There’s a version of this story where I simply tell you I worked with Spotify last week, it felt like a dream come true, and leave it at that.

But I promised myself I’d start talking about content and brand strategy more openly (on LinkedIn and Twitter), and this is genuinely worth dissecting. Because what Spotify Africa pulled off last week was a masterclass in closing the gap between building a product people use, and one people actually understand.

Let’s dive in.

The Problem

For many tech companies, it’s pretty common for users to lack feature awareness and understanding.

It’s not always a knowledge problem (although it sometimes is). Usually, the information is already available somewhere. Companies hire content strategists and SEO writers to pump out how-tos and explainers that are attached to newsletters and Instagram link-in-bios. There are blog posts and tutorials, in-app tips and FAQs. The information is there. The interest in checking it out and using the feature just always isn’t.

Now there are many reasons for this. People use products for different purposes, and one or two features are usually enough to make them happy. Using myself as an example, I have never set a Target Savings on Piggyvest despite it being one of the product’s features. I use SafeLock, PiggyBank, and Flex Naira and call it a day.

There are emotional reasons, too. A lack of curiosity or care, and an apprehension (what if I press a button and something breaks and I look like an olodo?).

And of course, there’s also the knowledge problem. Because while there might be several touchpoints for reaching users, not everyone will open your brand email, or check your social media page for tips, or see your push notifications. You win some, lose some.

Spotify has had this same problem. People have been using the music app for years. They have created playlists, sent them to loved ones, listened on their way to work and in the gym, but many have never once opened a Jam session or made a Collaborative Playlist which are genuinely useful features, sitting untouched because users are not aware they exist, or just don’t have a reason to care.

So how do you make someone care about a feature they’ve been ignoring? You’ll probably waste your time explaining it more than you already have. You have to make them experience it.

The Setup: Feature Mixer

Spotify brought The Feature Mixer to the rooftop of Sora Hall in Victoria Island, Lagos, turning an evening of culture and connection into a playful speed-dating-style intro to Spotify’s features.

The simple idea at the heart of the event was: what if you could meet Spotify features the same way you met people?

How It Worked

Before the event, Spotify reached out to six creators and influencers with individual briefs. Each talent was assigned a Spotify feature and tasked with showing up as the Feature’s Avatar, i.e., a representative in flesh of said feature, ready to speed-date guests.

On the day of the event, each Avatar was assigned to a station and given conversation flow questions to help them connect with attendees. The goal was to discover whether each attendee would or would not be a match for the feature.

As Jam, I was to explore the listener’s control habits. DJ Bundle explored how listeners shape their own music journeys in real time. Offline Bundle reflected everyday moments like low-data usage or travel. The Personalisation Bundle (specifically Daylist and Daily Mixes) showed how Spotify could adapt to their everyday routines. Mixed Playlists showed seamless track transitions, and Collaborative Playlists explored how listeners can contribute and engage together.

Each date would last two minutes. An attendee would sit in front of the Avatar, who, for the day, was named after the Spotify Feature. I kept telling people my name was Oluwajamilola and it was the easiest icebreaker.

They would talk about music and in the process, the Avatars would ask the attendees questions that explored their listening habits, why they should care about the feature, and in some instances, squeeze in a quick in-app demo with enough banter and curiosity to keep the conversation oil-smooth. Then, after the date, Avatars had ten seconds to tick answers in a box for whether or not they were a match with said attendee before the next date began.

Attendees were chiefly creators, cultural tastemakers, and media voices. They were grouped in teams of six, and the teams changed after everyone had been in all the stations.

After the speed dating event, there was a Match Reveal where, based on their answers and behaviour during the speed dates, attendees received a personalised set of Top Feature Matches on printed cards they could take home.

The night ended with a performance by Lady Donli, cocktails, and conversations. For Spotify, they had met their mark — curating an activation event with flirty one-on-ones that made guests confident in identifying the features and explaining what they could do with them.

Why This Format Is Brilliant (A Strategy Breakdown)

Now let me pull this apart, because the decisions embedded in this activation are worth studying.

1. Experience is the best teacher

Most brands, when faced with the “people don’t use our features” problem, default to the same content formats they’ve used before. A blog post, how-to video, or email campaign with bullet points and screenshots.

Spotify decided that instead of doing this, they would build an environment where the learning was the experience. You didn’t read about Jam — you met Jam, and she talked to you about how she enjoys listening to music with her friends all over the world. You didn’t watch a tutorial on Offline Mode — he walked you through a scenario you recognised from your own life: an Uber ride with bad network, or a flight with no Wi-Fi.

This matters because of how memory works. People remember what they did far more vividly than what they were told. If you watch a how-to video, you might retain 10% of it by next week. But if you move from station to station, having gorgeous people ask you leading questions and show you around an app, you are far more likely to remember how to use it.

2. Creators as translators, not billboards

I found this part the most tantalizing, because I see the alternative every single day.

The standard influencer playbook goes like this: brand reaches out, brand sends talking points, creator posts a video holding the product with a caption that is stuffed with brand references. Everyone involved knows it’s an ad. The audience scrolls past it, or if they engage, it’s because the content is great or they love the creator. The brand checks a box in a spreadsheet, and life goes on.

Spotify chose to do something different. They hired creators not for their audiences or engagement but for their voice. They carefully picked people they knew were charismatic and who could connect with their guests on a basic level. Gave us a feature, a brief, a set of questions to guide our conversations — and then trusted us to be ourselves.

The entire point was that I would explain Jam the way I’d explain it to a friend. Not in corporate language but with my personality, my own references, and in my own voice.

That’s a fundamentally different use of creators than I’m used to. They didn’t rent our audiences, and yet they were able to leverage our trust.

3. Distribution in the design.

Who did Spotify invite to the event? Less than a hundred people, who consisted of editors and Writers of Culture Magazines, media curators, influencers, and content creators. The number of people you invite to an event is not always as important as the value they will bring.

Spotify knew one thing: filling a room with creators and media people means you don’t have to beg them to post about the event. If the experience is good enough, the content will create itself.

And that’s exactly what has happened. The format was inherently shareable. The speed-dating concept was fun to describe. The in-person experience was colourful and interesting. Lady Donli performed. Spotify, as a brand, has massive goodwill. People would want to talk about it.

This is distribution by design, not as an afterthought.

By clearly defining who the attendees were going to be and creating a fun, memorable experience, they made sure the event would be able to market itself. The speed dating experience also made sure the people distributing the event also have a good command of the features and what to say.

As a rule of thumb: If you have to remind people to post about your event, it probably wasn’t good enough.

4. Takeaway packs you can’t eat.

As said earlier, at the end of the evening, attendees received a personalised “Top Feature Match” card — a printed one-pager based on how they interacted during the speed date.

Now this was extremely cool for a couple of reasons.

First, it extends the lifespan of the activation beyond the event itself. You leave with a physical object that reminds you of what you learned. It sits on your desk, in your bag, on your table. It’s a memory anchor.

Second — and the part I love the most— it gives creators a built-in content angle. Instead of the generic “had an amazing time at the Spotify event” post, you now have something specific and personal to share. “Spotify invited me to an event” is one story to tell. “Spotify matched me with Personalisation Bundle” is a more interesting story to tell.

Third, it makes the education stick. You’re no longer trying to remember six features. You’re remembering the one or two that resonated with you. That is manageable and actionable. That is the difference between someone nodding during your presentation and someone actually opening the app when they get home.

Personal Reflection

When I first read the brief for Jam, I thought: okay, this is a cool feature, but will people actually care about a feature in a two-minute conversation?

Turns out, once I turned on my storytelling dial, they did.

I’d ask: “When you are out with your friends, and you guys are playing music in the car, are you usually the one controlling the music, or are you the one fighting for it?” And suddenly, everyone had a story. You’d see their faces open, their eyes gleam. “Ah yes o! I don’t trust some people’s taste in music!”

The energy shifted from a polite sit-down to banter with a pseudo-friend. By the end of each rotation, people were not just smiling, they were pulling out their phones and checking out the features. They were saying, “Hm, I already know who I would like to try this one with.”

