So, I have two intro lines for this article.

Intro 1: The very day I started writing this article was the day of Teejay’s passing. Literally started around 5:00 am, March 5th, 2025. I had no fucking idea.

Intro 2: The very first time I heard about the concept of ‘the eye of a hurricane’, it was my first year in Barbados. I was probably 7 or 8, and that helped me arrive at the title of this article because that’s what this past year has been.

If this is your first time reading a birthday article from me, welcome.

It’s a yearly ritual where I let random strangers on the internet get some insight into the happenings in my personal life over the past year. Let’s get started, shall we?

Summary of The Past Year.

The opening line for Charles Dickens' Great Expectations best summarises the past year for me: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

In my own words? It was a great year, it was an insane year.

Let’s Start With Friendships

I feel like I’ve been living life in reverse. Let me tell you why I say this.

I’ve only now, in the past year been enjoying friendships on a much more meaningful and personal level.

All my life, I’ve been a floater. You can read more about that here.

But something different happened this past year. It’s like God wanted to reward me for the friendship betrayal I experienced the year before this.

It was like he was saying

‘Oya, I see that that one really pained you ehn. Collect these friends ehn & experience them make I rest. Sorry’

So, I feel like I’ve been blessed with honest friendships this past year, and God has presented opportunities for me to lean on people and for people to feel safe enough to lean on me.

Apparently, in a rather counterintuitive sounding way, what builds friendships is actually asking for help or being in a situation where a friend is able to be of help. Who would have thought?

Friendship has looked like going on random trips, binge watching movies at the cinema, cooking, mutually hating on an idiot, 2-hour phone calls, or getting involved in the randomest, most minute part of their lives.

It’s like my friends said,

‘If you like, involve us in your life. We will involve you with ours whether you like it or not. If you like don’t reciprocate, we will swear for you.’

I loveet for me. So this section is about you guys.

To:

Innocent, who will call me for the randomest, darndest things in this life and ask me stupid questions like ‘when last did you kiss a guy?’ Stupid guy.

Olamide, who told me he lost his mum & then asked me to make asun pasta for him after I blurted out ‘Ah. You’re an orphan now’

Feranmi, simply for opening up more, because before? She and clam? Small difference.

B for letting me be there for some of the most challenging periods in life. I imagine what the future is going to be like, and I know I’ll say \

‘Bish, see where we’re at now’

Cole, thanks for letting me hold your hand.

Then for my guys: Lade & Dami, thank you for listening to my hour-long rants and crashouts on random weekends.

My crazy guys like short rat Felix who will not let me resttttt & ashewo boy Tobe, thank you for being pains in my ass. God wee judge the both of you.

The ones that have been here for the long time: Fountain, Victor, Folo, Dunsin, Tomi, Gsmart, Folakemi, and co. Glad that we still talk and still have an existing circle.

I realise that by being more open to friendships, I am setting myself up to the possibility of experiencing friendship heartbreak, betrayal, or whatnot, but I’m just new here, please. Let me enjoy myself for now. That bridge will be crossed when I get to it.

My Career.

This past year was the year I grew ridiculously in my career and also experienced some ridiculous levels of stress.

PS: My career here is not just the place I work, but me as a professional in general.

Product Marketing Guru.

I independently organized a Product Marketing Class under Everything I Know and yoo..it was amazing.

It was a challenge I took up, executed, and excelled at..and for that I’m incredibly proud of myself. Plus, I’ll be having another one or two this year.

Everything I Know has now grown to the point where I’m getting sponsorship inquiries, and it's included in the value offerings some of my clients are interested in.

I will be doing a lot more with Everything I Know this year. Just wait.

Speaking Engagements.

I did quite a number of speaking engagements this past year, especially physical speaking engagements, but I’m looking to do more.

Let’s do events hosted by the United Nations, Canva, Google, 10,000+ arena paid, speaking engagements, shall we?

I’m a darn good teacher, great communicator of value & I know my shit. Call me for your events: [email protected]

Bumpa.

Coming to 4 years by June, I’ve had some of the best times and worst times this past year at .

I’m currently a Product Growth Manager: a hybrid of a Product Marketing and Product Management role, and I head a new team of 7: Engage, aka Product Growth.

I oversee activation, retention, brand marketing, churn management, product growth initiatives, and messaging products within the Bumpa ecosystem.

I have now seriously stepped both feet into the murky waters of Management and omo.. I’m just a girl o. How old am I tori oloun? But I’m not gonna lie, I was built for shit like this.

On the flip side of the coin, I’ve seen the shortcomings of corporate & now understand how that in of itself can be a blessing. Nothing is better at helping you focus or rearrange your life than corporate nonsense.

Side Gigs.

I’ve worked with brands and startups on content/product marketing projects like landing pages, content writing, branding strategy, and so much more. Chilli Papers, Bloomwomenswear, the ones whose names I can’t mention..everybody.

Believe it or not, I am stepping into not just being a contractor but also being a consultant. It’s an interesting phase and I love it for me.

Really grateful to everyone who has brought me business because most, if not all, have been recommendations. Thank you so much.

PS: I know it's way overdue, but I’ll eventually complete my portfolio, okay?

Anyway, if you want us to work together, shoot me an email at [email protected]. I’m good & I’m not that expensive, yet.

I promise.

Generally on Career

I love what I do as a professional and can only do bigger & better things from here.

I’ve built up my career to a point where my talent and expertise are impossible to disrepute. I know my shit and that’s that.

I’ve learnt a lot about the numbers, leadership & personnel side of career building and workplace management this past year.

I have a newfound respect and gratitude for working with smart people.

You just need to work with an incompetent person or an asshole one time to know that you may be taking the smart people you work with, for granted.

So, for Ayo, Mayowa, El Gloryyyyy, Felicity, Hope, Stanley, heck, most of my coworkers, thank you for making my work easy. It truly is an honour to work with you guys.

Conclusion on Career.

