2020 : Nothing was the same.

My Year In Review

It was crazy… but we ain’t dead yet.

2020 started out like any other normal year I’ve experienced… Midnight prayers and prophecies (and lots of olive oil, way too much olive oil). Nobody expected it to turn out the way it did.

I had just ended my job with Softicu and I was looking to improve my coding skills and my grades in school. I spent more time in class at night, working on minor coding projects and reading a lot of random stuff. Getting ready for HNG’s yearly internship.

Then corona hit and we all had to go home. For how long? Nobody knew exactly. There was a lot of uncertainty and confusion around it, and it was difficult to make decisions on which way to move.

Luckily the internship had just started, and it was fully remote. All I had to do was have data. I did my best at the internship but sadly I couldn’t make it to the end (in retrospect, maybe I could’ve done better 😪).

My life was average at best. Lots of failed attempts at learning to code and doing something meaningful in the tech industry. Lots of fake hypes (tech bros 🤝 insincere hyping). To the outside world, I was that smiley-faced tech bro who could code, on the inside though, I was falling apart. I was getting really frustrated because I wasn’t making any headways in this thing. No income because there were tons of incomplete, semi-useless knowledge and skills. I felt like I was just beating around the bush. I would motivate myself to code, and quickly lose that motivation, and try again.

Then Kay hit me up with a project he was working on and needed some help. I’ve always struggled with JavaScript and it’s frameworks, but I know CSS to my fingertips and I do enjoy writing it. So I helped him handle minor CSS challenges and we sorta built a relationship around that.

Then he moved to Port Harcourt, and shortly after, he invited me to join him to work on another project.

Moving to PH was one of the best decisions I made this year. It gave me a glimpse of what this world truly had in store for me. In many ways it was my first real taste of freedom and independence, and I had to fend for myself most of the time (I still called my parents from time to time to request for financial assistance sha 😅). Growing up under the cover of my parents sort of shielded me from the harsh realities of life, and made me develop a sense of entitlement, and when I came to PH, I really struggled with that.

When I got to PH, at first all was good… Kay really took care of me and made my stay cool, but it was soon obvious that I had to get my own source of income fast, so that I could go for what I really wanted. I asked around for gigs and jobs, got a few web development/design gigs, and thanks to Prince, I got a job at PayVest.

I didn’t exactly love working at PayVest 100% of the time. The place was cool, and my co-workers are the friendliest people I’ve ever met. But the work itself was gruelling. I had my first real encounter with impostor syndrome while I was there. It was terrible. I was depressed for weeks. Everybody was so good at their job, and I was still struggling with JavaScript 😭. I kept trying to improve but it was clear I wasn’t going to last very long there, and sure enough, I got laid off after two months.

I had told my parents I was working and earning 70k, and it seemed good, but in reality, I was struggling to survive. I was unsatisfied with a lot of things going on in my life and around me, and I was slowly sinking into depression. I started taking weed to escape it. The moments of highness were really amazing, and since they were temporary, I kept going back for more, and I got addicted. When I wasn’t high, my hours were spent in properly masked sadness, lots of anger and bottled up frustration, combined with entitlement, and a whole lotta un-bro-code shit. I started to hate everyone and everything. There were times when the love shone through, but mostly it was hatred or indifference.

I’ve really been struggling with my sense of entitlement (I’ve tried hard to get rid of it, but I still catch myself doing it once in a while), and it caused a lot of minor arguments and some major ones between Kay and I, and later on Kake too.

One day I and Kay had a major argument and a lot of emotions were expressed. Nothing was the same after that.

I think I need help, but I’m not bold enough to go ask for it. I don’t even know who to ask. I don’t even know what I want.

I need guidance too. Or maybe I just need someone to give me a whole lot of money.

This year was a mixture of many things… good times, bad times, passions and emotions, love and hatred, one step forward, two steps backwards, two steps forward, one step backwards… all that movement, but still in square one.

This year I discovered a lot of good things about myself, and some pretty disgusting ones too.

This year was full of shit…mostly.

I’m still alive tho, and hopefully next year will be wayyy less shitty and more successful. I really just want peace of mind and smooth sailing. I just want things to work out for me without having to stress myself over and over and over even for the simplest things, like getting NIN 😪. I want to get astronomically good at coding, and project management. I want to make my first million, and my second, and keep going up. I want to fix up those aspects of my life that are terrible. I want to genuinely love and care for people without insecurities or fear. I want to live, not just stay alive. I want to review 2021 with a sense of joy and gratitude.

That’s it.

Thanks to everyone that taught me something this year, knowingly or unknowingly. Thanks to those who showed me genuine love and care. Thanks Kay, for pointing the way out to me.

Good sides to this year:

I built my CV
I built my portfolio site
I learned how to code better

I fell in love, and out again
I boldly applied for jobs
I took myself out more
I got better at swimming
I made more money than in previous years
I did a whole of other interesting stuff that I can’t remember now.

There are other parts of this story that I can’t remember now, but I’ll update this as soon as I can

P.S.: If you DM me to talk about this, I’ll most likely push you away or curve you… just pray for me or send me money.