Trust and believe the man of steel can handle anything.

Superman is the superhero who made us dream as children. We wanted to fly, to be indestructible, to have senses sharp enough to hear a whisper from a mile away. We wanted to be super. I always identified more with Bruce Wayne, Batman came with a dose of humanity that made the fantasy feel achievable. You could tell yourself: if I were a billionaire, I would make real changes for my city, my country. As an adult, Superman starts to get on your nerves a little. He is too perfect. Too good, even when you wish he weren’t. But deep down, you are still fascinated by him. Still impressed.

When I wrote It Is Not That Heavy, I was trying to say how much I carry without sounding like I was asking for pity, but also putting out a bat signal. A quiet call for help.

This week, I was chatting with a friend last week. She asked how I was doing. I told her I was sad. That the loneliness from the relocation had already started creeping in, and I hadn’t even finished week one. I mentioned how much I missed home. How happy I was about a programme I had been directing, its implementation, though rocky, looked remarkable from where I now sit. But I am missing out on things I helped build and grow. I am not present for crucial moments in the lives of people I care about. I am not there to hug, to hold hands, to show up when my people are going through it. And no one is here for me in that way yet, not where I am, not right now.

She replied: “Maybe they probably think you’re also having fun.”

That one sentence tilted me over the edge. There I was, hurting, lonely, and somewhere out there, people might be looking at my photos, my silence, and assuming I had it all together.

Then it hit me: every person who has ever relocated has gone through exactly this. Friends I have watched go through it, I was the one telling them to live where they are. To stop trying to live in two places at once, because wanting both will split you in half and stop you from progressing. I hated that I already knew this. I hated that I understood it before I even had time to feel it properly.

I derive my strength from serving people. From being present, not as a servant, but as a guide. Being far from the people I held close, those I mentored, those I pushed and protected, it felt like a piece of me got ripped out. Not gently. Not like a page torn carefully from a notebook. More like a plane cut in half mid-air, and I got pulled out of my seat roughly and without warning.

The silence crept in again, but this time it was all around me. Everything inside me is loud. It feels like I am being torn in two different directions. Like a heartbreak met an existential crisis, and the two of them decided to become anxious together before presenting their pitch on relationships.

This is why long-distance anything is so hard. I am one week in and already feeling all of this. One week, and I can already sense the weight of a year or two of it. It requires something fierce and deliberate to survive. And if you care for more than one person across that distance, know it will tear further. It will rip deeper.

The Superman story came back to me. Atlas carrying the heavens with every ounce of his strength. Superman steps in, takes the load for a day, and even he struggles with it. But the influence Superman has built means that while he holds the sky, others are holding each other. The world keeps going. People look out.

I hope the people I left back home are doing that, looking out for each other. Not being individualistic. Not being selfish. Not lying to each other about how they are doing. From where I am, the solitude has become a wide, lonely field. A field where I wish for more calls, more pictures, more voice notes sent without occasion. A field where part of me still wants to be involved, still present, still in the middle of everything I helped grow.

Everything in me is screaming to delete my socials, go quiet, and focus only on what brought me here.

But I made a promise to a friend. I promised my mentor I would not let the world turn me cold, that no matter how hard it gets, I would keep my warmth. So I write this as a follow-up. It got heavy enough that I almost dropped it. Heavy enough that I need you to know: people who are abroad are not choosing to be distant. They are not too busy by accident. I have been here one week, and I can already tell you, I am strong, but not strong enough to make this look easy.

If life back home feels like it is moving without me, it is because it is. The time differences, the new responsibilities, the shifting priorities. Very few people will manage to keep up, and the rest will see me when I visit. That is a painful truth, and it is still the truth.

I am no Superman. But I carry it with grace.

It will take longer to break me. It will take more than distance to make me believe people don’t love me, don’t wish well for me, don’t hold me in their prayers. I know I am held, even from here.

I am writing this because the voices in my head are loud tonight, and trying to silence them alone is proving harder than I expected. I cannot wait to feel reassured, acknowledged, loved from close range again. To be of service again. Until then, I will swim against the waves with everything I have, and try not to go under.

I will carry the heavens. I will pave the way for those who come after me, and make it easier for them to land.

I tried multiple times. I kept failing.

I set the timer because I genuinely wanted to decompress. To forget about things, even briefly. I was sitting in a park, and I wanted to enjoy the view, the trees, the fields, the quiet beauty of it all. But I kept checking my phone to see how much time had passed. Twenty minutes felt impossibly long when I was trying to do nothing but exist. And yet I know twenty minutes disappears instantly when I am trying to catch one more episode before bed.

A task so simple. Strangely so hard.

Did this mean I was addicted to my phone? That it had become an extension of my arm, an extension of me? Or was it something else? The relocation. Missing everyone back home. Not wanting to miss a message before they went to sleep. Also needing to save my battery because I had to make it back to the apartment before it died on me.

I had a whole park to myself. I had notebooks, pens, pencils. I could have written my next piece, started drawing, gone for a longer walk, meditated under a tree. Instead, I gave myself the task of doing completely nothing. I sat on a bench and stared at everything and anything.

Each minute, my thoughts got louder.

What if someone comes and asks why I have been sitting here this long? Checks phone. Why would anyone ask that? I am literally just sitting down. What if my battery dies? How do I get back to the apartment? Checks phone. Are my people back home okay? Does the time difference kill relationships slowly? How many times do you reach out before you quietly stop trying? Checks phone.

Is it insecurity? Loneliness? Or just plain addiction, and I need to admit I don’t know how to simply be?

But I do have a life. I chose that bench because the scenery was refreshing and peaceful, serene in a way that felt almost unfair. Each time I closed my eyes, I could feel myself slowly loosening up. The breeze was just right, the sun wasn’t burning, and the weather was cooperating with the view like they had arranged it together.

I checked my phone again. No texts. My three most important people were unavailable. So all I had was myself.

Anyone who has read anything I have written knows I do not run out of things to think about. Going against that current was a real challenge. I usually manage my thoughts by doing, by occupying myself with something, anything. Doing nothing felt like trying to forcefully shut down a laptop while twenty programmes were still running in the background. My internal servers kept asking: Are you sure you want to shut down? And I kept pressing yes, each time a little harder than the last.

My piece on Edge of Tomorrow made me realise how much I operate on autopilot. When I lock in, I lock in completely, to the point where I forget about myself and just keep going, even when I am running on auxiliary power. In the last six years, I have not really taken care of myself in any sustained way. Every time I try, it falls short, because I keep putting people, work, family, and events ahead of myself. Then I wake up and do it all over again.

My mental health could be in the trenches. My bank account staring back at me like, "Sir, what exactly are we doing?” And you would still find me showing up, dividing myself into seven pieces to help and support everyone but myself. Am I Jesus? No. Do I want his job? Absolutely not. I genuinely do not mind doing what I do, for myself and for others. What I do mind is being consistently unavailable to myself.

It is being anxious about a message that came in sixty seconds ago. It is not doing what I said I would do. It is being physically present in a room while being entirely somewhere else.

I wanted to do nothing as a way to step out of the daily noise, the problems, the fires, the crises, the endless cycle of being there for everyone except myself. And even then, I could not fully manage it. But it did show me that I needed to. That I have to carve out time, every week, to sit somewhere without my phone and let the timer run without peeking. An hour, eventually. Away from devices, away from the running thoughts, away from the version of me that is always on.

Just breathing. Touching grass. Being one with the view.

Free self-therapy. No appointment needed.

In my 12 years of work experience, I finally learned this year which type of person I am. I am a builder. I have the patience and grit to move through several economic recessions, unemployment more than once, a pandemic, a work ethic shift, and a complete disruption of how work is structured (come ask me what I mean by that last one if it doesn’t land).

Not everyone can function inside an organisation with no structure, no budget, and no established work ethic. It takes a specific type of person to go through all of that with purpose intact. A purpose to build it up into the vision it was tasked with becoming.

An enforcer is someone who comes to reinforce what already exists. They work best with structure, a clear vision, a budget, and a functioning team. Don’t ask them to build from scratch or figure things out on the fly; ask them to take something on and grow it. Don’t ask them to develop strategy from zero; ask them to execute and sustain it. An enforcer in the wrong environment is not a failure; they are simply a precision tool being used for the wrong job.

A builder, on the other hand, will sacrifice time and income for a smaller salary with the conviction that the work will compound. They are not motivated by money or awards; they are motivated by impact and change. They want to sit down ten years from now and say: I built this shit, brick by brick, and nobody can tear it down.

An enforcer is motivated by growth and momentum. They are pushers, multipliers. They don’t linger; they absorb, deliver exceptionally, and move on to the next challenge. A builder does not mind making many mistakes as long as those mistakes are pointing toward something greater. An enforcer wants as few mistakes as possible, because a clean track record is part of how they get to the next phase of their plan. Neither approach is wrong. They are just built for different terrains.

When I look back at the people I have mentored and coached, and the output of their work, I am genuinely proud. I am grateful for the opportunities I have created, for myself and for others, and I want to keep that door open. More than that, I want to expand it. I want to build a longer bridge with a wider reach. I want to sit down when I am old and say: look at this, this is my empire. An empire of opportunities. Because for every door slammed in my face, every “unfortunately”, every time I got let go, I want to build something broad enough and solid enough to outlast every one of those moments.

It is difficult for me to picture myself somewhere purely for the sake of reinforcing its existing structure. I want to add to it. I want to build a west wing. I want to branch out, create new avenues, launch programs under that umbrella that did not exist before I arrived.

Now, leadership is not for everyone, and that is not a criticism. Everyone has their own way of leading and contributing. There is nothing wrong with being an enforcer who moves through organisations every two to three years. There is also nothing wrong with staying somewhere for fifteen years. What I find harder to justify is doing either without purpose or intention to grow. You cannot jump from organisation to organisation and remain on the same level each time. You cannot stay in one place for fifteen years and watch three generations of coordinators move past you while your title stays the same. That is not loyalty; that is stagnation wearing a familiar face.

Understanding which type you are, or which type you want to become, will save you enormous amounts of time and redirect your energy toward the growth that actually fits you. The skills I am building now are long-term because I want to grow specifically into Human Resource Development. Your path might call for a short-term skill, a certificate rather than a degree, a two-year sprint rather than a decade-long investment. And to be clear, you can be both a builder and an enforcer at different points in your life. It is just not easy to be both at the same time. It requires a level of discipline that allows you to build, grow, sustain, and then walk away, voluntarily, with intention, onto the next thing.

The danger is in misidentifying yourself. The builder who takes an enforcer role will feel caged within six months, restless, underused, quietly resentful of a structure they were never meant to just maintain. The enforcer who takes a builder role will feel exposed and overwhelmed, handed a blank page when what they needed was a chapter already written. Knowing which one you are is not about limiting yourself; it is about saving yourself from years of friction that was never yours to carry in the first place.

So before you take the next role, before you say yes to the next opportunity or no to the one sitting in your inbox right now, ask yourself honestly: am I being asked to build, or am I being asked to enforce? And more importantly, which one do I actually have in me right now, in this season of my life? The answer to that question is worth more than the salary attached to the offer. Choose accordingly.

So which one are you?

Who could I explain that to in one go without them calling an asylum or trying to slap some sense into me? What would I do to get myself out of it? How many times would it take before I actually accepted that I was reliving the same day, that it wasn’t a dream, that I wasn’t losing my mind? So many questions for just a movie. Or is it just a movie?

Then I looked at the way most of us move through life. We say we don’t want to live with regret. We want excitement, wonder, adventure, places visited, things done, a death that comes old and satisfied, with a life well lived behind us. And yet, for most of us, the reality is a dull and simple loop. Same sauce, just reheated. Wake up, go to work, come home, sleep, repeat. Those who manage to spice it up with a weekend getaway or a trip abroad still come back to the same routine. So we spend our days consuming things that promise to help us escape that routine, only to find ourselves reinforcing it more efficiently. The influencers and models who tried to sell an alternative lifestyle eventually showed us that content creation is still work, that they still have to lock in and grind to afford those trips and those Shein packages that keep arriving on camera.