Lastly, I have discovered that in my professional life, I am still Funmilola Dahunsi’s daughter. I have navigated new terrain & some murky shit with the audacity that cannot be taught by the best of schools and the fundamental principles of humility, strength of character, dignity and boldness that she has instilled in me since day one. Thanks mum.

May I also add that God is involved in the building of this professional’s life?

Generally, I’m quite fixated on career & income growth. I want to explore bigger challenges & interesting projects in Product Marketing & Product Management, and be paid ridiculously well for it.

I also want to help more people find their feet in their careers. Give them the little nudges that I would have benefited from when I was just starting.

I am excited to do more of that this new year.

Personal Life.

Romancee

I don’t know if you people think I’m hiding boyfriend somewhere or something.

I have this conversation with acquaintances who should even know me better than random people, but they always seem surprised when I reconfirm that I’m single.

Shey ma ni boyfriend, ma ma gbe pamo ni?

Anyway, welcome to yet another year when I’m single.

To God be the glory, let’s play Part 3.

Entrepreneurship

This is the year that I launch Interesting Pieces: my jewelry business. Just wait for it. You can follow the page on for now, sha. Eshey e ku ife.

My Family.

The last time I wrote a birthday article, my family was just a family of 4.

My eldest brother is married now, and Silas has a girlfriend. It’s crazy. A lot can indeed happen in one year.

My sister-in-law is mischievous, funny, balances Paul’s quiet nature, and she’s gist partners with my mum. I couldn't have asked for more, plus now I'm one step closer to my dream of being an aunt.

My brothers' wedding was really a wonderful affair & it brought us closer as a family.

Plus, my mum and I are much more closer than before. We’ve moved from talking every week to every other day and yes, Im the parent now: checking if she's taken meds, settled with her friends, keeping tabs and stuff. It’s fun.

God.

I remember about 3 years ago telling my friend that I was at a point in my life where I was navigating my morality.

Anyway, I still have been a Jesus baby all year. God has held my hand this past year like mad o. Bruhh.

It’s simply by his grace that I am here still here.

Then this past year, he has been talking to me directly through services consistentlyyy. It's so crazy!

Loss

If you’ve ever had this conversation with me in the past, you know that I have this OG outlook regarding loss.

I’m no stranger to loss.

I know what he looks like. I’ve smelled his cologne on people before. I spoke with him before I learnt how to actually speak, and I know he doesn't really listen.

I know that he comes to your house uninvited, pulls out a chair by your table, and sits down. I know he’s great at peekaboo. I’m all too familiar with him.

I’ve lost people. My dad, Uncle Dotun, a couple of people, so I'm no stranger to grief, I know how this works, I’ve been down this rodeo a couple of times, but Teejay’s death was a little different.

1. It Hit Close To Home: The first thing is that Teejay’s death, more than anything, was one of my first adulthood close deaths.

The last time loss really shook me was, say, in my early teens, and I’ve developed a coping mechanism since then.

But I think processing grief as a child is a bit more straightforward, you’re not thinking so much about the family that has lost someone, the financial, socio-cultural & legal consequences of someone’s death.

As an adult, you’re able to understand and process all of this in real time. You actually get it.

2. It was the unexpectedness of it all. I think personally, I'm able to understand deaths that come after sicknesses a little better, or situations where they are inevitable. But this one wasn't either of these, and it wasn’t anticipated at all.

3. The grief is strange to process: I have had a very hard time trying to place my grief regarding this matter. I am close and still not that close, so it's like, what is the right of my grief to exist? Should it? Is this my grief to carry? If it is, what is that supposed to look like? It's quite complex for some weird reason I can't understand.

What Has This Loss Meant For Me?

• I am acutely/morbidly more aware of my own mortality. Everyone knows they’re gonna die some day, but I think more consciously, I am very aware of the possibility of any travel, or event to be my last.
• I realise now that I was not a great friend. When my friends Shalom and Olamide lost their parents, I approached everything with a ‘been here done’ that thought process. I thought I knew how they were feeling but I was wrong. I had no idea. I hadn't felt my chest being heavy in years. I’ve not felt that painful lump in my throat that’s hard to swallow in a long time. I haven't had to be the firstborn in a family managing the loss of a parent. In my entire life, I have not had to deal with the estate of a deceased parent. My pain at best is oldddd. So my empathy was not full to the extent it should have been. Teejay’s loss reminded me of that pain, and I’d forgotten what it felt like.
• I still have a delayed response to grief: I remember the day after his passing. I was just quiet. I even continued working that day. If I didn’t think or talk about it, I was okay. Just a few tears here and there, and I was good. It wasn't until about weeks or a month later that my chest started feeling heavy and I just wanted to crawl into a warm space, do nothing, and stay there. It was then that it was a little hard to go to church because singing ‘I love you, I need you to survive’ was making me tear up. Dami and Lade were laughing at me that everyone has finished grieving, and I just started my own, but I guess that’s how grief works sometimes.
• Biggest Lesson: It was about 2 weeks or thereabout before Teejay’s death that he insisted he talk about and squash a beef we’d had for close to a year. I remember the day, what was said, and our resolution. We were parked in front of Ebeano in his car and talked for over an hour. Well, it was more of me ranting and being annoyed, but the conclusion from that conversation was for me to try again regarding the matter and getting back to how things were. If we didn't have that conversation, we wouldn’t have squashed things before he passed, and that would have been insane to me.
• The Last Time Principle: I still can’t remember where I first saw this principle, but it basically explains this: We are blessed with the awareness to remember and celebrate a lot of our firsts. A baby’s first step, first words, your first kiss, first apartment, first car, but we don't usually know or get to celebrate our lasts. Do you remember the last time you did your last crawl? The last time your teeth fell out? We may never actively know the last time we will speak, hug, or see someone, so it’s best to live life cherishing every moment nd everyone that means a lot to us.

Before I leave this section, I want to say thank you to my friends for carrying me. At some point, I felt what Joy Crookes meant when she titled her song ‘ Feet Don’t Fail Me Now”

I sometimes felt like I almost buckled over at some point, but again, thank you for carrying me.

