Ahmad’s Diary #6: absurdism, (finally) starting YouTube, and Nigeria-induced fear
It’s 5:14 am, Thursday, the 6th of March, 2025.
Just had Sahur.
Sometimes, it’s crazy to me that life is just a big, long, mostly indeterminable movie.
We all have these tickets — by being born — and we sit in the cinema without knowing the storyline, actors, or even the genre of what we’re watching.
We’re just strapped in for the ride.
Is it just me who feels that this is slightly unfair? We didn’t ask to be here.
Then, it also makes me think about people who get upset when people talk about legalising assisted suicide.
Again, we didn’t ask to be here, it’s also not your concern, and everyone has different views on life as a concept.
Not everyone believes in heaven, hell or a god, and not everyone wants to push on and hustle and be burdened by life’s woes, so I quite understand people who decide to opt out.
Anyway, before I veer off into an absurdist rant. Today, we should be finalising edits on my next article, so I’m excited about that.
I also want to get a phone tripod sometime soon, so I can make better content and finally start the YouTube I’ve been shouting about for years now. I need to decide on a day, or I will just procrastinate and never do it.
Update: I’ve decided I’m going on Saturday.
Very excited.
It’s 12:07 pm, Monday, the 10th of March, 2025.
Abuja has been hotter than a dumpster fire in the past few days, and this is one of the reasons I need to leave this country because if my AC spoils, I’d simply spoil with it.
Anyway, I got my tripod on Saturday! And it’s unlocked a cinematography-obsessed side of me that I was only slightly aware of before.
When the year started, I had all these things I wanted to do, and routines I set to do said things.
One of the more interesting things about life is how nothing is set in stone.
It’s March now and my goals are relatively still the same, but the things I’m doing to achieve them have changed significantly.
I started the year wanting to make more content and be more intentional about growing my personal brand.
This, in itself, is a solid goal, and while I broke it down pretty well so it was integrated into my daily routine, I realised the goal wasn’t… connected to me.
Yes, I want to make content and put myself out there, but the mediums I was focusing on were not ones that I felt connected to, and my problem was trying to do them all at once.
Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Medium…
So, recently, I further refined that goal. I want to do more by focusing on less, not just do things to say I did or am doing them.
It’s like the thing with the course I left.
I want to focus on the mediums I really enjoy and that inspire me — YouTube and Instagram.
YouTube is the main thing.
Shifting my mindset in this way has freed up so much time and I’m able to get inspired to create in the ways I genuinely want to, not just because I have this goal I have to meet.
Anyone who knows me knows I love YouTube, so, yeah.
What’s going to be on my YouTube?
It’s going to be mostly vlogs, I think. Essentially, I want to continue chronicling my life, but in another medium this time. I also don’t want to box myself into a niche because I want to have the freedom to do anything I want on my channel without it seeming out of place or off-brand.
So, getting the tripod has been amazing because I can take all these interesting shots I couldn’t before, and I’m super excited to make my first video.
I have a soft goal to upload by the end of this month.
Fingers crossed, innit?
Also, who knew that filming yourself was so much work? Getting angles and lighting and framing shots right. Wow it’s so much fun, I love it.
It’s 1:36 pm, Monday, the 17th of March, 2025.
I’ve been in a pretty bad depressive funk the past couple of days and I’m only just getting out of it. Strangely, working is helping.
Anyway, I haven’t written much in the past two weeks, and I’m wondering if it even makes sense to publish what I’ve written so far, or would that just be too little too late?
The country has been a disaster lately, from Sen Natasha getting suspended, to an NYSC babe being threatened by her Local Government Inspector for speaking frankly about her experience as a young person in this absurd country.
Her TikTok was quite satisfying to watch, as she gave the president a much-deserved diatribe, and said what many Nigerian youths are either too scared or exhausted to say.
This is not how I’m supposed to be spending my youth, and we really need to start waking up to that fact.
I just sent in my next article pitch; How Nigerian youth can turn social media outrage into real-life actions and hopefully solutions, so, fingers crossed that is approved then I can write it.
For now, I’d say the least you can do is email your senators; Find out who they are here, get their contact info here, and tell them as members of their constituency, you want to know what is being done about the situations unfolding.
No one tells us this, but young Nigerians deserve better. And it is clamouring for that better that will save us from becoming the older generations that are content to proclaim themselves superior in every sense but are the architects of the Nigeria we live in presently.
I keep oscillating between deep, immobilising despair for the state of the country and my future, and moments of blinding rage that a few thousand people (an incompetence of politicians) at the top have decided to punish us for their gain, and are now trying to police how we respond to our plight.
We really are in the most dehumanisingly peculiar situation.
So, yeah, that’s been massively weighing on me, and Ramadan isn’t helping, but, I will rant about my horrid relationship with religion in another entry, I’m tired now.
I hope you’re keeping your spirits up in all this.
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