We spend our days trying not to be stuck in a loop while simultaneously living in one. We perform a better life for the world to see. We take care of our bodies, our minds, our image, but who is it actually for? Who are we doing it for?

In the film, Tom Cruise’s character starts entirely selfish. He has no problem advocating for a war he would never willingly join himself. When he gets drafted, he tries to bribe his way out. When that fails, he tries to escape. And then he dies, over and over, in so many ways that, at some point, something shifts. He starts learning. He starts understanding what to do and what not to do, which carriers to hide under and which ones to avoid. He finds an ally. And together, with a plan and a direction, they work their way out of the loop.

The reminder is this: operating without a plan, without allies, without destination or ambition or discipline, will keep you exactly where you are. Dying the same death on repeat and calling it living.

The honest question is not whether you are stuck in a loop. You are. We all are, to some degree. The real question is whether your loop is building something or just burning time. Tom did not escape by wishing the day would change. He escaped by changing what he did inside it, by being intentional, by learning from every failure instead of just surviving it, by choosing who he let into his corner.

I have looked at my own loop recently. The same conversations I keep having with myself. The same habits I keep promising to fix. The same version of discipline I keep starting from scratch. And I realised that the loop does not break on its own; you have to decide, at some point, that you have died enough times in the same way to finally try something different. That the definition of madness is not just doing the same thing expecting different results; it is doing it while pretending you are not doing it.

Find your ally. Build your plan. Learn from the version of yourself that kept getting it wrong instead of burying them. The loop only ends when you stop surviving the day and start actually living it, with intention, with people who want to see you make it out, and with enough self-awareness to know which door not to walk through again. Tomorrow is coming either way. The question is what you are going to do differently inside it.

We felt alive.
We were living life.
We were feeling right.

The nightlife felt endless,
Every night we were out,
dressed up for no occasion
other than the fact that we were young
And the city was ours after dark.

We bought drinks, tickets, and food
With money we did not have.
We got drunk, sang our hearts out,
danced badly and beautifully
at the exact same time.

Every weekend was
Cheers to the freaking weekend.

Some of us had classes to go to.
Some of us had work to go to.
Some of us had both.
And we still made it work,
without even thinking
it would all be over one day.

The hangovers were deadlier.
The heartbreaks were lethal.
But we had one job and one job only:

Live your day like it’s your last.

Before you deny this,
let me jog your memory.
Let me take you back.

It was normal to chug a beer,
not any beer.
Mutzig.
Cold, bitter, and somehow perfect
at 1 am with the whole table laughing
about nothing in particular.

We had time for work,
for movies,
for the pool on a Sunday,
for class on a Monday,
and somehow still for the club,
only to go home at 4 am
and do it all over again
the very next day.

We danced to One Dance.
We rapped every word of No Problem.
We sang to each other
that we weren’t going to do things For Free.
Bangers on bangers on bangers.

Summer had heat,
but we brought in the heater.

We fell in love, real love,
stupid love, love that made no sense
and felt like everything.
We made friends we swore we’d keep forever.
We lost some we thought we never would.

Some started that year as one thing
and ended it entirely as another.
That is what summers do.
That is what being alive does.

All Summer Sixteen included everything.
The mess, the magic, the morning afters.
The group chats that never went quiet.
The plans that fell apart and became better stories.
The version of yourself you were still becoming.

All Summer Sixteen was ten years ago.

Ten years.

We have aged.
We have married.
We have birthed.
We have divorced.
We have moved on, moved away, moved forward
into lives we could not have imagined
at 4 am outside that club,
laughing at nothing,
feeling like everything.

And that is life.

But here is what I want you to remember:
It was not the summer that was hitting.

It was the people.
It was the places you chose to go.
It was the vibes, the activities,
the bonds you built between bad decisions
and good music.

It was you.
Living life.
Fully, recklessly, beautifully present.

So don’t wait for another Summer Sixteen.
Don’t wait for the perfect season,
the right amount of money,
the ideal version of yourself.

The sun is out.

Go live.

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I have thought about it more than people might expect from someone who laughs as easily as I do. Not with fear, exactly, more with the quiet awareness that every day I wake up is a day I was not guaranteed. I have sat with that thought long enough that it no longer unsettles me. It clarifies things.

So when I am gone, and I will go, we all will, tell them the truth.

Tell them about my pettiness. Tell them about the times I could hold a grudge so quietly you wouldn’t even know I was holding it, until one day I simply stopped showing up. Tell them about my sharp tongue, how I could say something in ten words that would take someone else a full paragraph to recover from. Tell them about my coldness and how I could make a room feel smaller just by going quiet in it.

Tell them about the lies. The small ones I told to avoid conflict, and the bigger ones I told myself to avoid the truth. Tell them about the manipulations I didn’t always recognise as manipulations until I was older and honest enough to name them. Tell them about the hurt I put people through, not always intentionally, but hurt is hurt regardless of the intention behind it.

Tell them I was no angel.

And then, tell them the rest.

Tell them about how I always wanted to be kind. How, even when I failed at it, the wanting was real. Tell them about how I took accountability for my mistakes, not always quickly, not always gracefully, but I got there. Tell them about the person who would sit with someone at their lowest and mean every word he said. Tell them about the one who remembered the small things, the details people mentioned once and assumed no one was listening to.

Tell them I cried. That I bled. That I got lonely in rooms full of people and didn’t always know how to say so. Tell them I was afraid of the dark, not just the literal kind, but the kind that settles in when everything goes quiet and your thoughts get loud. Tell them I carried more than I showed, and that carrying it well was both my strength and the thing that cost me the most.

Tell them I lived knowing any day could be my last, not as a depression thing, but as a reason to mean what I said and go after what I wanted. Tell them I approached life with a grain of salt and a full heart. Tell them I had regrets, a few, and that I learned more from my wrongdoings than from anything I got right on the first try.

Tell them I was content. Not always happy, content. There is a difference, and I learned it the hard way.

Tell them I was, will be, and will remain the only me that is me.

There is only one of me. And maybe that is where I should have focused more, for longer, earlier. Not on who I needed to please. Not on whose approval I was quietly auditioning for. Not on whose attention I was rearranging myself to get. On me. On what I actually needed, what I actually wanted, what I was actually worth, outside of what I could do for everyone else.

I needed rest. Real rest, not the kind you steal between obligations, but the kind where you put everything down and breathe without guilt. No capitalism, no inherited anxiety, no insecurity-driven system should have been able to take that from me. I should have asked for what was mine sooner. I should have fought for it louder. I should have looked at how far I had come and celebrated it, instead of immediately scanning the distance still left to go.

When I am gone, I do not want strangers speaking at my funeral because they met me once when I was thirteen and decided I seemed like a good, innocent boy. I was never just that. Honour me as I lived. Make the insensitive jokes, I would have made them first. Play the songs I played too loud. Watch the films I quoted too often. Eat the food I loved without apology. Do everything I did, and enjoy it. Enjoy it fully, because once they put me in the ground, none of it will reach me anymore. So enjoy it for yourself. That is what I would have wanted.

But here is the thing, and this is the part that matters most:

Don’t wait.

Don’t wait until I am gone to say it. Don’t save the kindness for a eulogy. Don’t hold the availability for a vigil. Say it while I am still here. Find time to be with me while I am still breathing. A call. A drive-by hug. A date, a trip, a meal, anything. Anything for us to be in the same place at the same time, to look each other in the eye, to laugh about something small and mean it completely.

We keep saving the good stuff for after. The speeches, the visits, the I should have told you more. But after is not guaranteed for either of us.

I am still here. So are you.

Let’s not waste it.

Isn’t that an odd feeling? Someone you care about, someone you deeply cherish, makes you feel irritated. Like someone is slowly passing a blunt knife through your chest and out your back, and it is not the knife that is hurting. It is who is holding it.

I keep asking for the people closest to me to be compassionate, to be understanding, because as far as I can tell, I am those things. I have always made myself available, even when I had better things to do, more pressing things to do. I have given money, time, effort, comfort, and an ear. I have stretched myself to be present in everything I believed mattered to the people in my life, because I knew what it felt like to not have someone show up for me.

But you don’t want to sound like a broken record. You don’t want to be the person always asking for better support, better care, better everything. You want common decency. You want fairness. You want people to look at you and not assume you are fine. You want people not to interrupt you mid-sentence when you are finally pouring your heart out, after they were the ones who asked. You want people to actually listen, not just wait for you to finish. It doesn’t have to be something deep. If you ask, then listen.

Now, I could make it sound like I do all of those things perfectly. I don’t. It takes effort. It takes respect. It takes genuinely caring about the people and moments in front of you. My mind drifts; I am stretched across too many things to always be fully present. But I want to change that, because when it happens to me, I feel exactly how much it costs. The resentment I end up carrying is not even towards the other person. It is towards myself.

Why did I say that? Why did I tell him this? Did she even listen?

Then I do my favourite thing and overthink until I have enough scenarios to send my whole body into a spiral. Sometimes it kills my appetite. I made myself vulnerable, and it was received with mid answers, mid energy, mid everything. I worked hard to show up, and got indifference in return.

Then the resentment shifts. I flip it back onto them and decide: I will give them exactly what they give me. Return the energy they are offering.

The only thing I have noticed with that strategy is that you are not being defensive. You are not being clever. You are just losing yourself slowly, going the wrong direction, because two wrongs never made anything right.

If someone ghosts you, talks behind your back, speaks ill of you, lies about you, or hurts you, whether directly or indirectly, do not respond with the same energy. An eye for an eye leaves you both blind. A tooth for a tooth leaves you both toothless. Now look at the two of you, poorly drawn versions of yourselves, going lower and lower. That whole “if they go low, go lower” only works if you have nothing to lose. And before you get too excited about how low you are willing to go, you have yourself to lose. That is not nothing.

Resentment does not even need to erupt. It just sits there, quiet, watching you while you watch them. Whispering hard lies into your heart. Telling you they meant to hurt you. Telling you they are doing it on purpose. Before long, you are hating everyone and everything. Your only motivation is spite. You are doing things purely out of spite because it keeps you steady, until you realise that steady is just another word for stuck. Grounded in negativity.

Your ego gets louder when it is hurt. Your pride grows bolder when you feel small. It is a defence mechanism, supposed to protect you from the other wild animals. If only someone would hand you a mirror in that moment, to show you the animal that is growling.

Pettiness is a fun game until it is not. Until you spend an entire day thinking about someone who has not thought about you once. It is a war with yourself, one that stops you from growing, from breathing, from believing, from loving, from living.

Free yourself from your own mental shackles. Look at the world for what it actually is and build the strength to withstand attacks on your character, on your soul. Life will not be fair. No one will hand you the salary you deserve. Few will put you first. Few will genuinely love you. And if you don’t protect what you have built, even that can be taken.

If you are a believer, pray. If you are not, meditate. Put in time to breathe, to reconnect with yourself, to release what is rotting in your chest. And if it keeps coming, change your environment. If your environment is your family… change them too. I said it. Change them!!

In all seriousness, resentment will eat you to your core and leave you for dead. The only difference is that you will still be alive. An empty shell filled with hate, anger, and disappointment. Couple that with black coffee and convince yourself that that is just what adult life feels like.

It is not.

Your friends with the car, the child, and the business, they took their own path to get there. Take yours. Not everyone is meant to be married, to be a parent, to be rich. But every life should matter equally. You can come debate me on that last point.

Resent all you want. It will find its way back to you, doubled, with salt and vinegar on top.

Which is true. I don’t know how to beat around the bush. Even at work, when I have to butter people up and talk about life as though I don’t want to jump straight to business, that has never been my strength.

