to rain, or to not rain.

and then, i am reminded of shakespeare’s “to be, or to not be.”
and then i am reminded of a joke i saw on substack. “why did shakespeare write only in pen? because pencils confused him; 2b or not 2b.”

i laughed hard at the joke till the point i got on a client call and was still laughing.

then i proceeded to tell the joke.

spreading the good feeling.

this is a letter that goes no where. i felt the urge to write, and then i did. so i cannot promise there will be any lesson, or what not, or whatever. my aim is to publicly share some thoughts holding me by the scalp.

and in return, hear your thoughts about them too.

we begin with vance joy’s missing piece.

table 1.

it repulses me to see people trivialise mental conditions, and wear them like a badge of honour.

i’m talking about ocd, ptsd, bipolar, and others.

every now and then, we see people blame their silliness on a mental condition and make it sound whimsy. it’s not. it annoys me. and then, those who are truly affected by this, have no chance to speak boldly about living with it.

it is just like when people blame their bad habits on astrological signs.

“i gossip a lot because i am a gemini.”

“i am manipulative, it’s not my fault, i am a taurus.”

without all due respect, shut up.

-

table 2

i got an invitation to something i once wanted badly, then forgot about it. now reading the invitation in my messages, i am tempted to refuse it.

abaft of my heart, i recognise the feeling grabbing and squeezing my heart. it is self-sabotage rearing it’s annoying head.

it reminds me of someone popular i once heard about, he disregarded a speaking invitation at a global platform because he had a fear of speaking on stages.

i do plan on saying yes to my message though.

the self-sabotage feeling is my pointer to saying yes to it.

i have gotten my mindset to the point where an uncomfortbale feeling means i must say yes.

-

table 3

still a continuation of the previous table. the best of us still face fear, the only difference is we act on it in spite of it.

my brain reaches deep into it’s archives to find a quote about courage. or was it bravery? one of the two. for the lack of none, i shall use this ‘quote’ i made up (?) in the moment.

brief interruption by ellie goulding’s still falling for you

-

table 4

152 b.c

sometimes, i find myself wondering what it must have been like to live in the days of moses parting the red sea. no, not as part of the israelites. but as part of a faraway country.

or maybe since communication was slow and took months (i’m not sure they even had a method of measuring times…yet), they has no idea a man call moses lived in a faraway land and his early life mission, first mission, was to bend the will of pharoah.

-

table 5

i turn older on saturday.

that’s it. no, i’m not going to say “here are 12,000 things i learned as i turned older,” or other-whatsoever-people-say-when-they-turn-older. i shan’t impact lessons on thee in this letter.

that was simply an update.

at the same time, i look back at the past 1 year and a tsunami of warmth sweeps across my heart. this time last year, i had a bit of quarter life (?) existential crisis, and then crashed out, and asked my mentor why. i remember my words. “i’m not even 30 yet, why is this happening to me?”

well, a year later, i can only chuckle as seeds of memories float by.

anyhow

those are all the tables.

over to thee.

what tables currently sit in your mind and refuses to let go?

i leave you in the never failing hands of matt hansen’s “forever again.”

I hear the creaking of wood somewhere.

Then the tap-tap-tap of leftover slow rainwater making its way down the roof.

We begin with “Where I found myself” by August Green.

The rain has begun again.

But this time, a drizzle.

I wonder how people who dance under the heavy rain do it. Amidst lightning and the booming of thunder. Every now and then, I refuse to flinch when it happens. But still, the fright remains. So standing under the rain, while it pours, all in the name of romance, with the loudness of a thunder overhead and lightning striking wherever it deems right?

Yeah, no. Thanks.

Maybe a drizzling rain could work.

“God Only Knows” by Kevin Quinn is strumming softly from my laptop’s speakers.

I was scrolling the streets of Substack when something else hit me squarely in the face. A note. Of someone saying, in a bid to optimise his brain and allegedly free it up to focus on other things, he has now outsourced his thinking to ChatGPT.

I furrowed my eyebrows in an irritated “as how” look.

You outsourced your thinking? And you’re happy? YOUR THINKING? Without all due respect, sir, are you high?

DO YOU EVEN HEAR YOURSELF?

HOW DUMB CAN A PERSON BE TO OUTSOURCE THE ONE THING THAT GIVES YOU AN EDGE, TO A MACHINE?

I like to believe it was only rage-bait, designed to allow readers such as myself to do the fine art of crashing out.

Brief break for Celine Dion’s “Lying Down.”

He most likely did that to optimise his time. Even though it was outright foolishness.

We are now in an era of over-optimisation.

We want to find the fastest way to do things. Sometimes, at scale.

But most of the time, it happens in a give-and-take situation.

Take, for another example, I read a post by Hertz Fauzan, who shared he once had conversations with someone and realised this person was using AI for all her messages.

All her responses.

That was a “give” as it allowed her to speak to numerous people at scale, innit?

BUT

The “take part was the fact that it took away the human connection. Hertz Fauzan eventually figured out what was happening, and blocked her. There goes a soiled closed relationship.

See?

Over-optimisations give...but take in return.

Most people are always on the lookout for the fastest thing. How to do X in 2 minutes. How to do Y in 1 second.

All is fine and glorious but

Brief important break for Celine Dion’s “Coulda Woulda Shoulda.”

Brief moment while I scream the chorus alongside Celine.

Brief minute while I bop my head alongside the beats.

Alright, where were we?

Over-optimisation.

All is fine and glorious, but I am of the solid belief not everything has to be over-optimised. Sit with the silence. Sit with the boredom. Sit with the arm aches, in appropriate amounts, after crocheting. Sit with the furious beating of your heart against your ribcage after running. Allow yourself be human.

From where I sit, the plantain tree is still swaying.

It is not trying to sway faster and is not looking for the two-minute version of standing in the wind. It just sways.

The rain is still marking her stance on earth too.

And look what I just did to you.

I made you sit here through the rain. Through August Green and Kevin Quinn and me screaming Coulda Woulda Shoulda at my laptop. I made you wander with me for ten minutes with no clear destination, or “3 takeaways,” or shortcut.

That drift.

The very same thing everyone is racing to outsource.

The thinking you hand to a machine, messages you no longer write yourself. The wandering you cut because it does not scale.

The things that makes you human. With flesh and bone and spleen and love for fried plantains. The slowness. The humaness.

I kept mine.

And so, this new month ft new week, sit. Before you attempt to indulge in over-optimisation, ask thyself if it is truly needed. What it takes from you and leaves you with. If nothing tangible, would you mind sitting your ass down and doing the work?

Yeah?

We both agree, yes, right?

Good. I shall see you in my next issue.

Till then.

I leave you in the hands of Ed Prosek’s The River

Stay Un…optimised

- Jescil “ew-overoptimisation” Richard

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Then I crumbled.

Well no, I didn’t fall apart like cookies gotten from Ebeano supermarket. I simply sighed, went puppy-eyed and told her, “it means a lot you asked about this. No one asks that.”

Pressure.

Or prejur.

‘Tis a beautiful thing.

One moment, you’re operating at a 1 and before you can say Radisson Blu, you’re transported to a 10.

You can’t afford to mess up.

because the stage is bigger, the stakes are higher, you’re signing NDAs that demand your spleen if anything happens.

But

In the midst of everything, I can’t help but think of how I would not be able to handle this if I didn’t have capacity.

If I didn’t build capacity when I had the chance.

If I didn’t, it’s every time I’d be sleeping inside Kirikiri and the church shall say what? God forbid.

But you get the general idea.

So as I reemerge from my imaginary cave, looking like a caveman who just discovered fire, I urge thee to build capacity.

Like a maniac.

Keeds?

Build capacity.

the stages you so dream of, the names, the stakes, you will crumble underneath if you do not have the capacity.

Picture a body builder lifting 120kg of ungodly weight and barbells and dumbbells.

Then consider you, who ate 7 rounds of akpu or a large loaf of bread just pulled out of the oven while soaking it in Milo.

Imagine you trying to lift 120kg.

You would crumble harder than kids knock over Lego bricks.

No shades.

So

In all, build capacity. Build immense capacity. As much as you can gather, do it.

So when the stage light beams down on you in full power, you have the capacity to hold it down.

Jescil “capacity” Richard

-

Oh

You thought I was going to leave you with a song? We don’t do that here.

I leave you in the hands of “Treat You Better (Live From New York)” by Shawn Mendes.

Glossary, for non-Nigerians

Akpu: a Nigerian staple food made from fermented cassava, eaten as a soft dough swallow with soup.

Milo: a chocolate malt drink powder, hugely popular in Nigeria, usually mixed with milk or water (and here, soaked into bread).

Kirikiri: a well-known maximum security prison in Lagos, Nigeria, often used as shorthand for prison generally.

Ebeano: a popular Nigerian supermarket chain.

Radisson Blu: a hotel brand (not non-English, but used here as a marker of “arriving” at a high-end level).

Keeds: playful misspelling of “kids,” not a different language, just internet-style phonetic spelling.

Prejur: your own riff on “pressure,” also not a separate language.

I am sitting with the sound of silence.

I just got off a call and when asked, “how are you?” I contemplated telling the person, “my head feels like someone is reaching deep into my brain and tossing it around my skull, I spent the whole of today being ‘outside’ and I just got in hence the headache. I also watched a fight break out between two drivers on the highway…Lagos.”

But alas

I simply said, “I’m fine and you?”

I want to blame it on capitalism but it wouldn’t make sense. I blame it on my inability to gather strength and talk.

