525,600. That’s the number of minutes in a year. My year will have 525,597 minutes.

1.29 P.M. One message. Three words. Russel is dead.

1.32 P.M. That’s when I responded. It took three minutes for my mind to fracture into smithereens, try to understand what was going on and then respond to the three words carrying a message that changed the world as I knew it. My God, I wish it was a prank.

As the seconds bled into minutes and the reality of living in a world with a Russel-shaped hole in it dawned on me even more, I wished our last conversation had lingered for longer. I wished we had hung out last year. I wished I had reached out one more time, perhaps he wouldn’t have left his office when he did, or done any of the several things that ended in him taking his last breath at the time he did.

Easter was one of Russel’s favourite times of the year. He liked the tradition of it, the songs, the masses. At Easter, Christ carried a cross over a long journey. For the rest of my life, I will bear the cross of Russel’s demise. The Bible is littered with prophecies about Christ’s death and suffering. Russel’s passing came to me on a random Tuesday afternoon in June. It was the type of news that you’d hear and say “God forbid”. I was in a hall packed with people, not knowing that the world as I know it had spiralled, changed, and would never be the same again. Heck, I wasn’t even in Lagos. I was in a conference in Abuja when those three words hit my phone and turned the whole hall into a blur of colours.

During Easter this year, the choir in my church sang a song which features the line “We dance on an empty grave”, a vivid reference to Christ’s death, burial and resurrection and the effervescent joy that comes with it. As a Christian, one of the most difficult things is having faith that is anchored on redemption via an empty tomb while coming to terms with the fact that your loved one now resides in a tomb that is in fact very full…

I remember the first (and last argument) I won against Russel. He came back a week after to say that I had the right facts and he didn’t. I like to say that I don’t argue to win. But I am absolutely delighted that I won that argument. But you know what? I would give up that victory if it would bring him back to life.

And speaking of life. Russel loved life. He loved jokes, he loved shows, he shared some of the most hilarious reels. He was the most serious, yet one of the most hilarious persons I know. He was the most organised person I know. He lived and led by example. For a huge chunk of my life, he was a big brother to me. He looked out for me. He lived by a thousand routines. He never missed breakfast.

I will miss our jokes and conversations. He introduced me to Trevor Noah. We joked about how the world was a more decent place before Trevor Noah grew out his hair. Around this time last year, we were arguing about Michael B Jordan and his disclosure that he was a babalawo. In the middle of a fervent conversation that had gone from us talking about colonialism and religion, I sent a voice-note and a message saying “Sorry for sending a voice-note without notice”. His response? “Me that’s sending a 5 minutes VN”. He was already recording a voice-note.

If I could change one thing, it would be knowing Russel earlier and crossing the bridge from acquaintanceship to friendship sooner than law school. I’m not even mincing words when I say I wouldn’t be this guy without Russel. He was the type of guy that you want your kids to know as Uncle Russel. I’m sure that he was the type of child that parents pointed out to their own kids as an illustration that you don’t need to have two heads to excel at things. Russel did not have two heads but with the things he lived and did, it was a surprise that he didn’t…

I have said all of that to say that Russel was complete and now the world isn’t.

Grief is a potter and you are going to sit at its wheel many times. And it will change you…

The worst thing about grief is that it is so personal. You are grieving but the clocks still tick. Nothing pauses for you.

I remember passing through security clearance at the airport on the morning of Russel’s funeral and being baffled by the fact that the baggage handler asked for a bribe. I couldn’t believe that with the intensity of the last few days, someone could be asking for something as a bribe. Russel is dead and you’re asking for a bribe. But it made no sense. Because it was my reality, not his. He probably doesn’t even know anyone named Russel. Heck, I only knew one person called Russel and he’s not here anymore.

There really is no method to the madness of grief and the beating your psyche takes.

God knows that one of the hardest things I have done this year is hold back the tears as I shuffled from point to point in an absolute daze. As my bags made their way from trunk to conveyor belt, I realised over and over that “when I left Lagos, Russel was alive and that I was going back but he wouldn’t be there anymore because he’s being buried today”. Even seven weeks after, it’s still so incredible…

I cannot believe that Russel won’t turn 35. Russel really died and life went on. Clocks kept ticking, birds kept singing and I’m even writing…

Russel had joked about the fact that I can’t dance and I had said he should wait for my wedding. Russel won’t be at my wedding. He won’t know if I can dance or not. Our last conversation is really our last conversation. That’s it, not even the dignity of a curtain call or elaborate well-planned farewell.

Just three words that ushered an ocean of grief…

Photo by Mitchell Luo from Pexels:https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-branch-of-wood-in-the-water-4614597/

Thankfully, God appears, speaks to Hagar and shows her a well of water. Hagar fetches enough for her son and herself, and all is well, no pun intended, with the world again...

In my father’s house, there’s a well that is older than me. It serves as a backup option if the tanks ever run out. The well sits in the same position now as it did more than twenty years ago. If I throw a bucket down its throat today, the bucket would come back up with water. Same solution, different decade.

Many times, we want to do big things that take centre stage. We want to be the Amazon, a roaring river which serves nations, quenches parched throats, and sustains cross-border ecosystems. We want to provide the huge solution to the huge problem and be ushered onto and off the stage with a round of applause which mimics our huge efforts.

For a lot of people, a well, not a river, is what they need. Some problems need a bandage, not a hospital…Wells are steady, quiet, and present when you need them.

I also find it fitting that when God became flesh he met the Samaritan woman at a well. She had a messy past, but she became the one who told her town about Jesus. He could have sent the twelve, but he sent one woman, ordinary, local, effective and her witness changed people’s lives. A well to her people.

Being a well could mean making sure nobody has a bad day because of you, apologising when you’re wrong, helping a child cross the road, telling the joke that diffuses the tension, sending 5k today instead of waiting to have enough money to send 1 million someday... Small efforts can make a huge difference.

At the beginning of this week, I didn’t plan to write this so I’ll end it with the immortal words of 19^th century philosopher, Batman of New York:

“A hero can be anyone, even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat on a young boy’s shoulders to let him know that the world hadn’t ended.”

See you around…

Photo by Matt Hardy on Unsplash

In April 2025, I put a laptop in a bag, bought a bottle of wine, and ordered a cab to the hotel where my colleagues were having dinner. Two hours later, I walked out of the hotel and they weren’t my colleagues anymore. It was my last day at the office.

When I got home, I changed my Slack display picture to that famous picture of Xabi Alonso waving goodbye, uninstalled the application, sat at my desk and scheduled a newsletter, the first of many I would write in the quiet routine I had built before I got pulled back into the suction of capitalism.

Sometime this month, while getting ready for work, I felt a wave of gratitude. Not loud, just certain. Gratitude for the fact that I wasn’t owed salaries. Grateful for the shaky moments that became miracles…

In April 2021, I had just quit a job which owed me a lot of salaries. In the months that followed, I formed the habit of standing in my kitchen, attempting to turn condiments into edible meals, and listening to Million Little Miracles as I wondered where the next miracle would come from…

I have learned that it is not my job to figure out where miracles come from or count the rain drops as they fall. It is my job to wait and trust that it will all work out, one drop, one decision, one miracle at a time…

You really can’t stop the rain or count the raindrops but you can wait for storms to pass. The thing about storms and difficult decisions is that you never really know when they will pass. Only that, somehow, they do. And you are better for it.

While I may not have a million miracles, I am no longer standing in the kitchen, listening to music, waiting and wondering how it will all work out…

Somewhere along the way, it did. And even now, concerns and all, it will…

I am caught between apologising and saying “the best thing a man can do is the only thing he can do” because while it does feel like I am trying my best, that effort isn’t enough. There are only so many times you can heartily respond to “How’s your day going?” or “What’s up?” before saying “From minute to minute” or listing objects which defy gravity.

Recently, my day started with me receiving an earful from an acquaintance who stopped short of calling me an inattentive imp. The same day ended with a voice note from another acquaintance calling me kind and thoughtful for something I did on a whim. Talk about two extremes.

If you asked me, I would say my life has been filled with Gethsemane moments; moments in which I am burdened with differing opinions while living with the weight of the world on my shoulders.

In these moments, my life feels like the crowded Garden of Gethsemane. In the darkness of Gethsemane, I am many things to many people. Brother, son, friend, villain, funny guy, quiet guy, Christian, neighbour, a very one kain person. Each one of those has its assumptions and apron-strings. In the middle of all these, in the darkness of Gethsemane, there’s someone saying “Did I just hear muah” and another person staring into the darkness and wondering “wetin really dey sup between this guy and Mary Magdalene?”