To me, that’s the moment where an activation has worked. When someone is able to situate the product/feature within their own ecosystem. The gap between awareness and action shrank because I made the feature feel like a solution to a problem they didn’t even know they had.

If you work in brand strategy and content marketing— especially in tech — I think the Feature Mixer offers a framework worth stealing: Don’t just tell people about your product. Create moments where they experience it for themselves.

The best marketing feels like a memory you’d actually want to revisit. A night on a rooftop where you learned something without realising you were being taught. A conversation with someone who made a feature feel like it was built specifically for you. A card in your pocket that says: this is your match.

Spotify didn’t just host an event. They created an experience that became content, that became education, and that became word-of-mouth. And the whole thing happened over drinks on a Thursday night.

That night, while guests left my station and new ones took their place, I knew this was worth writing about. It reminded me of something I believe deeply: that people are inherently emotional and they connect with experiences. The brands that understand this and invest in making people feel something rather than just know something — are the ones that eventually win.

Of course, it always helps to have Spotify’s money.

at the end of 2024 i wrote two eoty reviews. while very different in feeling, they both ended on a foreboding note — almost as though i could smell the blood before the year began and knew the sharks would come.

2025 was emblematic in that specific sense.

WORK.

i started the year knees deep in work. at some point, i was juggling four full-time jobs (my craziest stunt yet). the plan was simple: save as much money as possible for “rainy days.” i had already made a decision i knew would affect my ability to earn money for a while — i had decided to attend law school.

i don’t think parents get enough credit for how expensive providing education can be. let me tell you, i nearly fainted. there were so many moving parts involved: school fees and medicals and clothes (as a UNILAG alumna i knew nothing i owned would be remotely law school appropriate), books, flight tickets, food, and other living expenses. somehow, by the grace of God, i was able to cover all these expenses, quit all my jobs, and move to abuja for school.

by may, fear started to creep in. i was starting to get a little worried that i would not be able to survive the year on the savings i had made. and then an offer from piggyvest fell on my lap, and honestly, it felt like an answered prayer. two interviews later, i was working again, this time in a fintech company i had loved and dreamed of working at ever since i knew the company existed, with a kind boss and coworkers i really liked.

working in fintech has been . . . new. there is the occasional friction of being in unfamiliar territory, but it simply means there is more to learn. i think my marketing career plateaued in 2025, and mostly because of law school — it demanded more than i had hoped it would.

SCHOOL.

for a brief moment sometime in 2024, between signing white shirts and preparing for my convocation, i imagined that my complicated relationship with formal education had come to an end, at least until i was ready to get a masters degree. and then 2025 said: hold my beer.

i decided on the last day of 2024 that law school was something i was going to do, despite holding no intentions whatsoever of becoming a lawyer. and so for the first three months of the year i wrestled with whether the decision was a sound one. i remember calling a friend once and breaking down because i had made the mistake of opening a course module that looked like greek to me. “i don’t know any of these things!” i said, “i don’t like law, so why did i decide to do this?”

my friends tried to remind me that i had a choice. i had already started building my career in marketing and did not need to go to law school if i didn’t want to. nobody expected me to go in the first place. but there were bigger reasons for going and i wrote them down on a page somewhere and would read them to myself whenever the temptation of throwing in the towel felt too strong.

so law school came, and i went. i remember clearly, it was the day after my birthday, and i hugged my mum and sister in the airport and flew alone for the very first time. upon landing, i thought abuja was very lovely, got accommodation in school with the loveliest roommate, and settled in.

and then the classes began.

there is no bullshitting it — law school was hard. and boring. and overwhelming. i cried everywhere. in the library. while walking. alone in my room. an interesting mix of fear and loneliness would grip my heart from time to time because the stakes felt so high, and i felt incredibly minute.

during my undergraduate days i had not really made school a priority. i did just enough to get by and finish with a 2:1. now i had made this programme the main focus of my year, and to make matters worse, i was far away from the comfort of home, working one job for the first time in years, putting my content and my newsletter and my career growth on hold for a path i knew i was not going to explore. it felt like a sweet form of insanity.

and then with time, it got better.

the dread that would seep down my stomach whenever i was in class hearing my friends debate things lecturers said, transmogrified into understanding, and then certainty, and finally, expertise. close to exam season, i would hear my friends say to each other, “ask treasure, civil is her baby.” and it was a very small thing but o my, it felt so good.

doing something that comes naturally to you is not nearly as rewarding as watching your capacity expand while doing something you find incredibly difficult. law school gave me that.

up until then, the only hard things i had poured myself into were things i genuinely loved — like marketing where i was a fish in water. here, i floundered for a while, and then eventually found my footing. and it led me to realise two things:

• it was never really about the field. if you plant a mango seed and water it under the right soil condition, it will grow. it does not matter whether you like mangoes or not.
• and if that was true, then i could replicate this formula in other areas of my life; things i had always assumed were simply not for me because i did not like them or i found them incredibly difficult.

this was mind surgery at its finest.

forgot to mention: 2025 was also the year i convocated from UNILAG. didn’t think i would be emotional about it, but i was all smiles and screams on that day as i saw my friends and colleagues wearing their red and gold robes. a journey of seven years culminating in that much beauty. it would forever be etched in my memory.

HEALTH & FITNESS.

discovered running in 2025. felt the beauty of 5am morning air caressing my face. the wind lapping against my thighs, as i ran faster and faster. the sweet burn on my calves and inner thighs. if i were being honest, few things have felt better than running— and i have experienced quite a great deal of things that have felt good. beyond grateful for the bwari campus, the space it afforded me and the trees i got to speak with during those early morning runs. thankful also for my lungs. my shiny red balloons. they really came through for me in 2025.

continued doing pilates this year, too. alternating the practice with running. tried protein shakes for a while (mixed with oats and peanut butter). my booty got fatter and i felt scrumdiliyumyum.

it was not all good things. i drank too much coffee to stay awake and chewed too much gum. i had gotten aligners earlier in the year but was unable to complete my treatment within the stipulated time because i couldn’t chew gum with them on, so had them off more times than i should have. it was a whole mess.

sometimes i’d also forgo sleep for longer than a human being should because there was so much to read (i highly do not recommend) and at some point my eyes were twitching uncontrollably because of the too much reading and too much coffee and lack of sleep. my diet was also wack — consisting mostly of suya and masa and rice (with so much oil pooled at the bottom of the plate), because you’re not allowed to cook on campus. it was definitely not the healthiest i have been, but i will overcompensate for this in 2026.

RELATIONSHIPS.

relationships really saved me this year. i know i say a variation of this every single year but i have meant it every single time. people are so beautiful, and full of warmth. i love mankind, and am privileged to have experienced so many amazing people in 2025.

at law school i had the comfort of having my friends with me, and it made the world of a difference. we were able to rely on each other, read together, pray together, cry together. too many “omos” and “it is wells” were exchanged daily, and the best part of it was a complete understanding of what each meant.

i also got to experience new people: people from UNILAG i had never shared intimacy with, and people from other universities too. getting to know them felt like visiting, for the first time, a restaurant you have walked by everyday and discovering that they sell the best food you’ve ever had in your life. there was so much love exchanged between us, and curiousity and warmth.

with the friends back at home, friendship became a series of virtual calls exchanged infrequently. it broke my heart, but everyone was so considerate and sweet and understanding. despite the fact that i couldn’t be as present as i usually was, there was an outpouring of love, and credit alerts, and gist, and “let me sponsor your lunch todays.”

it was the sweetest thing.

thankful for my family as well, because this year was not the easiest but we lived it and survived it. in december we were all home for the first time in years and i felt so much love, and peace.

2025 really owed me nothing in the relationship department.

…

2026 is a year to work. there’s no two ways about it. i have turned the year upside down, shaking the glass jar for a different perspective, but everything that comes up requires a lot of work. i have to return to learning (this time, the things i really want to learn — like branding, and how to use figma, and how to drive — this time, with the dexterity i have acquired from surviving law school).

