.

“Must be your hair. Really nice.”

I asked his age, and he told me to guess too. For some reason I blurted, “32.”

He looked genuinely startled. “You’re right.”

“How did you guess that?”

I shrugged. “Your beard makes you look older.”

He laughed at that. The laughter was warm, not defensive. He asked where I was flying to.

“London,” I said. “My flight is at a little past six.”

“Mine too.”

We both paused, like we’d noticed a small miracle at the same time. My check-in had actually been delayed due to a technical issue. My UK residency couldn’t be confirmed at the airline counter earlier. The flight they rescheduled me for was four hours later than my initially booked flight.

What are the odds? I thought, and then said it out loud.

We were still holding our jars of peanut butter when he asked, “Are you going to the cash desk to pay?”

I said yes, and we walked over together. We paid separately at the self-service machines. We continued talking, still in that strange bubble you sometimes slip into when time is suspended between places.

Then I spotted Venchi.

“Wait. I want gelato,” I said. “I didn’t even have any while I was in Rome.”

He walked with me to the gelato counter like it was the most normal thing to do. I ordered hazelnut and dark chocolate, the safest choice I make in any country.

I turned around with my little cone of joy to continue the thread, and he was gone.

Just like that.

No wave, no dramatic exit. One moment he was there, the next I was scanning faces like I’d imagined him. I felt ridiculous for how quickly I noticed. More ridiculous for how quickly it mattered.

I spotted a cafe upstairs and made a practical decision. The seafood pasta I’d carried from my Airbnb was likely already flirting with spoilage, and there was no easy microwave in sight.

I tossed it and ate lunch by myself instead; grilled chicken breast and fries, the kind of meal you order when you’re pretending you’re not slightly disappointed.

And of course, since I had time to kill, I did what any modern woman would do when an interesting stranger disappears after saying he’s a professional athlete.

I Googled him.

Two close results. Photos. Teams. Clips. He wasn’t lying. He really was a basketballer, and judging by what I watched, he was good.

And after seeing that, I felt oddly resigned. If I didn’t see him again, at least his story was real.

I texted S to tell him about the whole random airport encounter. He joked that it feels Netflix coded.

After lunch, I went back downstairs and found myself studying the departures board, trying to work out which gate he could be flying from. There was no direct flight to Buenos Aires on the screen, so my brain shifted into connections and hubs, the kind of thinking you do when you don’t want to admit you’re hoping.

I looked away from the board and by sheer luck, I saw it.

A red backpack on the floor.

His red backpack.

He was sitting on a bench beside it, head bowed with his earphones in, like he’d been there the whole time.

I could have walked in another direction. I almost did. Airports are full of people, and you can miss someone just by choosing a different path.

“Hey you?” I said.

He looked up, and his face softened into something apologetic.

“Sorry, I had to take a call. That’s why I left.”

He didn’t owe me an explanation. The fact that he offered one made the moment feel human.

We talked again, unhurried this time. I told him I’d Googled him. He found it amusing and asked to see what I’d found.

Then he talked about his dog Peppa, named after the pig.

He showed her to me as his phone wallpaper: an English bulldog with a face like a sleepy old man. He hadn’t seen her in two days and he missed her terribly. It made sense that someone who traveled the world and played basketball for a living still lit up when talking about his dog.

There was something unexpectedly tender about that.

I don’t remember everything we said after that, only how easy it was and how rare that kind of ease feels these days.

Eventually, it was time for departure. We walked toward our gates, slower than necessary, until we reached the split.

My gate was E to the left. His was A, to the right.

We paused at the fork like people do when a conversation has run out of runway, when reality taps you on the shoulder and reminds you you’re both going somewhere else.

He finally hugged me, the kind that lingers. Then he kissed my right cheek — warm, gentle, unrushed. Like a quiet thank you.

He didn’t ask for my number. And I didn’t offer it.

We didn’t exchange Instagram handles.

We didn’t say, “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

Not because I didn’t want to. But because I think we both knew that the moment was already whole. A brief, beautiful pocket of time. A story with no need for an epilogue.