Long story, there are people who believe, for good reason too, that I don’t put enough “heart” into our relationships and they are right. There are others who believe, for good reasons as well, that I’m not a terrible person. Maybe they are right too.

When it’s all said and done, it feels like I am on trial and giving my version of events to a jury of my peers while standing in a dock fashioned from trees I planted, nurtured, and felled.

If there’s one charge, I would stand trial and be found guilty of, it would be for my WhatsApp becoming a graveyard of unfinished conversations. And that’s because I genuinely cannot keep up with the flurry of messages that require replies.

My case is simple: more people, more expectations, more “problems”. As grateful as I am to have the “blessing” of knowing so many people, there are only so many conversations I can be present in and these days I don’t even want to be in any conversations. I don’t even talk to myself anymore.

In my experience, people are more roses in need of constant watering than sturdy cactuses. And on a lot of days, there are only so many calls and texts I can enthusiastically reply with blistered hands and a distracted mind. These days, I just wan dey abeg...

Stay. There’s more.

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Between the first word of this newsletter and this one, I watched this video. In it, people between the ages of 5 and 75 answer the question “What do you regret?” That is such a burning question. Their answers are a mixed bag of responses- Words left unsaid, actions left undone, risks not taken- some of which I can relate to.

Recently, in the middle of a conversation, a friend mentioned the age I turn this year and as the seconds after that conversation have become weeks, I have felt the heftiness of the age I’ll turn in November. While my regrets change from day to day and I have learnt not to dwell too much on them, lately my regret has been that one age-shaped elephant in the room. Usually, I tend not to ponder on regrets because you can only do so much and hindsight comes with 20:20 vision and no time machine. But that one has stopped me in my tracks…

This is the part where you are expecting me to disclose the regret. I’m tempted to say it here, but I’ll add it to the growing list of things I’ve left unsaid. All I can say is that I should have done more.

Let this travel

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When it’s all said and done, I like to think that for everything left unsaid, every risk not taken, an opposite exists. And I think the scales should balance out. And if I should stand trial for the way I have navigated relationships recently, I know I should have been more present, put in more effort but as it stands today, I’m a bit exhausted so I’ll roll the dice and live with whatever the verdict is because today, I just wan dey abeg...

Photo by Athena Sandrini

Read. Feel. Return.

The final game of the World Cup. A football player with a ponytail and the name “Baggio” written on the back of his shirt, picks up the ball, walks up to the penalty spot, places the ball on it, takes several steps back. If Baggio scores the penalty, Italy could win the World Cup, and he’ll be remembered forever…

Baggio begins his runup. In the stadium and in cities around the world, hearts screech to a halt. He has been the star of the tournament, the standout player by several miles…

Baggio completes his runup, he kicks the ball, it sails over the spot, past the goalkeeper, over the bar, and into the stands. He misses. Brazil wins the World Cup. For an eternity and then some, Baggio, arms on waist, head bowed, is rooted to the spot. He hasn’t moved since the ball was kicked. Somewhere in the distance, a commentator says “Baggio died standing”…

Memories…Do not Open is the title of my favourite The Chainsmokers album. That title feels more like a loud warning than a subtle reminder.

On the right side of my office desk sits a spinning top, a memento from Inception, one of my favourite movies. When I spin it, I often drift to the last time I watched the movie with one of my favourite people. As the top whirls, I think more about the person than the movie. Eventually, the top stops spinning. The thoughts don’t.

These days, parts of my life feel like a museum. I turn the key and get instantly swamped by a deluge of thoughts from a day that is not today. There are books on my shelves, notes in a box, and a small army of daily habits and gestures, all tied with people-shaped apron-strings.

When we experience people and have great memories with them, we die standing. When I take a step back and gaze into the animated sea of memories, I feel like an insect stuck in amber, forever frozen in moments. In certain spots, there’s laughter on my face, in others, a frown, in another, a nickname on my lips.

In a lot of ways, I am stuck standing, living in those moments, laughing, smirking, shaking my head, the many motions of thinking and overthinking and trying to take it all in. The “how”, the “what”, the “why did this have to happen?”, the “I should have done better or handled that differently”…

In these moments, I fully understand Baggio standing still for as long as he did. Just looking into the blur and taking in the gravity of the moment, knowing that nothing will be the same again.

When it comes to life and people, I am as inspired by the dying words of Don Corleone (“Life is beautiful”) as I am by the words of Mo Gilligan when he said “Money comes and goes, but friends are the family that you choose forever” in his new special. You should watch it; it’s one of the best things I have watched this year.

When I go through my bank statement, I cannot remember how every alert made me feel. With friends, it’s a mixed bag. A gallery of random pictures make me remember inside jokes followed by raucous laughter, nicknames, and conversations that only ended because the Sun had set several hours before and there was work the next day.

On a random Friday evening, my phone lights up with a call from someone I haven’t seen in half a decade, the minutes pass and leave a reminder that time and distance can only dim, never kill, affection.

In my experience, moving on from people-shaped memories is such a hard task. You want to move but your feet have a mind of their own and even if they didn’t, there’s an anchor of memories holding you in place. Even movement comes with its own burden. Where do you stash the inside jokes, the nicknames, the memories, the plans?

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In a recent video of Roberto Baggio, he’s visiting a stadium. He waves to the fans and apologises for the miss in 1994. The ponytail is gone. The regret lingers. And I get it. If he could, he would do so much differently. And that’s life. We only get so many chances to do things the way they turn out…

In the years to come, some memories make your face give birth to a smirk, others cause your eyes to dim and leave you just staring into the distance, a top spinning on your office desk, your arms akimbo, staring into the beautiful chaos of it all.

What remains, remains…

See you soon.

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In the eighteen years that have passed since I learnt these theories, I have practiced every one of them. I have made money. I have lost money. However, this piece is less about my experience with money and more about the man whose chalk strokes illustrated the theory of money.

Mr. Abel Wakegire was my class teacher in SS2 Mercury. He taught Economics. I had always known it was this subject about money but with Mr. Abel, it was different. He taught with heart, with personality. He was the one whose strokes on a blackboard and explanations laid the cornerstone for a lot that would follow. And what a year that was. Demand curves, the law of supply, market equilibrium, giffen goods, the invisible hand of the market.

Beyond Economics, Mr. Abel taught me attention to detail, the discipline of pausing and double-checking. My mind has always been restless, forgetful even. In SS2, this showed up in the form of drawing my curves without labelling them “D” (for demand curves) or “S” (for supply curves).

A few weeks before a test, Mr. Abel had cautioned me about this “habit”. I heard the lesson. When the test came, I forgot to apply the lesson. The cost? A points deduction because my demand curve could very well have been illustrating anything between two points; the omitted words would have made it evident what story the line was telling.

SS1 was my worst year in secondary school. I cannot remember anything beyond literature lessons and serving more punishments than a repeat offender. God, SS1 had me in the trenches of sufferhead. I was punished for coming late, for missing notes, for failing assignments, for making noise. I think the only form of punishment I didn’t experience was crucifixion and that was because the school had used up its wood supply making chalkboards.

Thanks to Mr. Abel, SS2 was easily my best, most impactful year. I had the best grades, served the least amount of punishment (not because of favouritism, I was better behaved and less riotous). Heck, I was even part of the school’s teams to a few competitions. What a year. That year should have been anything but a good year. I should have struggled more that year than the one before because at the beginning of the school year, my parent’s marriage had begun its death throes, by the end of the year, the separation was final and in some way, I was largely unscathed because books and writing (that was the year I started writing) were a welcome distraction for me.

Ultimately, Mr. Abel taught me the benefit of a gamble, of believing in and taking a chance on people. I don’t know why or what he saw but he took a bet on me at the start of the school year and made me class prefect. In third term, he nominated me to be school prefect; I would go on to be library prefect.

When I look down that eighteen-year-old tunnel, my one regret is that I never got to thank Mr. Abel before he passed last year…

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For the longest time, I have wrestled with the feeling of not being or doing enough. I have skimmed the surface of my potential and know what I can be and what I can do but there’s a wide gulf between here and there, a gulf largely carved by doubt-inspired procrastination. Oh, lacking self-belief as an adult is quite the experience…

Lately, I have been thinking about legacy. For Mr. Abel, a core piece of his purpose, one he perhaps never realised, was teaching Economics with heart. For me, I have no idea what my purpose is, at least not the entire picture. But as I have heard more times than I have fingers, clarity come from doing, not wondering

While I have lost the opportunity to thank Mr. Abel, I think the ultimate tribute is to take another gamble, this time on myself. Here goes nothing….

