It’s 5:52 PM on the 31st of December, 2024. Over the last month, I have tried and failed multiple times to write a review of my year and plan towards next year. But in between a lot of oblee!, traveling, and a general loss of attention caused by social media, I have evidently very much sucked at this.
I started 2024 working as a medical doctor somewhere in the southwestern part of Nigeria and, at the time, was about to wrap up my one-year housemanship program. I was scared and worried about what comes next and, therefore, decided to extend my program for one to two more months while thinking about what I was going to do with my life. This would become a seven to eight-month span in which I re-mapped the course I thought I wanted my life to go, fell in (what I thought was) love and out of it. I also decided to take a different approach in how I communicate with students and, as a result, gained multiple friendships with students I can now call my younger ones. I developed a love for teaching, which was only “worsened” by my passion for internal medicine. I joined and captained a football team to the finals, only to lose it all at the finish line. I ideated and started to build DermAfricans.
It has, however, not always been smooth sailing. In retrospect, I was being molded into a form I realized I did not want long-term, with my ambition and dreams being capped by my immediate environment. And so, I left.
I keep thinking of something profound to write to showoff my profundity and literary prowess, but the truth of it is that I am very tired. It has been a very long and intellectually demanding year. I have probably written over ?200 to 400 pages this year- most of these, applications and reports. I did everything on my year-plan, only to realise halfway through the year that those dreams were not big enough. And so I re-strategised, only to realise that these dreams were too big for my timeline. Now I am stuck somewhere in the middle, between gratitude and discontent.
Calm Seas do not make a great Sailor, but Stormy Seas can destroy your ship
I visualize my emotions as a ship at sea. A normal day as its captain is marked by its volatility — periods of extreme storms/lows with brief moments of clear, sunny skies. But with sailing comes “experience,” and so I no longer have or feel as many downs. However, the “highs” no longer feel as good, leading me to either chase the next high in my achievements or just coast through life listlessly, without feeling anything. I’ve learned to ride out the storms while doing and making as much progress as possible in the periods that the sun is out.
“Ebe onye oso ruru, onye ije ga-eru ya”.
There really is nothing to make you as humbled or as low as a protracted job search. Over the last couple of months, I have had to rejig and rewrite my CV multiple times, interview multiple times, and sometimes voice out my frustration via social media. It’s worse when you see people on your level (and arguably below you) get access to things you so desperately want. But I have learned that reward is not always commensurate with hard work, neither is your life charted by your own hands. And so, in the middle of my agnosticism, I mutter prayers with each submission, hoping this is the bomb that finally hits.
Ambition and drive are a blessing and a curse. So when you lose as much as a year of precious time to factors beyond your control (like the University of Ibadan, it clouds the clear waters of your perspective with the darkness of grief and regret. The weight of missed opportunities and unfulfilled potential becomes a heavy anchor, pulling you into a sea of self-doubt. But I try to see the silver lining in every cloud, and thus I am thankful for the other life paths I have unintentionally forgone in the guise of delays. I have also strongly realised I need to calm down. Everything works out in the end. I have learnt how not to be a sore loser. Still, destination fallacy is my curse and cross. There will always be something bigger to aspire to.
I no longer joke with, deprioritise or postpone, my happiness. Pleasure is fleeting and exists as isolated islands in the flotsam of sadness that is life.
Could I have done this year without people? Every point along my journey has had one form of support or the other. A voice of reason or compassion when I needed it. The sounding board for all the sometimes-insane ideas across my mind. A distant acquaintance offering to pay for my exams when I did not get the GRE waiver. A roof over my head when I made the somewhat abrupt decision to leave clinical care. Money, advice, shoulders to lean or cry on. People randomly stopping me or DMing me to offer words of affirmation and encouragement, while easing my job search by sharing my CV with their contacts. I am a small boy, sitting on the shoulders of helpers from God.
Broken Pottery
I realize I am a very flawed man. I have tried severally to sit at the kiln of life to mend the broken shards. The heat of the oven and the effort it requires sometimes drive me away, but still I try. Kintsugi. Not because I will ever be whole but because of the hope that, in the end, the gold will shine through.
“Idha qada amran fa-innama yaqulu lahu kun fa-yakun.”
(When He decrees a matter, He only says to it, ‘Be,’ and it is.)
The nature of the world’s instructions as regards career choices has made me sometimes pick one in great detail, to the detriment of others in my journey for progress, making me forget just how many tools I have at my disposal. I am grateful for the progress so far, but very hungry for what is to come. I am nothing without God. Nothing is set in stone, but I very strongly believe that He has decreed that it is my time to “Be”.
Buy my dip. If all goes as planned, 2025 will be explosive.
O.C.
Originally published on Medium ↗