As I walked away, I remembered a line from a movie trailer I’d seen recently, The Map That Leads to You. Two strangers connect while traveling, and there’s a scene where the man asks the woman, “Would it be crazy if I asked you not to fly back to New York today?”

He didn’t ask me that. And that’s okay.

Some connections are meant to remind you that you can still be surprised, still be seen, and still be held for a moment by a stranger who will become a memory before you even land.

Some stories belong exactly where they happened.

Hello friend. Share and give as many claps as possible so others can discover my writing. I aim to share my thoughts and other life happenings at least once every two weeks this year.

Sayonara!

There are years that happen loudly, crashing through your life with chaos and spectacle. And then there are years that carry you.

If you’ve read my previous end-of-year reviews, you might know I love a good metaphor, one dramatic line, a song, and one tiny joke to keep myself from crying. This year, the metaphor is simple.

This year carried me.

2025 was not a year of spectacle. It did not arrive with fireworks or grand announcements. It unfolded quietly, sometimes painfully, often gently, but always with intention. Looking back, I see a year that did not abandon me in my confusion, my fatigue, or my becoming.

I lived through it anyway. And I’m grateful.

On Wins

My most important win this year, as always, is that I made it here alive, with my mind mostly intact.

There were days I felt like I was dragging myself across the finish line, and days where simply existing felt like an achievement. On those days, these lines from “Firm Foundation” by Maverick City Music felt less like a song and more like a prayer I kept repeating under my breath:

And I’ve still got joy in chaos

I’ve got peace that makes no sense

And I won’t be going under

I’m not held by my own strength

I. Career and growth

2025 stretched me further than I had ever gone before.

I reached new heights career-wise, but not without first being deeply uncomfortable. I crossed my second-year anniversary at a company for the first time in my career. They must be using juju to make me stay, or I’m genuinely enjoying what I’m doing. A small milestone on paper, but a meaningful one for me. It meant I stayed. I endured. I grew.

The first quarter of the year shook me badly.

It forced me to question my understanding of proactivity, communication, and ownership. I confronted the gap between intention and impact, between doing good work and being seen as someone who drives it. I was delivering impact, particularly in Open Banking, yet privately wrestling with self-doubt and the fear that I was falling short of the product designer I wanted to be.

I focused on impact anyway. I kept going anyway. I learned anyway.

A mid-year change in management became a quiet turning point. With better alignment and clearer expectations, I learned how to drive impact in a way that felt confident and sustainable. That growth reflected clearly in a glowing end-of-year performance review, a reminder that progress is rarely instant, but it is always possible.

Our Open Banking work was recognised at the UK Credit Awards 2025, and that mattered to me because I know how much invisible effort went into building things people would never clap for publicly.

I didn’t just grow in output this year. I grew in confidence, in voice, in conviction. And I am deeply proud of that.

II. Mentorship and community

Another win was leadership that didn’t come with a title.

Through Design Chics, we poured into women who reminded me of myself, younger, hungry, uncertain, brilliant. We completed another mentorship season, and I watched women refine portfolios, update resumes, gain confidence, and begin to believe they deserve more than survival jobs.

Mentorship continues to humble me because it forces me to live what I claim to believe: that community can change a person’s life, that kindness can be strategic, and that impact is not always measured in money.

III. More travel

Travel remained one of my soft anchors this year.

It has always been how I reset, how I breathe, how I remember that I am more than my to-do list. Each trip, whether brief or extended, solo or group, gave me perspective and softness when life felt too rigid.

This year, I kept moving. Sometimes for joy. Sometimes for rest. Sometimes because I needed a new skyline to remind me that life is still wide, even when my mind feels small.

Coming from a passport reality that tries to limit how far you can dream, every trip still feels like a quiet miracle. Travel reminded me that life is wider than my worries, and that rest is not a reward, it is a requirement.

IV. Side quests

This was also a year of what if I just do it?

Somewhere along the way, I stopped trying and started deciding. I stopped asking for permission to want what I want. I became clearer about what I would not entertain, in love, in friendship, and in how I show up online.