2026 would also be a year of rest, and growth, and connection, and many, many firsts.

but mostly work.

thankful to GOD for seeing me through so far. he has been incredibly mindful of me.

and thankful to you, lovely reader, for reading till the end. i hope it made you feel something. wishing you an amazing year ahead.

Read reviews from previous years:

2024 (concrete)

2024 (ephemeral)

2023

2022

2021

2020

In 2024, I took some time at the end of each month to write down what life had felt like. This capturing is what eventually became this piece. I put it out a few days ago but felt I still had more to share about the year — in concrete, more practical terms. It’s why I’m writing this piece.

I have journaled since I was 13. As a child who had once been called “too sensitive” by a classmate, I took to writing my feelings in journals. I still keep these books, sprawled in cursive, leaking emotions about events, people, and things that have marked my life. The journal for 2024 was the first of these books I gave a name. In coloured marker, I titled it: The Year of Magical Thinking.

The idea was simple, stolen from a Joan Didion memoir, long before I read it and felt guilty because her idea of a magical year was very different from mine. I wanted a year that encouraged me to dream, to think big. I wrote down three values to lean on for 2024: creativity, community, and consistency. I wanted it to be that kind of year.

Writing this now, I see all the ways 2024 encouraged me to stretch my faith to heights it had never been. The economy got worse as Tinubu settled into his presidential seat, and the strength of the naira weakened. Electricity tariffs skyrocketed. Fuel prices, too. I had to tighten my belt because I had left a job at the end of 2023 to focus on school. Living a good life seemed pretty unlikely at the beginning of the year, with everything going on.

But I gave 2024 my best. In return, she gave me a clearer vision of who I wanted to be and do.

As I have done in previous years, this review will be divided into the different key areas of my life. The final part dedicated to self, will share major takeaways.

Love

2024 was a wonderful year for love.

My relationships with family and friends blossomed. This year, more acutely than ever, I felt truly thankful for the gift of mankind. I watched the faces of my loved ones light up countless times. Listened to their stories; the good ones, the sad ones, the ones that made my eyes widen with surprise, and the ones that made me laugh till I couldn’t breathe. I asked and gave tons of advice. Had many movie dates in bed that were spent drinking wine and talking about men. Had so many conversations at art galleries, cafes, and dance floors!

Community is a major cornerstone in my life, and I enjoyed what I made of it this year. With a group of friends, a tradition of eating at each other’s houses began. With another, attending church together once a month. I met new, really amazing people and welcomed them into the halls of my life. Forged stronger bonds with older friends as well.

People talk about how friendship fizzles out after school, but I liked how inventive my friends and I became in a bid to see each other, despite our busy schedules. Yes, navigating friendship in adulthood can be difficult — but I have seen it work. I am making it work.

I also discovered the healing properties of friendship this year. How beyond laughter and fun, the right people can mend childhood wounds, some you may not even know you had. Friendship taught me this year to cave in, to allow myself to be loved, and love myself better.

2024 was also the year for loss. Several friends decided to leave the country, taking slivers of my heart with them. A key friendship walked out of my life this year, and while the mechanics of this loss still doesn’t make sense to me, I have made peace with the idea of friends coming in, having tea in the living room of your heart, then saying goodbye (or nothing at all).

It’s a symptom of life.

On romance: 2024 was a year for real lovers. They were everywhere, from the Olympics to Nigerian weddings. I just wasn’t one of them. I did experience little pockets of romance; some I would have lingered in longer if I were a different person. But none of them “clicked” at the end of the day, so I simply enjoyed going out on dates and spending hours with ghost-lovers.

I was fully present through it all. Even in less-than-ideal situations, I steered the boat of my heart as best as I could. I think this is because love does not die on the hill of romantic relationships for me, I am conscious of how abundantly I experience it in my relationship with family and friends. A friend of mine thinks I’m too busy to be in love, but I think many Lagos men are just mad. All in all, ending the year single is the lot of light-skinned babes from the East (according to AJ).

Work

The irony of leaving a job to focus on school when 2024 ended up being a Work Year. Work followed me everywhere I went, and I had a hard time saying no. I think it’s because I like work. If a project seems interesting and I see in it a capacity for personal growth, I am usually willing to give it a try.

And boy — I did try.

This year, I taught content marketing and branding classes, partnering with businesses and communities like SisterlyHQ, SmarketersHub, ConTech, Path4Her, BusinessDay, Brailoo, and several others. Zikoko invited me to share a day in my life, and 3MTT, a government program, invited me to host a webinar. It was a big blessing to teach, and I would like to do more teaching in 2025.

I also worked on several projects that were very dear to my heart. In June, we held the third edition of Marketers Therapy, a community I started with a friend last year — bringing Nigerian marketers together to share their work challenges. This time, we went bigger than we ever had, hosting over 150 people and inviting two esteemed guests to speak. We also partnered with WiiCreate, TechCabal, and several marketing communities to make it happen. It was a wonderful event, and I had to pinch myself several times during the day — I couldn’t believe it was real.

Then in August-September, the Lagos Model United Nations was finally held. LMUN took a lot of effort from myself and 90+ members of staff to execute. It was my baby — I held her anxiously against my beating heart for an entire year, raising money, liaising with school authorities, seeking delegates, and praying. The chances of success seemed so bleak at several points during planning period — we were fraught with so many issues. But we did it. The event was a major success, with 200+ delegates attending from 11 universities around the country. I will write about it in detail one day.

Within my 9–5, several projects were executed throughout the year, some of which I led: The Selar Creator Stories Video Series, Selar’s Creator Summit, Selar 100, and more. The work was hard, and required me to give more than I had ever given, but I did it. I also grew in my dexterity as a content marketer, writing articles that ranked, and seeing great results.

I worked with new companies as well. Explored working with a wellness brand for the first time, handling strategy, content, and design. Worked with my first international company as a content marketer, and a media publication company also. These experiences taught me a lot of lessons. Would love to explore more creative projects next year.

I tripled my income this year, earning seven figures in a single month. I really enjoyed this feeling, and would like to experience more growth in coming years. If there was anything I didn’t like about work, it was how monotonous it soon became. I felt like a hamster on a wheel, too busy spinning to dedicate time to learning, upskilling, and rest. There were a 101 things to do all the time, and I was pretty much operating on an empty tank at the end of it all.

2025 is also going to be a work-heavy year. I can feel it in my bones. My uncle says that I am young and this is the time to work — I agree with him. For my health and sanity, I would need to establish better boundaries (no work after work hours) and practice saying “no” more often.

Health

The bad far outnumbered the good, (hate how this is becoming a trend).

The bad: Was sick every other week; pretty sure my HMO providers were sick too — of me. To make matters worse, I had two accidents between June and July on my legs. Wrote about one here. My allergies worsened. This was the year I tried sleep medication for my insomnia for the first time. I was constantly fighting for my life.

The good: I picked up Pilates, and I loved the way my body heaved during a workout, my lungs struggling to keep up, the tension and the release. I also got myself a blender for my birthday. Made many natural juices: ugwu, carrot, cucumber, beetroot, watermelon, ginger.

My body does her best to keep me alive, and so in 2025, I will do my best to ensure she survives.

School

I finished school in August.

Late November, my official results came out. Second class upper division.

Earlier that year, I had spoken on a panel session in school, where I asserted that I would be finishing with this result. Unknown to listeners, I was operating by faith because there were so many variables beyond my control, like my final year project and final semester results.

But I did it. The morning after my accident, I left the hospital for school, to write a test. I remember feeling anxious on the ride, my mind scattered by the pain, struggling to recollect information I had read the night before.

Despite everything that happened, I am so grateful to God for helping me meet this goal. I am grateful to my friends too, who were always so willing to explain things I had missed in class, and share their notes with me.

Here, I mention my mother getting excited, her eyes sparkling because she had underestimated how well I would perform, given how busy of a student I was. Final year was full of work: my 9–5, LMUN preparations, writing my undergraduate project. I barely had time for anything else, but during my final year week, I allowed myself to get fully immersed in the celebrations, dressing up each day, and spending time with friends.