I just wanted to get the call over and done with.

-

-

Last week, a friend told me, “Please don’t lose your whimsy 😂❤️”

And I sat with it for a second, because that’s a top tier compliment, innit?

Not “you’re smart.”

Not “you’re talented.”

Even though I am those things. Durh, have you met me?

But instead, I got “Whimsy.”

The part of you that doesn’t make sense on a CV. The random laugh, the weird tangent, the way you find something funny that nobody else does.

Whimsy is hard to fake and easy to lose.

For someone who was non-expressive for a long time, hearing those words meant something. I had that part of me, I just didn’t know how to let it out. Couldn’t find the words or find the room for it so it stayed inside for years.

I also used to think being taken seriously meant being serious.

That if I wanted people to respect my work, my opinions, my brain, I had to file down the softer, sillier edges.

Show up clean.

Show up sharp.

Show up like I had it all together.

Show up with a frowning face like spoilt fufu.

But

The people who actually take you seriously are the ones who let you be ridiculous too.

And now, somehow, people are clocking the whimsy from the outside. The thing I didn’t even know how to express for years is now the thing others are telling me to protect.

Wild.

So I’m passing those words to you, especially in an era where everyone is forced to grow up.

Pay your bills.

Lock in.

Optimise.

Build.

Scale.

Repeat.

There’s a tab open in everyone’s head right now saying “become a more impressive version of yourself by Q4.”

And somewhere in all that becoming, the version of you who used to dance in the kitchen, laugh at nothing, send unhinged voice notes to your friends at 2am, get genuinely excited about a really good jollof, that version starts going quiet.

She/He doesn’t leave.

She/He stops getting invited to things.

Don’t let it happen.

Because the discipline, sharpness, respect, none of that is in competition with the silliness. They’re not on opposite ends of the same stick.

You can be the most disciplined, sharpest, most respected person in the room and still be the one who finds joy in the silliest things.

That should not be a contradiction.

Two can exist.

The serious version of you is not more real than the silly one. They’re both you and the trick is letting both of them have a seat.

And if you’ve been quietly sanding yourself down to look more like an adult, more like a professional, more like whatever you think you’re supposed to be by now, this is your sign to stop.

Put the whimsy back on the table.

What’s something silly, weird, or whimsical about you you’ve been hiding because you thought it made you less serious?

Stop hiding it.

Take the bold step to do it today. Heck, you can tell me all about those whimsy habits too. You can write to me about it.

I leave you in the wonderful hands of Celine Dion’s Coulda Woulda Shoulda

Stay Whimsy

Jescil “Whimsy” Richard

One moment, I was asleep in bed while craddling a warm pillow

Next moment

Flashes of lightning forked across the sky, the deep voice of thunder rumbled immediately after and sheets of rain splattered against my window.

All while the sky was a stark darkness.

I could only look up and think, "God? Did I tell you I love you yet? Because this is the perfect weather for being curled up and reading a book.”

That was the plan.

Then

4 hours later, I was seated in front of a laptop, typing away on a screen while putting together a deliverable.

Capitalism.

Tsk.

Anyway.

Now days later and curled up as a fetus in a sofa in my Father’s living room, I think.

I think of a lot of things.

I think of how in waiting for a thunder-flashing-booming-voice-from-Heaven, I wanted to have a perfect experience with lessons before I write to you.

It never came.

I never wrote.

Now I dislike how I never wrote to you in all those weeks.

I think of the movie I watched a few minutes ago, where a teenager asked the MC, “my Father said to give this to someone I can trust, can I trust you?”

And oh, the MC was Angelina Jolie. That woman’s beauty is ethereal.

The movie was “Those Who Wished Me Dead,” btw. Solid one in my books. Taught me some survival skills and how to survive a wildfire.

I think.

I think of how Nigeria is a tropical country and if I wanted to wear a trench coat like my Pinterest boards, I would turn into a liquefying chicken before you say “liquefying chicken.”

I think of the article I read a few hours ago, about a young lady’s situationship experience while remembering my own experience and scrolling through the comments. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I read through the experiences of others.

I think at some point in time, we might have all lived the same life because what is this uncanny resemblance to my experience?

Situationships.

Ew.

Never again.

Not worth the character development.

I think of the smell of cake wafting through the air while stopping to briefly kiss my nostrils. The smell comes from two covered but undecorated cakes placed a few feet away.

I think of how everyone seems to know what they’re doing when in truth, they do not.

I think of how everyone seems to know what they’re doing when in truth, they actually do.

I think of how fast life can change in a year.

I think of how we are now the new aunties and uncles, sending data to our younger ones with narrowed eyes while asking them, “how did you spend the weekly allowance I sent you? When I was your age, I only got 100 naira for break time.”

And in some cases, the new moms and dads.

I think of a lot of things, each one darting fast around my head and the chance to develop a full thought slips out of my hands.

I want to say like a crescendo but then I think of how crescendos work and no, not a crescendo.

I think of how just as I am settling to sleep, someone halfway across the world is brushing their hair while preparing to step out.

I think of self-responsibilities.

I think of how every experience we have had leading up until now, has shaped our thought process and emotions. Of how those experiences play out in many ways than one.

I think of how it is okay to outgrow people, and places, and certain experiences.

I think of how I wrote the beginning part of this letter a few days ago, and then at 23:14 today (it’d be yesterday by the time you’re reading this), I thought of completing it.

Then like a maniac, I sat still, still curled up by the way, and typed as fast as I could.

I think of Philomena Cunk and her hilariousness. One time, she asked her guest something around Soviet Onion and the man’s face contorted in confusion.

Soviet onion? Or Soviet Union?

Cunk insisted it was Soviet Onion.

Guest had to choice but to say sure, there must have been Soviet vegetables and turnips and turnips are good for stew, by the way. And she had to ask Vladimir Putin about the onions and vegetables in Russia.

His words. Not mine. I have never had a turnip in my entire twenty-something years on God’s earth.

I can only imagine Vladimir’s irritation at that question.

I think of Derry Girls.

I sigh.

Well, I leave you in the hands of silence.

No, no.

Scratch that, I leave you in the hands of Joy by RAYE, Amma, and Absolutely.

This song is a 100/10.

It has me in a chokehold and I can only hope it does same for you.

What has been on your mind lately? What are your “I think” thoughts? Care to share?

I shall see you when I see you.

Jescil “I think” Richard.

23:02

I am pissed.

No. Not at the time, poor fella did nothing to me.

I am pissed because I just read a post saying, “If you write too polished without typos or mistakes, you used ChatGPT.”

I BEG YOUR FINEST PARDON??????

Well, excuse me, Karen, if I read books and reread my posts to make sure it flows better.

Forgive me if I sat a little too straight in my English classes and know the difference between the usage of “am” and “I’m.”

Forgive me if I read too many classics and know when to write in a polished tone. And excuse me, but I shall not dumb down my intelligence so as not to be mistaken for AI.

Ugh!

You better not let me meet you in the wild, Karen! Because GOD HELP ME!

GOD HELP ME!

Alright, nothing like a good ‘ol rant. Cleanses your soul.

Still pissed, but I refuse to let a Karen dictate today’s letter.

We begin with Raye, Hans Zimmer’s “Click Clack Symphony”

Lord, what kind of brain does Hans Zimmer have? What did his mother drink while she was pregnant with him? There is something they’re not telling us about, because what manner of brain does the man have? You sure it’s also a gooey mass? I refuse to believe so.

-

Friendships.

A few days ago, I was doing the proverbial trip down memory lane when I remembered an old friend.

We met on the blue streets of Facebook. In the days when Facebook still Facebooked.

And we kept together.

We talked.

We spoke.

Wait, that still means talk.

Anyway, she grew to become a best friend.

Then that thing happened. The one where you wake up one day and realise you haven’t spoken for two weeks.

And it’s weird.

Because no, you weren’t held up in a cave and forgot to speak to her. And also, you two speak about everything. You told her about the first time you jammed spitty lips for 2 seconds and clacked your teeth with a boy, ew, she told you when her crush asked her out, and they did whatever crushes did.

No, ew, they didn’t “mommy” and “daddy,” don’t be ridiculous.

It was still those days when the highest was jamming spitty lips and holding hands and 0.5 second hugs and stealing glances at each other in class. Not now, when 12-year-olds are having boyfriends, and you’re wondering, “What the actual Hugh Andersen is wrong with kids these days? You’re supposed to…I don’t know…PLAY WITH BARBIE DOLLS?!”

Anyway

You reach out.

And you briefly speak. Then the fire fizzles out again.

And then you reach out again.

And each talk feels like you are scraping your left kneecap across gravel over and over again.

I just physically felt that pain.

Inter-house sport days.

Anyway, you speak again and again and again and again and somewhere down the line, it hits you like a Mack truck.

Things have changed.

Things have shifted.

It doesn’t hit you again until your next discussion, and you realise you are both forcing talk. Like:

X: so…what about you been up to?

You: well, I got this job in cuz and cuz and xyz.

X: lovely.

You: how about you?

X: well I did xyz and xyz and xyz.

You: cool.

X: yeah.

You: yeah.

*crickets

*silence of the lambs reenacted

Here, we give a standing ovation as “I believe in you” by Celine Dion, II Divo comes up.

Then the next 1 minute goes by, and you’re both listening to the sound of your fleshy vortex organ, which is pumping blood and keeping you alive. You also listen as your friend takes in oxygen and expels carbon dioxide.