For that same reason, I have also been told that not every truth needs to be said, and not every opinion needs to be heard. That whatever I think is right might just be soothing my own ego. That the ability to speak freely is a flex, and if you don’t know me, my words will cut you.

That tension, between honesty and acceptability, is what led me into people-pleasing. And people-pleasing is what led me down many rabbit holes. In situation after situation, I would ask myself how I got there, and the answer was almost always the same: I didn’t say no.

I can preach it to you. I can list the benefits. But me, myself, saying no used to be easy. Now it comes with weight. With baggage. With a coldness I have to manage.

As a teenager, I was always the listener. Rarely got it reciprocated. So whenever I found someone who let me talk freely, I would talk and talk until I was alone again, and then the vulnerability hangover would set in. That uneasy feeling after opening up too much, sharing too much. I would overthink it, build three or four scenarios of how things would go wrong. So I slowly started shielding up. Sharing less. Calculating every word. If it was yes, it was yes. If it was no, it was no.

Then in my early 20s, I noticed that my distance, my composed quietness, was costing me opportunities. When I started university, I treated it like a nine-to-five for the first three months. I would check in, study, go home. I barely spoke to anyone. It wasn’t until my classmates dragged me into walking with them to the bus station that I understood how humanising it was to chat about life without trying to fit in. I was being myself, and they welcomed it. It showed me that even when you think you are not trying to fit in, part of you still wants to. Back then, though, my no was firm and my yes was firm. Even when people pushed, I held my ground.

When I started saying yes to everything, it was because that is what we were told. Whatever door you get your foot into, push until you get to the top. So I pushed. The fear of financial insecurity kicked in and got me into jobs and situations with people who would underpay me, overwork me, or outright take advantage. I kept telling myself: I am doing it for my career. It will go on my CV. They may scam me, but I am building something.

A few years ago, I sat with my boss for a performance evaluation. I was acknowledging my failures, taking responsibility, being reasonable. Then I asked him: “The contract I have doesn’t guarantee my job safety. Am I safe?” He made me repeat it a few times, then replied: “Angelo, you are as safe as you work.” That raised a red flag that kept getting redder, until I lost the job.

What I didn’t know was that my calm, composed exterior was being read as Mr Nonchalant. Mr I’ve Got It Together. Mr Pays Attention To Everything Before It Happens. Nobody knew I wasn’t sleeping. Nobody knew I was doing three jobs on the salary of one. Nobody knew I was pushing myself mentally, financially, spiritually, romantically, physically, all at once.

Instead of saying no, I learned to disappear. To make myself small. To run things from the background. To be effective in every area without making a sound.

It also taught me something uncomfortable: it was easier to say no to the people closest to me. There would be discomfort, yes, but because they knew me, it wouldn’t last. It was the people on the edge I couldn’t say no to. The ones I was still trying to prove something to.

So why does saying no bother me?

Rejection never feels good. I have been rejected plenty of times, for reasons I could tell were sometimes lies. And that is the thing about lying instead of saying no: it feels kinder in the moment, but it is actually condescending. You are deciding someone can’t handle the truth. You are pitying them while thinking you are protecting them. And lying is exhausting. Draining. The story you invented has to be maintained; the real answer still sits in your chest.

Then there is the response when you do say no honestly. The face. The huffing. The puffing. The silence. The heaviness in the air, all because you didn’t want to do something they wanted you to do. Isn’t that something?

Now in my 30s, I look back at all the people I bent backwards for. Where are they now? Some are doing even greater than me. Do I sit and wonder where I would be if I hadn’t spent that money, gone to that party, stayed up all night listening instead of sleeping? Yes. Do I regret any of it? No. But I acknowledge that it cost me, in time, energy, and momentum I will never fully recover.

In the spirit of bettering myself, I want to go back to being clear, direct, and firm.

I want to say no and not spend the rest of the night feeling guilty while you huff in your corner. I want to say no to that report that isn’t mine to submit, and actually sleep. I want to say no to that friend asking for favours I know I am enabling. I want to say no and put myself first, without performing a whole explanation to justify it.

No is also something I owe myself. The junk food at midnight. The one last episode at 2 am. The situations I walk into knowing I shouldn’t be there.

I am not saying say no without thinking. Be smart about it. Reject the bad options, the bad opportunities, the bad behaviours, the bad environments. Know the difference between a door worth pushing and one worth walking away from.

But when you know, say it.

Say no. Clear, direct, firm.

And at the same time, it felt like a weight lifted.

Because after crying, that first deep breath of fresh air hit different. It was minty, it was cold, it was new. I allowed myself to sleep. To rest. There was a pending doom looming, yes, but the state of unemployment felt strangely different. I was confident I’d find something within two months. And I did, something that suited me so well, something so challenging it felt like a calling.

Then something else crept in. Something I hadn’t encountered in a long time.

Silence.

People checked on me the way they check on someone who has lost a person. Present and supportive for about two weeks, and those are the ones who care the most. Then silence. You are left with yourself and your thoughts. And your thoughts are loud. Somehow, your Instagram and Twitter feed decide to align themselves perfectly with where your head is, and boy, does it get dark. At some point, I genuinely wondered how the algorithm knew I was unemployed. The memes and reels were calling me out by name.

I tried to save my severance, but I also wanted to let loose. I had kept a discipline that kept me employed and on track, until the track kicked me out. So I drank. Had sleepless nights. Enjoyed myself. I told myself that once I was ready to go back to work, I’d have it under control.

I was wrong.

Nobody had ever told me the difference between a well-structured, policy-driven organisation and a less structured, more human-driven one. The new job changed me, humbled me. I had thought that with the big salary and privileges from the previous role, I had made real advancement. Everything I learned in the new place showed me I hadn’t even done enough work to be at the level I was dreaming of. So I started pushing, working odd hours, trying to absorb as much as I could. I let myself go. Started gaining weight because I wasn’t sleeping. Eating junk mostly. And in every relationship around me, I wasn’t present. I knew I wasn’t. I said it out loud, that I was going through multiple types of grief, that the hardship was affecting me.

But the more I talked about grief, the deeper I felt the wounds. Everything I had lost in the last four or five years came at me at once, screaming that I was the problem. Maybe if I had done things differently, said things differently, I could still have what I had.

Then one sentence kept returning every time I hit a wall: Just because I carry it well doesn’t mean it isn’t heavy.

The year was 2023. Every step felt like moving through quicksand. Who could I tell? My friends? My girlfriend? My siblings? My dad? I did tell them, all of them. Any time someone asked how I was doing, I’d answer honestly: I am not doing. I am going through it. I am tired. I am exhausted. I had understood from a young age that men were accused of not communicating, so I made sure I expressed myself as much as I could. At some point, I even stopped grooming myself, because I thought: maybe the issue is that because I look put together on the outside, you think I am just chatting.

People have asked me so many times: “You are always there for others, you listen, you give advice. Who does that for you? Who is you for you?” Honestly? I haven’t found that person. The one who makes me feel the way others say they feel when I show up for them. Maybe my expectations are too high. Maybe that’s why it never hits the same.

I traced it back. I saw the pattern.

My brother whooped knowledge and wisdom into me, literally and figuratively. The standard I held when I was at my best was so high that when I fell and tried to get back up, I couldn’t even see the bar anymore. People told me to go easy on myself, that I was human. But we were not raised to be sorry; we were raised to do better. So every apology to my partner for not showing up, or showing up too tired. Every time I was late to work when I had rarely been late before. Every mistake I kept making, I started drowning in them.

I went to therapy in 2023 for the first time. The first two or three sessions were helpful. Then it started feeling more like a colleague conversation than a therapy session; we were bouncing ideas off each other, things I had already taught myself or picked up through the free, uncertified therapy I’d been giving everyone else for years. So I stopped, and went back to carrying it alone.

I couldn’t move past two steps. I kept falling. No matter how much I tried, the goalpost kept moving. And I realised there weren’t many male spaces where I could go to speak my fears, my pain, my struggles, somewhere I could find real solutions on how to be a better employee, brother, boyfriend, friend, and person. I tried to build one myself. Tried to rally my boys for a night where we could just be men and talk about what makes and breaks us. They would show up and only listen to me. I kept moving the dates. Eventually I stopped trying.

Another avenue dropped dead.

I looked at the environment around me and noticed: the older generation of men, though trying to adapt to modern ways of living, were still mostly performing. And the younger ones were hiding behind doors, because the backlash of being challenged by a woman felt scarier than actually fighting to express how the people around them made them feel.

We need mentors. We need direction. We need men who have been through it, or who are further along, to show us how to handle grief, traumas, careers, relationship strain, faith, all of it.

Even the strongest Avenger had to be reminded of his worth.

We go through life thinking we have it handled. Thinking we know better. Thinking we are stronger. Then life says bet. And as a man, you feel like nobody will understand you, because the few times you opened up, you were either laughed at or left without the help you needed. So you conclude: that’s it. That is not it. That is the exact opposite of IT.

We genuinely mock women for having their healing spaces. “They’re doing too much; they didn’t need another centre.” Meanwhile, the only place we gather is the bar. And yes, it serves a purpose, but it doesn’t fill you whole. It doesn’t solve anything. It is temporary. And the hardest lesson is that night people are also temporary. The ones who walk with you in daylight, who make it to the end of the month, every month, those are the ones.

When you can’t find those people, society starts to feel like it is numbing you. You lose your job, your friends, your partner, people you love, none of them dead, by the way; they just stop showing up. Because you are no longer providing. No longer useful. No longer making decisions or making money or paying attention. Very few people will stay. Very few will nurse you back. Very few will actually be there.

And because you will have been broken, because you will feel like you failed everyone, you will start dragging down even the few who are trying to help you. Before you know it, the will to keep going quietly shrinks. And you risk dimming your light for good.

June is Men’s Mental Health Month.

I am writing this for the man who already knows, the one who understands that being a man does not mean numbing yourself and shutting out everything that makes you human.

And I am writing this for the man who doesn’t know yet, the one who doesn’t think he needs help because he doesn’t think he has a problem. You would rather hire a gym coach and learn what to work on than walk in and try to lift what you can’t lift alone.

We have all tried to step into great men’s shoes and found out, the hard way, that we lacked some of the qualities, the values, or the stamina to sustain it. And if we don’t have male figures to look up to, or if we admire them only in silence because we’re ashamed of what people might say, that tells us something important about where we are.

It is hard as hell to be a man. In most cases, we will not be understood. We will be handed the heaviest things to carry, even by people who know we can’t carry them, because it is easy to justify with “but you go to the gym.” And we will sweat and break our backs trying, either to prove a point or simply because that is what we do.

When your back is against the wall, when bills, deadlines, your partner, your siblings, your responsibilities all demand your undivided attention at once, while you can barely lift a finger, take the day off. Drink some water. Eat some protein. Go on a walk. Connect with nature. Put yourself first.

Find books that make you think. Find communities that represent who you are trying to become. Connect with people who genuinely want good for you.

But first, go easy on yourself.

You are not alone. You do not have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. We can build that community together and learn healthier habits together.

I got this. And so do you.

And no, it is not okay.

I always hear about absent partners and absent parents, but I rarely hear about how we are often absent in our own lives.

I grew up with a brother who told me to “Google it” for everything. “Hey, can you tell me what Gross Domestic Product means?” Google it. “What can I do to be better at…” Google it. “Where can I find the…” Google it. “Do you know if…” Google it. Now, with one prompt, you can get templates, well-constructed budgets, full proposals, cover letters, in minutes. Some days it genuinely pisses me off. Because I had to Google templates for how to write a CV, go through dozens of versions that were either boring or behind a paywall, pick one, only to be told nobody would read it anyway because they only accept Times New Roman and Calibri; anything else looks “dirty.” We all know it is because they lacked creativity, but let’s not open that can of problems… for now.