Happy to be leaving UNILAG finally. Ecstatic, even.

Self

The gaping melancholy that accompanied me through my teenage years appears to be slowly eroded, giving way to a sense of endless wonder and a willingness to explore the magnitude of life.

I didn’t lose my joy this year. I caught and sailed it, in all its different forms. Like a doting mother, I paid attention to my life and gave myself many of the things I wanted. I tried new things — beer combinations I liked, video vixenry, wearing eyeliner on the lower waterline, systems thinking, pilates, listening to jazz and afrohouse, silver jewelry, math, table tennis, raves, etc.

I invested in the things that mattered to me — my happiness, my intellect, and my relationships. I sang a lot at the top of my lungs. Watched plenty movies, too. When I realised that I was scared of math, I took Algebra lessons on Khan Academy. I enjoyed going out alone and taking walks. I told my mother often how beautiful she was and how lucky I was to have her, and spent quality time on phone calls with my father.

I struggled, too — mostly with my career. Feeling I wasn’t good enough for the opportunities that came my way. Feeling I didn’t have enough to offer. I recognize now how these feelings are very limiting, and would remain so if I don’t get comfortable with the knowledge that I don’t have to be good enough for good things to come my way. I am allowed luck, grace, and mercy. I don’t have to earn everything that is given to me.

This year I held onto the phrase: a different life is possible, and made it a prayer whenever I felt pressured by the demands of life. Like a handfan on a hot day, it was soothing, restoring back the air that would get sucked away from me. This prayer gathered more meaning when I went home to the village in December for my grandmother’s burial, and observed how different my life became in the three weeks I spent there. All of a sudden, I found myself sleeping for fourteen hours a day when previously I could only get five. The days passed slowly, lugubriously, and were spent playing table tennis and gisting with my cousins. I could breathe easy. The pressure on my neck disappeared. I felt really good.

I think this experience pulled my head out of the tunnel vision it had been in and made me see the other lives I could live if I created the right space and gave them enough time to take shape. It has made think about how to make a life that is comfortable to live in. A life for the Treasure who is active and works all day, and the Treasure that sleeps for half a day, and only wakes up slowly, the sound of children’s laughter rousing her back to life.

There were other takeaways from 2024.

1. That you have full agency over your life: Nothing happens without your permission. The places you want to go to, the people you want to meet, the person you want to be, can be willed into existence if you believe and act like it. You don’t have to wait for anybody’s instruction, advice, recommendation, suggestion or vision. Trust yourself more, and move.
2. Document, document, document: Documenting is my life’s practice, but I have always approached it as a teacher, sharing my thoughts and telling my stories. This year I discovered how documenting can also be a form of self-advocacy — in your career, when you need to show proof. I also saw its preservative nature at home in the village, listening to the oldest family member share stories about our tied history. Briefly, I thought about how I didn’t want those stories to die with her.
3. Curiosity is a form of love: When you love someone, you pay attention to the details of their life, and you ask them questions. In this newsletter, I wrote: “when we express curiosity by sitting with them [our loved ones] and asking questions about their lives, we signal an openness that is traded in with even more questions, back and forth, and this way, we are able to knit closer bonds with the people that we’ve chosen to love.”
4. The magic has to be created: Everything you see and love was made by God and man. If you want beauty, and magic, laughter and fun, you have to cultivate it for yourself, and for others. Learn to make yourself happy, noone else is obligated to do this work for you.
5. The work you do for others is yours to keep: When working for other people (companies, brands, bosses), there’s often a tendency to feel like you’re simply slaving away, especially when the work is tedious. However, when you realise that you have as much stake in your work as they do, and that the results you get are yours to celebrate or defend, it fosters a sense of ownership. So cultivate an owner’s mindset. Treat the work entrusted in your care as if it were yours.
6. You get farther with help: Asking for help can be very humbling, especially if you derive pride in cosplaying strength. This year, I learned how to let go of needless shame and ask for help when I needed it. It made the world of a difference.
7. Optimize for doing less: My father uses the example of trying to turn a ceiling fan with your hand. Sure, it’s hard work, but you could simply flip the switch and let the fan do its job, freeing up your time for other tasks. Similarly, instead of juggling 3–4 jobs, could you focus on securing one well-paying job? What steps can you take to make that a reality?

The future — 2025.

For 2025, I am not going to delude myself into thinking that life will be easy. It probably wouldn’t. The things I want require grasping at the edge of a ladder with more effort — choice fruit at the top of a tree. But I will live it, and live it well, and God will be with me, so I will not fail.

Thank you for reading.

Read reviews from previous years:

2024 (ephemeral)

2023

2022

2021

2020

January is slow beginnings, browsing through Pinterest in search of mirrors, and portals, and other things that connive with my desires. January is for listening to Tropic Morning News by The National, seeing my close friends leave university, and falling in love again with the ones near me. I sacrifice sleep for school and my screentime decreases dramatically. I eat a lot of fruits. January is also the month of having too many needs and not enough money; the month of strategic choices. In January, I teach people how to do things — branding and content marketing, and how to start. I also write. I write like a fever.

February feels like a rush of water. Crystal clear — taking me out from under. I am pushed into my washing machine reality of things (again) and watch the weeks melt into themselves. Life is hard in February. I watch the walls of the apartment I live in break down — no light, no water, and I’m forced to depend on the human collective. I teach more in February, each week a different classroom. My hands surprise themselves in their capacity to yield and to let go. In February, I fall in love with a knife. My newsletter, 20 Something, gets 5000 subscribers. At work, I get a raise. Exam anxiety curls itself around me like a snake.

March is both desert and forest rain. It is long hours spent memorizing cases, and sections, and the opinions of jurists and philosophers; then overnight readings soaked in energy drinks that engage in tiresome arguments with my desire for sleep. March is long walks under the hot sun, starved desires, an exercise in prudence. It is severing ties, and a hundred hours spent questioning why life enjoys taking such sharp bends, like a reckless adolescent behind wheels. Then sometime after the middle of the month, the rain falls and the month slows into a song and I’m holding A Secret History by Donna Tartt in my hands, and watching movies, and spending time with the people that make me happiest. March acquires a new taste, a feast for the eyes and the mouth. So many things flood my senses in March, I nearly forget myself.

April is held with anticipation, like the first grandchild of her family. I set out time to do things that give me great happiness and joy: painting, watching my friend DJ, attending church with friends, practicing early morning pilates, and drinking Tiger beer with Sprite. April is also an overwhelming month, and so the days fly by like the pages of a book with a broken stem. I only remember to pause on my birthday — and what a beautiful day it is! Dancing salsa on the patio, eating tiramisu and pasta in the company of people who give my life colour. April yields a reconciliation with certain details of my life that induce worry. In April, I learn the importance of inhale and exhale. I also learn a great deal about love, and its cleansing properties — I am carried on the backs of people who love me and truly want the best for me.

May is a flurry of activities, a forgotten scarf on the ride back home. It is listening to Sunburn by Dominic Fike and having a strange, yet comforting sensation that I haven’t listened to all the songs I am ever going to love, seen all the movies I am ever going to love, or met all the people I am ever going to fall in love with. May is planning and executing, letting go of fear and throwing my weight in. It is coming to terms with my human frailty, and allowing my body to be just that — my body. It is being part of Founders Connect: Builders Summit and seeing just how far dreams can fly if they are followed with raw horsepower, and the right team. It is friendship, and love, laughter and great results.

June is quicksand — falling like a toddler, then learning how to walk again. It is seeing Marketers Therapy 3.0 take place and pinching myself for many weeks, wondering if any of what happened was real. All those people in one room, sharing and listening, and learning. A certain kind of magic that follows me for days. June is the beauty of people talking about me in rooms I’m not present in, people believing in me more than I believe in myself. It is silly mistakes, like stabbing my feet with wineglass, an injury that leaves a scar I might carry with me for the rest of my life. It is listening to great music — Tems, more Dominic Fike, and The Beatles. Final Year Week happens sometime within the month and I have the time of my life piecing together outfits — becoming a magician.