Then somehow, you realize things will never be the same again.

You have both moved on.

Then months later, you’re minding your business dancing in the kitchen and then you remember them and your mood shifts. You are quickly pulled down into this sad place.

Your chest tightens.

You halt your dance.

You take a deep breath.

Lost friendships.

Then you mourn.

We talk a lot about romantic breakups; I think we should also factor in friendship breakups.

You wake up one day and realise things are no longer the same and will not be.

And you grieve. Oh, you grieve. But not loudly, though or with tears. You grieve with a slow, quiet ache that visits you sometimes in the middle of what used to be you two’s favorite song or when something funny happens and your first instinct is still to tell them.

Unlike romantic heartbreak, there’s no clean narrative for it. The narrative for this is rather incomplete, jagged, ya know.

Because ‘tis about people who grew only in different directions.

You know what they say, “sometimes love isn’t enough.” Dang, we went romantic.

But anyway

Nobody writes songs about it or makes films about it. But God, it hurts. It does. Someone else just came to mind, and my breath got caught in my throat.

*sighs

So here’s to the friendships that quietly closed. No door slam with a dramatic exit, or betrayal or whatever.

Instead, just a slow light going out.

My chest.

But mourn it. It was real, and it deserved to be called what it was.

Here’s to those friendships…

We close up with “Remember” by Hans Zimmer.

-

I shall you when I see you,

Jescil “Friendships” Richard

09:11

I hear a neighbor scoop water from somewhere, maybe a drum? And pour it somewhere too. Maybe a bowl?

Except it makes a deep splash sound which means it most likely wasn’t not a bowl and was something deeper.

Maybe a bucket?

-

I hear the wind playing around with the trees as they ruffle along my father’s house roof.

I am sitted on the floor.

My mind pauses for a bit.

This letter has been one long coming. I have no idea if it will be a short one or a long one but something I shall promise thee? It shall spill from my mind unfiltered.

The other day, I had Spotify on shuffle on a playlist Spotify had created for me. You know those “songs we think you would like?” kind of thing? Aye.

Although, I don’t think they are “songs we think you would like.” But something along those lines. It was a playlist Spotify had created, thinking it would suit my music taste.

So while listening to it, shuffle shuffled and before you knew it, a crude song was playing in the background. With wet hands, because I was at the sink doing the dishes, I immediately wiped them dry with a towel and grabbed my phone to drop it.

Then again

On a sunny blue day the Lord hath made, I was scrolling through Instagram reels and the algorithm brought up pornography disguised as a cute couple reels except with this one, they were dressed.

I gagged and exited Instagram, deeming it my cue to go touch grass. But not after making sure nothing of that sort pops up again.

I think that led to my epiphany.

Of how now we live in a world where we need to be guarded.

I’m not approaching this from a sin perspective, but from a broader lens of how so many things now exists to taint our mind. From a negative or positive point of view

Like how certain things attack your self-esteem

Or self-doubt

Or body shame you

Or personality shame thee, in fact. Taking you away from your originality

From how you were made

Hold, I think this is from a light and darkness perspective and Christianity perspective but I shall let your mind pick your narrative

Go on Twitter, and my goodness, 2 hours in and you have a bitter self.

Instagram? Visual madness in some.

I don’t even know what people do on Snapchat but I have heard it is the alleged HQ of Satan and his minions. Never been there, don’t want to.

I think of how we need to constantly be on guard.

Because it is so easy to see something as “just a reel” or “just a song” and before you know it, you’re head deep into something you swore you never would.

It is why I guard my music taste A LOT.

If my spirit retreats from a song, I stay far away from it and these days (not so recently but has been a while), I noticed I have only been listening to classics.

• Celine.

• Whitney.

• Backstreet Boys.

• West life.

• Instrumentals without lyrics.

• Lo-Fi.

• Brandon Lake.

And the list goes on.

Am I condemning other musicians who are considered “worldly” from a Christian perspective?

No.

I believe to each his own, and if your spirit gels with a certain musician, I don’t know, mahn. It is yours.

What works for the goose, shan’t work for the gander or how dem talk that thing again?

-

Anyway

I certainly miss writing to thee.

These days, it has been client work back to back (and movies and books and articles so my creativity still has a flow) till the point my very own brand was taking a backseat which I absolutely do not want.

I shan’t promise to write soon but I do think I shall, especially after realizing I miss writing and I have a load to talk about.

I shall see you soon.

No, no music for today because I deliberately chose to sit in the silence to write this.

My only music for this article was the splash sound from my neighbor, the clattering of spoons and forks as someone tried to find a suitable spoon to use, and then the little mumbles from my neighbor’s children.

Oh certainly, the wind. How can I forget her?

Never.

Till next magic,

Jescil “Music” Richard.

I think of how multi-dimensional they are. You could get an headache from staring at your laptop screen too much, or an headache from being stressed, or not having enough sleep or being hungry or chewing too much or existing.

Cheeky little dorks.

Interesting.

No, not interesting.

ヽ✿ﾟ

From where I sit, I hear Judah Earl’s Stories playing in a soothing way in my ears.

I also hear a child humming somewhere.

From where I sit, I see the sun dipping behind the roofs of a duplex, escaping. She is making her way to another part of this blue ball hurling across space.

In a second, I think of how how I have so many things to say and then nothing at all. Where shall I start from?

I could have sworn I had everything in mind.

This is why you write down your topics, keeds. Your mind plays tricks on you just when you need her to be serious.

ヽ✿ﾟ

I think of how we are now the uncles and aunties.

The other day, I was walking home from getting a couple of things — snacks to be precise…Coaster…I had suddenly wanted to eat Coaster biscuits and went off to go find them.

Yes, I did find them. Thank God for mini-marts made up of 3 large shops gotten by the same person and converted into a large store.

Now, where were we?

Walking home. Right. I was walking home and somewhere somehow, someone croaked, “good afternoon, ma.”

I didn’t do a double take but in that moment, realisation hit me squarely in the face. I was now the “ma.”

Ew(?)

I probably should have screamed, “what do you mean ma? I also watch Barbie every now and then (partly because when I was a kid, I couldn’t watch them all or as much as I wanted to. Now an adulthood, free will).”

Or mentioned the fact I also look forward to animation movies.

ヽ✿ﾟ

I think of how original thoughts are now becoming as scarce as water in the desert.

Most people’s thoughts are derived from the online world. Pains me to say. What else did you think would happen when you spend hours, shoulders hunched forward, staring into a glaring screen and swiping like a manic looking for the next brief dopamine hit in form of tiny people boxed into a square glass held in your hands?

Doesn’t help that all thoughts now pass through ChatGPT, under the guise of refinement.

*shots fired, innit?

Sweetie, your brain didn’t survive all evolution only for it to be put at the deciding mercy of ones and zeros. You’re stifling it. In a slow but steady way, sucking out the life from it, like a kid relentlessly sucks on lollipop and drains life from the poor red glop of sugar.

Brief break for Thomas James White’s Heal.

ヽ✿ﾟ

I think of how most people now live for public validation.

The constant urge to reveal to the world what you are currently doing. In a “hey! Look at me! I’m better than you!” way.

Not because you genuinely feel like it, but because you think you should. I think it’s sad to do things for the constant validation of strangers on the innanet and not do things genuinely because you want to.

Crazy, but many are already treading down that part. It doesn’t help platforms were wired to make us seek for constant validation.

Are you “many?” Already treading the path of internet validation? Might be a question worth pondering upon. No?

ヽ✿ﾟ

I also think of past friendships.

Friendships which had ran its course. The other day, I kept thinking of an old friend. We shall call her “Ebun.”

Ebun. Quite a beautiful name.

During my days of writing GCE, I met a young fair lady. She was just as skinny as I was, jumpy, and had a lot of gossip to share.

We were situated in separate halls and would often reconvene at the end of each paper, to talk about what we had each written and also to talk about the black young lady who kept sucking up to a tall guy, even though it was obvious he was avoiding her.

Now, I laugh and cringe. Teenage gossip.

Then we would talk about students who were caught with sheets filled with answers tucked into their belts, during the Literature-In-English papers. We would wonder aloud why they thought they could get away with that and why they found it hard to read.

We were both awesome at Literature-In-English.

Months later, after exams had concluded, we promised to keep in touch. Months later, we were barely speaking. Months later, I don’t even know where she is now.

It makes me think hard about all previous friends and how they might be fairing now. I know how one is fairing now, she got married and has a kid.

ヽ✿ﾟ

I guess that is a lot of thinking to do in a letter. I shall wrap it up here.

Thank you for asking, my headache feels much better now.

And

March is ending. Or has ended? I guess it depends on when you read this. What’s a favourite highlight from March?

Let’s make a deal. Mail me (or reply to this email if you got it via mail) and share and in return, I shall do same. I shall share an highlight from March. And no, I want to hear about the seemingly tiny highlights. If your brain disqualifies them for being “small,” I want to hear about it.

I leave you in the beautiful hands of Celine Dion’s Lying Down.

Till soon,

Jescil “I-think” Richard

Subscribe now

01:27

The air is thick with silence. My mind wanders and I find me thinking about what could be happening in the street. In this silence.

On the highway.

The other street.

Figures wearing white tearing dance steps? Stamping each foot one after the other in a bid to outdone themselves? Flying with an ancient means of technology called brooms?

Crazy.

If we call flies flies, do you think they call us walks? Or walkie talkies?