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya: https://www.pexels.com/photo/cursive-text-on-a-paper-11341894/

As an adult, one of my least favourite cliché sayings is “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Why? Because apart from church services and volunteer events, I never make any plans for the holidays. Yet again, I made no plans, and yet again, I thoroughly enjoyed my failure to plan for the holidays.

One of life’s greatest gifts is the randomness of waking up on a random day in the final week of December, checking my calendar to confirm what day of the week it is and figuring out what I want to do with the rest of the day. Go toe to toe with the existential loneliness that comes with spending the holidays alone? Contribute to the bottomless pockets of Lagos restaurants? See a movie at home? Drink wine straight from the bottle? Write an article? Tell Odogwu say we like to party?

Sadly, unlike the not-so hypothetical problem that never finishes, the holidays have come to an end. And my break from writing has come to an end too.

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A new year often leaves you dangling from a pendulum of emotions. Excitement, anxiety,zest, fear, desire. In one movement of the clock, you go from being orphaned by the old year to being dumped on the doorstep of the new one. It doesn’t matter what you have done in the old year. In the new one, you realise you have to do it all again. Out with the old, in with the same. Read books, show up, toss more logs into the fire of family and friendship, see the world, forgive yourself, go bungee jumping at a height that rivals the blood pressures of your family members when they see the videos, be an excellent person, fix your life… the many furtive attempts at doing great things with your life.

The last few years have really popularised the idea that you can just do things. While I really like that phrase, it is more flour, butter, and eggs on the shelf than cake batter in the oven. You still have to figure out the things that you want to do, and what you can do. As much as I have never been a fan of resolutions, it is hard to argue against the structure they offer. You want to be a better writer? Resolutions tell you to read x number of books and write xyz number of times per week.

In certain moments, while I miss the unbridled recklessness of youth, I like the stability that comes with getting older and realising actions have consequences and while you can just do things, you shouldn’t do everything because you can. You can’t just damn the consequences. In fact, the consequences have a greater chance of damning you than you do them. Damn, pun intended like mad…

I have a healthy feeling of envy towards people who are creatures of habit. They are the ultimate reminder that motivation is snake oil and consistency is cash in the bank. I would give anything to have the discipline and structure that comes with having a routine. To wake up at 4 AM and go to bed at 10 PM after conducting the chaotic orchestra of your day without going off the track of the big plan for your life has to be one of the closest things to being God. And speaking of divinity…

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The first few weeks of the year have left with me feeling like Thor in the new Avengers:Doomsday trailer. I don’t know what events led up to him being on his knees and praying but I have been praying too. For the same things. Strength, peace, clarity, and warmth.

I hope I find them. I hope you do too. Here’s to doing it all over again but with better results.

Feel free to subscribe, leave a comment, share/forward to a friend, or hit the heart button (it doesn’t bite).

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When you are ten, you’ll have a misplaced sense of geography, so you will assume the Moon follows you at night. You will form the habit of ducking from windows and hiding and running from room to room in an ultimately futile attempt to hide from the Moon. When you look out the window, the Moon will be there, regardless.

This year, a moon followed me. Every win, every high, every low was overshadowed by that moon.

The last time I wrote to you, I closed out with two quotes. One was “You wan gatekeep who sabi jump fence?” When I wrote that line, I had no idea how many leaps this new year would require. It is a small miracle that the year is finally coming to an end without me becoming a kangaroo.

If I said the truth, the first leap didn’t happen this year. Shortly before the turn of the year, I made a decision which led to sleepless nights and me being submerged over and over in a whirlpool of spiralling thoughts. I can count on one hand the number of times I slept properly in January. I remember waking up multiple times at 3 A.M whispering “I can’t believe xyz ended.” It was hard to understand, even harder to believe it.

That decision was the moon that followed me for the greater part of the year.

At some point in life, you’ll hear someone say “actions have consequences”, you’ll understand it but you’ll have no idea how much that string of words will cut through the tapestry of your life. This was a year of actions and consequences.

I also ended the last annual review with an Ayrton Senna quote, O medo me fascina. Fear fascinates me. This year I left a job I really really liked. A decision that sent a tingle down my spine and caused people to ask questions. Are you sure you know what you are doing? Why not wait? You know you don’t have to quit; you can just stay and figure things out? While I had already asked myself those questions multiple times, I didn’t have the answers because I was too busy falling through the air and hoping I landed on my feet, which I did. As you will come to learn, it is easier to take leaps of faith when you know God will catch you.

In those months, I felt like Harry Potter in The Deathly Hallows when he goes into the Forbidden Forest and gently whispers “I am about to die”. Of course, I am exaggerating slightly. But that move could easily have ended in career seppuku.

Everyone has a number. An age to retire. A number of children to have. An amount of money that represents financial security and retirement. This year was one of my numbers. This was the year I was supposed to get married. But I didn’t. And that’s life.

I have a large community. Friends, ex-colleagues, acquaintances, and everything in between. These last few years, I have seen friends become husbands, wives, parents. And I love their wins.

If the last few years have taught me something, it is that when it is all said and done, silence, like the Moon at dawn, will descend and ask you a few questions. At the end of the day, community is great, and while I am largely fine on my own, nothing beats having your own person.

I haven’t always done the best job of retaining my own person. Maybe if I tried harder, was more tolerant. Sometimes, it has felt like missing a jump shot in a crucial game. To come so far and yet fall short hurts like hell. I should have done more. I could have done better.

There have been wins that have left me stringing the Drake line “What’s a star when its most important fan is missing,” through my fingers like the beads of a rosary.

If I had a genie, I would wish for fewer work hours, more emotional rigor, and my own person. I wish I approached relationships with more flexibility and less “seriousness”. I have come to be tagged a workaholic, which is largely true but my commitment to work is because deliverables can be a shield from emotional battles. Work is a lot like a crutch for me. My work hours go up when I am having a personal downtime. It is easy to work into the night and send “warm regards” when your personal life is in flames.

My goodness, the holidays have such a curious way of mixing gratitude with introspection. I feel fulfilled, without mincing words, I can say I won this year. At the same time, I also like Christ’s tomb on the third day. Empty.

When it’s all said and done, I am grateful for the year that was. Grateful for the wins. I started a charity this year and gave away about five hundred books; we are doing more next year. I showed up for my people. I grew. My birthday messages almost made me tear up. I am in a great place mentally. I even have videos of myself dancing and pictures of myself smiling.

As the Sun sets on the old year and the Moon sails through the skies for the last time. I have one thing to say. Onye kwe, chi ya ekwe. When a man says yes, his chi says yes. Here’s to more dawns, answered prayers, and efforts that become results.

We go again next year. Happy New Year, Aloaye.

You.

I read somewhere that everything tastes better from a wine glass. So, I formed the infrequent routine of pretending I am a Wall Street lawyer working late into the night while drinking apple juice from the wine glasses I got as a gift for my 30^th birthday.

When I hit publish on this newsletter, it’ll be the twelfth time I have published a newsletter this year. That’s more than I have written in any of the previous years. I could have written one every other week if I wasn’t so skilled at finding the right excuse to put things off.

This year, I have done a lot. I could have done much more but I didn’t. While I am grateful for the gains, I am aware of the distance between effort and consistency. My gratitude is tempered by the knowledge that I could have done better.

This year reminds me of one of my favourite Bible stories. Elisha and the King. The prophet is on his deathbed when the King of Israel comes seeking blessings. Elisha instructs him to open the windows towards enemy territory and strike the ground with arrows. The king strikes twice and stops.

Enraged, the prophet rebukes him and says he wished he had struck more times. If he had, he would have destroyed his enemies.

This year, I should have struck more times.

But this is not the newsletter for going over this.

Silica sand, soda ash, and limestone. Those are the base ingredients for making glass. Introduce them to intense heat and a process of melting and moulding and a molten blob comes out on the other side. Shape it one way and then the other and a wine glass emerges from the heated blob…

When you raise a glass of wine, you don’t think of the process that birthed the glass. You just raise the glass. When you drink wine, you don’t think of the grapes which were crushed to make it. You just drink.

I would give anything to hear the conversation between wine and glass.

What would I do if my favorite wine glass gets broken? Clean up the pieces and get another one.

Glass is beautiful and sometimes, glass, delicate as it is, breaks. Into a million pieces. In my experience, you are better off leaving broken glass alone than attempting to piece the shards.

I started writing this piece on the morning of my friend’s wedding two weeks ago. At the time, I had an entirely different writing angle before I took a break to wear a suit and be a groomsman. Two weeks ago, there were no videos on the internet of me dancing and having the absolute time of my life at a wedding that is a highlight of my year. So, the writing angle has changed.