In July, I experience a physical pain that colours my memory of the month so intensely that it’s difficult to remember anything else. It’s everything — bleeding knees, tetanus shots, spirit on open wounds, hospital visits that hurt more than they fix. It forces me to slow down, to learn to walk again, to sit with a pain I feel in every movement, to be mindful of my nutrition because I want my body to heal so fast — goddamit! July is also the month of final exams and the preparation that precedes them. I stifle the excitement in my bones, rein it in as I read company law and evidence. It threatens to topple me over. Rema drops HEIS and I listen to it everyday. Friends return to me from faraway places and I embrace their momentary warmth.

August is everything I have lost returning back to me: time, connection, the sweet taste of satisfaction. In August I am a stretched catapult, pushing my faith to heights it’s never been. I graduate from school on a monday morning, and crash out on friday. “But what if I fail?” I tell my mother. “You cannot fail. You and your father have a grace that makes everything work out for you, even at the last minute.” I hold onto it. In August, LMUN 2024 holds (finally) and it feels like a dream made flesh. For the first time, I understand with stark clarity the confidence that comes with seeing your efforts prove worthwhile. It emboldens me. I declare August the most beautiful month of the year for all it gives me.

September is the sweet clasp of a friend’s hands around my waist. It’s oscillating from art gallery to art gallery with a loved one by my side. It’s laughter, and singing, and dancing, and watching movies, and discussing our thoughts and aspirations on the ride back home, and making up for lost time. September is also the month for learning to go out alone, and explore my very personal passions, gemstones, poetry, jewelry. It’s recognizing that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is to give up and walk away. Choosing not to sacrifice your sanity on the altar of trying harder can be hard for a professional tryer, but it’s necessary. It’s recognizing that sometimes the best way to love a person is by taking several steps away from them. It’s falling madly in love with House music, and dancing my heart away at raves.

October is coming home to myself. It’s the sober realization that the year is coming to an end, and a lot has happened, really fast, too. October is falling in love with reading again — I’m thirteen once more, wanting to be distended from the world so badly that I fall into the pages of books with reckless abandon. In this month, my loved ones remain a constant presence, in ways that hurt and heal me. I watch people walk out of my life and balk under the effort of closing the door behind them. I watch AESPA music videos compulsively and lose myself in YouTube video essays. October feels like a slice-of-life film by the countryside — peaceful and a little boring, but in a really good way.

November buds activity, and I get whiplash from getting tugged at different ends. Art exhibitions, and museum dates, conference panels and video interviews. In November, I am exhausted from working three jobs and feeling like a cloth wrung dry. I bide my time, patiently, the same way a coconut on a tree waits to be filled with water. In November, good news fills my mouth. I finish school with a 2:1 and my mother’s eyes look like stars when she says, “I had already made up my mind that you weren’t going to; you were always so busy.” In November I read Zadie Smith’s Swing Time and spend a lot of time thinking about the incidents that rumple the fabrics of our lives. Do you think about them as well? My body rebels endlessly; fevers, headaches, flus, and I shush her like a dog. Not yet, not now.

December is the life-cry of a newborn, years after waiting. Before she arrives, I spruce up her cot with things; bite my lips in furrowed anticipation, make plans and laugh. In December I am devoted to a vision of a better life — one that doesn’t have me sitting on Slack channels for fifteen hours. I write down all my plans: experience Lagos at night, attend one or two concerts, spend money, and have dinner dates with friends. And then the Universe lovingly takes the pen from my hand and guides me. She makes some edits, crosses my ts and dots my is. I get to visit my family in Abia state and spend three weeks with them, for my grandmother’s burial. Coming home to them also means coming home to myself. I am dry soil upon which water is poured. My hungry eyes, my grateful heart. I make new connections with old loved ones. I sleep well for weeks.

—

2024 is the sound of twin knives before a fight — the way they slice against themselves, iron sharpening iron, music for the wind. The nicks, and licks, slices and cuts, will only come after this sound has been made. So also the fatal stab, inviting victory or death.

—

For the concrete: 2024

My mother’s name is Marie. Marie Akamine. Until three years ago she went by Marie Rodriguez, but that is a story for another day. My mother and I are two peas in a pod. Very alike. I like to believe that from my father I got my love for literature and art, but she gave me everything else. In fact, our similarities would be a decibel higher than striking ― say, creepy for instance ― were it not for the set of genes handcuffing us to each other. We both have the same jet-black hair; ink-sleek and straight like a waterfall, and share unhealthy affections for ginger tea, cats, odd numbers, mysteries, and dead things.

Even our names would make perfect anagrams ― Amira and Marie share the same scriptural composition ― were it not for the ‘e’ that sits at the end of hers like some deliberate augury: a pointer to the fact that handmade things can never be perfect replicas of each other.

And it is fitting, I suppose. Really hypes up individualism and all that. I’m fairly certain I would be miserable if I were exactly like her, you know? My tolerance for misogyny and self-sacrifice amounts to a whopping negative one. “The customer is always right,” my arse. Not to mention I have inadvertently bitten into the sensational self-love cake everyone on social media preaches about.

But it had not always been like this.

Not too long ago I wished for nothing more than to live in her very own skin. It was during my early teenage years; a period I would rather not talk about but for the sake of this story. I was way over object permanence at this stage of my life; tackled that issue circa six months old (and yes, I’m proud to say it) but in its place, a different kind of self-realization was occurring; a coming of age experience that exposed me to the fact that being human was simply not / enough /. That there were boys and there were girls, and one was expected to act in ways that fit into either of the two categories (preferably the one coinciding with their genitalia). In addition to this, a series of imposed societal norms, the ignorance of which could cause extreme discomfort, pain, or both.

I was fourteen, attending an all-girls catholic school in downtown Maryland where I was forbidden from knowing a lot of things. Like how to use tampons, question figures of authority, and properly finger a girl. As of the present, I have learned the former. My voice still cracks when I challenge authority, an ode to the friction of restrained fear, and I still don’t know how to do the last thing ― though I make up for it in other ways.

At school, for the many things I did not know, there were new things I learned. I learned that being a lady was not something one simply was, but something one had to become. Ladies did not sit with their legs spread like butter, ladies did not cuss, climb trees, or lunge squirrel droppings at pedestrians. Ladies did not live outside their spot-clean bubbles of femininity. I did all these things, therefore I was not Lady Enough.

And as I came to understand, my mother was what everyone meant by being a lady. One of the sisters pointed this out one day when she was invited to a meeting to address my conduct. After she left, the women discussed her while I sat in a corner, kicking my legs absentmindedly.

ㅤㅤ “. . .and you would think her daughter would be a little more like her!” Said one exasperatedly. “What a charming young lady!”

ㅤㅤ “Perhaps the child gets her temperament from the father’s side,” another theorized.

They all seemed to agree.

I muffled back a snort. My mother dealt in astrology and magic, and I knew that they certainly would have had more interesting things to say, had they known that.

The wisest thing to do was to ignore their discourse, but my young impressionable self could not let go of the fact that my mother had something I was lacking. And the more I dwelled on it, the more the subtle differences became more apparent to me. Where my mother was graceful, soft-spoken, hands willowy and expressive, I was choppy and awkward, and my fingers stubby, cold-bitten nubs of flesh (from forgetting to cream my hands often).

The ‘e’ at the end of my mother’s name stood for elegance.
I did not just want to be like her. I wanted to be her.

To be honest with you, I still do. The feeling comes in waves. Like when I watch her pour tea inside a cup with the ceremony of a communion priest and the effortless guile of a waitress. And when she reads leaves and predicts futures and stretches against the couch, more feline than my cat, Geraldine. I watch with a twinge of yearning. She is lithe limbed and beautiful, a springtime ghost. But there’s not much to be done about that, I suppose. Most of what she is has been formed by experience, another e. This one is a given: she is older by two decades and a half.