My Key Takeaways For The New Year.

• Shege activated is not shege elongated: Meaning you will surely see shege, but you will always come out victorious at the end. Shege is like the building blocks of character development.
• In the end, I win: It doesn’t matter how many chapters the book has or what genre the story takes, whenever we skip to the last pages of the book, it ends the same way: Precious O’Dahunsi wins.
• Indulging my Vanities: Life is mfing short. There are little things to be enjoyed in life, and I will enjoy them. The travel I’ve been postponing for forever, walahi I'm traveling it. I will buy yet another perfume to the 7 I have at home and dance with no care in the aisles of the supermarket and laugh too loud.
• Cultivate the audacity of a Short Nigerian Man: There are few things in this world more inspiring that the audacity of a short Nigerian man or an Igbo man who is convinced that he’s going to marry you. I want to move more like that.
• Take Space: I hope I continue to take space and make cretins uncomfortable. Make my audacity shock them.
• Be Good To Myself: Two of my favorite artists have songs titled Be Good to Me: Nyanshinksi and Jacob Banks, so you can understand how important it is for me to retain this message. I hope I give myself the grace to fail at stuff and excel at stuff. I hope I’m kinder to myself.
• Again, Audacity: I want to be recklessly audacious. To do things just because.
• Money: I want money. Bastard money. To invest in the small things and experiences that make me happy.
• Friendships: I hope to preserve more of my friendships and keep my great acquaintances close.
• Self Hype: I hope to toot my own horn more and get recignition for the shit I do.
• Family: I hope my mum gets to enjoy the grandkids that she so wants. I hope that I get closer to the older people in my life. I saw some of them earlier this year, and I was so happy to see them.
• May God Satisfy Us with Long Life & Health: I pray for great health for myself, my friends, and family. That we get to enjoy ourselves while on earth. That God puts his comfort and joy in our hearts.
• If the world temporarily forgets who I am: I am Precious O’Dahunsi: the goddess of creativity, mother of conversations, Funmilola’s daughter, your favorite crackehead, that mfing bish & one of the most brilliant babes you’ll ever meet in your life.
• And finally, To Myself: Precious, I am glad that I get to carry the entity that is you. That I get to embody your spirit and soul and be the vessel through which people experience your heart, your soul, and your person. I pray that the world is kind to you, that God is good to you, and things fall in place for you. I am ridiculously proud of you, and I hope you never lose your smile, your joy, and your essence. Happy belated birthday, baby girl. I love you always.

Thanks for reading. See you next year, God willing!

Hello. Before you start this article, let me give you a little bit of context.

TLDR (But I mean read it duh)

My name is Precious O’Dahunsi: a brilliant Product Marketer, a scrappy Product Manager & a general troublemaker. (PS: I’m reading this again while editing and wuzz all this aponle?)

Anyway here’s the gist: this article you’re about to read is about one product ‘experiment’ that succeeded to failure and the lessons I learnt from it (if there are any for you).

It also attempts to summarise my craziest experience yet as a Product Growth Manager (this is the job description that I think combines the Product Marketing & Product Management function I currently perform)

We’re done with this part of the story. Let’s move.

The Lekki Phase 1 of This Story: How I Became A Product Manager

About a year ago, I became a Product Manager for a Messaging Product.

How? My company was doing a bit of internal restructuring and needed PMs for certain products, so my guess is I became a PM because of either or all of these three things:

• I was already doing some Product Management functions having worked on optimizations, pricing models & much more in my current Product Marketing Role.
• We are not that plenty in the company.
• I had independently done some Product Growth work for the product I was assigned to.

This would be the beginning of ‘my cookings’ as one of my co-workers: Lade would call some of my crazy ideas or ‘ambitions’ as JohnPaul would comment.

But before we proceed, let me tell you the kind of PM I started off as and still pretty am (till I learn more and do more crazy work) I was a PM armed with 3 major capabilities:

• Familiarity with the product, team, and processes to get shit done.
• Understanding marketing.
• Just knowing how to figure shit out.

The Lekki — Ikoyi Link Bridge of the Story: The Problem Statement.

So this part is about how I thought I had hacked something and maybe I did, but then I really did not.

So, one of the products under me was the campaign feature on Bumpa that allows users to send bulk SMS & emails to their customers.

It was one of those features of ours we didn’t really pay attention to. It wasn’t a revenue generator as such and just a sprinkle of merchants used it and the world was okay, plus Obasanjo’s internet was working well.

But here’s the problem with having a Marketer build a product. You’re looking for growth numbers or trying to improve revenue if there’s as much as a whiff of making some and here’s how we did it.

Moving to The Admiralty Road Portion of the Story: The Solution

There were three major reasons why users weren’t using the feature as much and it wasn't generating enough revenue:

• Functionality
• Awareness
• The pricing structure

Functionality.

One of the reasons more users weren’t using it as much was because it wasn’t always dependable and it was as staple as it could be. Checking the provider we used at the time the number of say failed SMS was quite high.

Awareness

Because it was a tertiary feature, most users never really discovered or used it and we didn’t create as many prompts in the product to guide users towards discovery.

Pricing Structure.

Revenue for it was also low because of a number of reasons we discovered after doing a little bit of investigation.

• For example, if you sent 1 SMS to 100 people and 1 failed, you wouldn’t be charged for the remaining 99.
• We offered a bit of messaging credits for free for free users but we topped it up every single month. Same for subscribers.

As my friends would say, these are the izzuhes.

The Lekki Phase 2 Roads of the Story: Arriving At The Solution

As logically implied, solutions are found exactly where the source of the problem lies.