I am finishing this piece on the morning after Christmas. It is five days until New Year, that weird five-day shaped gulf where the mind is prone to grueling introspection as it wanders over the previous 360 days and reaches the wrong conclusions.

I’ll be honest. If I could go back in time, I would do a lot different, but I cannot and that’s just how the cookie crumbles. So, I choose gratitude.

I am grateful for all that has happened since I hit publish on Gambling with Tied Hands. I am grateful for the glass-making process that the year has been. I don’t have all my wins, but I have some. A win is a win.

So I choose to raise a glass of wine to myself. Life’s good. Even when it isn’t. And you know what?

You should raise a glass too.

See you soon.

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Cover photo by Gabriel Meinert on Unsplash

Heads up, this piece is going to feature more than a few of my favourite scenes and lines from pop culture.

Let’s get to it.

In one of my favourite scenes from Avengers Infinity War, Thanos stares down at an almost mortally wounded Tony Stark and tells him “I hope they remember you”. As much as I think that’s a powerful quote, I think how you are remembered holds even more weight. I also think how you remember yourself holds even greater gravitas.

In one of the opening scenes of the next Avengers movie, we see Tony Stark stuck in space and sending a message to his partner. In his supposed final words, he tells her that when he drifts away, thoughts of her will be on his mind. All things considered, even at the assumed end of his life, he makes one final roll of the dice, a frantic attempt to shape his partner’s remembrance of him.

When I was fourteen, the author of one of my favourite newspaper columns wrote about her indifference towards legacies and not caring about how she would be remembered. That essay laid the foundation of my stance on legacies, the Rick Sanchez’s quote “I don’t care for your boos, I have seen what makes you cheer” built the pillars, and the Hamilton musical quote “a legacy is planting seeds in a garden you never get to see” roofed it.

Lately, I have discovered that it is one thing to say you don’t care about legacies. It is another thing to live by it. A recent conversation made me realise that I care for the boos and the cheers, a little too much. And that’s fine too.

If I could tell my younger and future self one thing above all else, it would be: don’t forget to remember yourself and live on your own terms.

In my three decades on this side of eternity, I have been a lot of things, in many roles, to many people. It would be deeply unfair if I outsourced the entirety of my remembrance of myself to others. I must colour in some of the shades myself.

A year ago, my life was remarkably different. I had fewer questions and more answers…

This year, one of my favourite sounds has been “A Good Man with a Broken Heart”. I don’t know if I’m a good man, but I know that this year has broken a part of me that lies beneath my skin and has a rhythm.

For the greater part of this year, my phone lockscreen has been Philippians 4:13. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I have done things and had things done to me that have just left me wondering if I should have just chosen a less demanding Bible verse. This year has required so much strength, to do things and to move on from things and people.

If there was a byword for the year, it would be “reset” because sometimes, you pray to God for clarity and then He hands you several blank pages. And while I’m largely grateful for the pages, I would have loved to hold onto more than a few things that are not on these pages. To be honest, a sheaf of blank pages wasn’t what I was expecting or wanted but it’s something, I guess.

The Bible says that all good and perfect things come from above. I have realised that just because it is good and seems perfect doesn’t mean it’ll stay or is meant for you. I am slowly making my peace with the art of letting go, with the fact that “the things He gives me. He can take away”. And that’s fine too. It’s not. The older I get, the more I realise that sometimes, the cost of retention is not worth the delight of presence.

If I told the truth, I would admit that I added a few blank pages to the current book of my life. Maybe I should have fought more fiercely, held on more tightly, put on a show. However, I don’t have power to fight. To prove anything. Like I wrote in a previous newsletter, if you say I’m a villain, then maybe that’s how I’ll be remembered in your story. And that’s fine too. I’ve learned I can’t control the version of me that lives in other people’s memories.

The last time I saw a former friend, we had a heated argument which ended in a tense unspoken agreement to part ways. Almost a year later, a random encounter ended in a request. “We can just pretend we didn’t see each other”. And you know what I did? Just that. Pretended. Because I’m a democrat, I give the people what they want. And I move on…

The thing about moving on seemingly easily is that the assumption will be made that you are a hard guy made of Teflon, with a graveyard in his chest, hence the easy transition. In my experience, moving on always costs something. And the fact that the cost isn’t printed on a receipt doesn’t mean it wasn’t incurred. In my case, moving on caused me sleepless nights in January and a loss of appetite in October.

Perhaps more than ever, there have been multiple days when the blunted, empty, boring ordinariness of my life has been shocking. But I’ll be first to admit that I created a few of the moments leading to this emptiness. I’ll also be honest enough to admit that I wish some of the people not here anymore were here. But they aren’t and that’s just life.

In Becoming, one of my favourite poems by Titilope Sonuga, she says “Remember rock bottom is always a good place to start rebuilding”.

I guess that is what the year has been, a journey to rock bottom. In some way, a lot of ways really, I am grateful for the last 365 day, grateful for the minor falls and the major lifts. I wish the cost wasn’t so steep.

It is time to start rebuilding and finding myself in the rubble of the last year. The first order of business? Changing my lockscreen wallpaper.

Happy new year,

Aloaye

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Photo by Javardh on Unsplash

Every time I get a new system, the first thing I do when the system has an internet connection is download a picture of the Linkin Park logo and make it my lockscreen wallpaper. Last month I got a new system and carried on the almost decade-old tradition. It’s been a decade since I started the tradition. It’s also been a decade since several Linkin Park songs saved me from a lot of shege-themed things.

The year was 2015, a year which felt like a torment-themed eternity and then some. It was meant to be as perfectly normal as a final year in the faculty of law in the University of Benin could be. Mentally, I was ready for the long haul ahead. I was not ready for all my 300-level results to go missing. I was not prepared to be advised to “…just take the courses again”. I was also not prepared to have my name omitted from the law school list. The entire year felt like an Icarus moment. It felt like an academic ellipsis.

The Linkin Park song for my final year? In the End. As apt a title as any could be.

I tried so hard and got so far
But in the end, it doesn’t even matter

Five years before 2015, I was top of the art class in secondary school. Final term results? First in all, but two subjects. JAMB Score? 272. WAEC results? 6 distinctions, 2 credits. Five years after and I had more questions than answers. How? Why? Why me? What’s next? Is this the end? What’s the point of anything really? Classes? Tests? Projects? In my experience, it is hard to be excited for the future of your friends when it feels like the door of your future has been shut.

In more ways than one, my final year felt like I was attending the funeral of my future. It didn’t help that I had attended Caesar’s funeral the year before, so I had firsthand experience with sudden endings. I remember standing at the grave side and Linkin Park’s Valentine’s Day playing to mind as they filled the hole that held his body.

And the ground below grew colder
As they put you down inside
But the heartless wind kept blowing, blowing

Apart from a weird couple of early, clearly misguided, childhood years where I wanted to be a magician, I always wanted to be a lawyer. I had read the books, passed the exams, laughed at my friends’ jokes in class, lived in terrible hostels… I remember getting sent out of a class because of laughter in my section of the lecture hall. Getting sent out of class didn’t hurt as much as the fact that I didn’t even laugh at or hear the joke I was sent out of class for. It felt like I was paying for a sin I didn’t even commit. That is probably the closest I have come to being Christ-like.

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Experiencing grief in my penultimate year and then going through that weird limbo moment in my final year prepared me for post-university uncertainty. Quit your job without an immediate backup plan? Sign me up. Go through tough moments without being overly worried? I plaster. It was in those moments that I came to terms with the fact that everything passes.

Ultimately, my final two years in UNIBEN were a huge inflection point for me. There’s an Aloaye before 2014 and one after 2015. Same body, different guy. Those two years felt like I was receiving a beatdown from Bane. I can point to four, five or six moments where I felt like Batman’s broken cowl- cracked, discarded- because what do you even mean by my entire 300-level results were missing. Exams I sat for? Classes I attended? I even presented for my oil and gas group. That’s really the one that pained me o. How would I have done another presentation to students who weren’t even in university when I had done the first one with my set?

My ultimate fear was becoming part of the wallpaper of the university. You know those students who never graduate? The ones who know when the taps in the hostel bathrooms still worked and dinosaurs attended graduation ceremonies? That was my biggest dread. Becoming part of the lore of the university. An academic cautionary tale, all because someone somewhere didn’t do some paperwork.

At the end of the school year, I sighed for the last time, submitted my project, packed my bags, went home, crossed my fingers mentally, sat on the edge of my bed for days on end as I hoped for the best.