I remember when I was sixteen and my first wisdom tooth snagged out ― a cunning malady, that one ― I raved about how I was too old for teeth to be growing out of me and she laughed in that her signature devil-may-care style, then told me about how wisdom tooth are so-called because they grow as one becomes more intelligent, which she thought was something to be proud of. It made me smile. She always has answers to everything, this my psychic mother. She has lived and boated through a shit ton of storms, but like a Venetian rafter, she always catches the sun. I admire her strength and positivity and seek to imbibe these traits, but sadly my head is as dark as my hair. Sunshine doesn’t reach there. Maybe it is one of those things that develop with age? Like wine?

The e in my mother’s name also stands for endurance, the least desirable of our differences. You’d say, well Amira, I know you to be a very stubborn person, and I’ve seen you endure a lot of stuff to make life happen for you. Well yeah. But there’s a difference between doggedly going for something desired, and plowing in deference. She calls it temperance, I call it weakness. She would go the extra mile to harbor a despicable person and their eccentricities. Endure a boyfriend who has expressed verbal dislike towards me. Would take all the shit from me, her family, and everyone else, without a word, like an all-too-willing sponge. I’m ashamed of this metaphor, but it just seems to work for some reason.

And don’t get me wrong, my mother is not always a pushover. I’d just appreciate it if she thought about herself more, you know? I have always prided myself on being a modern-day Atlas, but she’s more of a weight-carrying god than I’d ever be. And I guess I should be way over this at this point, it’s been four fucking years. But the question I’ve had many sleepless nights over is why she can endure so many terrible things and people, but could not endure my father, with his gentle hands, and crooked glasses, and childlike excitement over the unknown. How did she grow tired of loving him when love is meant to conquer all? It doesn’t add up to me. Are there variables in the equation that I’m not aware of, or was she the outlier herself?

Last summer, my father took me to Margarita for some father-daughter bonding, as he’d named it. It was going alright, we’d gone swimming all afternoon and had gotten arepas and oysters and bottles of malt. And then it all went south when I opened my wallet to pay for our meal and a picture of my mother slipped out. My dad stared at it for the longest time until I returned it to the purse, and after that, silence pervaded the area. I could see his knuckles whitening and jaw working, and I couldn’t help myself; I asked, “Why did you allow her to leave?”

What he said next bit into my thighs.

“She was really. . . really exhausting.”

On Thursday, the 11th of July, I fell from a moving bus.

I wish I were using the above sentence as a figure of speech — to explain some drastic change that has occurred in my life, but it’s pretty literal.

I went to visit a friend. We had a test (Evidence) the following day. Her friend was there, so we all read and solved past questions until 10:00pm, before deciding it was time to go home. I remember how we walked leisurely on the street, talking about a place where they sell meat pies, and trying to remember our cases. Maybe, if my head hadn’t been too stuffed with sections of the Evidence Act, I would have been able to sense what was waiting for me; but that’s just giving myself too much credit.

At the junction, there were no vehicles, so we waited. Eventually, a Danfo trudged along filled with people. Two people got down; one from the conductor seat, and one from the front. My friend’s friend decided to seat in front, so I opted for the conductor seat.

“That seat is not properly set,” one of the other passengers said, as I sat down. Within a split second of trying to adjust the seat properly, the driver took off and I fell.

In 2015, my friends and I went on a trip to Valencia. One of us had parents who owned a Yacht and drove us out into the water for a couple of days. Because I have a mother who nearly drowned as a child, and who is very very African, I had been forbidden from going near water all my life, and saw time away from her prying eyes as an excellent opportunity to learn how to swim. One of my friends took it upon herself to be my instructor. She made me do breathing exercises and practice paddling on the water. Then she let go, and all I could taste was salt.

When I fell down from the bus, I felt the same sheer panic of being swallowed by sea water. My knees kissed sand, I could feel my skin melt away. I held onto the metal seat. The bus kept moving. The entire incident didn’t last up to two minutes, but I remember thinking, “I don’t think this is how I want to die.”

Sound returned to me. Somebody screamed. My friend says it was me. The driver eventually halted, and people came down from the bus, some shouting at him, others expressing their shock. I was quiet as I felt them surround me, offering condolences, and pouring water on my legs, to expose the beautiful red circles that now bloomed where the skin on my knees once were. I couldn’t move, or speak. At some point, I whispered Thank You Jesus, and then I said it again, just to hear the sound of my own voice. My friend grabbed my hand and waltzed me away in search of a pharmacy to administer first aid, and that was when I burst into tears.

My life has been pretty tame where malaise is concerned. In fact, I’d consider myself a very lucky girl. Good things have always found me, even when I’m not looking for them; but for some reason, 2024 has been particularly hard. A month before this incident, I had another leg injury that caused me a lot of trouble. It’s been exhausting trying to girlboss my way through life, school, and work, while dealing with these inconveniences.

The aftermath of this injury has been really painful:

First, the timing is pretty bad as I am about to start writing my final exams and I dislike having to think about medication and dressing and pain. The pain is almost unbearable. The other day I went to the hospital to get the wound dressed. The nurse said it was turning green, and dedicated thirty minutes to cleaning out the wounds with methylated spirit.

I cried like a child.

Then, I am worried about scarring. I really like my legs and I’m worried the wounds will leave giant scars I will have to explain forever. I think one sexy scar per person is enough, and I already have one from an incident with an iron during my teenage years, so I’ve paid my dues. What do I need three for? Also, my mobility has significantly reduced. I walk like someone with a giant boil in her metaphorical balls, and I can only do so for very short distances so I have to Uber everywhere. As you can imagine, this has been pretty distressing for my account balance.

If I have learned anything from this incident, it is that life as you know it can change in the twinkle of an eye. A friend invited me to a listening party for his podcast, and the first episode was about a lady who woke up one morning to discover that she could no longer hear the sounds from the Mosque near her house. In one day she had lost her hearing, just like that.

The variability of life leaves much to be desired where tragedy is concerned. Sometimes you will have to pick two while somebody you know will hold on, but last last everybody will still go gen. It’s insane.

The Saturday after the incident, my mother came visiting and I was recounting everything that happened to her when I realized that all the variables had worked together for my good. If I had fallen the wrong way, I could have hit my head on the pavement. Had the bus been on the other side of the road, at a busier time of the day, I could have gotten hit by another moving bus. That I am able to complain about the scarring on my pretty legs is because I still get to use them. In that sense, I’m grateful.

I am documenting this incident because it’s the scariest thing that has happened to me yet. I saw my life flash before my eyes, and I’m trying not to undermine what that experience felt like. I’m also tired of having to explain what happened to my legs to people and a friend jokingly suggested I write medium piece I could direct inquirers to, so if you’ve seen me around and you were wondering what happened, here you have it.

I was also ranting earlier about how I’ve been unable to buy the fabrics I want to use to sew my final year thanksgiving outfit (because again, limited mobility), and I felt that streamlining my thoughts through an essay would give me much needed reprieve. To some extent, I think it has.

1.

there’s no smart way to fall in love.

2.

“I love you. I feel as though we were never strangers, you and I, not even for a moment.” — Freidrich Nietzsche, from a letter to Mathilde Trampedache, April, 1876.

3.

it is one am and my phone is on my chest as i lie in bed, listening to your voice pulled in by radio waves. our nights have been the same for as long as i can remember, and as far as i’m concerned, all the versions of reality in which my days do not end this way — accompanying you from a distance while you write code and crack jokes, amusement dripping from your tongue — the comfortable warmth of two individuals that belong to each other, have lost their validity in my mind.

4.

a few months after we fall into each other, i would drape my thighs over your laps and tell you that being with you felt like being cocooned in bubble wrap, like a DHL package. we had happened in the break of that long and lonely summer, weathering the odds of everything unfamiliar; and our love was something we birthed and nurtured, and eventually killed by ourselves.

since then, i have been tempted to attribute everything that happened to bad timing. it’s such a convenient excuse — you were still picking at the scabs of a love gone sour, and i was a green baby, unfamiliar with all the ways our love could twist and turn. all the ways a fire could burn.

in the grand scheme of things, however, timing is a flimsy justification for why things ended the way they did. you said this yourself a while back. how we were meant to be something, because my life was already so stuffed with people, and anything extra, anything else that should have mattered, had to be special in some way.

and so you were.