01:29

I bump my head up and down, listening to “Jack Sparrow - by Hans Zimmer, Klaus Badelt, Kian Soltani.

Hans Zimmer.

Sometimes you sit and cannot help but imagine how terrific some people are. Take Celine Dion for example.

DANG!

That woman is indescribable. Her voice. HER VOICE.

He, *coughs coughs in God* don’t make people with angelic voices anymore. Bruh ran out of voice boxes to hand out.

Then He left us stuck with “your-body-na-meatpie” voices. Classical music are still being made, btw.

For example, Fantasmagorie Mvt.II by Oscar Kowalski

I keep thinking of something.

It has been sitting at the back of my throat for a while, like a word you can’t quite swallow and can’t quite say. Like “Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu.” It’s the name of a hill in New Zealand, btw. I’m serious. Check it out.

It’s a Māori name translates to "the summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the slider, climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one".

-

Now, where were we?

Right

We used to have this thing. This perfect, airtight excuse.

“I am this way because of where I came from.”

And it worked. For a while, it really worked. The childhood. The parents who didn’t show up, or showed up wrong. The school that didn’t see you. The neighbourhood that taught you survival before it taught you anything else. The version of yourself built in a room you never chose to enter.

It made sense then.

You were small. You absorbed what was handed to you because absorption was the only option on the table.

But

You grew.

Not just in height (short people who cannot relate…sarry sarry) but in agency.

In the terrifying, exhilarating fact you can now open doors for yourself.

That your hands work.

That your mind, however bruised, is still running. That you woke up this morning and made at least three decisions before you even touched your phone.

Growing older means inheriting yourself.

Not the self handed to you (the one assembled from other people’s fears and limitations and unfinished business) but the self you are actively, consciously, sometimes painfully, building.

The inheritance comes with a clause nobody reads out loud at the handover ceremony

“YOU ARE NOW RESPONSIBLE.”

Dang, they really should hold handover parties.

Like “you-will-have-the-ability-to-eat-two-meats-and-drink-as-much-Fanta-as-you-want-but-the-catch-is-you-won’t-be-able-to-drink-as-much-Fanta-as-you-want-because-you-will-learn-constant-consumption-is-bad-for-ya-body-and-you-won’t-be-able-to-worry-about-eating-two-meats-because-you-have-much-bigger-things-to-worry-about” parties.

Back on track.

You are now responsible for what happens next. For directions. For the pattern you decide to repeat and the one you decide to break.

The truth is

Your parents did what their parents taught them. Your environment did what scarcity and pressure and history told it to do.

Once you understand those words, you unlock a different layer of perspective.

Beautiful thing is, unlike every test you sit in school, no one is stopping you from writing and rewriting your answer until you get it right.

The silence at 01:27 makes the mind wander.

Makes you think strange things, tender things, things that don’t have names yet.

But underneath the wandering, something steadier is happening. Something that knows, even if it won’t say it plainly, that childhood ended, the excuses expired, and what remains is the most interesting part:

you decide what you become.

Take your explanation of the past, understand it, honour it even (it is part of your story and your story deserves to be told) and then put it in its place.

Behind you. Where the past lives. Then turn around and face the only direction that still has options in it.

Forward is where you have power.

It is waiting for you to decide you are the author now.

DANG!

I should run for a philosophical position. Anyone got ideas?

I leave you in the warm hands of "I’m Alive” by Celine Dion.

Yours in Magic,

Jescil "Excuses" Richard.

One of the things I decided I wanted to do more of in 2026, is to feature incredible people sharpened by experience and blessed with profound wisdom.

Kuku is one of such women. And so, lads and gents, it is with utmost pleasure I present to thee, Kuku.

Enjoy!

p.s this is the most profound thing you will read on the internet today. Scratch that, this week. I certainly urge thee to sit somewhere quiet and immense yourself.

I want to ask you something and I want you to sit with it before you answer.

.

.

Think about the thing you keep failing at.

.

Not the thing you haven’t tried. The thing you HAVE tried. Multiple times. The thing you’ve prayed about, journaled about, made vision boards about, bought courses for, made New Year resolutions about.

.

The thing that’s been on your list longer than you’d like to admit.

.

Now tell me.

.

Do you honestly believe the problem is that you haven’t worked hard enough?

.

Or read enough?

.

Or tried enough strategies?

.

Because if that were truly the case, it would have worked by now.

.

At least once.

.

So let’s consider another possibility.

.

What if the reason your life isn’t moving isn’t because of what you haven’t done. But because of what happened to you. A long time ago. That is still running your life from the background. Without your permission. And almost entirely without your knowledge.

.

.

Stay with me.

.

The Addiction Nobody Talks About

I’ve told parts of this story before, you can read the earlier version here →

I was somewhere between 9 and 13 years old the first time I encountered it.

.

I don’t remember the exact age because the mind does interesting things with memories that carry shame. It blurs the edges a little. Makes it harder to pin down.

.

What I do remember is that it started small. Quiet. Secret.

.

And then it stopped being small.

.

I’m talking about masturbation.

.

.

I know. I KNOW. You weren’t expecting that sentence this early in the morning. But this is a TMI letter and I did warn you in the subject line so kindly adjust your pearls and keep reading because what I’m about to tell you matters for your life whether you struggle with this particular thing or not.

.

.

Because here’s what nobody tells you about sexual addiction when it starts that early.

.

It doesn’t just affect your body.

.

It takes up residence in your identity.

.

It moves into the place where your confidence is supposed to live and it brings shame as a roommate. And shame, as you probably know, is a terrible person to share a home with. Loud. Suffocating. Always making you feel like you’re two sizes smaller than you actually are.

.

I could not make deeply connected friendships.

.

Not because I didn’t want to. But because I was carrying something I couldn’t name to anyone and the weight of it made closeness feel dangerous. Like if anyone got too close, they would see it.

.

So I kept people at a comfortable arm’s length and called it “being an introvert.”

.

I lived inside books. Inside daydreams. Inside worlds that weren’t real, where the version of me I couldn’t be in public could exist without judgment.

.

Before that season, I was always at the front of my class. Always the first, the leader, the one everyone expected greatness from.

.

After? I hovered somewhere in the middle. Not failing. But never quite arriving either.

.

My poetry became vague. My work became inconsistent. I started projects and abandoned them. I procrastinated constantly. I was always smart enough to scrape through but never fully there, my best self permanently just out of reach.

.

And I spent YEARS wondering what was wrong with me.

.

Why could I see what I was capable of so clearly, and still not fully step into it?

.

I had no idea that I was looking at trauma. I thought I was looking at a character flaw.

.

That distinction is everything and I’ll come back to it.

.

The Fear That Ate My Future (Or Tried To)

.

Here’s a story I’ve never told quite like this.

.

After I left secondary school, I worked at a school owned by my parents’ foundation. I was earning ₦10,000 a month.

.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Ten thousand naira is not a lot of money. And you’re right. It wasn’t.

.

But here is what’s strange.

.

Every single time that money arrived, I panicked.

.

Not the healthy kind of panic that makes you plan better. The irrational, compulsive kind that made me find ways to make the money disappear as fast as possible. I gave it away irrationally. I spent it on things I didn’t need. I raced back to zero like zero was where I belonged.

.

One time, I joined a group savings with the other teachers. When my turn came around, I got back about ₦50,000.

.

Fifty thousand naira.

.

More money than I had ever held at one time.

.

I immediately bought a guitar for ₦8,000. Then I handed the rest to my mother to keep for me. No plan. Just. Get it away from me.

.

I worried about it every day until the day my father traveled with the bag my mother had stored it in.

.

He was robbed.

.

The money was gone.

.

And I remember, with a clarity that still unsettles me when I think about it

.

I felt relief.

.

Not grief. Not rage.

.

Relief.

.

Because the money I had been terrified of was finally gone and I could go back to being comfortably broke.

.

I didn’t understand then what I understand now. That wasn’t laziness. That wasn’t irresponsibility.

.

That was a fear of success so deep it had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A trauma response wearing the costume of a bad financial decision.

.

.

The Year Everything Broke

.

And then came 2019.

.

I won’t do this gently because it wasn’t gentle.

.

I had been betrayed by two people.

.

The first was someone I had called a close friend. The second was the person who had been, for most of my life, my hero. My father. The man whose teaching had formed the foundation of every belief I held about God, about life, about people, about what was possible for me.

.

This friend went to my father and told him I was being promiscuous.

.

It was a lie.

.

And my father, the closest thing to safety I had ever known, swallowed it whole. Without coming to me. Without asking me to explain. Without giving me the chance to be heard by the one person whose opinion of me I had staked my entire sense of self on.

.

His accusation didn’t just hurt me.

.

It dismantled me.

.

Because when the person who has been your anchor lets go, you don’t just drift. You sink. Fast.

.

Everything I had believed without question suddenly came into question. Not just about him. About everything.

.

I didn’t just ask “Is God real?” I went all the way to the foundation. I asked what right the Bible had to serve as evidence of God when it was supposedly written by God. What if it’s just propaganda? Brilliantly maintained propaganda, but still.

.

It was that bad.

.

I left home. Broke. Jobless. Depressed. Without any real sense of who I was because so much of my identity had been built on the approval of someone who had just withdrawn it.

.

I moved first into the home of my closest friend. I’ll call her Solape. Her father was in the military and she lived in the barracks. I was known to stay up late and those barracks roads at night were quiet, tarred, well-lit and safe.

.