At the end of the day, I went to law school with my set. I can’t say it was an all things work together for good for those that love God moment. At least not directly because I had a crisis of faith and my belief in God had died when Caesar passed. But I guess I can say it because it was my mother’s prayers that came through for me. My faith would rise from the grave during the law school year.

So why do I keep the Linkin Park wallpaper? Because it is a reminder that even the darkest days come to an end. That things pass. That twists and turns occur and endings happen. That’s all part of life’s wallpaper.

So what does any of these have to do with roads untravelled? You tell me.

If there’s one thing about a Mission Impossible movie, it is that Tom Cruise must, at some point between the opening and closing credits, run at full speed. Across rooftops. From bombed buildings. Across the Kremlin. Over bridges. From duststorms in the Middle East. Away from assailants. That man must run at full speed and without breaking stride or stopping to catch his breath. There’s an entire collage of YouTube videos dedicated to Tom Cruise running

Lately, Tom’s Cruise’s running scenes have been a metaphor for life, my life. I have been running. From things, through things, with things.

Ten minutes before the first word of this letter, I was sitting in the dark, on the floor of my room, phone dimmed. That was the first pause I’d had all week. And it was not for lack of responsibility, it is in spite of responsibility. I was overstimulated from having to do and attend to so much that I just dropped off the call I was in, shoved my plate to the side, sat on the floor, scrolled through social media for about a minute, got overstimulated again, then annoyed and turned the screen off. A brief pause which was punctuated by a call. One of the many I have to entertain every day.

When I was much younger, runners at inter-house sports games had little on their bodies except their sports uniforms. As an adult, you run without the gift of weightlessness, you learn to move with the spritely grace of a ballerina, even with the weight of the world on your shoulders.

The race of my life feels like an unending relay race, where Aloaye the lawyer ends, Daniel the friend begins and then hands the baton over to [insert annoying nickname here], the brother and on and on and on and on. While I am grateful for the gift of responsibility and community, I have to ask one question. Is it every day, no breaks?

In a lot of ways, my needs can be summed up in four words “I just wan dey”. I wish I could just get a day when I didn’t have to live up to expectations or demands. Some days, I don’t want to talk but the world demands conversation. Some days, I don’t want to run but the world demands that my feet get moving.

While the plot of every Mission Impossible movie revolves around a slightly different crisis and villain, Tom Cruise is always the one doing the running. Different movie, different day, same sport. I can relate like mad.

Recently, I had to take several flights between cities. While in transit, I realised that I was much more than whatever number my boarding pass assigned to me. I was not just the passenger in seat 24B. Even while airborne and several miles above the earth, I was also Christian, uncle, friend, lawyer, writer, brother, son, social media user, neighbour… So many strings, so many expectations, so many tracks to run on, so many WhatsApp messages to reply to. Between flights, I realised that it would be really nice to be duty free. No pun intended.

Sometimes, I wonder if Achilles wished he was a random Greek soldier with a perfectly normal heel. I ponder on these things because responsibility can be an Achilles Heel. Equal parts blessing and burden. You get a gift and then you have to cultivate the skill and discipline to grow it and thrive in it. You ask for abundance and God sends you the rain. You really can’t complain because you asked for it. But still…

All this reminds me of the Bible passage where Paul writes “…necessity is laid upon me”. There are days when I wish necessity was not laid upon me. Those are the days when I just wan dey abeg. I know there’s a fat chance of that happening but still…In fact, there’s a greater chance of me wearing a Gorilla costume and injuring people with legwork at a random wedding than me getting a day off, but beggars can ride and a man can wish…

Till next time,
Somewhere between motion and pause,
Daniel

Photo by Jeremy Lapak on Unsplash

Cover Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

What I have been reading.

1. Random posts and articles. But this newsletter would never have happened without this one by Hauwa Lawal, one of my favourite creatives. This newsletter is my 30%.

Looking back now, I realise the robbers didn’t just steal our valuables, they also failed to deliver the robust robbery experience. I had grown up on a diet of Nollywood movies, the ones where the robbers arrived in the night and asked families to choose between their money and their lives. Getting robbed in the manner we did, robbed, no pun intended, me of this experience. What do you mean by you rob during the day, when no one is at home? Are you serious at all? Your mates that rob at night, do they have two heads? Are you an armed robber from Temu? Are you a second-hand armed robber? Who used your audacity before our paths crossed?

My father viewed their aversion to human contact as an Achilles Heel so he took a page out of the “if hunters have learnt how to shoot without missing, birds must learn how to fly without perching” playbook and instructed that the radio, the loudest appliance we owned, be turned on each time we left the house. For a few weeks, our leaving the house included turning on this radio. Dress up. Turn on the radio. Lock up. This routine went on for a few weeks until we came home one Sunday to literal radio silence…The robbers had struck again and this time, they had turned off the radio. Clearly, they preferred a noiseless work environment.

Eventually, more families moved to the street and the robbers left us alone.

Moral lesson: We all need each other.

Two and a half decades after, I can relate to the robbers wanting to be in radio silence and not deal with human contact. I have been silent and thinking…

The older I get, the more I realise why God put off the creation of people until the last day. Adam was a person and people are complicated. The more I know people, the less I understand them. However, for all the layers they come with, I genuinely hate losing people, all shades of it, permanent and otherwise. When I lose people, that friend-centered part of my life becomes a loop of that scene where Harvey tells Mike "People don't leave me". As the days become weeks, I am constantly plagued by the ones that got away. The thoughts, the memories, the jokes, the yawning void. It is a scab I have to itch. The itching is like lighting a fire to keep warm while stranded on a rapidly capsizing boat in the middle of the ocean.

In hindsight, I should have made more friends in my 20s. I don’t say this out of regret. My circle is pretty solid. Making friends in your 30s is a lot different from making friends in your 20s. For one, there is now so much noise, so much fluff to deal with and I thoroughly despise the pressure and increasingly transactional nature of the friendship landscape. I think I am late to the game because I missed the advisory memo of adopting strategic cageyness when you make friends. To be honest, it’s not that I prefer lower standards (I don’t), I just resent the performance of proving that I am a decent fit for anyone’s life. I’m not doing that. I’m 30+, my back is aching me and it’s my bedtime.

A decade ago, I didn’t need to present a pitch deck of features to make friends. You just clicked. The stranger-acquaintance-friends trajectory was easier to navigate. A lot of my friendships are anchored on common ground and the principle of “You’re weird, I like you”.

A lot of my friendships started from the most random conversations. My first conversation with S was about the theme on the Nokia phone I bought with my first salary. With O, it was an argument about Nigeria’s economic theory. I didn’t become friends with E in 2015 because I had the prescience to know I would need to call her at 1 A.M. on a random Wednesday in 2023 when my heart was on the cutting floor of my chest.

Do I have a problem with how the stranger to friend pipeline has changed? Maybe. What do people have against a thoroughly enjoyable conversation with no strings attached? Why does there have to be something else, something permanent which must be put in the ground now?

In personal and impersonal experience, friendships tend to be optimized for lifelong romance a lot more now. Yes, they made you laugh today, I’m not sure you should start making plans to wake up next to them forever. Sometimes, just have friends, just smell the roses and enjoy the banter and company, you can save some affection for your friends too. Cupid doesn’t have to get involved.

I have come to realise that the world is perhaps not what it used to be. Will I accept that reality? What does it matter. You probably shouldn’t take advice from a guy who’s in a friend’s group titled “The Guardians of Victoria’s Secrets”.

I guess that with age comes caution but I’m not jumping through multiple hoops to be friends with anyone. I’m not doing the whole song and dance of being “friend material”. At my current age, if you call me a villain, I’ll accept. If you shout “Thanos” into the mirror three times, I might just appear. But I’m not snapping my fingers to prove my worth. I’m not stating my intentions like manifesto points, I’m not proving anything. To be honest, I don’t bring anything to the table. I don’t even like the scent of wood or iron or whatever material tables are made of these days.

One of my favourite quotes is “the ultimate form of love is presence”. When I think of friendships, I think of a rock, present and stable. I think of Paolo Maldini, armband on his bulging bicep in all seasons, grizzled and present. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of friendships isn’t the “features resume” of my friends. I’m not accepting of everyone but I’m not manically sifting people into categories like I’m cutting cocaine for the cartel. And this isn’t grandstanding, I am flawed. When it comes to emotions, I am in a lot of ways more Harvey Specter/Conrad Hawkins, emotionally reserved but available, than Mary Poppins with her songs and sugar. I know that I can be flighty and averse to people-related wahala but I am also anchored and tolerant. With age comes stillness. However, I’m not going to jump off a cliff to prove that I don’t have the wingspan for flight anymore. I’m not howling my love of friendships and my ability to handle them at the moon like a deranged wolf or sharing hugs every day or calls but I’ll be there through it all, whatever it is.

