Living alone dairies #10; getting high (not really), clean ears and celebrating small wins.

Wow, I feel like I should celebrate or something, ten whole weeks of journal entries. That’s longer than some relationships.

I’m incredibly proud of my consistency.

It’s ten o’clock on a very cold and rainy Tuesday morning and I’m at work typing this. Jos weather really makes me rethink if I actually do want to leave this country; this cold is insane. And from what I heard, as the year drifts to an end, it gets worse. Actually, in all honesty, I feel like if I do eventually permanently relocate out of this place, I’d definitely visit a lot; I have lived and traveled abroad before but I guess there is truth to the saying that your origins never truly leave you. I can’t wait to be one of those diaspora Nigerians with the green-white-green and the flag of my resident country in all my social media bios.

Quite aesthetic, methinks. A spicy Nigerian, uno.

Nigeria is best in small doses, believe me.

More recently I’ve really been getting into meditation, and for the past week I’ve meditated quite often, I use an app called Balance and honestly, it beats the YouTube videos I used to use by a wide margin.

Frequent practice has made me realize that meditation is more than just siting Indian style on the floor and chanting “oum” (while these are parts of certain meditative practices, they do not constitute its entirety), I’m not an expert in any way, so take all this with a grain of salt — also, I’m open to tips and criticisms from more knowledgeable yogis — but its something I’ve frequently fallen back on when I’ve felt overwhelmed and/or distraught.

Because I live alone, when I’m not feeling great all I really have is myself, physically at least, and so self-soothing practices are what really help me through my ruts. You can work out, clean, go for walks, read, etc. My favorite one is of course, reading, but lately a close second is meditation.

A lot of the time my head feels like its buzzing. Not like actual sound, but like I’m never really having a singular train of thought, concentration for extended periods is difficult for me and I could get distracted by the drop of a hat. My frequent random intrusive thoughts also don’t help things. I’m sure you’ve gleaned from how I write that I oscillate between various trains of thought at random — and this is me trying my best to make a cohesive body of writing to post, so of course, I edit — so its quite easy for me to get “lost” or trapped within my own head.

Meditation helps with that.

I find that through conscious, guided breath work and effort to relax my body and focus my mind, I’m able to (almost) quiet my thoughts in these states and I come out of them in a curious “high”, similar (I would say) to MJ, of course, not as intense or indulgent, but its like there’s space in my head and I’m floating, just for a little while, my thoughts streamlined and calm.

I’ve also found that as I practice more, its easier for me to slip into these calmer, more relaxed states and have — again, almost — out of body experiences. It’s also helped me in handling upsetting/triggering situations.

I promise this is not an ad.

But yeah, meditation, as cliché as it sounds, actually does make you feel better.

Its Friday now, and guess who’s not behind on writing for once?

Its me.

Today is strikingly sunny in comparison to the rest of the days prior, and while the change in weather is nice, Jos doesn’t do anything in moderation, most especially its weather; the sun is out with a vengeance, as if annoyed that it couldn’t get to shine earlier and is now trying to make up for lost time all at once.

Anyways, for some reason I have a slight sore throat.

I also had a random, intense bout of tinnitus this week that destabilized me; It’s such a rarely talked about condition but it can be so nerve-wracking. I suspect I have earwax impaction that’s pressing against my eardrums, affecting the nerves there. This is caused by frequent use of cotton buds to “clean” my ear canal.

In truth, cotton buds don’t really help clean the ears as much as they push wax that could have come out on its own deeper inside the ear, this in turn can cause infections, perforation of the ear drum, and earwax impaction. All of which can cause tinnitus. So, please don’t put anything inside your ear canal to “clean” it, the ear is a self-cleaning organ. That being said, if you want to clean the outer orifice, you could do the tissue and pinky finger thing; where you wrap the tip of your pinky in tissue and wipe around the outer canal and the part of the ear that you can touch.

You live and you learn, hm?

No more cotton buds for me, anyways.

I’ll have to go to an ENT to get it checked out and hopefully resolved.

Apart from that, my week has been pretty productive actually, I’ve done a lot of stuff I wanted to do, and I’ve started some other projects too; I’m actually starting to take my writing a bit more seriously and I can’t lie I’m surprising even myself and I’m working on pieces for submissions, so that feels good.

So, it’s been a good week, methinks. I just hope I’m not jinxing it.

Maybe I kind of did jinx it.

While some unpleasant things did happen this week, I didn’t really deep them much. Then for some reason it felt like everything culminated into this overwhelming feeling of sadness (?), I don’t even know what the hell that was, but I felt so miserable and I didn’t have a solid reason why, which pissed me off even more because I usually understand my emotions pretty well.

This just felt like a cloud of sadness so heavy I really started to wonder if I just had high functioning depression. It has dissipated, and I feel almost completely normal again, but that was just really weird for me.

On top of all this, I have now come down with a cold.

Like, what is the point of all this?

Gosh, this entry is just melancholy, I hate that.

Anyways, its August now? How insane is that, my God, when did this wretched 2022 start? We’re more than half-way through it already and I genuinely still feel like the year just started.

Where is time actually flying to?

I’m not the kind of person that has new year resolutions and all of that, and maybe that will be good for me, because I work best when I have my work cut out for me clearly, but I feel like I’ve made quite a lot of personal, emotional progress this year; managing my anxiety, working on accepting my relationship with my family, living alone and managing my finances, etc., if you really look at it, I haven’t actually achieved some huge milestone like making X amount of money or traveling somewhere, but I’ve actually grown in a lot of ways that I was afraid to, starting this year.

So, I think it’s very important to recognize and be grateful for your “small” wins. Those infinitesimal feats that stretched you just a bit (or more) beyond your comfort reach; the time you spoke up for yourself in an unfavorable situation, the time you really wanted to buy something and went against your desires, the time you wore what you really wanted to wear out and said “fuck the stares”, just anything that pushes you to be closer to the person you want to be.

I feel like that’s another ideal question to ask yourself; what does the ideal me look like? Who is the highest, best version of myself? Then, how do I become them? What would they do? That way you aren’t setting the pedestal too high, you’re still dreaming within your own body and what it can do, but you’re moving forward to being the you, you want to be.

Before you just ignore that situation that’s been upsetting you and let it slide, think about how your most high self would react.

What would the me I want to become do?

If that person is confident, brave and intuitive, wouldn’t they speak up in an upsetting situation? Would they let their voice be drowned out?

I know, I know, it sounds very cliché, but its honestly my favorite way to motivate myself, because I’m not giving anyone the power over me (I hate giving power over myself to others) that most people give “role models”, I’m honestly just doing what a better me would do.

Back to my main point now, celebrate the less social media worthy wins, because inch by inch, you’re becoming the version of yourself you want to be, and that’s really what matters.

Don’t forget to clap and comment on/highlight parts that stick out to you; I genuinely enjoy receiving feedback on my thoughts.

Love you.