Today I Vent

I havent written anything in about 3 weeks because I personally took a vacation from everything work and just decided to have me a few weeks of leisure.

How were those days? Amazing!!! So much fun. I think I actually needed it too. Got a lot of deserved rest and had lots of time to meditate. Now I feel like I can take on the summer full throttle! I'm surprised (and humbled as a matter of fact) that some of you guys actually missed me cuz y'all reached out to me to make sure my blog wasnt dead yet. Grateful for the love. Ima stop now and jump into what's on my mind and it has probably crossed everybody's mind at some point. Oh by the way, I am kinda upset so here goes...

What is it with my African folk sef? Especially the older generation who like to exploit the concept of respect when talking to younger people. I am seriously tired of holding my tongue when such human beings do not respect themselves. Maybe my mentality changed after spending a few years in this country and what I usually saw as a normalcy in Nigeria became a nuisance in this country. Who knows, maybe a few more years in Nigeria too and my concept of it my have changed as well. But really, all the "You have no respect!" and "Am I your mate?" phrases have gone through my ears many a day in this country even as recent as 4 days ago and it took everything within me not to flip out on this obviously semi-literate (even though business smart) man who tried to play smart with me and not give me a full refund after selling me a horrible part for my poor car which has been out of service for roughly 2 months now. I would go into details but I wouldn't wanna expose my technique of handling such human beings. I will however let y'all know that I walked out .. .sorry, stormed out of his office (OK maybe I did flip out). And I left without my money unfortunately but luckily, the thoughtful Nigerian/Brazilian dude working on my car got me my money after about 24 hours as he felt bad that it was he who referred me to ol' dude in the first instance.

I know a bunch of us have experienced such people in the past and we still do every now and then and I'm usually not the one to ask such questions but what would y'all do or what do y'all do when faced with such situations? It is standard in most family homes that children are brought up to respect their elders but what happens when such elders start acting the fool on purpose and not respecting their own selves because they know they are older. It is just so annoying and instead of trying to respect such people, I lose every form of respect for them and I would let it show if I wasn't such a reserved person. I personally try to avoid them at all costs because like it or not, we run into a bunch of them every now and then.

I don't know if it can be considered Psychology. I don't know if one day, we might grow older and all of a sudden just switch to such behavior just because we are older. I seriously pray against that though because funny enough, it also happens among people of younger ages with older ones trying to command respect from younger ones. Where did they learn such from? Of course, probably their parents or that arrogant uncle or aunt who comes over to the house a lot. And of course, they grow up exhibiting the same traits as such people.

Obviously, almost nothing can be done to stop some of these old folks from behaving the way they do but I believe that as we grow older, we can choose not to adopt such traits into our systems. And by no means am I saying that young folk who try to disrespect elders should not be put in their place. I am just hoping that peeps don't go trying to be superior to someone else because they take a couple years from them. It would only make peeps look stupid.

And stupid is what the guy looked like after I stormed out of his office and had someone else get my money for me. And I really did try to be nice to the guy but he asked for it and BOY! He got a piece of my mind.

That was the highlight of my Wednesday ...

Maybe I should go run and hide sef before all the old folks start looking for me.

What Will Be ...

So my mind has not been at rest for an entire month and there is a possibility that it might go on for much longer. By no means does it mean that nothing is going the right way for me right now. As a matter of fact, a lot of things are starting to look up and I can gladly say my mind is not at rest because I am finally getting round to accomplishing a bunch of things that normally, I should have accomplished a while back.

I dream a lot! Hey! Who doesn't. I also make a lot of plans. I guess a lot of people do that as well. But in the past, the plans I made never got past my brain and never even made it to a piece of paper. Truth is I basically had a mentality that things would just happen even if I did nothing. I have since graded myself "F for Foolish" for ever thinking that stuff would just happen without me making an effort.

There is nothing wrong with being carefree but when it comes to certain issues that concern your future, that carefree attitude has to be put in check. A lot of us are familiar with the phrase "What will be, will be" and honestly, that is how I was living life. Again nothing is wrong with that but in my case, "abuse" is an understatement for the way I treated that phrase. If the slightest problem arose whenever I was trying to get stuff done, I would just turn off and of course my response was "What will be, will be". I intended on starting this year on a better note but that never worked out, thanks to that phrase. I literally applied it to every damn phase of life I could think about and stuff was not getting better and yet I said "What will be, will be"

One thing I can say that I always did and still do was have a quiet moment when I think about stuff and life generally and it just so happened that some voice in my head redesigned the phrase and actually got me doing a bit of pondering. The phrase went something like this "What should be, isn't happening". And I wondered  to myself why things were not happening. I tried so hard not to blame myself for all that should have been but weren't but of course I soon came to the conclusion that it was denial and I was only deceiving myself.

It was all it took. I realized that my number one problem was me and my attitude towards accomplishing tasks was diminished. Why? I would never know and I do not ever want to spend time trying to find out. All I know is that as true as the phrase "What will be, will be" might sound, it shall no longer have any command over how I run affairs of my life. I had a spectacular April and I realized that attacking issues with a positive mind and a positive attitude yields positive results. I never even attacked such issues with a negative attitude. I just allowed whatever it was to envelope me and keep me down. I allowed it! Well, never again. The voice in my head that tweaked the phrase a little and got me thinking and getting down to business was very well needed and I am optimistic that May will even be more spectacular than April.

Everybody goes through tough times and it is really up to you to either let the tough times take charge of your life or you toughen up and handle the tough times. You might even get knocked down in the process but every event that does not go according to plan is a learning experience and it will only make you wiser for another time. And it is important to get back up as quickly as possible and keep pushing. I seriously want to stress that for all of us, whatever is gonna happen will happen but we have the power to change our destinies for the better.

It took me a while but I have finally learnt that. This was a real experience and I just thought to share

BigTyme Out!