My tension stems from the alchemy of trying to meld the old and the new. I don’t want to deal with the questions. Can we just go with the flow? If I am a good person, you’ll find out. If I’m not a good friend, it’ll come out in the wash eventually. Either way, you’ll have a lifetime of desert-dry jokes to remember me by. Win-win, no? Where’s your sense of adventure, eh?

I guess in some way, I have been robbed of a full experience once again. First by second-hand thieves, now by adulthood.

Just great.

Still, I want more friends though…

Until next time…

Warm regards, Love and fried fish,

Aloaye

PS: If this made you smile, think, or miss someone, I’d love to hear from you. I’m always somewhere between wanting more friends and needing less noise.

Credit: Cover Photo by ANDY ZHANG on Unsplash

The last newsletter wasn’t meant to be published. At least not when it was. It was written because I needed to stay awake. Every edition of this newsletter has been written from the same position. My work desk, almost always on Friday night or Saturday morning. Always from one city, Lagos. Until that newsletter which was written from the floor of my mum’s hospital ward in Benin-City.

I wrote that newsletter because I needed to stay awake, not because of a commitment to consistency. Those words are what happens when literacy meets the need to stay awake. My routine before I hit the first word was largely this- check IV bag, check mummy’s temperature, go back to uncomfortable chair, wait for thirty minutes, check IV bag, go to nurses’ station, watch nurse replace IV bag, ask mummy how she’s feeling. On and on and on. I had to write to take the edge off.

Let’s get to it...

When I walked into the cinema to watch Sinners, I had no idea the next two months of my life would mirror the timeline of the movie. For context, the plot of the Sinners movie takes place in twenty-four hours. The Smokestack twins really want to retire. One minute they were pulling into town to open a juke joint, the next, half their clientele has been turned into an army of vampires which lays siege to the juke joint and dances a catchy jig to pass the time.

Ultimately, did the twins get to retire? Your guess is as good as mine. There’s always just so much to do. What have I been up to? What has been my real-life version of the dancing vampires? Tinubu Everything and anything. Multiplied by twenty-four hours over and over again.

Earlier this week, I caught myself saying “it would be really nice to rest”. If there’s one word that has plagued the last few months, it would be rest. I have thought about it, I have desired it, I have considered it, people have asked me to do it, but here I am at 1 A.M doing anything but resting.

There are days which I wish were easier. The last few months have left me feeling like Smoke, the more withdrawn, brooding version of the Smokestack twins. There’s a scene in the movie where he is sitting still, a gun in each arm, a blood drenched shirt clinging to his back. In this scene, he’s exhausted and taking in the entirety of the madness the retirement plan has devolved into, his brother is dead, his customers have turned into an army of dancing vampires, and he may not see the morning; all less than twenty-four hours after pulling into town.

Before this month, I hadn’t really been home since I moved out in 2015. It felt good to live out parts of my favourite episode of Suits, the one where Harvey leaves capitalism behind and takes a train out of the city. I just wish my return was under heartier circumstances. It felt good to trade the madness of Lagos for a city where it felt like time was frozen and the dusk to dawn hustle was easier to deal with because the urge to put up the ersatz appearance of having it together hadn’t fully descended.

In some way, even though I cannot remember them, I almost miss the problems I had when I moved out a decade ago. The boy has become the man and life is way different now. It feels more like a millennium than a decade because so much has happened. Rent, difficult conversations, romance, migration the perks of being an adult, employment, unemployment, grief, capitalism. All these were different when viewed from the other side of youth. My life has so many layers now, I’m quite grizzled mentally.

When Annie tells Smoke “your body didn’t forget…” she wasn’t just waxing ero-philosophical , which is a phrase I just invented. A body never forgets, never forgets where it’s been, where it is, and where it could be. The human body is a spaceship travelling through past, present, and future.

The last month has been a lot of thinking and living. For the longest time, I assumed I had made my peace with my parents’ mortality. Until the last few weeks… but that’s a story for another day, or never.

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In Hamilton, the musical, a character says “We are going to fly a lot of flags half-mast”. Between the last newsletter and this one, I have attended two funeral services. Attending the service of songs of my friend’s mum and that of my former boss made me realise that while the flags being flown half-mast may not be your flags, you are going to have to stand in the shade. Seeing my friend and my former boss’ daughter deliver votes of thanks at the funerals made me realise that while grief is a hefty burden, life doesn’t even pause to let the grieving breathe.

Life really has no brakes and as much as I am grateful for the gift of work and activity, there are moments where I’d love to just have nothing doing. As much as the idle mind is the Devil’s workshop, the mind is really not idle if it is being used as a workshop, is it? And that’s how it feels most of the time, like life is auctioning my mind to the lowest bidder, there’s a constant carousel of people and obligations to cater to.

I’m not complaining, I’m just taking it all in. This life thing can happen quickly. One day, I was in Lagos hosting a session on understanding business structures, the next I was in Benin more fatigued than a stranded camel in a hailstorm and almost losing my nerve in the hospital ‘cause the laboratory was taking two eternities and a day to release my mum test results. The switch between cities and between moods took forty-eight hours.

In the middle of all these, there’s a small army of people who think my dating life is the equivalent of a Great Gatsby party where I go swimming in an army of women. I don’t want to say I wish I was. I wish I was. The only proof of romantic life has been a question- “are you sure you are not a Yoruba man?” I am getting Yoruba man allegations.

I am getting used to my dad’s inquiries about my social life. The last one was cloaked with a request to put my search for a partner on the “front burner”. I had to hold myself back from replying “gas is expensive” but I still want my share of the inheritance. I wish I could tell him that the closest I have gotten to being married, this year is dodging Yoruba man allegations. That’s a win.

At the end of the day, even Smoke got to rest. I just want to sleep abeg…

See you in the next one. Rest if you can…

Photo by Megan Lee on Unsplash

Cover Image-Photo by Damon Lam on Unsplash

You never forget your second baptism. You remember how it starts, often with a phone call or message which causes your heart to skip, but never how it stops. Because grief, the avalanche that it is, never really stops. It is an ocean birthed by a kitchen tap left on for too long, you can never really swim back to turn off the tap. You never know what the tap will be, or when it will begin to run.

Arguably, the most cruel thing about loss is that regardless of the weight of the tragedy, life is going to go on without pause. On the morning of Caesar’s death, I remember staring out the window of a bus at a group of students huddled around a woman and her frying pan of akara. The question “How can you be buying akara when Caesar just died?” kept playing in my head.

As I walked home from the hospital where my friend just had a miscarriage, I got an email about docked points for a missed filing. As much as I loved my job and hated dropped balls, in that moment, I couldn’t even be arsed about the lost points and the impact they would have on my annual bonus. Someone just died, my account balance would be fine, or not.

I recently got a message to send in a tribute for my previous boss who passed in March. I just couldn’t bring myself to write it. Partly out of procrastination, partly out of the learned experience that referring to someone in the past tense really brings the loss home, makes you more aware of it. Mr. Otteh was a very very good man. I will never have the right words. When I left the office, one of the last things I did was set up a Google alert so I could keep up with his publications. It wasn’t part of the plan that a Google alert would confirm the news of his passing.

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I can count on one hand the number of funerals I have attended. I cannot count the number of persons I have lost, at least not without borrowing an extra pair of hands.

I like to think funerals are as mental as they are physical. I also like to think funerals are not always linked to the tragic loss which ends in an obituary. Sometimes, a funeral can be both physical and emotional. You can bury a body but you can’t bury memories. You cannot embalm the sound of their laughter or commit inside jokes to mother earth. You cannot sing a hymn about the black hole a breakup creates in your chest.

When it comes to loss, there’s so much left unsaid and undone. In some way, especially outside of religion, I think the human mind still struggles to understand the how, the why, the what of loss. Still struggles to understand that sometimes things fall apart and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. Just ask Humpty Dumpty.

Apart from Caesar, I think the biggest loss I suffered in university was the loss of faith which came on the heels of Caesar’s passing. I barely attended service in my final two years in school. I wasn’t angry with God as much as I was utterly rattled by the mystique around death and permanent loss. It definitely didn’t help that the persons who should have kindled my faith snuffed it out.