5.

i can never talk about you in linear fashion. you have surrounded my life with your warm, effusive light, leaving me fly-drunk and restless. i find myself scrolling through our chats in attempts to jostle my memory, because my mind can only store a fraction of the magnitude of what you mean to me, and technology (thankfully), has availed me the opportunity to go back and reminisce on inceptions and in-betweens and everything that has led up to this moment on a monday afternoon in march, right after i send you a link to a phoebe bridgers song and you comment on my newfound obsession with her.

by november, i would have deleted all our chats because returning to the good times whenever i miss you stutters my ill-fated attempts at healing. i try not to resent you too much for ruining what to me was a beloved pastime — re-reading our conversations.

6.

the first time we speak i am surprised by the ease with which words flow out of my mouth. for someone wary by nature, and constantly in search of the tagline — something to make her think “aha! so that’s what you are after!” — the lack of suspicion from my end, the confident freefalling, is interesting, to say the least. that day, we discuss music in a room filled with people; but i only see you and sufjan’s album art, and the nervous, habitual tick of your hand folding in and out of itself.

if there are any uncertainties regarding my feelings for you, they dissolve the second time we meet. we have thai food and you dare me to order something i have never tried before. i’m an anxious mess. my legs bopping under my skirt as i thumb the bracelet on my hands. i cannot remember what i ordered that day, but i remember yours — something sticky, with rice and fruit.

i don’t like it, but i like you.

7.

somehow, i am led to believe that everything that has happened thus far has been a conspiracy to get us to cross paths, connect, love, laugh, kiss, reach out in intimacy, and fall apart.

if not this, then what else?

8.

i have always felt the need to eulogize you. your bleary eyes that are capable of great tenderness and mischief. your eager mouth, and your random spiels of laughter, like a madman. in a field full of dandelions, you have stood as a lone sunflower, vibrant in all your fierce coloring, making everything around it pale in comparison. i look at you, and my heart constricts in a way that’s almost painful. my love for you threatens to burst at the seams.

9.

heartbreak has been well documented through the centuries, by poets and warriors alike. but nothing prepares you for the transfiguration that follows. since our rupture, i have become many things. a child discovering stove-burn. an archaeologist lost in a cave. a seasoned actress, generous with tears. a brick wall.

they tell me it gets better with time, but patience is one of my lesser virtues, so i wonder how long before this madness ends, before i wake up and feel whole again.

as i form conjectures on future romances, their inceptions and in-betweens, i suspect that there are some things you will never get used to. for example, breaking down into as many tears as your shattered pieces, or when a fraction of your heart disappears without warning, without anyone else noticing. that’s the thing about being heartbroken, you’re dangerous because you know you’ll survive. you’re just never sure about the aftermath. how the landscape will shift. what fault lines will remain.

10.

i remember one of those conversations we would have, when we were feeling a little dangerous, about how it would all come to an end. i told you that i got over people fast, but felt that it would take a little longer with you. well, i was right because it has been a year and a few days, and i am still here, breaking over random memories, mastering my tears.

11.

“Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.” — The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt.

Death to me has always been the most fascinating concept. Like street magic, here today and gone tomorrow, I ponder on my elusiveness from time to time. How easy it is to become something that once was, swallowed by tenses past. It unnerves me, that someday my bones will wither and I will be put to rest in a box (if I’m lucky). Above me, a smattering of words I didn’t choose for myself accompanied by two timestamps and a hyphen in between. I want to be able to tell where the hyphen ends, but things don’t usually work that way.

People have been dying a lot lately. Not sure if this is because the world is rapidly going to shit, or I am simply a lot more attuned to impermanence as a concept so that the slightest changes in the stratosphere are detected by the wiring in my brain. From time to time, posters of missing people assault my vision, along with them a lesson on the psychology of colour. A red layout because something has gone wrong and we have to be on alert. A blue one because the world is a cold place, and we must never forget.

Do you think of death often? I don’t, but whenever I do, I feel more helpless than the other times. Yesterday, I was swiping through my Instagram stories and stumbled across a heartfelt post about a boy whose corpse was found weeks after he had gone missing. The text attached to the post detailed how “he was so loved by his peers” and how it was “so sad to see him go.” A swipe to the following post revealed a day-out picnic, adorned with a retro filter. I found it amusing, then like a bucket of cold water, the sobering weight of reality crushed me. Life goes on, even after it ends. Semi-colon. The same way we plan weddings for others, to come sit down and eat rice and have something to tell their friends when they get back home, is the same way burials are perfunctory ceremonies to assuage us of the guilt of living longer than the dead. We rely so much on tradition to justify the absurdity of life.

Have you ever thought of how you would die? I had a friend who was really into astrology and dead things. She’d do readings for us once in a while. She told one of our friends that she was going to die a violent death, in a car crash, and that one replied that she had always felt like she would. The manner in which she said it brought chills down my spine. Like she’d made peace with an ending most would run away from, with a god forbid and three circles around their head. I could never be that brave.

Lately, I’ve been scared of many things. I’ve been scared of closing my eyes and not living to see my brother graduate from the University, and move out of the house and meet someone he would love to spend the rest of his life with. I have been scared of not turning 40, cropping my hair, and being the fabulous aunt who drinks wines from 2005 and sees the dust on the carpet that the housekeepers miss. Whenever I think about my future, I skim over my thirties and settle my claws deep into the neck of my forties. For some reason, I believe that’s the sweet spot, and I would really like to embody it.

Several laws of the universe rest on the principle that desperation yields negative results. Somehow, I find it difficult to align this principle with the part of my brain that is constantly yearning for safety. The voice in my head sounds like my mother’s, warning me to not enter bikes, have sex with people who don’t get tested, or do any of the heart-racing things that make us shake our heads in awe while watching TikToks and mutter, “this some white people shit.” You know? Bungee jumping, skydiving, and the likes.

I wonder if this fear is like Schrodinger’s Cat; whether it is stopping me from living to the fullest, or whether it is keeping me alive. I have visions of the end times that involve religious pamphlets and gnashing of teeth, but I don’t have enough faith in me to fully commit to the script.

Sometimes I wish I did.

Anyway, before I end this piece, I have been dying to ask you a question: do you have feelings concerning what death would look like when it comes to sweep you off your feet? Would it be the romantic, ripe, old age kind; the — I’m going to wait here patiently until you feel comfortable, and then I will stretch out my hand — kind? Or would it be violent, like a summer romance between two hormonal teenagers, here today and gone tomorrow?

Would it ever come?

When Peace told me to write a mini-introduction for the person who was to take over my job, I used the word accelerator to describe what I believed the role was going to be for them. This was because it had been my experience, and I felt it was likely to be theirs as well. From the day I joined the team on the 1st of February, 2022, to my final day, on the 31st of December 2023, my capacity had been stretched in ways I hadn’t envisioned. Working with Founders Connect set me on a new career path, and for that, I will always be grateful.

Before delving into my Founders Connect story, let’s dial back to the past, to the days when Treasure the Content Marketer, was Treasure the Personal Assistant, working in the Nigerian entertainment industry.

In 2020 I got a job as an assistant for a celebrity. It happened by chance — I had seen an application on the Instagram story of one of my mutuals and made inquiries. After sending a cold email and having a physical interview, I got the job. My role was to bring up creative ideas, help this celebrity bring them to life, and also assist him with anything else that required assistance. By December of that year, his manager would poach me and I would begin what to me (then) was the most exciting time of my life.

My months were filled with making presentation slides, sourcing for influencers, creating scripts for advertisements, and sending invoices. This part of the job was not very fun. The real fun happened when we had events and I had to be on set and see all the magic happen backstage. I really enjoyed doing this, and I learned so much on the job. Super grateful for that experience because it opened me up to so many things, and it also made me a lot more confident in my abilities. Then the economy got worse, I started thinking about earning more, so I shared this with my friends, and we all started looking for work.