So here’s what my team and I did:

1. Functionality: We had to improve the functionality of campaigns and we did that in these ways:

• Changed providers: I think I and my Technical Lead and Backend Engineer probably sat on about 7 virtual calls, spent hours scouring the internet for 3rd party providers, and reached into our personal network to find a service that was affordable, reliable with API integration.
• Added extra features to campaigns: We made slight edits to the functionality like adding a text counter for SMS, showing users how much a campaign would cost before sending, registering a general Sender ID that would work for the SMEs on our platform, validating the phone numbers of recipients before SMS get sent to prevent our end users being charged for failed SMS as much as we could and a bunch of other micro things that made the feature much better.

2. Updating the pricing structure: So this was one of the most interesting parts for me.

Because SMS cost was determined before I got on the product, it was part of a subscription package & I couldn’t find documentation for how it was arrived at, I had to first strip down what the unit cost of an SMS was for us as a business.

Then estimate what we were charging the end user from the messaging credits system we used.

Finally, I would compare cost & functionality across other SMS products in the market to determine my new pricing system

So here are the things we did:

• Free Plan Limits: For people on a free plan, you get the first free credits and that’s where it ends. It doesn’t get topped every month.
• Increased the unit price slightly: This was to boost the profit margins however slightly while still making the product competitive. Plus, it had remained the same price for three years.
• Separated allocated credits from purchased credits: We designated the credits that came with each subscription package as Allocated credits & the ones that customers purchased independently as Purchased Credits.
• Credits Exhaustion: To get people to make more purchases they gotta finish what they currently have no? So, what we did was the allocated credits that are part of a subscription package will expire by the end of the subscription and we deduct allocated credits first.
• Tiered Pricing: Just like you have data plan pricing, we also did something where the more you buy, the lesser the cost of the credits to encourage more bulk purchases from users.

3. Workflows: As predictive of something I or any other PMM would do, I created a workflow that had a combination of PNs, emails, SMS, and other stuff to introduce users to campaigns: emails & SMS once they had spent at least 3 months using the general product.

The Lekki Phase 3 of the Story: The Results

I’m going to make this short.

We saw a 200%+ increase in revenue after about 3 months.

We consistently had a 50% increase in new user discovery and adoption of the product.

We often times even saw a 100% increase in this number.

I must say we also got more questions and queries which is characteristic of products when people pay more attention and start using shit.

The Lekki Ajah Part of This Story: The Lists of Events That Upended My Happiness

(Ok. This title is a bit dramatic but I generally am, so why not?)

You would think everything was perfect no?

Yeah..if you already work in a startup you guessed right. Of course not.

So, here’s what happened.

With the updates made to the product, we were able to attract or should I say convince the number and quality of users who were ready to consistently send out a shit ton of campaigns.

This should be good on a normal day but here’s what happened… the request overwhelmed our servers during Black Women’s black Friday month (in Jessie Woo’s voice) and it was causing issues across the app.

PS: Bumpa is an e-commerce product so you can understand how disastrous having issues during Black Friday would be.

So, we temporarily disabled it.

Yup. That’s it.

That line was the singular bane of my existence for a couple of days.

It felt like a wet cold rag soaked in the icy waters of Iceland and applied to my cheekbones and somehow the icyness penetrated my jaw. I was livid.

The decision to temporarily disable it was because it was affecting core features even as a tertiary feature itself and we’re in the middle of Black Women’s, Black History, Black Friday month.

So that’s it. That’s the story o, ara adugbo.

The I Don’t What’s Beyond Ajah Part of the Story. Maybe Badagry?: Lessons For Me

Okay..so this part of the story has lessons for both myself and you (if there’s anything for you to learn)

So first off, let me first register my displeasure.

Why did Product Management give me such a crazy orientation package??? Why did I have to experience such a roller coaster of shit less than a year into this field officially? Common Chelsea!

Anyway, the major thing I learned in this entire fiasco is that at the end of the day whatever you do has to align with company objectives or goals, even if you meet your goals.

Number 2 Lesson, it’s not personal, it’s business. Like one of my colleagues would say during our reflection at the end of the year: all of us can do with not being too attached to a project or product and I think it's true.

Something else was, I was trying to do a post-mortem of the situation. What could we have done better? If we planned the sprint better would we have known that our servers would be overwhelmed like that and therefore prevent the meltdown? What could my engineer have seen that he missed? Yadayada.

PS: My technical lead felt stressed over how I was stressing over it and he sent me this that was really really enlightening.

The truth is, sometimes shit happens. Dazz it. Sometimes you really can’t foresee that shit is going to go down. Sometimes you can but at times you can’t. That's the crazy thing about Product Management.

But you do have to train your dragon to be good at proactively spotting potential disasters.

Now We’re Out of the Descriptive Titles Because My Knowledge of Lagos Geography is Limited: Lessons In Product Building.

So, if I was to give tips to a Product Marketing Manager or a Product Manager who is thrust into the role and needs to make changes and make them fast and just do shit, here’s what I would say:

• Get your old-time data first: When you want to start growing a product you need to know your starting adoption rate, usage, and revenue levels to have things to compare with when you eventually push your growth strategies. This is important for you to measure growth.
• Figure out the problem: Some problems are obvious because the complaints have been there but just not paid attention to. Some are obvious because you yourself can see them. Some, you need to talk to customers: the ones that have never tried it, the ones that are super users of it, and the ones that abandoned it. I would advise surveys then call the ones that even filled your surveys. I recently did a survey and the answers were a little open-ended, So, I called, and that even helped me understand their responses better and add one more survey field. Sometimes, speaking to them gives you more insight than a survey.
• Figure out your pricing: If it’s a revenue-generating product and you don’t know the model they used to come up with the price, if you do a little digging, and some competitive analysis, amongst other things, you will figure it out. Plus, everything in this life is an experiment. Experiment my dearrrrrr.
• Use different servers for different products: Don’t ask me about this plisk.
• Relaunch the product/Create workflows: Work on a relaunch plan if it’s an existing product, and set up workflows to keep re-introducing the product to new users and engage old users from time to time.
• It’s business, it’s not personal: Circumstances and management le ya werey. You will be okay. Sometimes the success of a thing isn’t necessarily the success of the company goals at large and (in Layi Wasabi’s voice) dazz okay.