I use ChatGPT and Claude. I was against it until the current took me with it. Reports that used to take two days now take four hours. Resisting AI is like being in the ‘80s and ‘90s, trying to resist the age of technology, wanting to keep everything on paper and in files while everyone else moved to floppy disks and CDs. There is always going to be resistance to change, because what we put time, energy, and effort into learning is hard to simply push aside for the latest tool. That is human.

But this is not really about AI. It is about access to information, and what we choose to do with it.

Millennials were told they had to learn everything. That by being well-rounded first, only then could they think about specialising. That is how we played it safe: your skills had to range from Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Cloud to knowing how to drive, swim, and speak in public, because you never knew what could save you. I think that is why it is very hard for most millennials to grasp “work-life balance.” For most of us, the only balance we get is if the work we do gives us the life we want. Our job defines our life. We are trying to unlearn that, and it is not easy, because it was drilled into us.

Losing your job feels like sacrilege. It sends you straight back to questioning your whole character because your job is you. You are it. I always took pride in being so associated with my work that people would say I was the organisation and the organisation was me. But when you hit your goals, or when that job ends, your life halts with it. You pushed yourself so hard, and with one stop, everything loses meaning. So you start again, from scratch, most of the time with less hope than you had before. You find something new, you push forward, until something else comes along and the cycle repeats.

Very few of us stop and ask: Wait, how do I make sure this doesn’t keep happening? Very few people build the systems and strategies that ensure the only way is up. That ensure a setback doesn’t send you back to zero.

And very few people think to turn around and say, I kinda like my brother; let me make sure he doesn’t go through what I went through.

Instead of “Google it,” imagine hearing: “Read this book. It’ll teach you about economics and money. Read it, and let’s discuss it.” Instead of losing your job with no savings, imagine hearing from day one: “Save 70% of your income.” If you start whining about how you’ll eat, how you’ll get to work, what you’ll wear, we are all so eager to grow up in our early 20s that we misuse our sources of income and knowledge before we even understand them.

Special cases where life has been genuinely rough, and you had to fend for yourself early, I understand. But the rest of you, still living under your parents’ roof, eating their groceries, enjoying their utilities, are you telling me saving above 50% is tough? If you are 30 or older, this question is not for you. You already know.

I wish someone had given me what early 20-year-olds have access to today. Yes, inflation is having a field day, but all these avenues of learning exist, and your only reason for not diving in is that you woke up late? I used to wake up late too. I used to enjoy the nothingness, and for a long time it was comfortable. Until the people my age were on their second or third year in entry-level roles and I was still finding my footing. I am not sharing this out of shame; it was my choices that got me where I am, and I am grateful. I am sharing it because if I had someone in my face, or an organisation presented to me in a way that my big-headed teenage self wouldn’t have said no to, things might have moved differently.

The most I was part of was Peace and Love Proclaimers (PLP) in its early days; they had a Youth Champion programme that trained young people for a week and sent them off to start something of their own. I went on with my life because, again, very hard-headed. Then came iDebate Rwanda, and even then, in its early stages, I was already hating, because I couldn’t debate to save my life.

Now there is so much out there. We literally have to beg young people to learn. I am out here mentoring, asking young individuals not to become like me, because there are already plenty of 30-year-olds who all want to be billionaires by 40, and we all can’t be. For example: knowing how much your skills are worth and which salary range to aim for is crucial. I was thinking about a friend of mine this week; she is so good at negotiating with moto guys, to the point where it feels like she is robbing them. But when it comes to saying how much she wants to be paid for her actual work? She robs herself.

Most of us are tapped into huge networks, and the only thing stopping us is ego and pride. “Ask for help? As a man??!!” Then three months later, eating rice only, it is all “heyyyyy”, because Samantha from marketing, who is 24, just bought a car. Stay in your lane, boss. What are we learning? How are we moving forward, and up? I need to specify up, because some of y’all be moving forward… into the darkness. Please. Into the light. Let’s move into the light.

Ask. Ask. Ask.

Lower that ego and that pride if it is costing you opportunities. “I cannot be led by someone younger than me.” Lower yourself, please. “I cannot work under a woman.” Okay, but what options do you have? Lower your tone. Learn to listen. Learn to learn, learn to earn. Then pass the torch down, so that everyone else gets to know what kills and breaks, and what heals and multiplies.

The problem is that most of you are too thirsty for money and power. Most of you want to get to the top of the bridge and then burn it. Which you actually do.

On that note, I want to remind you. Google is no longer the only source of information. AI is useful, yes, but it is not the goldmine. The networks you have, the relationships you have built over time, that is your goldmine.

Ignorance is a choice. It is choosing not to see the people in your life as people who can help and support you. It is choosing to go on Beyoncé’s internet, scroll through TikTok, and take those MBs for granted. It is thinking bills and groceries will always just be there. It is thinking the only discomfort in life is parents being annoying and not letting you enjoy yourself. It is thinking that when you are finally ready to get a job, you will be so impressive they’ll have no choice but to hire you on the spot.

You can find a mentor today. You can volunteer somewhere today. You can attend group discussions, join communities that represent who you are trying to become. We spend our days removing ourselves from society, then blame society for being as broken as it is, without even trying to change it. But sure! Let’s complain about all the problems. I’m sure they’ll solve themselves.

Patiently waiting to be rich by miracle.

Who needs financial literacy? Who needs to understand mental health? Who needs couples therapy before marriage? Who needs systems? Who needs to know about meditation, meal prepping, proper nutrition?

Not me.

We had Yeah by Usher, Drop It Like It’s Hot by Snoop Dogg, Jesus Walks by Kanye West, 99 Problems by JAY-Z, Just Lose It by Eminem, Let Me Love You by Mario, Goodies by Ciara, Lose My Breath by Destiny’s Child, and more, and that is the English songs only. If we did French and Rwandan songs… Ahhh!!

I would scribble little rhymes in my notebook whenever I could. I remember rapping and singing the most horrendous lyrics; if those artists could have heard me at the time, they’d have revoked my listening privileges on the spot.

I remember going to my Dad’s office and going through tons of printed lyrics, memorising them. One time, I clicked “print” so many times on a song I loved. The printer wasn’t responding, and I didn’t understand printers; all I knew was that you click and it comes. So the next day, when my dad came home, he had stacks of copies of Sean Paul’s The Trinity album lyrics. He was too amused to be angry. He looked at me and just asked me to be more mindful. I think it was around that time that I pushed myself to write more.

In grade 5, saturated with Western culture and like any kid searching for an identity, I found mine in words, in lyrics, in music, in poems. There was something about creating through writing that felt liberating. I felt free when I was scribbling things down.

Then came Facebook. Before it, we had Hi5 and Yahoo Messenger, our social media before social media had a name. They were Twitter and WhatsApp before Twitter and WhatsApp existed. When Facebook arrived, everybody was on it. We had already gotten used to online messaging and posting pictures, but what we were really after was connection. You'd befriend someone, go to their page, start liking things, they'd like things back, and that's how a conversation started. We made friends on Facebook, and when we met in person, it was actually not bad. From about 2005 to 2013, we genuinely wanted to make friends. It flowed naturally. After that, we all became detectives, doing background checks on everyone before we even said hello.

That’s when I started craving to be heard.

The Facebook status box asked, “What’s on your mind?”, and boy, did I have things on my mind. And girl, did I say them.

I didn’t like the shift when everybody went cold and distant. I still dislike it now. We stopped talking with our hearts in our hands, and we started clowning those who still could. Nowadays, that’s called being corny. “You be saying some corny shit, Angelo.” True. I do be saying some corny shit.

But in a world where you can’t tell if someone likes you for you or for whatever you have, where everything has become transactional and most of us find ourselves in relationships we don’t even expect to last, being corny is a form of resistance. I have Gen Z friends who don’t want friends at all, because the fear of losing them feels worse than never having them. That is why I write corny shit. That is why I am overly sentimental about certain things.

Because when I started writing and people told me my pieces were amazing, told me what my words meant to them, the boost, the ego, I loved it. Then I realised it wasn’t organic. When I stopped sending my work to people directly, it was just another post. Social media had taught me what that kind of attention was really worth: not much.

When I started my blog on WordPress in 2015, my writing was better than anything I’d published on Facebook. I had more to say, more emotions to share, and I wanted to be raw, not performative. It wasn’t for the likes; it was purely for me to get things out. It was where I would publicly thank those who did me well. My first post was about a crush; it never worked out, but we are grateful. We are where we are.

Then I noticed people were too stuck up, too cool to read, too cold to share. They were going through the same things I was going through, and somehow that made it lonelier, not less. So I stopped writing.

But the passion remained.

Now and then, I’d write things down just to release and recalibrate. In 2020, I was mentoring a kid, and we were talking about life decisions and self-love. On my way out, a guest who had overheard the conversation held my hand and said, “You should really keep doing what you do. Come to Lighthouse Rwanda; you’d like it there.” I smiled, said thank you, and left without thinking much of it.

But I kept hearing it. People telling me I was good with people. An uncertified counsellor, they called me. When I looked honestly at what made me decent with people, it came down to four things: availability, listening, understanding, and collaboration. And I realised that everything I felt I lacked as a kid, as a teenager, as a 20-year-old, I was giving it back to those who didn’t have it.

The problem was it cost me. I became a victim of my own success. At some point, I stopped waiting for people to come to me with their problems, and I started asking them if they were sure they didn’t have any. A superhero complex. A saviour complex. My words and actions had quietly grown into something superior, something I hadn’t intended.

Then Covid happened, and it humbled me thoroughly. I realised how much people needed people, and I had an overload. I realised I was weak. I went back to listening more.

It was only in 2025, after years of “you need to go back to writing” and “people need to read what you tell us,” that I understood it was bigger than me.

Yes, I do be teaching you a thing or two, sometimes with violence. Yes, some of it is corny. Yes, most of it is things I’ve been through, am going through, or am actively trying not to go through. If it gets to you, you’re lucky to have read it. I’m probably pushing you to talk to that crush, that parent, that lover, that boss, that sibling, that somebody. I’m probably saving you time you’d have wasted doing something you’d regret.

I took a break because I got scared by how my last post landed. A friend of a friend grew the courage to talk to her crush. Another went and fixed things with her partner, and they got back together. Someone wrote to ask, “Is that why we are the way we are in relationships?” The feedback was incredible, and terrifying. I didn’t want to tap back into that complex. I wanted to keep writing raw, non-performative pieces. Not to make a point, not to educate, not to chase a trend.

To everyone who asked why I hadn’t been posting: I had too much to say and didn’t know where to start. I also needed to make sure I wasn’t doing it for the numbers.

I started writing to get my thoughts across. I kept writing because it was helping one or two people.

I hope the teenage me, the one printing stacks of Sean Paul lyrics on his dad’s work printer, would look at this Substack and see exactly where all those scribbled rhymes were headed.

They help us understand what to look for in a partner but also what to expect from a relationship. They show us the lovely acts of kindness and genuine care. They show us the toxic traits and what not to accept from a potential partner. We fall in love, we get heartbroken, we have a hard time getting up, until one day someone or something gives us hope to try again. Into believing in love again. They teach us that something could start in a very ugly way and turn out to be very beautiful. It tells us not to look at the exterior alone but also to look within. To see and feel the spirit of the one we are trying to pursue.

But… there is that thing, that cliche that every romantic movie or romcom has that it just can’t shake. Either it is love at first sight, and they would do anything to be together, which I find quite funny since a whole one-and-a-half-hour movie could be just about a three-day love story. Or they hate each other, and they can’t stand each other’s guts until they pay close attention to what is on the inside, their actions and their hearts speak louder when they are not busy putting up a front.

Most speak ill of those movies, yet they are still being watched. Frequently, might I add. I dislike the embarrassing scenes before the big reveal. I always ask myself, did he really have to do all that nonsense? Did he really have to be a douchebag? The most irritating part is when you, the viewer, are following, and there is this scene where they fight, and you know the loudest one is in the wrong. You scream it at your screen, “Speak up! Tell them the truth!” and when the loud one leaves like they have won the argument, as if they were right, you, the viewer, are left frustrated.