I continued building my personal brand in a way that felt more honest, less polished, more me. I wrote. I created quality travel content. I shared pieces that were tender, and sometimes scary to publish. I protected parts of myself too, because healing does not require full exposure.

I ideated on side projects, even when I was tired, even when life was doing its own thing. TechTacToe became real. Weekly conversations turned into episodes. And for once, I didn’t overthink something to death before starting.

Starting things is a win.

On Failures and Ls

This year had its share of disappointments, even if they didn’t always explode loudly.

There were several “unfortunately” emails, enough that my body started bracing before my eyes finished reading. Rejection has a way of making you doubt yourself, even when you know you’re good. Even when you can point to impact. Even when you have receipts.

I also didn’t get married, which is amusing because if you asked me in January what 2025 would look like, I would have confidently described a year that included soft, art gallery-styled engagement photos and a unique ring that deserved its own spotlight.

Life said, “No, babe.”

Even though I can laugh now, making the hard decision that changed that outcome bruised me. Not because marriage is the only marker of love, but because I genuinely believed I was walking into a certain kind of future.

I had to mourn versions of my life I had already rehearsed. Timelines I believed in deeply. Letting go of those expectations felt like losing something real, even if it never fully existed.

There were moments where I felt emotionally stalled. Like I was doing everything right but not necessarily feeling fulfilled. Those moments didn’t erupt into crisis, but they lingered quietly, teaching me patience and honesty.

I also didn’t add the weight I wanted to. I wasn’t consistent at the gym. I had short bursts of discipline, then disappeared like a ghost. I kept promising myself I’d return and become that girl again. Sometimes I did. Sometimes I didn’t. This year reminded me that desire without structure is just wishful thinking.

Housing was another quiet L. If you’ve ever moved, you know. If you’ve ever moved into a place that came with problems, you know. A home is not a luxury. It is a foundation. It is also emotional.

2025 also taught me that adulthood comes with a quiet, constant weight. The kind that doesn’t announce itself loudly but sits with you in decisions about rent, utilities, and whether stability is actually guaranteed just because you’re doing well on paper.

I had to learn to be vigilant, to plan, to choose practicality over comfort at times. It wasn’t a year of abundance, but it was a year of responsibility.

On Love and Personal Life

This year reminded me, again, that love cannot be carried alone.

I often explain relationships using a bicycle analogy. It takes two working tyres for the bicycle to move. When one is flat, no matter how hard the other tries, the journey stalls.

There is a point where trying becomes self-abandonment. Where fighting for love becomes fighting for basic respect.

I regret some of the choices I made for love. I could have chosen myself earlier. I could have walked away sooner. I could have trusted discernment over hope. But hindsight is generous, and grace tells me I did the best I could with what I knew at the time.

What I will say is this: my heart remains open. Despite disappointment, unmet expectations, ambiguity disguised as companionship, and moments where love felt like a miscalculation, I will not harden.

Love matters to me. I still believe in it. I am simply more careful now about where I place my hope. I want love that is clear. Honest. Intentional. A love that shows up without needing to push for it.

Trusting God in 2025 meant continuing anyway, even when I didn’t understand what was being protected or postponed. Faith was not just something that comforted me, it was something I had to practise. Serving in the projection team in the house of the Lord gave me structure, discipline, and a community I genuinely love relating with.

This year also required me to listen to my body more than I wanted to. There were days I felt sick in my body, and days I felt sick in my spirit. Therapy continued quietly in the background, helping me name patterns without shame and understand pain without romanticising it.

I learned that health is not just physical. It is mental. Emotional. Hormonal. Spiritual. It is sleep, stress, and how your body holds what you refuse to say out loud.

I am learning to treat my body like a friend, not a project. To rest without guilt. To understand that softness is not laziness, it is survival.

On Friendships

I tried to be a better friend this year, and I think I showed up well.

There was no opportunity to be present that I didn’t take. I was more available. I listened. I checked in. I celebrated people loudly and held them quietly when needed. Friendship mattered deeply to me this year, perhaps because I needed it to.