On some days, the fear of loss still sits like a guest on the porch of my mind. Each time I open the door to let someone in, I have to glance at that guest-the fear-and consider the possibility of opening the door to let them out. As much as my life is filled with joy and laughter and people, I don’t want to think about a joke and then sigh because my relationship with the person I shared the joke with isn’t the same anymore. This has happened twice in recent years. Why are human beings so human? This is no way to live, but wetin man go do?

When it’s all said and done, maybe the goal isn’t to turn off the tap, but to live wet and still walking, bruised but afloat, laughing, living and grieving through it all.

Photo by Cristian Palmer on Unsplash

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If this resonated with you — feel free to like, share, subscribe, or leave a note. I’d love to hear what grief, faith, or floating means to you. We’re all swimming in something.

It is 3.39 A.M. when I write these words.

On Tuesday, it was 8.00 P.M when my sisters and I had dinner with my dad. If there’s one thing African parents have mastered, it is the art of pulling you aside for one-on-one conversations about the “important stuff”. If there’s another thing they have mastered, it’s the art of asking the “when are you getting married?” question without saying those words.

My dad never asks this classic question in a direct way. He prefers to ask “how is your social life?”, a question which has absolutely nothing to do with my relationship with fellow citizens of Lagos as much as it has to do with settling down.

Several times during the conversation, I caught myself looking at my watch, not out of boredom or mental fatigue for not having the answers. I really wished my watch could take me back in time to when things were probably simpler. I’m pretty sure the dating scene is nothing like it was in the 1970s. I really wish dating was as simple as running into a nubile doe-eyed maiden on the way from the stream and asking her to “tell your people to expect my people”. If I had more time, I would have talked my dad through the amusement park that is the dating scene. There are so many moving parts-japa compatibility, Snapchat streaks, talking stages, red flags, princess treatment, effort, love languages, first date conversations, plates with chocolate letters, intentional men and women, QR codes at Lagos restaurants. I just want to sleep abeg.

My problem isn’t time. It is answers. I genuinely don’t have the answers to the “When are you getting married?” question. “I don’t know” is supposed to be a sufficient answer. But when you are closer to forty than you are to twenty, an acknowledgement of ignorance can be a pointer to something being wrong. In a previous edition of this newsletter, I wrote these words:

“What is it about being single that makes people assume your life is plagued by instability, as if you emerge from a lice-infested bed of straws barely anchored to the bottom of the Lagos lagoon to go about your day?”

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I wish I could tell my dad that I have been angry enough at Cupid that defeathering him with a nail cutter would be an act of mercy. I wish I could say that I have bled, tried and failed and I wish I had the gift of being younger that allows you try and fail with minimal consequences. I am the older version of Wolverine. I don’t heal as quickly or easily so as much as I love love and all the benefits that come with the romantic mating dance, I have learned to choose my battles.

The irony is that this perhaps the most settled I have been in years. My life largely revolves around five cardinal points. Church. Friends. Volunteering. Work. Gym. God, my family and my friends are the greatest loves of my life. I get an insane endorphin-high from volunteering. Thinking about the positive ripple effects of carrying and tossing bags and boxes of food supplies at the Lagos Food Bank makes my face break into a smile. The post-Sinners conversation with a close friend is one of the highlights of the month. But for some reasons, this handful of joy will perhaps never be enough except I change the marital status I was born with.

The other day, a badly behaved police woman pulled social rank on me with the whole “I am a wife and a mother” spiel. I genuinely didn’t know what to respond with. I should probably have said “Should I tell the Igwe to organize an award for you?” But I digress.

I know that being a cool uncle will probably never measure up to having my own kid(s). I know that the endorphins I get from volunteering will likely never be as much as those I could derive from talking into the early hours of the morning with a woman I really like…and then to imagine those conversations never having a final full stop, My goodness. But this version, this version of Aloaye is a less-powerful Wolverine and he just wants to rest, whatever that means.

He also just wants to listen to his watch tick…

Photo by Eugene Shelestov on Pexels

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The highlight of my week? Listening to the voicenote of my niece telling her mum that she wants to come to my house. Clearly, her cousins had told her they had a nice time hanging out with me. I would post the voicenote but it features my least favourite nickname and I am not about to give the internet premium banter material.

All this talk about nephews and nieces almost makes me feel really old. Do I miss the days when I was the youngest member of my family? Yes. Would I trade them in for anything? No.

As much as I dislike monoliths, I love how to my younger ones, I am just uncle (insert least favourite nickname here). To them, a lawyer is a stick character in a colouring book. Their uncle is just…uncle, a two-dimensional guy who lives in an apartment filled with snacks, colouring books, and toys.

This part of my life reminds me of the scene in the first Avengers movie where Captain America asks Tony Stark who he is without the IronMan suit. “Billionaire. Playboy. Genius. Philanthropist,” he replies. As much as I largely admire the Tony Stark character, I am more than happy that there is a space where I can just wear my uncle suit and be nothing more.

The uncle suit, at least for now, means less pressure and even less to prove. I spent the first thirty minutes of my nephews’ visit taking down colouring books and pencils from my shelves and the hours after their arrival cutting fruit, preparing snacks and then lunch, falling into a well-earned sleep as my nephews got haircuts, getting them ice cream after, and then sending them into the sunset.

A proper ten over ten day.

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Nursery rhymes are a great way to introduce children to the unpredictability of life. Humpty Dumpty is the most subtle story of tragic death. He fell from a height and all the kings’ men couldn’t put him back together again. This is the equivalent of a permanent secretary falling on Obafemi Awolowo Road and all the civil servants in Alausa being unable to fix him or her.

In some way, I feel like Humpty Dumpty after the fall and like I had to after cleaning up after my nephews, I need to find the missing Jenga blocks of my life. When I was younger, I really thought I would be married by 27 at the latest. But I didn’t approach that plan with enough intentionality so these days, my Instagram Explore page is filled with Cool Uncle-genre videos which I have collected like infinity stones. Married at 27 una. The fact that I am not married is not for lack of trying as much as it is for lack of planning and the unpredictability of the many moving parts of life. Also, maybe I have bad character. Nothing is going to put your character under the microscope as much as being in a relationship. Every day is going to feel like an invasive surgery.

On Valentines Day, I planned to throw myself into work and emerge on the other side until I got a thoughtful package with a note. The words on it?

“Na single you single, you no kill person.”

Being single has a way of making you reflect and crave your own person. My own person. What a term. I want my own person. Simple. Complicated. Holy. Wild. Necessary. I thoroughly enjoy the thought of ending up with someone I can spend the rest of my days having endless conversations about everything and anything. And it doesn’t even matter that they may have what I fondly like to call “crackhead behaviour”. At least they’ll be my crackhead.

On some days, I am so full of optimism and belief in love that I feel like asking a woman I enjoy talking to for her father’s account number so I can transfer bride price. On other days, I am tired- tired of dying and resurrecting because love is salt and while I am an earthworm with more lives than a pack of cats, I am genuinely tired of dying over and over again.

This love thing feels a lot like a wolf howling at the distant moon to stay; regardless the morning comes and the moon goes away. Why does love demand so much effort, plis? I don’t mind the effort, I just wish my results were more than scars and slowly fading memories. O ti sumi mehn. But I digress…not

This isn’t the newsletter where I unpack all of that. That day will come. Or it won’t. Right now, I’m off to find more missing Jenga pieces. Maybe a few of my own too.

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

If you made it this far, thank you for sitting with these thoughts — messy, hopeful, and everything in between.

Maybe you’re also finding your own missing Jenga pieces. Maybe you’re just stacking new ones. Either way, I hope you find joy this week.

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Two weeks ago, I played Viva La Vida. I had pressed “send” on an email which had my resignation letter attached to it six weeks earlier. Turning in my resignation was the capitalist equivalent of turning off the Eiffel Tower at 7 P.M.

Six. That’s the number of times I updated the date on my resignation letter. One for each month leading up to final submission. I loved my last job. I loved the people I worked with. I loved the people I worked for. That morning as I sat in silence, looking out of a window on Bishop Aboyade Cole Street, the timer ticked down and I ran out of the chance to retract the email. Then three words came to mind. Even Kobe retired…

The last two quarters had been a struggle. The demands of personal and professional life had left me more burnt out than a candle with a wick of molten magma. For the last six months I had been swimming without arms and every time I came up for air, I ended up with a mouthful of saltwater. It felt like every pedestal I climbed became a crucifix. So I quit…

What does quitting a job you love without a backup option feel like? It feels like falling out of a well-built spaceship because you want to feel the air on your face. It feels like you’re a cat thrown out of the top floor of a castle by a reckless child. And speaking of cats…

When people say cats always land on their feet, no one talks about the anxiety between height and floor. No one writes about the questions the cat asks as the distance between its legs and the floor shorten:

“Did I really have to jump?”

