Now Q1 is over.
It was the end of the first quarter some days ago, and for some reason — best known to the universe — this is the first essay I’ll be writing, completing and putting out for the year.
Remember how in my end of the year essay, I said I’d like to live and do big things in the coming year?
Well, let’s say I’m living and doing things but not exactly how I wanted or imagined.
There’s the feeling that I’m way behind schedule, whose schedule you may ask. I have no idea, but that’s how I’ve been feeling.
I’ll share with you my wins and losses from the first quarter, because you’re like family to me — whether you like it or not.
I started the year depressed and anxious. I had lost my job in December and black tax had taken my savings. As the hardworking person that I am, I thought that getting a new job would be a piece of cake.
I applied for everything I saw, and every single one of them gave me a resounding no or never got back to me. I got fed up, and cried a lot in January.
I woke up every day in January thinking that God must really dislike me. I felt alone and angry.
In February, I saw a lot of the people around me — friends, acquaintances, internet friends — win. Either getting a job, an apartment, finding love, getting a new phone or laptop, you name it. All the good stuff.
While I was very happy for them, I couldn’t help but feel bad for myself. Yes, I felt jealous.
According to my friend, Judith, jealousy is desire inspired by others, and it is okay to be jealous. We can turn our jealousy into a motivation to get whatever it is that we desire.
Still in February, I got my heart broken for the first time in my entire life. I cried so much, I don’t know how the tears never stopped. In those moments, I understood the phrase “do not put all your eggs in one basket.”
This person had become a routine in my life –talking to them everyday was my drug. So when it ended, I cried and didn’t have anyone around to comfort me.
I decided to start making friends –female friends especially, and I reached out to my woman (one of my favorite writers) to work with her brand and she agreed. A content marketing role –which I had no clue about, she took me in and started showing me how it worked, and now I’m implementing everything I’m learning on her brand. What she has done and is doing for me, I do not take for granted.
I planned to go back to school in March, but that flopped terribly. With no job and source of income, nothing I planned to do was working out.
Have I talked about the rejection mails? Or the subtle shade from employers? I get it, the country is hard but you don’t have to kill me because I want to work with you to better my life as a Nigerian citizen living in Nigeria.
There were offers with little pay and heavy workload, and if I’ve learnt anything from working as a teenager, it has to be that I never overwork myself for peanuts. I refused those offers without thinking twice.
At some point in March, I started getting angry at myself for rejecting those jobs. As someone I know will say, all money na something, whether big or small.
I couldn’t go back to say, hey, remember me? I want the job you offered me back. They would never have gotten back to me, and even if they did, the offer and incentives would definitely be reduced.
In the last week of March, I told everyone I came across that I needed a job and if I didn’t get one I’ll unalive myself in April. I told some that I’ll become a sex worker, or different things that came up in my head as I asked them to recommend me for work.
I joined a women only forum on WhatsApp, courtesy of a journalist that loved my short story at the March edition of Ouida's open mic. They welcomed me and made me feel special, and reminded me that I’m not alone.
In the first quarter, different people held me at different times while I was hard on myself when Q1 was already hard enough on me. These people reminded me to breathe, to sit, to cry, to laugh. They held me up whenever I tried to stay down –some of them random people, people I may never meet again, some I may never meet at all.
I’m alive, I lived, is what I say whenever I’m asked what I achieved in the first quarter. Not the way I wanted, but I did. The year has three more quarters, nine more months and many more days to go, and I know I’m going to live my dream of living and doing big things in 2023.
Q1 was after my life, I’m after Q2’s life.