Now, Here at the Destination…..

My hands are tired yet again and I hoped you or someone you share this with learned from my story, shook your head at my mistakes or gave me a mental thumbs up for the stuff I did.

Thank you for reading and thank you plus shout out to my amazing team who pulled all this work off: Raji Mustapha, JohnPaul Chidera, Mayowa Shofoluwe & Olaoluwani Onafowope.

And oh, in case you were curious, we only disabled a part of campaigns and we’re bringing it back.

Thank you for coming to my sob story. Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Hi hi!

I decided to write this article to celebrate my 3-year workversary simply because some things are worth documenting.

The basis of this piece is examining, how

“Let’s try this out for 3 months”

becomes

“Today is your 3 year workversary!”?

It’s a medley of reasons but let’s start with how I joined the company.

How did I join Bumpa?

I was about 4 or 6 months writing a tech newsletter for a community called Consonance Club owned by Bumpa’s CEO.

The newsletter was a hit and sorta revived the community. It got Twitter buzz and I’ll confidently say it was one of the most interesting Nigerian tech newsletters at the time.

One of Bumpa’s investors also found Bumpa through the newsletter as well.

PS: I would learn of this about a year later through an interesting conversation with the investor. Top guy btw!

Anyway, one evening, Bumpa’s CEO calls me and asks me if I want to join his new startup & do content like I was doing for Consonance and I said yes.

I don't think I said yes that day sha because we had a demo call the next day.

I remember having 2 other job offers at the same period & I eventually chose Bumpa.

Shikena. That’s how I got the job.

My career at Bumpa in the early days

We were a lean team at the time and are still pretty lean if you look from a particular angle.

My first day, I remember being added to the WhatsApp group, starting an amala lovers vs haters war, and telling the CTO not to embarrass me in public because he used the word ‘smellos’ in 20 fucking 21. Like common!

My first undertaking was to create the Gift from Bumpa persona, focus on email marketing for acquisition and start churning out content.

I was the only person in marketing for quite a bit but this also gave me space to try out a lot of things.

Email marketing, digital ads, the billboards we did, video creation, content writing, mini launches, creative campaigns, and much more.

I remember my 3rd month or so, there was this number I remember seeing.

About a 2000% increase in something I cannot remember specifically. I think it was ‘acquisition’ but the point was it was heartwarming to see such numbers for something I was just testing out.

We used to celebrate 15,000 downloads at the time

My early days saw me carrying myself with my personable skills & talent: creativity, understanding user psychology, knowing how to write insanely well, ability to do research & an unending bucket of curiosity.

And even now that I have been able to add more theoretical knowledge and experience to my deck of skills, those things I listed, still carry me through a lot of stuff I take up.

I have moved from handling content writing, digital ads, influencer marketing, UX writing, and content marketing to doing more of product growth, CRM, and product marketing now.

What’s my marketing career looking like at the moment?

At the moment, my job title reads Product Marketing Manager but I probably would define my function as Product Growth Specialist.

It’s still within the scope of what a PMM is anyway, but that’s a better definitive title.

I do less writing for articles, videos & social media design now. We have beautifully skilled people: Petra and Dami that handle a large portion of that.

I do more product growth tasks, tackling product bottlenecks, trying to improve UX, and using data to make better product choices.

I also do a lot of thinking. Jesus Christ!

Before making a decision, I think through the end-to-end process of things, check how it will impact the user, and much more.

I enjoy doing this because it helps me lean into my creativity a lot.

No matter what role or thing I do in this life, if it’s not maximizing my creativity, it’s a waste of my talent.

Summarily, I am currently curious about using data to conduct product experiments and see how it can influence user behavior.

I’m excited about defining how users get to experience a product and moving them along the needle of product goals.

This is my current obsession (work-wise). So, if you have interesting case studies or resources, pass them my way will ya? Thank you.

Difficult Times at Bumpa.

I don't like stories that make things seem like only good choices were ever made, life is perfect yadayadaya.

These are some of the most difficult things I’ve had to work through in my 3 years here.

Churning more content:

There was a time when I was the only one writing articles in line with my other content marketing duties.

And higher up, there were different perceptions of what I was supposed to do/achieve.

One party wanted me to be shelling out about 5 articles per week. The other sorta understood my workload and style of writing and was more insistent on results from another aspect of marketing.

It was a very stressful period for me because I couldn't possibly shell out that number of articles per my writing style & workload and I didn't always have enough time for the other outcome because I would try to achieve the first. So, it was a lotttt.

Supervising contractors.

To solve the problem of getting more content out, we decided to hire freelance writers on contract and it was stressful for me. Jesus!

See, I have managed influencer marketing relationships, merch production, design contract staff, etc but I struggled with this one.

Interviewing them, managing them & managing their output was still a lot of work I did not want on my plate.

I enjoy the creative process of writing but proofreading other people’s content, making edits & having to rewrite a number of them from scratch because it just didn't suit our tone/my goal was just too tedious for me at the time.;

It also didn't help that there were more freelancers than I could keep up with.

It made my life boring, my work uncreative, and stressed me tf out tbh.

The first months of product marketing.

When my product marketing switch within the company occurred, my functionality didn't switch immediately. Let me explain.

When I was a Content Marketer, I was already performing some product marketing functions. So, when I made the switch, you’d expect that I’d face product marketing fully right? Errrr, nope.

I was still doing content marketing with a side part of Product. A major part of this was the way teams were structured and the fact that I was still in my old team.

Then the team switch happened and we were able to move past that a little bit.

And then there was the problem of my PMM needs not being taken as seriously when I first started. For example, there was an important tool that took over 4 months before it was integrated fam.

Anyway, the struggle here was more of adapting to the new team and even for others to adjust to the fact that we were now doing product marketing full term and it's not something we do in our spare time anymore. So yeah.