But friendships can break you in quieter ways than romantic relationships do.

Sometimes it’s the disrespect that shocks you. Sometimes it’s realising someone has been carrying a version of you in their mind that is unfair, untrue, and insulting.

One particular experience shifted something in me permanently. Believing I was close to someone pushed me into being more non-confrontational. It is hard relating with people who value being right over understanding, who would rather disregard a friendship than acknowledge they were wrong.

Perhaps some friendships are just in my head, and they never really regarded me the way I did them.

Next year, I will be deliberate about the kinds of friendships I maintain. I want a close-knit circle where hard conversations are possible, accountability is welcomed, relations is intentional and respect is not negotiable.

This year changed me quietly.

Not in a glamorous way, but in the slow, uncomfortable way that involves unlearning, learning, disappointment, prayers whispered into pillows, and choosing to keep going anyway.

I didn’t get everything I wanted in 2025. But I gained perspective. Discernment. Endurance. Moments of joy that felt undeserved in the best way. Friendships that held me. And steady evidence that God is intentional with me, that even under pressure, something solid was forming.

As the new year rolls in, I am not rushing into grand declarations or rigid plans. I’m stepping in with gratitude, discernment, and a quieter confidence.

And I’m ending the year with a prayer I’ve been carrying for a while now.

Peace of mind.

Softness.

Ease.

May our lives always be good, joyful, and full of sweetness. Amen.

December 31st.

Note: Best read with Fido’s Joy is Coming playing in the background.

“Mo dúpẹ́, Olúwa, Olúwa yeah yeah

Joy is coming, early in the morning.”

I’m screaming at the top of my lungs. I am dancing in a loose party circle with old friends, new friends, and strangers whose names I will probably forget by sunrise.

It is past midnight. I have lost count of the tequila shots. My feet hurt. My voice is cracking. None of that matters.

Dearest reader,

I write from Tirana, Albania. It is day two of the Afrofete festival, and I swear life is good.

Signing up for this trip took more willpower than I care to admit. I’m not a large group travel person. I don’t particularly enjoy long social events. I am simply not built for back-to-back parties. But hey, let’s do something outside of our comfort zone.

When F suggested I should come along on the group trip, I went back and forth until four days before departure. Then I stopped overthinking it, booked an overpriced flight, and told myself I would deal with the consequences later.

I am not an extrovert, even if I sometimes appear to be one. I’m social when the people feel right, and my battery runs out quickly.

Yet, here I am at Afrofete, a festival designed entirely around three days and four nights of constant socialising. I tell myself this is a one-time thing.

“This is my jam guys. Joy is coming, mo ni early in the morning.”

Earlier tonight, a man I matched with a while back, who talked to me for over a month without ever planning a date, spotted me at my table with friends. He approached me like someone suddenly realising what he hadn’t bothered to pursue properly. He pulled me toward his table, tried to slow dance, leaned into my ear saying he was “feeling me.” An attempt was made to force a kiss, I turned my face away just in time.

I hated it. The sheer audacity of it nearly ruined the night for me.

Less than twenty minutes later, I saw him kissing another woman across the dance floor. I laughed. The moment clarified itself instantly. It was never about me. Men too bad! God forbid I reduce myself to being someone’s festival fling.

There might be things I will regret about this trip. I can already sense that truth forming. But right now, I feel good. Really good. I look good. I smell even better. For once, my mind isn’t replaying the ways this year has bruised me. I’m not cataloguing disappointments. I’m not carrying the weight of everything that has gone wrong.

Maybe joy doesn’t always arrive neatly. Or responsibly.

Sometimes it just shows up loud and unplanned and a little reckless, without asking whether it fits into the version of myself I usually try to be. There is relief in allowing joy to exist without needing to explain it, optimise it, or turn it into a lesson. Some experiences are allowed to be good simply because they are.

Joy is coming. Joy is coming indeed.

Tonight at least, it feels like it is already here.

September 28. 02:19 am.