And that is how we simply began to gaslight each other, in my opinion.

Those movies taught us not to say “I love you” unless we meant it, but also that when it came too late, it disrupted so much. They taught us that love at first sight is real, but that it requires a certain type of delulu in order to go for it. “She is the one for me, I just know it!” When your friends and family tell you to be careful, to go slowly, to be vigilant with your heart. When you can see the red flags from a mile away and still go for it in the name of, “God is just testing my heart.” Let that character growth locate you! Those movies taught us patience, they taught us guilt, they taught us pain! Temptation by Tyler Perry still haunts me. Because what do you mean you could be doing everything by the book, you could be the right person for each other, but in the end, it just doesn’t work because the thrill and spontaneity weren’t enough?

Psychological warfare in relationships is a form of emotional abuse involving manipulative, coercive tactics designed to control, intimidate, or diminish a partner’s mental well-being and sense of reality. Common examples include: gaslighting, love bombing, guilt tripping, isolation, and weaponized incompetence. It aims to foster insecurity and dependence.

Some of you think you are incapable of these, but funny enough, so many of us have gone through so much “silent treatment” that we now know to give space and wait to be reached out to again. You could be going through the biggest pain of your life, you’d be like, “Nope, I will wait.” You could find a funny video or an amazing song you’d want to share with them, and you’d be like, “Nope, I will wait.”

Most of us don’t even do it intentionally. Granted, some of you are little sociopaths, and I see you!!

You don’t text first if you were the last person to text. You don’t overshare the next time because all they did the first time was listen to you, and you can’t be sure if they are only listening to you or judging you. You can’t show your heart because you have gone through so many mental rejections that if it happens for real… You will still be disappointed in yourself for trying. You are on guard, on guard for whoever may think you are a fool, a clown, a sucker! You do not want to be the one who was too naive, too innocent, too dumb to realise you were being played.

You want that perfect love story, that perfect friendship, that happy forever after story. But in all honesty, “Happy endings are stories that haven’t finished yet.”

You are the author of your story! You are the driver of your soul! Sometimes you make mistakes, sometimes you pick the wrong routes, sometimes you put in the wrong fuel, sometimes you drive terribly, sometimes you drive smoothly, sometimes you’re patient, sometimes… You are just too tired to drive.

Culture, faith, gender, economy, politics, and biology all play a role in how we deal with people. Most African men don’t want to talk about women’s cycles, yet understanding them helps the relationship. Most African men think women don’t want to listen to them because they are hard-headed and can only listen if they channel their inner “Alpha.”

Most men think they are in control most of the time, but in the long run, we all get to see that women do indeed run the world. I think men fear women! We generally joke that “After God, fear women.” But I sincerely think men are afraid of women. Diary of a Mad Black Woman, another Tyler Perry, because he apparently likes to see black women suffer, really shows how far a broken woman can go!

Everybody has their own systems, their own needs. Some men would prefer the traditional route where the woman would stay at home, and they’d provide everything. Some would prefer an equal partner, one that has a job and supports equally at home. Some women want a mix of both. There are so many combinations out there, and I think that is one thing movies don’t quite capture. I think they tend to give us the same story, just remixed. And I think from that, most people who grew up attached to those stories think that is the way to go, that is how things are.

Most people have a checklist, and I believe most of it has been force-fed by the movies we watched, the songs we have listened to and sang to, and the books we’ve read.

You surely didn’t come up with that on your own; thinking those tall men were perfect for you. As a matter of fact, when you dismiss a short man, you might feel some type of way because deep down you know he could be the one.

Boys growing up to both Megan Fox and Meagan Good and you want to tell me your type wasn’t designed for you?

We go into war with the people we choose to be our friends or our partners. We use techniques and tactics to win arguments and conversations. We create so many scenarios and fight imaginary battles that we’ve lost touch with the ones we want to spend our lives with.

• I won’t talk to them if they don’t want to talk to me

• I won’t tell them how I feel because nothing will change

• I will not come and kill myself for someone who doesn’t value me

Why are you there???

Why are you there if you are there to play games?

What is so fun or what is holding you back from being your true self to the point you are willing to sacrifice your time and theirs?

Why are we stuck in a loophole that we can easily get out of if we just communicate?

Selfishness? Ego? Pride? Narcissism? What is it?

Because here’s the truth: Hollywood sold us a script, and we’ve been performing it ever since. We learned that love is supposed to be dramatic, that silence is power, that making someone jealous proves they care, that grand gestures fix everything, and that if they really loved you, they’d just know what you need without you having to say it.

We learned that relationships are supposed to be hard. That if it’s not a rollercoaster, it’s not real love. That peace is boring. That stability means you’ve settled.

So we manufacture drama. We test each other. We withhold affection to see if they’ll chase us. We pick fights to feel something. We play games we learned from a two-hour movie and wonder why our real lives don’t get resolved by the end credits.

The movies didn’t teach us how to communicate. They taught us how to perform. They taught us the grand confession scene, but not the daily maintenance. They taught us the chase but not the choice to stay. They taught us how to fall in love but not how to build a life.

And now we’re all out here reenacting scenes from movies that were written to entertain, not to instruct. We’re following a script that was never meant to be a manual.

So maybe it’s time to stop blaming our partners for not reading our minds. Stop waiting for them to figure out what we won’t say. Stop treating love like a battle to be won instead of a partnership to be built.

Maybe it’s time to write our own script. One where communication isn’t weakness. Where asking for what you need isn’t needy. Where peace isn’t boring, it’s the whole damn point.

Hollywood gave us the fantasy. But we’re the ones choosing to live in it.

Then it had me thinking about all these villains that we come to actually understand, why they do what they do.

I am not excusing nor condoning those who choose the evil route. But I think we need to put more effort into understanding why they become that way in the first place. Everyone can scream out "monster" when they see those who threaten, those who hurt, those who bully, those who kill, and those who do awful things.

Funny enough, the line “If you don’t die a hero, you live long enough to see yourself become the villain” is an interesting line, depending on which area of life you approach it from.

For instance, when it comes to age, you grow up wanting to be the best. You want to be a doctor, a firefighter, a police officer, a soldier, a crime fighter, or an engineer. Someone who will change the world. Then, because there are no real guidelines to success or a cheat code, life humbles you enough to be corruptible. As a child, they teach you that dishonesty is bad and that it is unfair to others and to yourself. As an adult, you realise that being honest 100% can only land you in uncomfortable or bad situations. But you also realise at some point that the more lies you tell, the more you lose a bit of yourself.

In a relationship, you want to treat your partner the best way you can. Sometimes the best way you can don’t amount to what is needed. Not because you can’t push yourself to it, but just because you don’t know any better. Then comes in the ego, the pride, the mixed feelings, and the fights. A good cocktail for the beginning of a beautiful, toxic relationship that lasts longer than it should.

At work, you join in to give your best. You want to succeed and move upwards. You want the good salary, the good benefits, the trips, the premium care. That means you must slave to the rhythm of capitalism until you fall through. All your hopes and dreams get to be shattered, and all you’re left with is a routine of waking up, getting ready, going to work, doing the bare minimum, going home, complaining about how work was, and going to sleep to do it all over again the next day.

With your family, they care for you, they cuddle you, they feed you, they make sure you are clothed, they are present for most of your early life, and then once you turn 18 or 21, you find yourself abandoned to fend for your life. You are supposed to put two and two together and understand that everything they have done for you your whole life was to prepare you for this moment. And if you don’t get it, you’re stupid and spoiled.

With friends, you soon find out that only like 2-3 will stay. You grew up playing with your neighbours outside, and then one day you started seeing each other less. You and your high school friends told each other that you’d always be there for each other, and the first thing they did after high school was move to another country. They told you they’ll be back after their Bachelor’s, but it’s been ten years now, and some of them are married with kids. You chat here and there to check on them, you wish them a happy birthday and slide that “we should meet up soon,” but soon never comes. Your university classmates who turn into friends go through thick and thin with you as you are all learning to manage school and adulthood. But once you graduate and move on to build careers, your monthly or quarterly hangouts are reduced to once a year because of how busy and hectic life has become. Your work colleagues who become friends go as far as when all the things are going well until they are not, and you get to find out who is your friend and who is just your colleague.

As a country, our moral compass is so messed up that I would be surprised if we could actually tell what is right from wrong. We uphold values and beliefs that are so performative that none of us can keep up with them. We talk about culture and virtue as if they are written in stone and can’t be changed or broken, as if they are not meant to evolve! Like all these books, art, entertainment, style, technology, and whatever more is out there is not meant to change us. You don’t even have to be five years apart; a two-year gap is enough to show you who is advanced and who is not. But we want to treat people as if it were 1959.

We go through so much in our lives that a breaking point is something that shouldn’t shock us. We are trained to be resilient, to not be naive, and to grow stronger with time. We push ourselves to be the strongest warrior there is. But one can take too many punches, too many kicks!

Our villains don’t look the part. They don’t smell bad, have crooked teeth, distinct scars, or treacherous voices! They are you and me!

They are nice to most people. They’re down in the gutter with all of us, working their way to the top like the rest of us. They treat us well when we need it, know what to say, and when to say it. They are friendly and fill us with so much hope and dreams. They are young, old, men, women, and more. They get us comfortable! They get us addicted to their presence and one day… they just change!

We cheat, we break, we lie, we steal, we commit acts we can’t come back from. And all in all, we are still expected to be treated equally. We want our friends to understand when we were weak. We want our relatives to go easy on us when we betrayed their trust. We want our colleagues to know it wasn’t personal when we chose ourselves instead of them. We want to let people know… we could have been selfless, we could have done the right thing. But we just couldn’t put someone else first. So we make up all these reasons why, if we had known better, we could have done things differently. We could have stopped ourselves from lying to those we cared about if we knew it would have resulted in something worse. We could have stopped a whole genocide if we had known not to follow our leaders. We could have stopped gender abuse if we had been raised as better people. We could have stopped homophobia if we knew love was for all and it came in different flavours. We could have… We could have…

But we don’t.

So now we normalise all our bad traits. We tell ourselves that it is part of life and that consequences teach us to be better people. You can’t stop a war from happening; you have to let it happen and then try to stop it. Isn’t that an insane way of approaching things? You can’t learn from all the mistakes of others; you have to remix them and learn for yourself. We are not special. We all want to be the hero of our story, and when we are ranting or complaining about friends, partners, colleagues, relatives, and more, we always think we are being impartial, but it is rarely the case.

I grew up loving Batman and everything he stands for. Now, as an adult, I understand why he exists, but I also understand why the Joker exists. I understand that the Joker is all of us, and Batman is what we wish our moral compass was.

The villain isn’t someone else. The villain is what we become when we stop fighting to be better. When we choose comfort over honesty. When we choose ourselves over everyone else and call it self-care. When we rationalise our betrayals as survival.

We’re all one bad day away from being someone’s villain. The question is: are we doing the work to make sure that day never comes?

So many things happened! The weeks were slower, the spending was higher! So many birthdays to celebrate with not enough time or money. But here we are, we made it to the end of the month. I have a few things I would like to share with you all that stuck with me.

1. Reassurance, what it is, what it feels like to give it and receive it.

2. The prices are going to keep going up, raise your effort to make more money, but also live according to your wallet

3. You are a burden!

The action of removing someone's doubts or fears.

1. Reasurance

You know, when you start overthinking about everything, work? Life? Friends? Relationships? Your ability to achieve anything? When people you trust and believe to be good for you try to advise you on something that’s been troubling you, and it doesn't change anything? You could be told you are capable of achieving your KPIs and more, and all it does is freeze you? Your relationship could be going down the drain, you could be seeing it going down, and you know everything you can do to bring it up, but you just can't pull yourself to do it?

