Diary of a 20-something Nigerian: starting again, making (more) money, and Eid depression
It’s Monday, the 8th of April, 2024, and MTN is after my life.
Not even in a cute and quirky “Oh, my messages are taking two seconds to deliver” kind of way, but in a “You will never stream any song again in your life and I will make you suffer” kind of way.
I feel like we’re always talking about how disastrous MTN service is, but no one is coming up with a plan to destroy them. I’m ready to invest in such a venture.
Anyways, hello, dearest readers.
It’s truly been too long, do you still remember me? Have you moved on to other bloggers now? If you have, I’m sure you will let them know that their time in your life is over, and you’re ready to be reunited with me, Ahmad.
If you don’t know who I am, I’m Ahmad.
As I’m sure you inferred from the title, I’m a 20-something Nigerian living in (battling, really) Abuja, Nigeria, and this is where I chronicle the ups and downs of my life and all the neurodivergent machinations of my thoughts.
In my past life, I was quite consistent with these, and I had a lot of fun writing them, but, as I’m sure many other young Nigerians can understand, life started happening a bit too swiftly, and some things took a backseat.
Anyway, I’d been having recurring thoughts about resuming this, but I’d been pushing them away until someone (If you’re reading this, hi, thank you) texted me about how he was reading an entry of mine from about 2 years ago and how he really connected to it.
I like to think that was a canon event. So, I decided to continue.
I don’t know how or where to begin catching you guys up on things, so I guess you’ll just know more as you read.
I have to be very intentional about writing these since I have a job, so I’ve come up with a timetable for writing and publishing.
Wish me luck!
It’s such a blessing to say this; I actually really enjoy my job.
It can be annoying, long and tiring sometimes, but it’s always worth it, and I’m doing something I’ve always loved doing in different media — storytelling.
I love touching people with my work and hearing other people’s stories too. There’s something so magical about the power of storytelling, and I’m grateful I get to do it.
But recently, I’ve been feeling like maybe I’m not doing enough.
Not at my job (I do my best there), but at life in general, specifically making money and having multiple sources of income.
So many people have corporate jobs and then run things on the side, and it makes me feel like “Damn, you’re really just sitting with this one thing and that’s it for you?”.
And do you know the crazy thing? I’m very nearly perfectly content as I am now.
My job pays well (for now), I’m doing something I love, I live in my parents’ house, I’m young, hot, and rich (amen), so why do I even feel this way?
Thank you so very much for that question.
I feel like I’m not taking opportunities I should or using other talents I have or just doing something else. This is one of the reasons I decided to start blogging again, as a little passion project on the side, it’s not as if I get paid for this now, but who knows? It could be something someday.
I don’t know if how I feel is good or bad (read: unfair to myself or not), I just don’t want to feel like I’m not doing all I can or should be.
Sometimes I wish I could talk to God himself like, Oga, what’s going on here? What should I be doing?
But then I also feel like I know what I should be doing, and that’s taking advantage of the financial stability I have and using it to do other things, like getting back into this, maybe taking content creation seriously, and just doing something with the talents I’ve been blessed with.
I know I can’t be the only one who feels this way.
Every time I see on Twitter that someone has done something great or started a company or is a panellist here or is building XYZ, I want to throw my phone in a blender and drink the pieces.
If you are new here, that was a joke.
I’m not very competitive and I don’t typically care what other people do or have done as long as I’m good.
But I do feel like “Hm, I should be doing something too.”
I don’t know, I don’t know (I actually do).
I need to come up with a plan so I can actively start working towards the things I want to do because I could talk about them for years, but without concrete plans, I might as well be trying to drink zobo with a fork.
It’s the 10th of April, 6:31 PM.
Today is Eid.
It's been such a tiring day. Went on an early run, got back and started food prepping to cook, went to the mosque to pray — and Abuja sun was so deadly, my God — got back home, cooked, ate, then took a fat nap. As I napped it rained quite heavily (and it’s drizzling right now) so I guess in hindsight the extra hot sun made sense.
We took no Eid pics, and nothing special or celebratory happened.
It’s so crazy how holidays go from this thing you really look forward to as a kid to a mostly stressful day that kind of does nothing for you.
Can you tell I’m not in a good mood? I’m forcing myself to write because that’s the point of this journal, to show up in whatever state I am.
I miss my friends, and a hug would fix some fundamental imbalance within me, but they’re mostly far away.
Going to do something to distract myself now.
This is just a quick note to say that I’m publishing today, and I didn’t write as much as I wanted to, but I’m proud of myself, nonetheless.
Thank you for reading and being here.
below this entry is a clap icon and a comment section, and you can “clap” (hold down on the clap icon continuously) on a single post for as many as fifty times, this shows me how you felt about what you just read and also helps other people see my entries. Clap for me? you’re doing the lord’s work. i’m also an attention wh*r# and love to read and reply to comments, so leave me a comment, hm?
and if you want to keep up w me elsewhere, i’m mostly on twitter, but my instagram is pretty too :-)