One day, Peace Itimi shared a tweet about how she was looking for an assistant, and two of my friends tagged me (grateful for good friends!). I issued the reply below.

I would like to say that I knew nothing about the tech industry, then. I didn’t even know there was any such ecosystem. I didn’t know anything about the apps, or the founders, but I had seen Peace’s face on Salem King’s story and I thought she was so cool. The application process was interesting. Peace filmed a video explaining what she wanted in an assistant and put a code word in it. Applicants had to incorporate the code word in the article they wrote about themselves, and I did the best I could.

After two interview rounds, I got the job. I remember the day of my last interview, sitting in a small room with a friend at Chemist, my hands shaking as I answered the questions Peace and Joyce Imiegha threw at me. “Could you tell me a time when you felt you had done excellent work?” I spoke about the Lagos Model United Nations, my work at the Unilag Law Review, and my previous experience working as an assistant.

Some days later, I got the offer email.
I was overjoyed.

Failing Forward.

Working at Founders Connect felt like doing everything I knew how to do, but better, faster, and with more precision. It was easy to apply for the role, but being faced with the actual work was an entirely different ballgame. Working with Peace required me to think like her, to manage Founders Connect’s social media page (which at the time was shy of 3000 followers), in addition to every other task ancillary to my role. I hadn’t done some of these things before so I had to learn on the job. We would have meetings and I’d just be in awe as words and terms flew over my head. This was a good thing though — because it pushed me to take my learning into my own hands.

How Marketing Found Me.

I knew about marketing as a verb, but I didn’t know about it as a field that was super diverse and encompassed a lot of roles until I started working at Founders Connect. Peace’s channel became my school. I spent a lot of time trying to understand her, through her videos, and then trying to understand the tech ecosystem through the Founders Connect videos. As I watched these videos, I found myself falling in love with the stories of these people who wanted more out of life, who wanted to do something great for themselves, and who were able to accomplish wonderful things. It was a slow process, but I was learning.

I was getting better.

On the first of April, 2022, I had a mini panic attack. I had just finished taking a Product Management course, but I felt like I was forcing myself into a shoe that didn’t fit, and grew worried that I was running out of time. I knew that my course of study, Law, was not the right field for me, and I knew I had to find something else. Something that made sense. That day, I called Peace on the phone to get some clarity. This would be one of many personal conversations we would have during our time as boss/assistant and I would never take them for granted.

I left that call realizing that I had a place in marketing. It was a natural fit. I had been a writer/storyteller all my life, and I really enjoyed the work I was doing at Founders Connect. The next step was to learn. I found Google’s Foundation of Digital Marketing Course and started taking it. It was a discovery that changed my life for good.

Getting Good.

Growth has a compounding effect. You put in the work consistently over a stretch of time and one day you look up and realize that a lot has changed. At first, the changes are subtle. You apologize less for errors and get more great feedback and more trust. Then you recognize your growth in the big things, like getting poached by another company (which you join), growing the Founders Connect Instagram to 10K followers, then 20K. A reel that amasses 300K+ views. You see it in the first Founders Connect event and the euphoria of having people say amazing things about it on social media. Holding the booklet containing the content you had written in your palms. You see it in HOW I — The Series and the process of bringing it to life. The several job offers you have to turn down. You recognize that it’s all because you took the advice of exploring the ideas and the skills you had, and leveraged them for growth.

The time really flies. One day it’s February 2022 and you have gotten a job offer, and the next day it is December 2023 and you’re leaving that job, but this time, the company has grown bigger, with a documentary that has amassed over 100K views on Youtube, two successful live shows, one in Lagos and one in the UK, two shows under their belt, a team that loves and trusts you, and a feeling that maybe you can really make it, in this industry.

That has been my Founders Connect story. My first tech job. My accelerator.

There is a lot I would miss about working with the team: Joyce, watching Founders Connect episodes before everyone else and leaving comments on the group chat stating why This Is The Best Episode Yet. That time Peace came to Nigeria and we spent a lot of time talking and learning from her, especially the morning at the airport before she left. Tito and Treasure, a dynamic duo. Being allowed to cook up crazy content that offers value and makes people happy. So much to love, so much to miss.

Lessons.

I learned so much from working at Founders Connect. I have shared many lessons in the articles listed below, but I have a few extra that I would leave here:

1. Growth Happens If You Want It To: You have to lean into growth. You have to try so many things until you find something that clicks. Nothing happens if you do nothing. Growth requires the awkward fumblings and the sorrys, before you actually get good.
2. Execute > Talk: Spend more time working than talking about the work you want to do. Working with Peace made me realise what excellence looks like. That woman is a machine and does great work really fast. It is what sets her and her achievements apart, and comes with years of practice.
3. Synergy Matters: Having a good team that you get along well with is the reason why we were able to pull off what we did in two years. While I am quite averse to the concept of work families, FC really felt like one.
4. You’re Hired to think: My friend who is a lawyer once told me that people get hired in law firms for one of two reasons: to think, or to bring in briefs. If you are not going to bring in the briefs (the money), then you should be the thinker. In essence, let your value shine through wherever you find yourself.
5. Life will always give back what you give it: Peace is a testament to the fact that life will always give back whatever you give it. Her work has stacked on itself to the point that great opportunities come to her as a result. Watching her, I learned that all I have to do good work, and the life I want will come to me.

— — —

I have written other articles about Founders Connect.
Check them out here:

1. The Beauty of Excellence — lessons from Founders Connect: Live in Lagos.
2. Lessons I Learned From the FC Documentary Filming.
3. Stories Are Powerful.

Thank you for reading!

To me, Imposter Syndrome has always felt like that moment in a crowded room when an unfamiliar pair of hands bring themselves over your eyes and a voice from behind you says, “Guess who?” In the split second before you hear the voice, there’s this panic — this overwhelming apprehension you might feel — until the familiarity of the person envelops you, and you gain the foresight to take in whatever cues might exist — their scent, their voice, and the feel of their hands.

Imposter syndrome is both things —the panic, and the familiarity. Panic, because sometimes I feel like a forged painting on the wall of a museum, printed and stamped on canvas. I am scared that if anyone comes too close, they will notice the duplicitous nature of the brushstrokes and the faint smell of ink. Familiarity, because it’s a feeling I’ve felt for so long and have gotten used to as a result. I know where it stems from, and I am familiar with its triggers. I also know the right things to tell myself to lessen its debilitating effects on me.

And yet, I struggle.

I struggle because growth is a neverending process, and what made me feel like an imposter yesterday might not be the same today. When I was younger, I didn’t feel “artist” enough when I showed my paintings to people. Now, I don’t care. I like to think it is because I know they are good, but deep down, it is because visual art is no longer the altar, and there are new idols I pray to and sacrifice my sleep for, like writing and content creation, and career growth.

I struggle because every situation that has ever made me feel like an imposter was tiered in an upward fashion, and my life just began yesterday, so I’m at the bottom rung of the ladder. The only people I compare myself to are those climbing above me, and while you might agree with me that my comparisons may not be fair, my brain is my fiercest critique, and she doesn’t ask for résumés before making her assertions.

There are other things that make me struggle; things rooted in biology — studies show that women tend to suffer from imposter syndrome more than men — and things rooted in the amazing ability of the brain to focus on the little mistakes, like an overbearing mother. But I am learning to ignore the voices in my head, do things, and occupy spaces even when I don’t feel worthy enough. To Walk Worthy, like Eloghosa said.

It may always be a struggle because every time I write an article, post a piece of content, or talk about my career, I suffer. But the suffering only lasts until the moment it dawns on me that my actions are helping me get out of my own way and take the climb up that proverbial ladder. When the realization hits me, I turn to Imposter Syndrome with the most triumphant grin on my face, and she begrudgingly takes the scoreboard, wipes out my previous score, and updates it with a new one.

Something like this:

Imposter Syndrome: 0
Treasure: 1