“What if this is my last life?”

“Wetin be this one like this?”

I know these questions because I have directed them at myself. Do you have any idea what it means to be woken up by anxiety at 3 AM and have no answers to the questions which were your alarm? As much as everyone is going to believe you’ll land on your feet, there will be moments when the one person who will doubt you is the person who has to do the landing. You. You are going to be your own Judas Iscariot. You are going to second guess and triple guess your abilities and decisions.

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When I was much younger, I really wanted to succeed in three roles. Husband. Father. Son. For me, work was a bus-stop that became a destination. And I loved it. One of the favourite endorsements on my LinkedIn profile describes me as someone that “…understands balance and that makes him a great team player; he knows when to lighten the mood and get serious work done.”

Last year, I lost that balance. I could still lighten the mood and get the serious work done but it felt more like an obligation than a natural turn of events. What had previously come as naturally as breathing now felt like a crucifixion. It felt like I had lost my way and myself.

Looking back, I am grateful for the privilege that comes with being able to take a leap of faith as immense as quiting my job but I cannot deny the fact that I could take it because I am single and childless. My responsibilities do not breathe oxygen. I will be fine, largely.

The other day at the gym, the instructor asked if I was a beginner. I answered “Yes”. I cannot remember the last time I was a beginner at anything. It sure feels good to be a beginner at something and get the chance to experience things from scratch, even though they are as mundane as obliques and planks.

I will always be the guy who gives blood, sweat, toil and tears for his job. I will always be the guy “…who can get serious work done.” While I was senior associate and head of compliance when I left my job, it is a breath of fresh air to be described with a term other than “corporate lawyer”, “hard worker”, “late night guy”…

Two years ago, when I was asked to submit a quote for my work profile, it was an easy pick. Uncle Aaron’s quote from Into the Spiderverse. "You are on your way, just keep going.” As I move on to whatever is next, it’s time to keep going, free fall and all. There’s a bottle of wine I’ll open when I move on to the next thing. This is not a retirement. This is a reset.

As always, whatever is next will be earned not given. It is time to earn my place again. Earn my stripes. Do the work and reap the rewards. Fall in love with the routine again, one day, one step at a time.

Viva La Vida

Photo by Daniel Putzer on Pexels

Thank you for reading

Feel free to leave a comment, share/forward to a friend, or hit the heart button (it doesn’t bite).

What I have been reading recently?

1. This relatable post about emotions and being a hard guy. It reminded me about a conversation I had with my friends. Themes of the conversation? Ageing, Lagos women, and shielding emotions.

2. This post about quitting jobs and coping with the questions that come with starting over again.

It was 4.27 A.M when I wrote the first words of this letter. I had just finished laughing at a tweet I can’t even remember now, when I stopped resisting the urge to write a newsletter. For the greater part of the past few weeks, the final line of the penultimate newsletter-“Even matadors walk away”-almost became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The number of “bullfights” I have been in and things I have had to walk away after I pressed the “publish” button is ridiculous. Bloody Hell. Pardon my French.

Every time I miss my newsletter deadline, I start the next one with a Jay-Z line from the Power remix. If we ever make an anthem for adulting, two lines from the original version of the song have to feature:

“Reality is catching up with me

Taking my inner child, I'm fighting for custody”.

Adulting is such a circus. In the words of 19^th century philosopher and poet, Victoria Beckham, “It’s really entertaining when the circus come to town, right? Except you are in it.” Lately, my life has been really “circusing”. Life has put me through an insane workout. The first quarter of the year felt like adulting took my dropping out of the gym personal so it decided to bring the most insane of workouts to my life.

The past few weeks have felt a lot like fighting on Jupiter. Remember that scene in Infinity War where Tony Stark dares Thanos to throw another moon at him and Thanos doesn’t? Yeah. Life is not Thanos. Life will throw another moon. Because Jupiter has 95 moons. Like Shallipopi said:

“Men Moons mount o, men moons mount…”

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What has kept me sane through it all? God. Really. I recently caught myself typing the words “Thank God say to craze no easy”; if not, I would have lost all nine yards of my mind a long time ago. One of my favourite songs this year has the line “I put my faith in Jesus, my anchor to the ground…” God has been the filigree preventing my mind from fraying and bursting into insanity.

I like to think my family members and friends are the lyrics of AnEndlessOcean’s Imagine come to life. It feels like God answered unsaid prayers by sending them to me. Because some of the help I get, I’d never ask. I have been on the receiving end of so many wholesome check-in calls. For someone who brings little else beyond knowledge of trivia, terrible jokes, and puns, I have somehow ended up with some of the best people. I like to think my friends are God’s gift to me. When I look at my friends, I have the answer to the line “Could I ever say that I am empty?” No, I couldn’t. I haven’t seen God, but I have seen my people. That’s enough.

Recently, I was walking in the rain with an umbrella gifted to me by my former boss over my head and the Hamilton album, introduced to me by my friend Femi, in my headphones. In that moment, I felt swaddled by love and kindness. I realize that even in the quiet, most mundane of moments, we take the people we love and the lights they bring everywhere we go. Shoutout to MTN.

The time is 5.24 AM now. I have been writing for about an hour. I need to go to bed now because I have renewed my gym subscription, and I have to be up in a few hours. If adulting is going to show me shege, the least I can do is get in shape and match its madness.

See you soon.

If this resonated…

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Bullfighting revolves around a bull locked in an enclosure with a matador waving a red cape. Once released from its pen, the bull repeatedly charges at the matador who skillfully evades the hooves and horns of the beast in time to avoid being gored to death. Generally, it is believed that the bull charges with so much gusto because the red colour of the cape waved by the matador triggers a hyper-aggressive reaction. On this point, science begs to differ; bulls are colourblind. However, while it can’t see the hue, the bull keeps charging again and again with the same intensity.

In the end, the problem of the bull is not the colour of the cape. It is the bull’s natural reaction to work itself into a frenzy and charge at moving capes regardless of colour. Blue. Black. Pink. Yellow. Orange. Same reaction. The aggressive reaction of the bull probably has everything to do with the reaction of the first bull in history to a vigorously waved piece of cloth. Several centuries and genetic cocktails later, bulls react with the same primordial vigour to capes. Different century, different matador, same reaction. You can’t teach bulls new tricks.

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In my first year of secondary school, my teacher taught a series of topics which enforced the point that “humans are higher animals”. As an adult, in a lot of ways, I realise that while humans may be higher animals, there are only so many degrees of separation between us and the lower animals.

Some human relationships mirror the bull and the matador—driven by instinct, reaction, and unchanging patterns. I like to see people as the sum total of all their experiences. We don’t get to choose how people arrive at the threshold of our lives. They come as they are- backgrounds, attitude, relationships, nature and nurture in a nutshell. And you cannot reshape the dominoes of the past. Like the bull, a lot of people approach issues with the intensity of the bull charging the cape. To them, every issue, every conversation is a cape, a trigger and deserves a one-size-fits-all reaction. For them, there’s no nuance, no pause, no reaction that is not steeped in aggression. It’s always route one. Every conversation must be charged at and shaped by instinct rather than reasons.

Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather, puts it best:

“There are men in this world who go about demanding to be killed. You must have noticed them. They quarrel in gambling games, they jump out of their automobiles...These are people who wander through the world shouting, ‘Kill me. Kill me.’”

And at the risk of sounding cliché, it’s not you, it’s them. We all have our flaws but it’s not your fault that some people have cape-sized triggers and a heightened sense of reaction. This is a dangerous position to be in, because while you may, in an attempt to placate them, be waving a cloth with more colours than Joseph’s coat you are at risk of getting gored or worse. They become judge, jury, executioner.

At the end of the day, I hope you know that there is only so much you can do. Even matadors know when to walk away.

Photo by Harsh Gupta on Unsplash

Cover Photo by James Wheeler on Pexels

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What I have been reading?

1. Chimamanda’s Notes on Grief. When I got this book last year, I didn’t know I would quickly have to deal with loss. In a lot of ways, living goes hand in hand with loss and the people in our lives imprint their presence so much so that when they are gone, the ripple effect is

2. This half-funny, half-serious Medium article on Love. Definitely something I wish I wrote.

3. Chimamanda’s piece on her first love. As usual, her writing is peerless. In this piece, she explores so many parallels-love, loss, childhood, Nigeria’s dysfunctionality-without losing traction. My GOAT for a reason.