"Utwo ni utu dayimoni" (those are little demons), as my people love to say it. How can you not bring yourself back from the brink of disaster? As a man, why are you asking that girl who is your close friend, "Are we good?" just because you haven't heard from her in eight hours? Clearly, you have too much time on your hands. As a woman, why are you checking his WhatsApp status to see if he posted anything, to see if he's online? The things we do because of a lack of proper communication. The things we do because of pride. The things we do because it is easier to blame our upbringing than to face our own lack of effort, our lack of transparency, our lack of confrontation and hard conversations.

Have you ever had a hard conversation and realized how much you were not breathing because of how anxious you were before you opened up? Opening up to your friend and letting them know you were no longer going to support their financial problems because you were tired of being responsible for someone irresponsible? Opening up to your partner about how stagnant your relationship is getting and how much you were outgrowing it? Opening up to your siblings about how bad they messed you up, no amount of therapy could fix it?

I feel like hugs are underrated, and we should be giving more of them. Because all of this worrying and suffering we go through is just… insane. Disclaimer: give hugs to people who want to be hugged. Body odour and diseases.

How do you give reassurance? All of us are keen on identifying the people who are dramatic, problematic, do too much, stand out, overthink everything, have social media brains, suspiciously quiet, full of themselves, lack a few brain cells, and more. With all those identities on the table, how do you manage to reassure those you care about and let them know your relationship with them is steady, it is standing? How do you not make them feel like you have abandoned them? Like you have left the chat to never return? How do you make them feel like they are part of your life, even if you only talk every other week or month? Is it measurable? Is it quantifiable?

Most people will look at all the above questions and go, "Oh, that is why I have three friends." But in reality, those three are the only ones they keep up with because they are in their everyday life. Probably work in the same office or building, live continents apart, but are driven by the same two things. Probably grew up with them, so every family function is a catch-up. Then the rest of the people who are your friends but you can't keep up with them are just left on read now and then. Meeting them in person and starting a conversation is so hard because the last few conversations were just shallow and were enough updates on how good your life was, but broke enough not to be available for them.

Do you ever hang out with someone and you hear them lie on the phone about what they are up to or where they are, and ever wonder if they ever do the same thing to you? Nahh, you're special!!

How do you receive reassurance? All those trust issues. All those walls you have built over time. You pride yourself in spotting a lie from a mile away but still get lied to. You get to be extorted by the same friends who are always "present" and ready to lend a hand. How can you feel reassured when everything, every relationship you have, comes with a string attached?

This is a reminder to unclench your jaw, unclench your butt. Breathe a little. That control you want to have? That force you are trying to go up against? It is not a wave, it is a storm! And you can't swim to save your life!

My emergency buoy is "asking." I ask for reassurance. It does not do me any good to sit with my thoughts that will simply bring me down to the seabed. Obviously, sometimes it takes me a while to gather the energy and willpower to do it, but making it a habit or pushing myself to always go for it has made my life easier. Sometimes people go through it or just forget, and it is okay. Or sometimes they are avoiding you on purpose, and knowing it could help you in giving them that space or open a conversation to get to the bottom of the matter. Looking angry, breathing heavily, being silent or being inaudible when they address you, and disappearing or leaving the room when they enter, helped nobody.

March showed me that I had stopped putting energy into some relationships, that I had been giving less simply because when I started watering myself, there were some relationships I stopped watering. I owed some relationships some reassurance and letting them know I was just caught up with working on myself and my job. Some relationships owed me some reassurance, as they were the ones who were sleeping on me. The whole "But Angelo, not everyone is as kind and caring as you. Not everyone can do their job, have time for movies/TV shows, have time for books, and have time for relationships." An actual sentence that was told to me. No, I am not that kind and caring. I am dedicated, and every time I break my word or a promise, I feel terrible. I feel anxious, and I probably go a little bit hard on myself when I don't show up to what I said I would do. We have the same 24 hours, but we have different problems. Pain marathons are shared every other day. What did you do last week that shows me you are worthy of my time? Love? Effort?

Don’t be sorry, do better!

Don’t engage people if you are going to half-ass it! Don’t enter people’s lives if you have no intentions of putting in the work. Yes, it is also a job. It shouldn’t feel like it, but it is! I am not telling you to go around giving your all to strangers. I am telling you, for those you claim to be in your life, those you think about inviting to brunch, work events, housewarming, weddings, birthdays, trips, to the movies, those people that just come to your mind any time you feel low or down, those are the ones I am advocating for.

2. You are rich… In your own way

Inflation is crazy, but what is crazier is your need for comfort. I know, I know… Mind your business, Angelo! But hear me out.

Angelo receives 1.3 million RWF every month. Angelo has to pay:

• 300,000 RWF for rent

• 60,000 RWF for grocery

• 35,000 RWF for the maid

• 100,000 RWF for transport

• 25,000 RWF for home internet

• 5,000 RWF for mobile data

• 100,000 RWF for home essentials (water, electricity, gas, hygiene materials)

• 8,000 RWF for neighbourhood security and trash pick-up

• 100,000 RWF for Vuba Vuba

• 200,000 RWF for restaurants

• 200,000 RWF for a night at Lemon/Cadillac

• 100,000 RWF for girlfriend

• 100,000 RWF for girlfriend number two

• 50,000 RWF for that friend who can’t take no for an answer

He gets paid on the 25th of the month, and by the 3rd day of the month, he has 117,000 RWF.

We had a good conversation about Tantine’s “Why Does Everyone In Kigali Want To Serve The 2.7%” and lots of opinions were shared. My take on it was that, yes, the country is growing to be expensive and something should be done about it. But like the example shared above, our financial literacy is minimal. We spend too much on things that we could regulate and preserve some for future us. We could spend better, we could spend smarter. But consumerism is at an all-time high, as the only thrill you currently get from your salary is the ability to go to T2000 and buy that mop, that water bottle, and those lunch boxes, even though what you have at home is fully functional and in good condition. Yes, the country is expensive, but your fridge has no more space for your home-cooked meals and your Vuba Vuba orders. Yes, you are broke, but it is also because you want to entertain everyone.

March looked at my spending and said, “So you have chosen ice cubes for meals at the end of the month?” Because that is where I was heading. So many birthdays in March and February, most of your parents had a memorable summer the year before!

By the 10th of the month, you are like:

But even in that phase of being financially cautious, you can still choose to show up to your people in ways they see you. In ways, they understand that in your limited capacities, you are trying and you thought of them. Saying “Ayo, I am broke man” is not the reason you think it is. If you can doom scroll on Instagram or TikTok for more than an hour, you can walk to my place and create memorable moments.

You can lower your standards to match your current income, while you think of ways to increase it to match your fancy. You can be comfortable in the little you have while you seek more to be more comfortable. Psychologically, if you hate the life you live, it can either keep you there or push you to be in a better place. When they say you have the power to change your life, they really mean it. It is just not that easy to do. Until you find your sauce and how to reheat it for it to taste different, it will always feel like the same sauce that is just reheated.

3. You are a burden!

Why is it that the people who are afraid of inconveniencing you are the ones who feel like burdens, and those who aren’t afraid of inconveniencing you are the real burdens?

I know you have that one person in your life who keeps saying sorry for things that don’t even deserve to be apologized for. You could step on them by accident, and they would be the ones apologising. They are those people you wouldn’t mind having over for hours, and they would just spend an hour with you, for fear of taking too much of your time. Then you have those who you keep yawning in their faces and keep saying, “damn, I am tired.”

Maybe we should all feel like burdens? Maybe we would all be mindful of others and where our freedom begins and ends. That home training of not being able to play any sound (video/audio) when your dad was around was training for the world. How are we in a small room, and 4 devices are playing loudly? How are you bringing potential boyfriend number 78 to your friend’s 7-year-old birthday, knowing very well that the child doesn’t even remember boyfriend 68’s name? How come you are always hitting their line for services, but when it is up to you to serve back, you are suddenly ill or drowning in work? Why are you always late for hangouts, but you opened the gates for Doja Cat’s concerts? Why are you always broke, but your stories start with “I cannot believe I spent money on that gnome…”

At what point did we stop offending people? I feel like we should bring it back. We no longer tell people how we feel or how they make us feel, and I think people have gotten too comfortable. Everyone wants to be nice and kind, but not everyone has the backbone to back it up. I am not nice! I want to be kind, but it really comes down to what kind of human you are.

March told me that cutting people off doesn’t help anybody. You don’t have to go on a rampage, doing “Truth” drive-bys. Everybody has their own skeletons and would love to keep them hidden. But some people are really out here bullying and yapping about people all willy-nilly, like their business can’t be found and exposed in seconds. Unless you’re an angel, unless you are so pure that nothing can stick to you, I suggest whenever you open it with no shame… keep that same energy when it comes back.

Clearly, March fed the brain. It exposed so many of my weaknesses and reminded me that I am not

It reminded me that although February was tough, the recovery needed a lot of work and I was still lagging. I needed to shake myself up if I wanted to complain about the economy while eating my favorite Strawberry Tarte, which is definitely expensive for its portion.

Remember when your parent(s) used to get you that one thing you really loved, but it only came once in months, and it was perceived as a delicacy? Now, as an adult, you know why buying ice cream or chocolate every week could make you “lose the thrill for it,” he said sarcastically.

Recap:

1. Be present, show up

2. Get your money, stay in your bag

3. Talk to people, they talk back!

Solomon’s Paradox is the observation that people can give reasonable advice to others, but fail to apply this advice to their own.

People gravitate to me for answers, sometimes to problems or questions I can't even relate to. Yet, most of the time, I always find a way, an answer, an idea. This prompted me to want to become a fixer. I wanted to show up and handle any problem thrown at me. It allowed me to grow beyond myself by projecting myself into other people's lives to better understand their issues. It taught me to learn from their mistakes and to avoid life choices similar to theirs.

The hiccup with that lifestyle is that you become everybody's therapist, mentor, leader, support system, the one phone call away. It becomes draining, and the worst part is that in most cases, nobody can be there for you the same way you are for others. You have done your research on how to be actively present, or better yet, being heartfully engaged in most relationships you hold comes to you naturally. You don't do things halfway when you are invested; you put your time and energy into it. You can make anybody feel like they have all the attention in the world by how focused and engaged you are with them. Surprisingly, I found out recently that not everyone can do this. Not everyone in this day and age has the willingness and ability to create space for someone they call a friend, family, or even someone they mentor.

When you get that much attention from people, when I have all of you readers waiting for that Monday post, new subscribers coming in every day, it scares me. It scares me because now I have to pay more attention to what I share. Not because I am insecure about my thoughts and opinions, but because I want to be sure the one who reads it fully understands where I am coming from. It is not what I deliver; it is whether you actually received it. I know some posts will not always tickle your fancy, but that extra thought of trying to include or involve as many as possible is the actual pressure.

A young person I mentored in 2024-2025 wrote to me on Substack last week, appreciating our sessions and the fact that one of the things we set ourselves to do, which was going back to writing, we were achieving. Now that tickled my fancy, that made me happy. One, because when she mentioned our mentoring sessions, it took me back to a period where I discovered how much I loved mentoring and how much I learned from it. Two, it gave me role model pressure. In the same light, I shared with a friend my excitement for my page growing in subscriptions and also the pressure that I was sensing. She is the one who named the role model pressure because she spoke about it and how I should be putting even more energy into expanding what I write about, or even how I write. Both the young person who reached out to thank me and share her appreciation, and my friend's thoughts on my work, gave me a huge boost.

If someone came to you and complimented you on your work, your words, your appearance, or your choices in life, how quickly would it settle in? How quickly would you agree with them? How often do you recognise the small wins, and how often do you pat yourself on the back for the work you do on yourself, whether professionally or personally? Since December, I have been giving advice and opinions every Monday that are meant to change your approach to life and how to better yourself. I do it for myself and everyone who chooses to stick around and read every post I share on Mondays. I almost didn't post one today, but a few people reached out and asked why they hadn't received their weekly dose of violence.