One thing I will say about the difficult times is that grace has been extended to me to figure stuff out and I have also extended grace to the company to figure things out as well.

Things I Have Learnt in My Career.

• How to Pushback: One of the biggest differences between a junior and senior marketer is knowing how and when to push back.

A junior marketer is prone to accept almost anything brought to their plate.

There’s a new trend one person thinks you need to jump on, there’s something fancy a competitor has just done that someone is advising you to emulate, etc.

A senior marketer knows how to look at tasks/goals, determine if it's worth taking up, push back with stakeholders, make unplanned suggestions because the data says it's important and so many other things.

Learning to say no becomes a hallmark of your growth as a marketer.

• Data is King: Create avenues to measure data (in fact insist on it), then measure and use the numbers from what you measure to improve whatever you're doing.

The best combo for a marketer is using data (user feedback, product interaction data etc) and matching it with creativity (differentiating marketing) to achieve your goals.

• Everything adds up to make you great talent

What you studied in school, no matter how unrelated to your profession, your moral values, your interpersonal skills, your communication style, etc, everything adds up in the end.

I like to say I’m the personality hire wey come sabi. So, I win both ways. I’m darn good at my job and working with me is a breeze (on most days)

Hey.. up to twenty-something employees added after me and I'm still the Chief Ment Officer of Bumpa, keeping the lightness of the workplace existent. I dey try.

• Your Work Is Not Your Family.

This may sound very contradictory to you( if you know me), but walk with me, I want to address something.

It’s popular opinion that ‘We’re like a family here’ is a red flag to watch out for.

Whilst I think it’s true to a degree, I look at it a little differently.

I think you can make some of the most profound relationships and friendships of your life with the people you meet at work.

I think you can be lucky enough to work at a place that prioritizes your mental health, career growth, etc.

I think you can go above and beyond for a job if you feel the need or desire to. (These things pay off in a way for you)

However, I think the healthiest way to view your relationship with your workplace is not necessarily as a family but as a place where an exchange of value occurs. You provide value to receive monetary and professional growth as compensation.

Always put it at the back of your mind that the business will always do what’s best for it and this is not always in negative cases that they will fire you if they need to.

It also means if what’s best for the business is to do something good for you like paying for your learning, giving you perks, etc, it will do that because it benefits it.

Viewing the workplace like this (in my opinion) will help you navigate the workplace and your career way better. You will be able to make the best decisions for yourself per time and reduce disappointment or entitlement that way.

• Community is important: Sometimes I think about it and wonder why I wasn't so big on ‘community’ before but I think it's because the term community just seemed so abstract to me and also I thought of myself as a brilliant lone ranger.

But belonging to a valuable community of people or peers in your profession will do wonders for you.

I belong to maybe 5 communities but I'm only active in 2 and they’ve been tremendously helpful. Whether it's to keep up with trends in the industry, learning what makes up a criminal job opening you saw, getting feedback that you’re not going crazy, the ecosystem is just like that, community is good for you. I recommend.

Things I’m most grateful for at Bumpa.

• Brilliant Coworkers: I am grateful for having worked with some of the most brilliant minds I’ve ever met. I’m currently working on a product experiment with one of our designers named Mayowa, and the way his mind works is amazing.

I have a vision for an experiment and he helps me interpret it into design & he acts as the sounding board for some of the crazy ideas I have.

I have never had to work with mediocre people and I hope not to in the future.

• Audacious Coworkers: I am grateful for daring and audacious people like Serah. Serah is going to be the reason why for every organisation or body I join, I will look out for the benefits and use it to the fullest.

Serah is that girl who uses her HMO fully. I’m the one that will pay out of pocket most times (Major reason is because I don’t know where the HMO freaking card is) but it even goes more into more things like putting your professional learnings on the company etc.

• Coworkers that dream: I am grateful for people who show that you’re never too deep in to pivot to what you want. These are people like Cole, Felicity, Dami, etc.

Felicity and Cole used to do Customer Support/Success at some point in their career with Bumpa & they’ve moved into Web development and Product Manager respectively. Dami is doing more marketing these days and it’s amazing.

• The Ones that shall not be named: I am grateful for people who bring the corporate world into my startup world and remind me that I still need to be tough and employ tactics like pulling rank and conversation verification on more than one occasion.

These people have helped for times when I may no longer be here and the work culture may be different.

A more positive spin to this category is someone like Temi, who told me one time: ‘You wear your feelings on your face abi sleeve, you need to learn how to get a poker face on’ and I’m trying!

• Supportive Coworkers: I am grateful for supportive teammates who engender creativity and ease of working together. These are people like Ayo & our CEO who see a big personality & creative ment like mine and embrace it fully.

It also spills into professional things I do outside Bumpa. Say I have a speaking event somewhere, I am hosting one Twitter space or I've written another article for a different organization, I will casually look into the audience and see my coworkers there.

They’ll repost my article or flyer without even asking. I’m grateful.

What makes Bumpa special?

The people: The founders are pretty decent people but more than that they’ve been blessed with hiring crazy, dedicated & hardworking people who believe in the Bumpa vision.

The product: When we say we’re building the future of commerce, walahi talahi kin shey iro.

We have a solid, solid product on our hands and it is becoming clearer every day that we have a huge responsibility for the SME economy.

Additionally, you almost run into Bumpa in the most unseemly of ways.

Say your mum is billing you to buy something and the vendor who is not even in Lagos, is sending you a Bumpa receipt.

You follow a random Instagram vendor through a Meta ad and the website they’re using was built by Bumpa.

Bumpa as a product has a really bright future.

Post 3 years, What Am I Looking Forward To?

The results of the current project I’m working on.

Career-wise I think I want to tackle more interesting problems, work on more impactful projects, do more interesting work, and making a hella money.

Conclusion

I am proud of the work I’ve done here. Immensely, immensely proud.

I have watched this brand grow and I’ve grown with it as well. I look forward to the amazing things the future has in store for me career-wise, wherever that may be.