I’d take long walks at 11pm, midnight. Just walking. Thinking. Or not thinking. Sometimes just putting one foot in front of the other because that was the only thing I could control.

.

Then I moved in with another friend who worked at a bank and had a spacious three-bedroom apartment in Ijesha, Surulere, Lagos.

.

She’d leave for work in the mornings and I’d be alone all day.

.

I had no job to go to. I didn’t have a phone for most of that period, not because it was a spiritual discipline, it just wasn’t there to have. So I was saved by the particular cruelty of doomscrolling through other people’s highlight reels while my life sat in rubble.

.

I would clean the apartment. Freshen up. And then spend the rest of the day reading. Writing. Praying. Journaling. Sleeping. Crying.

.

I cried more times that year than I probably had in all the years before it combined. I’m not exaggerating. I wept in ways that felt like they would break something loose in my chest permanently.

.

It was the loneliest year of my life.

.

It was also, without question, the most important.

.

What I Found In The Rubble

.

Here is the thing that still amazes me.

.

I wasn’t following a healing programme. I didn’t have a therapist. I didn’t know the words “trauma-informed” or “nervous system regulation” or “attachment wounds.”

.

I was just a broken girl in a borrowed apartment, doing the only things that still felt available to her.

.

Thinking. Praying. Writing. Reading. Questioning. Grieving.

.

But what I was doing, without knowing its name, was trauma-informed healing.

.

Slowly, not quickly, not dramatically, not with a single breakthrough moment the movies would have you believe in, I began to rebuild.

.

My sense of identity. My belief systems. My relationship with God, which looked completely different on the other side of that rebuilding but was somehow more solid.

.

My ability to look at people clearly and still choose to love them. My ability to hold disappointment without being destroyed by it. My ability to exist in my own skin without shame as my constant companion.

.

The addiction that had sat in the driver’s seat of my life for over ten years loosened its grip. Not because I white-knuckled my way out of it. But because the wound underneath it had finally been seen, named and tended to.

.

The fear of success, the self-sabotage, the inability to sustain deep connections, one by one, they stopped making sense as strategies. Because the threats that had originally produced them no longer felt so absolute.

.

I didn’t fix my life that year. I fixed the person living it.

.

And everything else slowly, imperfectly, began to follow.

.

The Thing Nobody Is Telling You

.

I’ve spent the years since then teaching growth, clarity, purpose, discipline. Trying to help people build better lives.

.

But here’s the honest confession that this letter is really about.

.

I’ve been doing it in fragments.

.

Trying to cover everything, productivity, mindset, faith, finances, relationships, spreading myself so thin that I was giving everyone a little bit of help and nobody the depth of transformation they actually needed.

.

The thing I keep running into, in everyone I work with, in every conversation I have with people who are genuinely trying to build something meaningful with their lives, is this:

.

They are not failing because they haven’t learned enough.

.

They are failing because something that happened to them a long time ago is still making decisions on their behalf. And they have no idea.

.

Look at this list and tell me honestly how many of these live in your house:

.

.

You procrastinate constantly, even on the things you actually want. (Not laziness. Often a fear response, the brain protecting you from the risk of trying and failing at something that matters.)

.

You self-sabotage right before a breakthrough. (That promotion you didn’t apply for. The relationship you blew up when it was going well. The business you abandoned at the exact moment it was starting to work. Not a coincidence.)

.

You work incredibly hard and somehow never quite arrive. (There’s a ceiling. You can feel it. But you can’t find it to break it.)

.

You struggle to sustain deep relationships — romantic, friendship, professional. (Not because you don’t know how to love. Because somewhere inside you, closeness feels like a risk you’ve learned not to take.)

.

You fear success or money, sometimes irrationally. (You give it away. You burn it. You find ways to go back to zero. And you shame yourself for it as though it makes any logical sense.)

.

You’re addicted to something - substances, pornography, social media, food, validation, chaos and no amount of willpower has been able to touch it long term. (Because willpower isn’t what you need. You need to understand what the addiction is protecting you from.)

.

You feel like a fraud, no matter how much you achieve. (The imposter syndrome that never leaves, no matter how many people tell you you’re good.)

.

.

Now here is what I want you to hear.

.

These are not character flaws.

.

They are not evidence that you’re broken beyond repair or that God made a mistake with you or that you simply don’t have what it takes.

.

They are trauma responses.

.

They are survival strategies your nervous system developed at a time when they made complete sense and then forgot to update when the season changed.

.

They are completely, absolutely, stubbornly healable.

.

But not by adding more information.

.

Not by another course or another podcast or another vision board.

.

By going inward. By doing the real work. The slow, unglamorous, life-changing inner work that most people are too afraid to attempt because it requires you to look at the things you’ve spent years working very hard not to look at.

.

Where I’m Going. And Why I Want You To Come.

.

I’ve been building towards something.

.

I don’t fully have the words for all of it yet or rather, I have the words but I want to give them to you properly, in the right sequence, so that when I do, you understand exactly what it means and why it matters.

.

But what I can tell you today is this.

.

I’m not trying to teach you everything anymore.

.

I’m dropping everything I’ve been doing that doesn’t point directly here, to this. To the inner work. To the healing. To the part of your life that nobody is building anything serious enough to address.

.

I’m going to be working with people ; individuals, teams, communities, leaders, not to add to their knowledge, but to subtract from their lives. To help them identify, name and dismantle the trauma-born things that are putting a ceiling on everything they’re trying to build.

.

Not because healing is a wellness luxury.

.

Because it is the precondition for everything else.

.

Because you cannot out-hustle a wound. You can only heal it.

.

Something is coming. Something I’ve been building quietly for a while now, that I will be introducing to you properly very soon.

(If you’re new here and want to understand who I am and where I’ve come from, start here → Knock Knock)

Kuti’s Substack

Knock Knock

For the first time ever, yesterday I did a successful OOTD video…

Read more

10 months ago · 111 likes · 65 comments · Kuti Priscilla Temiloluwa

.

For now, all I want to ask is this.

.

.

Which item on that list stopped you?

.

You know the one. The one you read and felt that tiny, uncomfortable thing in your chest that meant it was yours.

.

Tell me in the comments.

.

Or if you’re not a comments person, reply to this directly. (Yes, I read every single one.)

.

Because the conversation I’m building a space for starts with being able to name the thing.

.

And this, right here, is as good a place to start as any.

.

.

I love you very much.

.

And I’ll see you on the other side of honesty.

.

Kuku

.

.

If this resonated for you, please share it. WhatsApp status. IG. Wherever you live online. The person who needs this most is probably the one least likely to find it on their own.

About the Author

Kuti Priscilla Temiloluwa is a coach, writer and the founder of a forthcoming institution dedicated to the inner lives of Africa’s builders. She has been writing the GMs (her weekly newsletter on growth, identity and inner freedom) for over six years, and has built a community of over 1,000 readers. She is based in Nigeria.

Read more and subscribe at Kuti’s Substack.

I also watch as the clouds saunter across the sky in a beautiful enticing way. I once heard they taste like foam.

But now I think of it, how did whoever concluded the clouds taste like foam know it tastes like foam?

And beside me, I watch as a burning fire blazes high. I feel like that should be a tongue twister.

Burning fire blazes high.

Burning fire blazes high.

Burning fire blazes high.

Did I just invent a good tongue twister? I think I did.

I stare long enough at the fire, with no thoughts in mind, watching the flames play with each other.

For some reason, I am reminded of Punch.

Punch.

The viral baby monkey who caught the attention of the world because he was rejected by his birth mother. Shortly after birth.

He was captured being bullied and every time, he runs to clutch his warm orange Orangutan plushie.

In January, we had Penguin.

In February, we have Punch.

In March, kinda looking forward to what creature holds us by the neck.

Heads up, I have no lessons for today.

February has been quite interesting. When I was a teenager, I once said I would never take on a 9-5 role, part-time or full-time, remote or physical.

So every time I saw an open role, I huffed and puffed and refused to apply

I felt I wasn’t built for that kind of life. I felt I preferred a free setup.

But guess who said yes to a remote 9-5 role in February? Not just a remote role, but one with high-stakes, in a way. I’m afraid I love it too.

Now as an adult (*scrunches up nose), I have learnt sometimes, you “never say never.”

Life twists and turns in ways we never see possible and then leaves with some form of undeniable character development.

Or trauma. 💀

And it is in our best interests to adjust previous preferences to accommodate the pattern and path of the future we want to build out and live in.

Maintaining an adamant and firm stance does you no good. On certain instances of course.

Dang. That’s a lesson.

My mind has run out of things to say so we wrap it up here.

I hope your February has been good to you.

I leave you in the beautiful hands of Mia Wray’s “Not Enough.”

Yours in Magic,

Jescil “never-say-never” Richard.

The clock reads 02:04AM

It is one of those hours where darkness coats the land.

It is one of those nights where loud thoughts invade my mind. Certainly this is not the first of its kind to happen, but with this one, I decide to loudly pen my thoughts.

This piece shall be a wandering one.

As usual, we will find a point of convergence later

Or not.

In the distance, I hear the furious beatings of a drum.

I imagine people swaying side to side, stamping their feet repeatedly against the ground, as if in a bid to trample upon an unseen creature.

I wonder who would hold a party at this time of the night. It sounds like Fuji music.

As if on cue, a baby cries from somewhere. I think it is the neighbor’s new baby.

I think back on posts I have seen, making their way through the endless streams of content on Instagram, of babies being active at night and disturbing their poor parents.

Little devils.

Not the parents, I mean the kids.