This one is more for me. This one is a reminder that I need to take my own advice, too. That the discipline I advocate for, the work on ourselves, the consistency, and all of the other things I have been preaching about… I must practice it.

In addition, I would like to say that there is nothing special about me. I wasn’t born with these skills; I nurtured them. I learned that

• A call of 2 minutes or less can make someone’s day

• A random hug can change someone’s mood for the better

• Sitting in silence could be enough for an anxious person

• Listening for the sake of listening could make someone’s thoughts lighter

The list can go on further, but the point is that where there is a will, there is a way. If you want to be there for that person, if you want to be present for that person, you will find a way. And that is how those who know you, when they see you fully showing up for someone, will be shocked to see you going out of your way for that person. That energy, think of how far it would take you if you generated it in everything you did?

I think those of us who are like this, being able to give advice and support, can't successfully follow it because we are just expecting or waiting for someone to do the same thing for us.

And maybe that’s the real paradox. We keep pouring from our cup, hoping someone will eventually notice it’s empty and fill it back up. But nobody’s coming. Nobody can read your mind the way you read theirs. Nobody can show up for you the way you show up for them because they don’t know how.

So what do we do? Stop helping? Stop showing up? Stop being the person people call at 2 AM?

No.

We learn to fill our own cups. We learn to take the same advice we give so freely to everyone else. We learn to sit in silence with ourselves. We learn to give ourselves the same two-minute check-in calls we give others, except it’s a conversation with the mirror asking, “Did you drink water today? Are you okay?”

We learn that Solomon’s Paradox isn’t a flaw. It’s a reminder that wisdom doesn’t automatically translate to self-care. That being good at fixing other people’s problems doesn’t mean you’re good at fixing your own.

This Monday post is my two-minute call to myself. This is me practising what I preach.

Are you?

A network of friends, family members, and other people who can be relied on to provide emotional support or practical assistance at times of need.

Now…

Look at your life and ask yourself, who is your Support System?

Who shows up for your work events that you yourself don’t want to attend, and you need someone whose presence is enough to lighten your mood?

Who shows up for you when you have deadlines to meet, and they help you with it instead of asking you why you haven’t finalised it?

Who shows up to help you move instead of hiring movers?

Who brings you food when you are hungry?

Who shows up to sit with you in silence?

Who holds your hand just because?

Who hugs you longer?

Who?

Last week, I made it to my 100th subscriber on Substack, and I didn’t take it as a small achievement. I saw it as if it were a room full of 100 people, all sitting to listen to what I had to say. Every week! That is not a small task, nor a small win! For those who have shared my posts or reached out to talk about it further, I am grateful for your engagement. I am grateful for your support. I am grateful for those who challenge my opinions and help me learn more, or who want me to write more.

It also put some pressure on me, because, as I said, 100+ people reading your thoughts and having an opinion about them is not something small. It challenged me! The consistency I have had since I joined Substack in December hasn’t stopped, and I want to keep this up.

My brain started thinking of who was actively present in this journey that I am on. Who actually reached out and asked why I moved my pieces from WordPress to Substack? Who asked why I was writing what I write? Who reaches out to comment on my Monday posts? Who reshares them? Who casually drops it in conversations, “by the way, Angelo has a blog”? Who is actively present?

I counted. There were three people. Three people who consistently showed up without me asking. Three people out of a contact list of hundreds.

And that’s when it hit me, we’ve all agreed to lie to each other about support.

We say “I’m here for you,” but we don’t know what our friends are allergic to. We claim we’re present in each other’s lives but find out someone got a new job three months after they started. Someone’s been working out and eating healthy, and we only notice when they look different. Someone went back to school, and we learn about it from their LinkedIn update, not from their mouth.

We’ve reduced support to showing up at funerals and weddings. To commenting “congratulations” on big announcements. To saying “let me know if you need anything” and hoping they don’t actually ask.

Most of us are in WhatsApp groups or on platforms where, when a friend, relative, or someone we support does something, they share it for you to go show your support. We hit the like button. We drop a fire emoji. We reshare our stories. And we call that being there.

But being there isn’t passive. Being there involves asking follow-up questions. Being there is remembering what someone told you last month and checking in. Being there is showing up before someone has to ask. Being there is knowing they hate eggplants, that they’re allergic to cucumbers, that they’ve been struggling with their manager at work.

Here’s the truth: we don’t have support systems anymore. We have audiences. People who will watch our lives unfold from a distance, engage when it’s convenient, and disappear when it requires effort.

And before you think I’m only calling others out, I’m guilty too. How many times have I said “we should catch up” and never followed through? How many people in my life are going through something right now that I don’t even know about because I haven’t asked?

We’re all out here fending for ourselves and calling it independence. We’re all drowning in silence and calling it strength. We’re all waiting for someone to show up without ever showing up ourselves.

So when I ask, “Who is your support system?” I’m also asking: whose support system are you?

Because maybe the reason we all feel unsupported is that we’ve all stopped supporting each other. We’ve confused presence with proximity. We’ve mistaken awareness with action. We’ve replaced showing up with showing interest.

A support system isn’t supposed to be theoretical. It’s not supposed to be a list of people who would help if you asked. It’s supposed to be the people who already know what you need before you have to explain it.

And if you can’t name those people? If you counted and came up with two, three, maybe five?

Then maybe it’s time to stop pretending we have what we claim to have. Maybe it’s time to either rebuild it properly or admit that we’re all just out here hoping someone notices we need help without having to say it out loud.

I have three people. Three people who actually show up. And honestly? Even those three don’t get my full support.

That’s the part that keeps me up at night.

Funny enough, Urukundo is the ruthless one. For those of you who don’t know, Urukundo means Love.

Angelo is the kind and gentle one; he is a listener, a caregiver.

Your name is your identity; it is what people call you when they address you, and, in a sense, it defines you. I say in a sense, because some of us don’t really look like our names. To future parents, please name your kids with grace. Know that they will be bullied, and they will carry it on and probably pass it down to their kids and so on. In today’s world, you can go and change your name, but at the core, the name you were given at birth, the name you grew up saying yes to, the name that is in most of your paperwork, that name can’t be erased.

It took me a while to actually fall in love with my Rwandese name. Urukundo was so… soft! Before I got comfortable with my masculinity, love was just… gay. Now, I am not saying I wasn’t loved, or I wasn’t feeling love. I am saying, with the era we grew up in, showing softness and gentleness was perceived as being gay. So, going by Urukundo, I had to sort of suppress that gentle and kind side of me. I had to show that I wasn’t going to be messed with, and boy, did I develop a lethal tongue. It wasn't until like 2017-2018 that I actually understood how big a bully I was. My smart mouth, my comebacks, I was so quick with it, I barely gave people the time to process my attacks.

But with great power came responsibility I didn't know I had. When people started telling me how unique my name was, how beautiful it was, it shone a light on something I had buried so deep. I don’t think it is because I knew better then, I think it is just because I changed my environment and I no longer had to suppress who I really was on the inside.

But then there it was… The Bully and the Sage. On one hand, I could end lives with a sentence and on the other, I could change lives for the better. I understood that I had a way with words; my words could cut or heal.

Then came this great distinction. I always emphasize that my name is Urukundo and not Rukundo because it pisses me off. Get it right! With that need for people to get it right, I sensed a level of honesty and power that I always felt like you could never mess with Urukundo.

With Angelo, that name has been butchered so many times to the point where even I sometimes catch myself saying it wrong, and I am like, ewww, they have contaminated me!! Angello, Angero, Angelon, Angela, Angelina, Angelique, Angel, and so on. I will correct you, but it will not be as brutal as when you mess up Urukundo.

The Split.

Angelo is the one you go to for advice and softness. He will soften his blows and make you feel understood. He will generally mean no harm, and he will give you all the time in the world. With him, you will feel like all the attention you’ve ever needed in your life has been given through one individual. He will be present at important events in your life and coach you through life to get to where you want to be in life. He will listen to your drama, your bad decisions, your wins and losses, and still provide you with the shoulder to lean on or a big hug to let yourself drop and be held.

In 2019, I would call people just to ask them how they are, if they drank their water. It was a simple 1-minute call that just aimed at making someone feel acknowledged. You could be having the worst of days, and a call could send you into an anxious state, wondering why Angelo is calling you. What does he want now? All for me to say “hey, you good? Did you drink water today?” That was just enough to remind people to take good care of themselves and know that there was someone there for them.

Urukundo’s words will slap you into “Can I know my offence?” when you were just looking for a handle to hold you through your hard times. He will use logic where you need emotions, and he will use words where you need hugs. He will ask you questions to lead you to your own truth instead of giving you the answers. In most cases, a conversation with him will leave you feeling like you were stupid for asking. He will have enough patience to drag you to your own mirror and say, “Look, lookkk!!! You are the problem!” He will call himself out for being imperfect and unjust, just so you understand that if you are both on the same level, it shouldn’t be enough of a reason for you to accept less.

Urukundo is a big bully, but mostly, he bullies bullies. I once got a whole class in trouble because of my smart mouth. We were in a common class, I was sitting at the back, minding my business. I was writing notes, but the lecturer kept writing fast and erasing the board. He only spoke to or cared about the students who were sitting in front. So, at some point, I just stopped writing and decided I would copy the notes from one of my classmates later on. My classmate, who was sitting next to me, reached out to ask if I had written down the last few things before he erased the board, and I told him I stopped writing a long time ago because clearly the lecturer didn’t care if we did or not. Unfortunately for us, he eventually noticed that my classmate and I were not following his class anymore. He took three shots at us while I stayed quiet.

1. You two in the back with the glasses, are you in this class?

2. Are you part of this class or not?

3. Which department are you from?

We replied, telling him which department we were from, and he took a shot at my whole department, calling us unfocused and not paying attention. He followed up by asking who the class representative was. He didn't like the answer; it was me. He was unhappy and pressed by saying, “This is the type of leadership you show? Not paying attention?” and that was the last straw, which I fired back with “, I would actually be learning if you were actually teaching.”

Let’s just say we passed that class by a few marks.

Urukundo will look deep into your eyes while you share your life hardships, and he will say

Now, having a combination of Angelo and Urukundo can sometimes be confusing and emotionally stressful. In one sitting, you could cry and laugh at your own life decisions just by the truth that would be delivered to you. It is therapeutic if you ask me, because how often do you go through all your emotions all at once?

Living between Angelo and Urukundo isn't clean. I don't always know which one is showing up in a conversation. It just means I acknowledge that sometimes I am too much and sometimes I am nice to be around. It means that when I look at myself in the mirror, I can tell who is who.

I know who I am, and by this short article, I hope you can tell who you are addressing, depending on what you need.

I wrote this to bring sense to “Urukundo or Not” violence or not?

I wrote this for all of you who mention only one name when presenting yourself because you don’t really feel the other one. Maybe you can learn to love it after this, you can find what makes it part of who you are?

I wrote this for all of you who code-switch a lot, those of you who have to be a different person at work, with your different friend groups, and at home.

I wrote this for all of you who feel like your name could have been a different name growing up, but ended up loving it and letting it strengthen your identity.

Let’s face it, you know it! I know it!

Why is this man attacking my self-esteem on a Monday morning?

You look sharp and alive for someone who slept less than 6 hours. Are you ready for the weekly meeting you were supposed to prepare for? Do you have those updates that will push you closer to achieving your milestones, or you can explain?

Should we talk about your social life? Should we talk about those 2-3 people you’ve spent the weekend with, but know they were really not your people because they made you spend money you didn’t have and went to places you didn’t want to go?

And let’s acknowledge something quickly: no one made you do it. No one can make you do anything you don’t want to do.

Should we talk about your romantic relat… maybe not.

How is home? When was the last time you spoke to your siblings? Not to ask for money or to borrow something. Like to genuinely catch up on their lives and what they’ve been up to? How are the parents? Do you know if they’ve been eating well and drinking enough water? Age is no longer just a number, you know!?