PS: I’ve listed some questions I’ve been asked over the years and answered some of them. If you have any not listed here, you can drop it as a comment and I’ll respond to everything.

The Questions Y’all Ask Me.

• Question: It’s been three years. Are you leaving Bumpa anytime soon?

Answer: Let me keep it short and sweet. We’ll see.

• Question: What’s the most exciting thing I’ve worked on at Bumpa?

Answer: To be honest, it's what I’m currently working on.

For past stuff, I’ll say putting up our billboards, merch production, organizing employee bonding activities, the first time we revamped our website, working with KieKie (the endorphins gosh!)

• Question: The most stressful thing I’ve ever done in Bumpa?

Answer: Our Meta release. That’s the period I went to get medically prescribed glasses. My left eye started twitching involuntarily mehn. Crazy times.

• Question: Have you thought of leaving the company?

Answer: Yes. A number of times.

• Question: What’s Bumpa’s culture like?

Answer: Great for the most part.

• Question: Do you ever feel like you’ve missed out by staying for this long?

Answer: I think there are 2 sides to this question. Do I have any regrets for staying? No.

Only thing I don't like is some people in my circle not even sharing some opportunities because “she’s happy where she is’ Abeg. Don’t let me give you uppercut. Bring the JD first and let me make that decision myself.

The second side to this question is usually about earning less by not job hopping.

The answer is I’m well aware of it. I definitely would be earning more if I’ve moved around once or twice but we optimize for different things at different points in our lives yunno.

So, I don’t regret anything but I definitely will be optimizing my career for bigger things as I advance.

Thank you so much for reading. May the gods of career success be on your side always and always smile kindly on you. Bye!

Intro: When I opened my laptop in the middle of the night, seated on my toilet seat as I wrote the first draft of this piece, I struggled a little bit.

A part of it I guess, was caused by some small things that had big effects in my life last year.

Also, I’m a public-private person. I say a lot online, wear my heart on my sleeves but you still don’t fully know me or know what’s going on with me at the time it's going on with me.

So, I guess I’m a little worried about losing a bit of my mystery.

But, hey, we are here and I’m going to drop this article..open yansh or not…

Fun Fact: There’s no draft for this article on Google Docs. To ensure that I actually posted this, I did the drafting straight up on Medium.

Let’s get started, shall we?

How Did the Birthday Go?

This is my best birthday in yearssssssss!

Not because of anything spectacular per se. I mean I didn't have a birthday party, vacation, or stuff, but I felt full on that day and even now.

I have always had one consistent tradition for my birthdays: order food in or take myself out to eat but it was more than that this year.

I went to church, from church went to eat/have a business meeting with a friend that I force-fed Korean food & he was squirming for half of it😂

Then we dragged ourselves to GTCO Food festival and walked around that hall with my high heels 😭

I then went home, changed, and carried myself to Korty EO’s dreamland (this was a gift from my friend EF), which had me reigniting my OAU loud-mouth-at-events side and dancing at the ‘concert’ part of the event, like it was a party organized for me.

So, it was a full day of activities and then the icing on the cake was the prayers & wishes.

Let me share snippets from some of them:

‘May you never dwell in failure when you do something wrong’

‘May the odds forever be in your favour and courage, I pray never fails you’

‘You’ve always made me smile and laugh, you insane person’

‘From the conversations we had years ago, the vision has always been clear — to be undeniably remarkable. I am proud of everything you have accomplished”

I find these extremely, extremely heartwarming. It’s praise and prayers I couldn't afford if I wanted to buy them.

Then the common denominator of the birthday greetings bordered around the fact that I radiate joy, have a light about me, I’m ment etc.

As someone who has had to fight to keep my light on some days, it was great to know that I keep winning that fight and the happiness is abundant enough to overflow to others.

Then there were the gifts from unexpected quarters. Eshey o.

No one has gotten me a carton of Bebeto Gummy Bears yet though. O ga o.

Anyway, let's do a recap of how the last year was for me, shall we?

Life Generally.

But, it was mostly a quiet year, quite uneventful. Just chill.

Small emotional rogbodiyan here and there, a lil extra money here and there, family bonding, closing out some stressful chapters and so on.

That’s all I can say here, let me move into specifics.

Friendships.

The year she made some and lost some.

I’ve always been a floater and I still am but now I’m a floater with a friend group that is now about 8 years old.

They’re still my friends and I have a group of 5 guys that will make up my bridal train if hopefully, we stay friends for much longer.

They as a group & as individual units have come through for me at the times I didn’t even bother to lean on them. It was nice to experience that because I usually don’t lean in. I’m grateful for that.

Now for the friendships outside that circle, I have made some really cool ones & some of the old ones have died a natural death.

Someone asked me recently why I wasn’t as close to one of those tight friends at the end of the day my response was:

“I stopped trying.

Then, they made some feeble attempts at trying and I just didn't bother.’

I have new stupid friends like Olamide and AB. Then social friends like Toyin.

But I look forward to new friendships in this new year. I think I will make more and I’ll find them in the unlikeliest of places.

Relationships

Well, what can I say? I have tried in the love department and I’ve learnt a lot this past year.

One is that I’m not unforgiving.

Last year, I started thinking I was unforgiving because someone I was talking to betrayed my trust and I couldn’t get back to where we were, even though they wanted me to put them on a clean slate.

I would later discover that they are mad sha & weren’t even worth the mental dilemma of figuring out if I was unforgiving or not.

Tried little talking stages but here and there and well, we’re still single.

For dramatic effect, I should add that I had an interesting rendezvous (I pronounce it as French as I possibly can) with someone who turned out to be a LECTURER. Yohhhh!

How? Please abeg? Single life and going on dates would take you to places you no know..because what was I looking for in my father’s line of work?

Abegggggg! We’re not dating anyway, but it was a fun meeting or potential thing at some point. And we’re still banter buddies till now.

We declare the dating season open in 2024, in the name of Jesus! ..or at least I think so.