Babies.

No, not devils with the horns or whatever. I mean. Oh boy, you know what I mean. Don’t stress the gooey mass in my head.

Where were we?

These past few days, I have thought of a lot of things.

Some inspired by my introspections, others inspired by outer information.

I keep thinking of 2025 Jescil Richard.

Reminds me of something I read, “January 2025 version of me is so different from January 2026 version of me.”

I can relate.

Or as the GenZs would say, ‘I can relate like madt.’

(GenZs say that?)

January 2025 Jescil was an hyper independent woman who frowned at any potential show of vulnerability or external help.

But now I think back and trace my growth trajectory. I am proud of her for deciding to step out

Proud of her for dipping her toes in the waters of the unknown and deciding, ‘this sucks, this is growth,’ then immersing herself in it.

I think if I could see 7-year old Jescil, I would give her a hug. A hug from a place of, “dang girl! You’re going to do so much better soon.”

I am resisting the urge to end this on a moral lesson.

I don’t want to.

I simply want to leave a thread of midnight musing.

My digital clock says the time is “02:09” now. I remember I started writing at 01:40AM. I can’t help but chuckle because I know I have an event to attend when the dawn hits the ground

Yet

Look at my eyeballs being wide open and roaming like a deer caught in headlights.

Alright

Moral lesson

You truly won’t realize how far you have grown unless you take a step back.

You ought to look back to look forward.

Another philosophical words, I should really run for a philosophical position. Anyone got a rec?

I feel the onset of sleep creeping closely and now I shall end this letter here.

Before you go gogogaga and hate yourself when you compare yourself to someone else’s growth. Perhaps a friend. Perhaps an enemy (?)

You should attempt to compare your previous version to your current version.

It would surprise thy lungs (in a good way I hope) to see how far you have come.

You would be surprised to see the wins you have absentmindedly pulled off but ignored due to the fact you were watching someone else’s trajectory.

Stop that.

And if you haven’t come “far”

Well.

*sighs.

*scratches hair.

*stares up the ceiling.

You will be fine.

We will all be fine.

As you were.

Jescil “look back” Richard.

P. S no. I’m not so cruel to leave you without a song. I know, I know, you almost got heartbroken. Here you go: Higher Ground by ODESZA, Naomi Wild

You’re welcome.

If you look really closely, most overnight success took a long time.

- Steve Jobs

From where I sit, I can see the overcast sky.

Grey, some patches an even deeper grey and they all seem to hold water. Stubborn water at that because it still hasn’t rained despite being overcast for the past 6-7 hours.

The entire morning length.

Sia is an absolute lovely singer. To Be Human is strumming not-so-softly while I sit jabbing at my laptop keypads.

The other time, I saw a 20 year who looked like she could pass for my older sister and I narrowed my eyes. Narrowed because I am older than that and another time, someone mistook me to be 15 and I didn’t know if to be pissed or excited.

It was a situation of

“Ouu, she said I look 15.”

And, “ehn? She said I look 15?!”

I guess it is a good thing. Albeit annoying sometimes, but still good.

Alright, now look around. Noticed anything different?

No, I don’t mean look around your house or current location. I meant this letter. Noticed anything different yet?

No?

Okay.

Previously, this letter was called “Alchemy Letters” and was named so because personally, I knew I was going through an intense phase of Alchemy. Of change.

Now returning here, months after and nearly a year after my break, so many things has changed.

And I decided this newsletter needed to reflect the new.

Including the name.

Yesterday, while sitting and tinkering around with the most suitable name for this new phase, I realized I simply wanted to now share something different.

And now

Drum rolls

More drumrolls

Another

Another

Alright, enough, my head is starting to ache from all the noise.

Yesterday, while tinkering with what to call this space now, I realized what I really want to share what it means to be a twenty-something writing her own story and navigating adulthood while building global relevance.

So Alchemy Letters is now “Jescil vs. Adulthood”

And this is what that looks like

A few days back, I was sitting on my father’s couch, typing away at my laptop, when I got a message from a client.

She had wanted me to help her put together a piece of written content for video idea she had in mind.

Of course, I said “sure” and got right to work. In less than 30 minutes, I wrote everything, edited it, and sent it over to her and she loved it (of course, she did. It’s Jescil Richard. What were you expecting?)

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After sending it over, something clicked in my head.

Less than 30 minutes was all it took to write a piece of content which was going out in front of thousands of eyeballs.

Anyone standing beside me at that moment would think, “pft, her job is easy. Is it not just to write? After all, she did it in less than 30 minutes.”

(I can hear The Cranberries singing Dreams through my eardrums. Absolutely lovely).

What they wouldn’t see was what I just delivered was a powerful blend of copywriting, psychology and persuasion, storytelling, narratives and more.

What they wouldn’t see, alas, was the past 5 years I had spent perfecting my craft.

They wouldn’t see the messy drafts in those 5 years I once thought, “what the heck is this, Jescil?”

They wouldn’t see the rigorous exercises I had to take while working with a mentor in order to get better at narratives.

They wouldn’t see the day I was asked to put together 3 campaigns in less than 24 hours. I have memories of sitting in a blue extra large limousine aka BRT, a piece of steel hurling through the expressway while my own fingertips hurled through the narrow screen of my then Infinix Smart 7 Plus.

In the same vein, I think of 8 lessons hidden in plain sight:

1. What looks like talent is compound interest on boredom, reps, and consistency. Those 30 minutes weren’t magic, they were the dividend from 5 years of deposits. People see output time, without understanding that the bill was paid years ago.

2. Your value is invisible until it’s undeniable. No one saw me typing frantically in that BRT, sweat on my back, phone screen burning my eyes. But my client saw the result.

3. If your work seems easy now, it means you survived the hard part and don’t you dare apologize for it. Every “messy draft” I once questioned taught me something and the ease you see now is the scar tissue that healed smooth.

4. Pressure is a good teacher. Nothing sharpens skill like being in a pressured spot to deliver or drown. Three campaigns in 24 hours taught me more than three months of comfort ever could.

5. Craft is built in unglamorous places. Not in perfect writing studios with aesthetic lighting, but on steel buses hurtling down expressways.

6. Confidence is earned privately and performed publicly. Those rigorous exercises with my mentor? The hours no one applauded? That’s where I learned to trust my own hand.

7. People will always misprice your effort. Let them. Someone watching me type for 30 minutes might think “easy.” Their misunderstanding is irrelevant but you owe it to yourself to price your results correctly born from the years before.

8. You are never paid for today. Your payment comes as a receipt for your past. So every invoice is for who you became, not what you just did. That client wasn’t paying for 30 minutes, she was paying for the writer who survived the BRT travail.

So dear gentle reader, (cue Bridgeton)

Here’s what I know about adulthood so far

Every ‘easy’ thing you do today is built on a thousand hard things you did yesterday. The question isn’t whether people see the work, it’s whether you remember it when you’re tempted to undercharge, undervalue, or shrink yourself small.

So play the long game. Always the long game.

I shall see you whenever I see you.

- Jescil “Adulthood” Richard.

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Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

— Anne Lamott

Beads of sweat are starting to form around my neck. I can feel the heat rising from beneath my skin and rising up to the surface. Like lava.

Is this what a mountain feels like before violently retching?

I think so.

I’m starting to look for an artificial source of breeze.

Something.

Anything.

Oh wait, I don’t tell you I’m currently plopped down on a stool in my mother’s kitchen? I see I left that part out.

Now why am i writing a letter from a hot kitchen?

Good question.

Because while dancing, in same kitchen, to “Good Grace” by Hillsong UNITED, I thought of writing a letter and wanted to wait till I was somewhere nicer.

Then I thought, “wait, don’t I have free will?”

Soooo here we are.

Also? There is a moral lesson there. The lesson of how we wait for the perfect conditions to do something. Anything. A thing.

I guess this is my way of saying if you wanted to, you would. I mean, sitting in a hot kitchen and yet writing?

Takes guts, mahn.

Or rather, takes skin.

Now, where were we? I am just as confused as you are.

May.

May 2025.

Like a cold bite of the wind on a dry harmattan morning, May was the month I fully realized writing Alchemy Letters had become boring. Repetitive. Tiring. Which defeated my personal reason for writing a newsletter.

Then I realized this happened because I was now writing from place of performance.

It had become some kind of routine. Something everyone seemed to do and in order to “stay at the top of mind,” I had to constantly write.

When writing (or anything) becomes about maintaining an image or “staying top of mind,” it transforms from expression into obligation. And obligations breed resentment.

So then, as days rolled into weeks, I realized I dreaded writing. I started to hate writing Alchemy Letters and this was coupled with the fact I was handling other things at that moment.

I knew it was time I put a pause.

Then came the “terrible” thoughts. What if everyone unsubscribes? Alchemists would forget you! You would lose traction!

Then I thought, “well? All hell be dammed. I would rather pause, and restart. Then keep going and eventually hate it all.”

So I did.

I put out the letter about Alchemy Letters going on a break. One month became three and three became six and well, here we are.

But guess what?

I have grown from 1300+ Alchemists to over 1800+ despite being quiet.

Sometimes the best thing you can do for something you love is to stop forcing it and let it breathe. Trust that if it matters, it’ll wait for you. And the people who matter will too.

When I eventually returned, I got heartfelt messages (you guys…making strong woman shed a tear).

AND

I got questions/enquiries on why I didn’t add a song to the end. See? Alchemists did not forget our old tradition despite our break.

