Personal

In keeping with last year, I thought I’d go through the list of songs Spotify thought I listened to the most from my 2020 playlist to try to tease out some themes and recollections behind them. Here goes: ** Fighting For Us - Anthony Evans: I popped into a church end of year event in Croydon at the behest of my friend O, where Anthony Evans did this song amongst others. It turned out that he’d just lost his Mother to cancer which put his turning up at all into perspective. I came back to this song quite a few times over the course of the year. ...

It feels very much like my first Christmas up in the ‘Deen, what with being house bound, friends and family some distance away and there being a decided chill in the air. Now, as with then, I woke up to We Three Kings in my ears with all the rabbit holes of memories it brings with it. The key difference this time is that the lockdown has given everyone practice of staying in touch across the distance. Fortunately or unfortunately, that means I have several family zoom calls to jump on. It is a small inconvenience I guess, given the year we have all had - the best of years and the worst of years to use that oft quoted line from Dickens. ...

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash ** It was my birthday the other day, and in keeping with what is becoming a tradition of sorts, I spent the morning wading through a flurry of WhatsApp and text messages before a fairly lengthy video call with the niece who I almost share a birthday with. The rest of the day was spent off-grid, which has become one of the more enjoyable parts of the day. I don’t remember when the need to unplug on the day first came to the fore but I am finding that in the aftermath of all of that mental stimulation, some downtime is helpful. As I have reflected on here before, the five weeks between the 8th of July and the 15th of August tend to be emotionally draining ones. Dealing with a move - which is quite frankly a culture shock of sorts - has only added to that this year. ...

A Poets & Writers prompt from a few months ago asked us to explore ourselves by using the ten questions guests on the TV show, Inside the Actor’s studio, are asked. A few months late here goes my response: What is your favourite word? This would have to be ‘Quotidian’, a word I’ll admit to first hearing from Chris Abani’s 2008 TED Talk. Between the man, his work and the heft of the word, it is my favourite word, one I once made the theme of an entire blog. ) What is your least favourite word? Like, when it is used as an immensely irritating filler word. What turns you on? Boobs and brains. I’m partial to a well-spoken, well-read damsel with a great rack, cload in something just slingy enough to highlight the cleavage a wee bit. :) I’ve clearly thought too much about this…. Like this, which I’ll have to admit is disturbingly specific.. :) What turns you off? A nag.. What sound or noise do you love? I love the sound of rain on a tin roof, maybe a throwback to growing up in Nigeria and the freshness that a thunderstorm brings, washing dust and dirt away. A tin roof speaks of solidity and shelter I think, and the sound of hearing the rain rage outside whilst I’m safe within is one I love. What sound or noise do you hate? Dripping water. I suppose it is a counterpoint to rain, not least because dripping water drips in that annoying way, never quite making up its mind whether to be unleashed in a torrent or to just stop. Neither hot nor cold in a manner of speaking to use a Revelations metaphor. What is your favourite curse word? Fecking, like fucking but maybe less in your face? What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Medicine, psychiatry or family medicine. How close I came I’d never know but both my sisters ended up towing that path and have quite succeeded at it I’d say. What profession would you not like to do? Policing, politics, and the pulpit… If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates? Could you have made your existence a little bit clearer and helped us understand our origins? What was all that cloak-and-dagger stuff about?

Photo by Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez on Unsplash ** When I reflected on life at the turn of the year, and wondered what the year would be for me, Delve Deeper came to mind. Behind that was the understanding, inspired in part by the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders, that everything worth its salt is tested, and only those which had roots sunk deep would survive. I was also on the cusp of quitting my job up north with the prospect of the move of a lifetime looming. Whatever your particular take on COVID-19 is — elaborate hoax, a pretext for instituting a new world order or a symptom of a broken world — what is incontrovertible is that in its wake has come a seismic change to the world and what we know of it. For all the preening, posturing and the facade of strength the world economies have presented, 2020 has shown it all up like an edifice built on shifting sands to use a biblical metaphor. The Emperor’s new clothes, for all we can see, are anything but a covering. ...

\\\* Seemingly like in the blink of an eye – like play like play in the pidgin English of my youth – we are somehow at the end of May! Summer is finally here, bringing in its wake the realisation that if I had stayed up North, the first of my Nine Fridays of Summer would have just gone past. As it is though, I find myself in an intermission of sorts, loitering in the space between a past life and the future in which an adventure in the sun hovers just out of reach, 70 days late. There are of course worse things than swapping grey granite for verdant green or being cooped up with family, like dying or very nearly dying like so many people, including a few closer to home for me, have over the past few months of this pandemic. ...

Of the many conversations I have had over the past few years, one sticks out in my mind, not for its length or its importance but for how odd it felt at the time. As I recall it, a travelling salesman and I had just finished a meeting and were heading to the kitchenette at work to drop our coffee mugs off when he asked: “How did you end up here?”. ...

As part of refreshing my Life Plan at the end of last year, I took the Enneagram Personality test, which suggested I am a Type 5 with a 6 Wing. The Enneagram is a personality categorising methodology of unknown (but ancient, possibly some Catholic mystic) provenance which was brought to the US by G.I. Gurdjieff and and eventually to pop culture by the likes of Richard Rohr. I owe my introduction to it to Ian Morgan Cron and his various appearances on podcasts I listen to regularly, as part of his book tour. More information is available here. With the benefit of time on my hand, I decided it would be a good time to re-read the book (The Road Back To You) and reflect on what I’ve learned about myself in the process. ...

One of the unintended outcomes of my year of living intentionally was revisiting my life plan and rejigging it to incorporate a Codex Vitae and annual (Life) plans. The framework remains the same: three interaction spaces (personal, professional, and public) and seven life domains (spiritual, physical, relational, financial, vocational, mental, causes and charities) across which the health of my life is measured. The idea is to, on an annual basis, review the health of my life using the seven domains to identify ones that need focus in addition to the three interaction spaces. The output of this exercise then is 10-12 goals which form the main objectives for the year. ...

One of the biggest disappointments of 2019 for me was interviewing at a company across town and failing to land a job there. It was a company I had admired for some time, the role itself was to be the team leader for a small group of technical specialists overseeing a North sea portfolio and the pay was better; an added incentive. The interview itself started off well I thought but somewhere around three-quarters of the way through, it delved into territory I wasn’t overly familiar with. Part of it was a failure of preparation; I hadn’t taken the time to get intimately familiar with the company’s portfolio and thus prepare for any potential curveballs. The more I mulled over the disappointment, and let time do its thing, the clearer it became to me that this had ultimately been a failure of depth. I knew enough about my subject, had built a reputation in my locality and knew enough about the company to give the perception of competence and suitability on the surface. It was when the screws were turned and the veneer was stripped back, that a lack of depth - somewhat dodgy foundations if you like - proved my undoing. ...