The world is unfair, right? All these atrocities happening, the economy is making us kneel, the mental regression with all the technological advancement. You want the world to pause for a day? For you to catch your breath and enjoy the little things you have?

You have tried everything you could think of and still found yourself in the same pit? No matter how hard you try, people keep disappointing you, and work keeps drowning you.

Do you see a point to the life you’re living right now?
Are you actually finding your purpose?

We look at old heads telling us to go less on our socials, on some, “it is that phone that has been causing you problems”, and we don’t believe or listen to them because we think we know better.

“We think we know better.” But Angelo, we know better!

I am getting older now, and one thing I know for sure is that I do not know better. Now you might be quick to tell me not to drag you into my bubble because you “know” better.

A good friend of mine who is in his balding years keeps telling us that “you really think I want to read all of these books? Go to all of these places? I do it because I have to keep learning, I have to keep pushing myself if I want to win.”

“Win”

Something we have lost passion for! Winning looks and sounds nice as a concept now. Because “I cannot come and kill myself”, “I am going to work my ass off for someone else to come and rip off the benefits of my hard-earned work.” “Why should I reach out to them first? They can text and call me, too.”

We don’t want to put ourselves out there because we don’t want to be left exposed. We want to stay in control of how people view us. We know we are not perfect but yet… still we try to appear like it.

We curate ourselves. We adapt to different personalities depending on the group we’re around. The beauty of all of this is that over time… you just end up not caring what people think of you… That takes time, though!

In the meantime, you are just not good enough!

Funny enough, that is what you aspire to be! You want to be enough for your family, for your friends, for your partner, for your career. You want to be acknowledged for every ounce of energy you put into things without having to say it or explain it. You want to be rewarded for your effort, no matter how small it is or how big it gets.

We no longer can tell what is enough and what isn’t because of how exposed we are to different choices, different options, different ideas.

We have things in abundance; our current issues revolve around making decisions because we are afraid we might pick the wrong option. We are afraid we might have the wrong friends, the wrong career, the wrong partner. Obviously, nobody wants to make decisions they will later on regret. But are we really going to be handicapped by our own minds because we are afraid we might make mistakes?

Nobody wishes to live poorly, to get sick, to end up in places that will cause them long term harm. But sometimes I feel, and maybe this is just my fear speaking, that we are moving into an era where nobody is thinking deeply anymore. Nobody is capable of holding real conversations. Everything feels shallow.

Nothing is meant to come easy; we can build the muscles and the strength to make it feel easy. But unless you are lucky and blessed, I suggest you take charge and start carving your own path.

Here's the thing: 'good enough' is a trap. You're chasing a finish line that doesn't exist. The parents who seem to have it together? Not good enough. The friend with the perfect career? Not good enough. No one is. We're all just making it up as we go. So maybe the real question isn't 'Am I good enough?' Maybe it's 'Am I showing up?' Because that's the only thing you can actually control.

Look at your current life choices right now. Your friends, your career, your level of education, your partner, and your family relationships. How are they? Is it something you are proud of? Is it something you gave up on? Or is it something you’d like to work on? Why does it matter to you?

If you are waiting for the time you will be good enough for your work, your partner, and or any other aspect of your life, you will never get to it. And even if you do, chances are you will have lost so much time and moments trying to be.

You are not Good Enough, and it is okay.

Start with that.

I have fallen.

I am falling.

Personally, February was…

February decided to test me.

February 2026 2 - 1 Urukundo.

I really tried. I had my cute little plan, and I was doing well with my daily goals. I set up a few friends to hold me accountable for my weekly targets. I had plans to do more steps, 50k steps a week. I got to drinking 3L of water and spent the majority of my day going to the loo to pee. I wanted to read at least 150 pages per day, but the books I read were not tickling my fancy. Eating healthy… Ahhh, let's not even go there. Sleep, where??

I stood ten toes on business for two straight weeks. The first two weeks, I was unbeatable. I was finishing my tasks on time; in fact, I had way too much time to kill, so one day I ended up taking a 14 km walk just to meet my walking target faster. The next day, I was so tired that leaving my bed was a fight of its own. I was eating in an unhealthy way, it wasn't well-regulated, and I was catching random headaches just because, hunger? Also, as a man?

With my social media cleansing, I found myself isolated, but this time it was by choice. By design. I wanted to find healthy habits to tap into and work my way up the ladder to be able to deal with what is out here. My bandwidth for drama and BS shrinks by the day to the point where I leave conversations or places that are not feeding me. I used to accommodate everything and everyone because I wanted to be nice, or so I thought…

So, again, the first two weeks, I am killing it. I am drowning myself in whatever demons were eating at me the previous months, and I really was doing well until I got too tired from pushing my mind and body too hard. Definitely should have read my piece about planning the year and lessons from January, because clearly, that man is different from me.

It started raining every day, so my walking routine slowly died. My reading habits grew further, but with more Substack content than with actual books. But I did find Make Work Fair by Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi interesting. If you are in a leading position or are interested in data on fairness in employment, go for it. I started going back to using my phone more, but because I didn't have my social apps on it, I spent it playing games. Which I should delete because they have started to feel like those people who want to quit smoking by snacking to keep their hands busy and their minds distracted.

February, personally, taught me that I am still learning to get up. I am still going to trip over my own decisions. I will trip over my own words, thoughts, and desires. I will feel lonely surrounded by people. I will overwork my body and forget to take good care of it. I will put myself after everybody else and get reminded why I needed to find some me time to recharge and protect myself from everything I willingly throw myself at.

Professionally, yohh! Professionally?

February 2026 3 - 1 Urukundo.

February said…

Then ran me down with a Zamboni! Slowly…

Staying objective, keeping a sharp mind requires what? A good amount of sleep, some good food, a healthy diet, which also includes the time of day when you eat, and a clean environment. I don't know why we do this to ourselves, but why do we say "oh, I don't need to take notes, I will remember," then proceed to forget the question that was asked seven minutes ago? Our attention span is no longer trustworthy, and for us to remain focused, we must train our brains like it is that back you want to flex on Instagram in July from all the back exercises you do once a week. It is putting your phone in the next room if you want to read or listen to podcasts. It is going away from your devices and recalibrating your brain with new visuals. My favourite thing to do lately is looking at the names of businesses or shops in Kigali because ehh!!

I learned to trust my skills again. I had not realized how much I was on autopilot until I found out how many of the things I was busy doing, I was absent-minded. I was doing things to finish them. I wasn't doing it to learn something.

I went to a reading session review about Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck, which I recommend because it couldn't have come at a better time than when I actually needed to hear it. Fixed Mindset versus Growth Mindset. I went home thinking to myself which one I had. I know it would be easy to pick Growth because I am open to change and I want to learn until I get better at what I do, but… Am I really like that? Or which percentage do I have the most of?

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck argues that success is driven less by innate talent and more by the beliefs we hold about our abilities. Dweck distinguishes between a “fixed mindset,” the belief that intelligence and talent are static traits, and a “growth mindset,” the belief that abilities can be developed through effort, learning, and persistence. Through research and real-world examples from education, sports, business, and relationships, she shows how a growth mindset fosters resilience, embraces challenges, learns from criticism, and ultimately leads to higher achievement and deeper fulfillment, while a fixed mindset limits potential by creating fear of failure and avoidance of difficulty.

The book review left me feeling like I needed to conquer the world. I wanted to win! I wanted to be the best at everything I do.

I still want to…

But February, ayii!

We are going to get there, though.
I know it will get harder. I know it will get tougher.

But so will I!

What are three lessons you learned from February?

Are we feeling March?

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“Money is the devil’s poop”
How can you grow up with that in mind and have a positive relationship with money?

Money destroys families, friendships, careers, spirit, and more.
Again, how can you grow up with that in mind and have a positive relationship with money?

They tell you money is bad, don’t chase it, then spend 70% of their lives trying to get as much as they can to live “comfortably.” It is insane, right?

Same as the way we are told sex is bad, sex will destroy families, friendships, careers, spirit and more. But it all becomes safer and beautiful once you are married. Anyway, a conversation for another time.

How do you build a healthy relationship with money? A relationship that allows you not to settle for less? A relationship that doesn’t shackle you to places and things that are toxic to you?

We stay in jobs that pay us a lot but treat us like slaves. We stay in relationships that give us all the tangible things we’ve always wanted to have but could never afford, while being treated horribly.

If you dare to get everything someone else wanted but had to put their lives on pause to acquire it, they will shame you for “taking the easy road.”

We find ourselves counting other people’s income and wanting to audit their wallet because why are you making more money than I do? You can’t possibly be better than I am?

Equity and equality are the biggest debates of the century, driving us against each other and calling it a healthy fight to discover how to make progressive decisions. Leaving us with more insecurities.

The first work experience for most of us is being exploited and abused for the work we overdelivered on. We push ourselves to become the best of the best with no complaint, no whining, because we hope that once you make it to the top, once you hit that big salary, everything else will make sense, and you won’t have to suffer anymore. But how many people actually make it to the top? How many people have retired happy and with no debts?

One thing I appreciate about people under 27 years old is that they are cutting through that bullshit. It might be unpleasant for millennial and boomer leaders because the relationship they have with work is different. A job for most millennials (you might not claim it now, but deep down you know you do) is their identity. That is why when they work at a place they don’t like or do things that do not align with their core values, they will despise every minute they spend at work and will end up providing less effort. Gen Zs do not dream about labour. They will quit with no other lined-up job, and they will not be shamed for it.

So many layers, so many conversations, so many questions, and I barely just started. So, money is bad, check! Work and life affect your money in one way or another, check!

The biggest question is, are you in control of your money, or is your money in control of you?

How do you feel when you haven’t been paid versus when you get paid? Are you more joyful? More outgoing? More alive? Do you eat home food, or do you immediately go, “I haven’t had pizza in a while,” knowing very well you had pizza two weeks ago?

My mantra on money for the past three years has been “Money will come and go.” And it has kept me from thinking about all the poor decisions I have made with money because, yohh, while others were buying land, I was buying gadgets. I do not regret my choices; I just wish I had better guidance, better control, and better options.

Now I spend my time telling younger people than me to be wiser about their money, to ask for more, to invest it, and to grow it. But most importantly, do not let it have control over you. To instil healthy habits in your money spending. It is work too; it is a 24/7 kind of work. You have to be disciplined about it, you have to know your margins and know when to have fun or to hold yourself back from spending.

“If that ka money cannot save you, eat it”, until the future you have to deal with hunger and discomfort.

“You only live once, live it to the fullest”, and then live up to be 70 years old with debts and no life insurance.

I can keep this up, but I think you get my point.

We all want to skip to the part where we are millionaires, travelling to places we have always dreamed of, paying for things without checking the prices, and more. But the honest truth is not all of us are going to be as rich as Gates and Jay-Z. Not all of us will be able to afford a watch that costs 400,000 $. Because why should you really? We can all find happiness in what we have. We can find freedom and peace in the little we make.

We don’t have to lower our standards to enjoy it; let those standards drive you to get more. But don’t let those standards drive you to think you are not enough, that you don’t deserve to be here. Let those standards not drive you to the brink and push you over the edge. People do insane things for money and lose themselves in the process. Be patient, be kind, be grateful, be generous with yourself. We are the decisions we make.

If my elders made their comfortable money at 50 years old, all it shows me is that I am on the right path, because I know I can get into my 50s already comfortable. You who are 22 years old, wanting to have your own house at 27-30 years old, keep pushing, keep grinding. But don’t feel like a failure when you reach 35, and you are still living in your parents’ house. Times are changing, the cost of living is at an all-time high, and it shouldn’t push you to go to extremes that you can’t come back from.

Be smart about your money! This doesn’t even scratch the surface of what is out here. But it should give you some perspective on how you should approach money.

I hope.

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