(New neighbors, as a tradition, I add whatever music I am currently listening to at the end of every letter. Reports say I have the best taste in music 🙂‍↔️).

Have I lost traction? By the general understanding of open rates and the ugly definitions, most likely yes.

But after taking a much needed break, have I come to love writing these letters again? YES in all hundred thousands languages of the world.

You know me, I rarely spell out the key takeaway or as our Sunday School teachers would say, ‘moral lessons’ at the end of my letters (except for exceptions…)

So let’s do it this way, how about you write back to me about what you got from this episode?

About a lesson you pulled out in the midst of my writing?

I shall look forward to it.

I wrap up by leaving you with “Praise” by Brandon Lake, Elevation Worship, and Chris Brown (don’t be ridiculous. It’s not that Chris Brown).

Bonus song: “So so good” by Phil Wickham, Brandon Lake, Elevation Worship

Why does that question sound like the one a man says to clarify his relationship with a lady? Or wait, what do they say when they are in a situationship and want to clarify where they stand?

“What are we?”

Exactly, that’s the one.

*strokes invisible beards.

From where I sit, I can make out the silhouettes of trees. One, a mango tree with branches spread across the width and breadth of the sky. Or is it an avocado tree? I think so. Either way, it stands there, unbothered, dancing against the sky.

The sky.

Dark. Quiet. No stars tonight. Although, I did hear the moon is out. My mother believes every new moon is a signal of the new month coming. In this case, it is a signal of the new year coming.

The new year.

This evening, a few minutes ago, I thought about 2025. My aim was to mentally count how many things I did this year.

I did count some. Then a little annoying voice in my head chuckled to remind me perhaps I didn’t do enough.

Then like a flickering bulb in my head, more “things” I did this year came running in. I sat there, surprised at myself, at how much I’d forgotten I’d actually done. It did make me think of doing a “2025 Recap post on my Instagram.” Then I did a double-take.

A double-take.

Now, things are starting to get serious seeing as I just hunched forward to furiously type on my keyboard. As though I want to make the end serious.

The end.

The end of 2025 and as much as we cannot help it, we are greeted across the face with numerous images and carousels and reels and everything, of how 2025 went.

It is certainly beautiful to watch. I also know some would feel bad about how 2025 went. And I am certainly not here to smooth talk you, or attempt to butter up your wound.

If you did well in 2025, glorayyyyy!

*furiously shakes a church tambourine for you.

If you also did not do well in 2025, glorayyyyyy!

*furiously shakes another church tambourine for you.

I personally think we have gone past the era of pushing people’s butts in order to get them to create the life they so desire. We’re all adults here, allegedly.

If you await someone to tell you when to move, when to act, when to do things, I have nothing to say to thee. My nose is scrunched up against thee.

If anything, at this year’s ending, I invite you to be honest with yourself. Brutally honest, if you can stomach it.

• Did you do well?

• Did you not do well?

• Were there things out of your control you should have let go?

• Were there things you should have held on tighter to?

• Did you genuinely try your best?

• Should you have said no’s more?

• Should you have said more yes’s?

• Should you have confessed to your crush? (my advice is no, by the way, don’t do it for the plot. Actually, now I think about it. DO IT FOR THE PLOT! Get served one more breakfast before 2025 ends).

• Should you have extended more grace to yourself?

• Should you have been harder on yourself?

• Should you have been more easier on yourself?

I think just as much as we want to see the boxes ticked and sit with our losses, allow yourself to also feel the win. Feel the small victories. The moments you showed up when you didn’t want to. The times you chose yourself.

You know what?

Do what you want to do.

The Lord is with thee.

Talking about doing what you want to do, here am I taking my own advice. I wondered if I should write a newsletter today, or tomorrow, or next tomorrow.

I certainly knew I didn’t want to write on January 1st. It feels too much of a “yay! New year, new letter, new restart.” It feels performative, not me.

No.

Should I wait till tomorrow morning?

Should I wait till Monday?

Should I wait till Wednesday?

It’s Saturday and everyone is most likely scrolling on Instagram, giggling at a TikTok video, reading a book, everything everything.

So I did what I wanted to do.

I wrote.

Moral lesson as we wrap up the year: do what you want in 2026.

Work hard. Or not.

Write a book. Or not.

Hit 8-figures. Or not.

Fall in love. Or not.

Rather than living by someone else’s timeline, someone else’s definition of success, someone else’s expectations

Ask yourself, what do YOU want in 2026? Then like a maniac, do it. After all, “a man on a mission needs no permission from anyone including himself.”

Dang, I should be a philosopher.

If you’re new here, welcome to the chaos! I write what I want. And as we restart this letter, I can’t promise you life-changing letters. I can only promise you chaotic letters that change your perspective.(…)

In a good way.

Or a bad way.

You’ll figure out the rest as we go.

And to answer the burning question at the back of your mind, is Alchemy Letters returning? Is this what people call a return? I think it is then. I think Alchemy Letters is officially back.

I’ll see you when I see you.

As you were.

Jescil “DO WHAT YOU WANT” Richard.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

... for two months.

You will not receive any letters for the next two months.

I know.

Blunt.

So soft landing. No cajoling. No warning.

I did not want to hold back what was due and needed to let you know instead of beating around the bush and prolonging our heartbreak.

A collective heartbreak.

For nearly two years, I have consistently written these letters to you

In transit.

In my room.

In the living room.

At school.

At hostel.

Ears plugged in.

Head kept down.

Fingers flying across my screen.

Laptop.

Phone.

I'm sure I would use the TV if I could. But of course, pointless and stressful. Perhaps Telepathy? A bit boring after repeatedly being used. Except used in high stake scenarios.

I can't think of any right now so we shall skip examples.

But

Painstakingly writing to you as promised. To turn you from LEAD to GOLD.

Culling from my experience and thought processes and learnings gained from the external.

But now, I realised more than anything, I needed to take a break and step back a bit.

And instead of suddenly going radio silence, it made more sense to me to let you know what was about to happen.

I am not uncultured.

And so Alchemist, here we draw the curtains for the next two months.

Am I worried about my open rates? Yes.

Am I worried it might not be easy to get back all your attention? Yes.

Am I worried I should not do this? Yes.

But rather than holding on, it's better I take a step back now.

After all, it was said, we take steps back in order to move forward.

I only ask

Can you share your favorite Alchemy Letter? And let me know? It would make my heart immensely warm.

You can always read back on old letters when you miss my words.

Feel free to always write back to me when reading old letters or when you have news to share, I will always respond.

I leave you with Please by Chelsea Cutler and Jeremy Zucker.

Talk soon, Alchemist

⚗️

Jescil "step back" Richard

We begin with a riddle:

If a man works hard, shows up daily, journals like a monk, prays like a prophet, and still does not get the result he desires, did he really fail?

Or was he in the wrong scene of the movie called life?

While you ponder upon those words, we began with something else.

Lana Del Rey is leading the charge with Emily

Three different topics.

Yet we will find a point of convergence. One melting into the other, like an orchestra.

Now

Welcome to the ironic theatre of existence. Where input does not always equal output, and yet, woe unto him that doeth nothing, saying, “What shall be shall be.” (slothful servant, innit?)

See, the game of life is funny.

You plant a seed and expect mangoes. But it rains too much and you get nothing.

Then three years later, your mango sprouts in another man’s backyard. And he thanks God for his "harvest."

Wicked.

But the deeper truth I have learned after many episodes of frustration and false enlightenment:

You control the input.

And the output?

Well.

Sprinkle hard work ft smartness ft leverage ft a host of others I refuse to include here and there, output rises up to meet the input. Or more.

Life is a cocktail of grind and grace.

You put in effort because effort is noble.

Because showing up changes you, even when it does not change your outcome. Yet.

But you also hold the paradox.

That even with your best attempts, the result is often out of your hands. Sometimes fate, or that one thing we call timing, needs to align.

Divine jazz.

You play your notes yet life freestyles on top.

Lorde strolled in softly with Ribs

Listen carefully as though I am about to impart a secret because I might be doing just that.

Your job is not to predict that. Your job is to keep playing.

Some days, you are David with a sling.

Other days, you are not.

Either way, the story unfolds.

And if your season resembles Job without the boils: Broke, broken, and surrounded by “advisers”

Know it is part of the path.

You are not cursed.

You are being refined.

You see, life irony is also its beauty.

You might not always get what you want.

But somehow, you always get what you need.

BUT

If you are like me, who is delusional enough to know that we will get what we want

Then cheers to us 🥂

Jescil "Irony" Richard

⚗️

PS: What part of your life feels ironic right now? Reply and tell me. I will personally respond to all your replies.

Forward this letter to someone who needs to hear it. Be their help.

-

You heard the news. On the 26th of April, we made insane magic. Nearly two weeks later, I still get texts from attendees.

AlchemyCon was that hot.

Shout-out to our sponsors

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Want to bring your business to life on the internet? Go speak to Nextcone.

And guess what? Sneaking you in backend. Attendees get 30% off all NextCone services from now till May 30th.

You said you were going to make the best out of 2025, this is your golden chance. Will you take it?

And we close off with another hit in Lagos.

TEDxCMUL is happening on May 10, 2025

Mark your calendars.

Clear your schedule.

Ready yourself

An experience of bold ideas, brilliant minds, and powerful conversations.

Ready to experience it?

Alchemists, courtesy of this community, you get tickets at slashed prices for only a limited time.

Here:

TEDxCMUL team.

Text the team and tell them you're from Jescil Richard's community.

PPS What is your answer to the riddle in the beginning of this letter?

Before we dive into deeper waters, I shall let you in on what has been happening with AlchemyCon.

After all, this is BY US and FOR US.

Last week, an Alchemist got a ticket for his woman. I know he will see this. In his words, "so she can represent us," since he would be absent on the D-Day

You people are making my anti-romance self become less anti. Tsk.

*narrows eyes.

Go secure a ticket to AlchemyCon here: https://bit.ly/alchemycontickets

Onto deep waters

You know what?

I pride myself in being self aware.

I got intentional about building my self awareness ever since last year (another interesting story on its own) and the results have paid off

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Slow dancing to gavn! Static and Lightning

I cannot remember what the trigger situation was but I found myself thinking

"Why do I struggle with commitment in the long run?"

I want to do a different deeper dive into how this goes on to affect ALL aspects of your life. We will do it in the next letter. Yes?

Now

With "allegedly" big tasks, I find it interesting to work on

And with the seemingly little things, which turn out to be the genetic makeup of the bigger things, I tend to lose interest.

Side gist, I started using biological words ever since I read about Colossal Biosciences bringing back the dire wolf which had been extincted for over 10,000 years.

A part of me is excited

No, scratch that. The whole part of me is excited because I have been in love with wolves for as long as I remember.

If not fren, why fren shaped?

Also excited because this is a groundbreaking feat.

I hear they plan to bring back the wooly mammoth 🦣

Anyways

Since the big tasks are made up of the small tasks, I was deliberately sabotaging myself under the guise of wanting to do bigger things.

I was hiding under the guise of "I am a spontaneous person."

I am.

I tend to rebel under rigidly rigid structures.

But I have come to understand creativity thrives under constraints. Now, this means more than one thing but for the message I am passing across, I will let it explain itself.

(Creativity thriving under constraints does not mean boxing yourself. I will let you figure this out on your own. Feel free to share your understanding).

So I was shooting myself in the leg by "choosing to be free."

The freedom came at an indirect cost of clipping my wings.

I was living on dopamine spikes instead of dopamine sustenance.

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Hozier is up with Almost.

The "I am a spontaneous person" sounds aesthetically pleasing but the foundation is rooted in a deep lack of commitment.

Sounds familiar, innit?

It took a deep dive into myself to undercover what was truly happening

The same deep dive that will happen at AlchemyCon

Go get a ticket here: https://bit.ly/alchemycontickets

Don't deliberately sabotage yourself by refusing to register for AlchemyCon.

Now

The idea of "you will not be creative if you don't allow yourself to be free" is now a double edge sword

One slashing everything on sight if not handled carefully.

The next time you tell yourself, "I am a spontaneous person," ask yourself if you are truly spontaneous or simply hiding under the guise of lack of commitment.

READ THAT AGAIN

No rush.

Be spontaneous. By all means.

But be structured.

Again, creativity thrives in constraints. No, I will not explain.

You need the structures more than you think you do, especially if you are spontaneous as I am, lest you struggle to commit to things.

Setting structures around your spontaneity will allow your spontaneity to thrive.

And make sure you do not miss AlchemyCon

Again

Do not deliberately sabotage yourself by sitting AlchemyCon out

Go grab a

ticket here: https://bit.ly/alchemycontickets

If you have an excuse, it means you are not ready for AlchemyCon.

And that's fine. Let the ‘ready’ ones come up hitherto.

Talk soon.

Xiao ⚗️

Jescil "Sabotage" Richard.

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It was supposed to be a networking event with "connections."

And when I left? The only connection I made was with the Wi-Fi. Wait, did I even use their Wi-Fi?

No. Mbanu. And there again, nothing to show for my networking event.

At a point in time, I decided I wasn't going to attend any event anymore EXCEPT I was sure of the calibre of people in attendence and I was sure of the intimacy of the conference.

Fast forward to 2024.

Oh wait, we were still talking about 2024.

I remember lying on the bed, legs on the window sill, typing away at my phone. It was late at night.

I remember seeing another conference advertisement and rolling my eyes because I knew this, again, like every other one, would be forgotten in a few days. Or hours.

The networking? Gone with the wind.

But then I thought, why not create something you want to see?

I have always lived by the philosophy of "If you want something and cannot find it, create it. Chances are people out there need it too."

So I did.

And AlchemyCon was born. Born from the need to see discussions that move the needle.

Because, Alchemist, in my growth journey (finances, emotions, etc), I found out that the things that move the needle are not the surface level things. Not the things flying all around.

Things peculiar to the 1% of the 1%

How I stepped into my authentic self? It came from a conversation of depth with a mentor.

How I made my first 6 figures? Same thing.

The things that shifted my mindset and lifestyle and opened doors of collaboration as a creative and an entrepreneur? Same. Thing.

The connections I have been able to build? Depth and hidden from the public eye.

I can look back at my life and trace my growth trajectory. It never happened from surface-level regurgitated conversations. NEVER.

And this is the same narrative I am bringing to AlchemyCon.

There are rooms that change you.

You walk in uncertain, weighed down by questions.

You walk out clear, bold, and ready.

AlchemyCon is that room.

You have been on the waitlist and as a part of this community, it’s time. You get access before the main public.

Your early access is here:

🎟 Tickets: ₦5,000 (10 slots before public release).
🎟 VIP Tickets: ₦15,000 (5 slots before public release).
🎟 A space where creatives & entrepreneurs have real, breakthrough conversations.
🎟 No fluff. No surface-level talk. Just clarity, connection, and growth.

The best rooms aren’t the loudest. They’re the ones where something clicks inside you.

This is your chance to be in one of them.

🔗 Get Your Ticket: bit.ly/alchemycontickets

To give you some context, AlchemyCon is backed by Selar with over 300,000 audience. Emails and Social media accounts altogether.

One of our co-hosts has a pull of over 50k audience on IG.

Our main community on Whatsapp has almost 100 Alchemists ready for AlchemyCon.

You might want to act fast before this gets to the public. AlchemyCon is about intimacy, exclusivity, and transformation.

If you are serious about getting into a room with people of depth (speakers + attendees), serious about your growth in 2025. ACT NOW.

You know what we say. Talk Does Not Cook Rice.

Get your ticket here: bit.ly/alchemycontickets

See you inside.

Dancing to The One by Jorja Smith.

Xiao

Jescil “AlchemyCon” Richard.

If you can see this, it means this was meant to find you.

Research say Sundays are days when people least open their emails.

Now¹

Why in blue tarnations is the sun angry? Who pissed it? Because explain to me why sitting in your house without electricity feels like sitting in an oven.

There must be an hidden explanation somewhere.

Last time I wrote about the heatwave for my school project, it wasn't this severe.

It has been over a month since I wrote to you. I got complimented on my music taste and I remember responding with "a lot can change in 30 days."

A lot can change in 30 days.

And in my case, it has.

Not only 30 days, but the past 4 months has been an interesting one in regards to my emotional growth.

This morning, I found myself thinking about a recent event and how I had reacted differently to it.

My reaction to it would have been different in the past.

Yet, here I was, 4 months later wth a healthier emotional version of myself.

In my early growth journey, I was more focused on my mind growth. This was because I understood growth takes root first in the mind.

But in pursuit of it, I forgot just how powerful our emotional health can be when healed. When healthy. When secured.

And as as if life knew it was time for me to work on it, it threw several situations my way.

Also, the beautiful thing with self awareness is the fact that it is not only limited to your mind. It encompasses every other aspect of yourself.

I saw it play out in this journey nd found myself beaming.

Glad I built it earlier on.

Now²

You remember the little stunt we pulled off last month? I On growing Alchemy Letters to 3000 Alchemists?

I did think I was crazy. Call me crazy. LMAO. And boy! Am I glad I have a community of Alchemists who are not scared to do and attempt to do the unimaginable.

But you remember my reason, right?

For sponsorship?

For an event I was putting together?

Aye. It is ready now.

Alchemists, I officially give you

ALCHEMYCON

AlchemyCon is about conversations of depth and transformation around creativity and entrepreneurship.

In my creative and a little bit of entrepreneurial journey, I have come to understand that the real things

The things that move the needles are never open to the masses.

The stuff thing flying around are surface level.

Regurgitated rubbish.

And it pisses me off.

Theose who desperately need to hear those words that pull them to take action, cannot.

Leaving them trapped in the same circle.

So I spoke with a couple of friends, shared my dream, and AlchemyCon was born.

This is a gathering of the 1% of the 1%

From people who have walked the talk.

People who understand what it is to be crazy and creative and all.

AlchemyCon 2025 will be happening in LAGOS on April. Intimate Exclusive Transformative. Only 20-50 people.

I look forward to the years when AlchemyCon will become a global conference, even held as a tour in other countries.

Then drawing foreigners to the Nigerian soil.

If you are tired of surface-level conversations

Tired of being trapped in the same spot

Tired of confusion and need clarity

Want to be in a room with Alchemists

Want to meet and real network the right way with people who are like you (Creators Creatives Entrepreneurs)

This is the room you should be in

Join the waitlist here: WAITLIST

Alchemist, I only need one favour from you

I need you to share the waitlist link to whoever you know stays in Lagos and should or would love to be a part of AlchemyCon.

Here's the link again: WAITLIST

My heart says thank you.

Speak soon.

Jescil "AlchemyCon" Richard.

P. S bold of you to assume I won't add a song to this episode. Bold of you.

Here: When The Party Ends.