Oh, funny story. My sister in-law to be has given me the mandate to bring a boyfriend to her wedding that is happening in months. All I have to say on that matter is that women are funny people.

My Career.

One of the things I’m most proud of is my career and please don't read that solely as Bumpa.

I’m proud of who I am as a professional, and what I have achieved (even though I honestly have not documented my impact as well as I should)

I mean, I’ve done the professional ring around the roses at this point.

Content Writing, Email Marketing, Digital Marketing, Product Marketing, Onboarding Specialist, CRM specialist, Product Manager (Yuh.. I’m currently a baby PM and a PMM my brothers and sisters in Christ 😂)

It’s a lot but I am really looking forward to what the future holds in store for me professionally.

I’ll be clocking 3 years at Bumpa soon and I’m looking forward to new adventures.

I’m trying to start taking my freelance life seriously and put structure around it because I have a crazy work schedule that doesn't let me do it as much as I want but I’m working around that.

PS: I want to send a special shoutout to mutuals, friends and colleagues who have passed a contract my way, brought me on projects and other stuff even though I have not been marketing myself as much.

I really appreciate it and I hope we do more stuff together.

My Family.

Urgggggggggggggggh!!! The most beautiful thing that has happened in the past year is the relationship with my family and how it has deepened and grown.

I’m still the closest with my eldest sibling but even that bond has grown deeper. My brother is getting married soon and it's crazy.

I have come to terms with the fact that I will probably cry at his wedding.

My mum and I have a newfound respect for each other.

I and my mum used to fight every now and then, yearsss ago but she has always respected me and trusted me.

But in this era of young womanhood, there’s just a different level of respect that we have for each other and it’s amazing.

Also, my mum has called me baby all the days of my life but now she’s become my baby and it's also a wonderful thing to experience.

Then, my elder brother. We send memes and stuff to each other on IG..if you know the both of us.. that’s something to celebrate because he’s too serious with his life.

One slander story I easily share about Silas is that he once told me to stop watching movies and I should only catch documentaries.

He was saying this to me as a 10-year-old watching cartoons on MyTV or OSRC.

He’s a fun, enigmatic character and he’s always fun to talk about and troll aswear.

My Dog.

So, sometimes I find it hard to measure the happiness Lisa probably brings me because she’s just a regular part of my daily routine and life now.

If I need to travel, I need to think of whether I can carry her or who I trust to leave her with.

When I’m home she’s either sleeping, being naughty, cuddling up next to me, licking my feet, or peeing in the wrong place.

I wish I could quantify how much she makes me happy but I can’t reconcile it in my head. I think I can just say she makes me happy and she keeps me busy.

I still want a cat sha.

What will Precious be up to this new year?

Ooooof. A lot of adulting.

I dey find house for this rubbish Lagos, need to make some adult purchases and some other stuff.

I’m starting a jewelry business that I hope takes off really well.

I will be doing a lot more travel and a lot of smiling, not taking life too seriously, dancing in the supermarket, eating good food and the entire works.

One of my goals for this year is Make More Money and I’m on that path professionally and personally.

I’m in a building phase this year and my theme is Sprout.

You know how Sprout means you’ve planted something & it’s going to burst out through the soil to grow?

Yeah, I see a lot of growth and maybe slight discomfort on the path to breaking through new terrain but still succeeding anyway.

I have set up new goals, entering into a new phase of adulthood and young womanhood and the ante has been upped, okruuu?!

What Have I Learnt?

I am the darn bish that I say I am and more.

I have discovered that I have strongwill and I am one hell of a woman.

I'm just really invested in the person that Precious O’Dahunsi is. I bought her stock early, I’m holding my shares and not selling.

I have learned that I'm a softie and it annoys me. I used to think I was liquid metal before.

One new thing I’ve learned about myself is that I have some sort of maternal instinct if that's the word to describe it.

Felicity and Dami say I have baby fever but I don’t.

I like babies but I'm not crazy about raising them. Basically, my heart turns into a puddle when I see babies, small animals, and stuff like that.

I’m still trying to unpack this and why I feel drawn to small, vulnerable things.

What Mantras Am I Taking Into the New Year?

Here are some of the quips I’m taking into this new year:

‘Everything good will come’

‘This thing/person stressing you right now will not matter in the next 2 or 5 years’

‘I am damn smart and amazing’

‘Everything eventually works out in the end’

‘In regards to issues or difficult times, sometimes you just gotta sit with it and the solution will come.’

‘You always find a way Precious’

‘You’re never stranded or out of options.’

‘You are surrounded by people, Precious O’Dahunsi.’

‘Life comes around full circle and God is amazing’

If you’ve gotten to this point, I don't even know what to say to you because my life is not even that interesting but thanks for reading, and see you maybe next year!

PS: Twitter mutual: Precious, I’ve written and published it now o.

Christmas has always been my favorite time of the year ever since I was a kid. Probably more than my birthday sef if I’m being honest.

It meant Christmas shoes, Christmas dress, disco lights, and banger sounds since we were not allowed to throw them in our house. I’m not even sure that rule existed, we just never tried.

Christmas meant waking up to about 3 coolers of food from different neighbors at 8 am, it meant packing cakes my mum had baked overnight and doing errand girl to deliver it to the people in the neighborhood we were friendly with.

It also meant dressing up for church, going to say hi to the family friends we’ve not seen all year, telling them we’ve eaten and them insisting on feeding us and feeling like a lorry when we get home because we have eaten different versions of pounded yam and jollof rice all day.

Christmas also means our estate will have the annual prayer meeting at the Obaisi’s compound on January 1st and you get to see the people you went to primary school with, who you haven’t seen in years or all year because everyone has either gone to school, traveled out or wan tin wan tin.

Anyhoo, all that one is some nostalgic rubbish.

I’m now an adult in my 20s..and this random thought of how to get a romantic Christmas came to my head whilst watching Breath of Life, for reasons I don’t even know.

So, how do you get a romantic Christmas when you don’t have ‘Ro’ let alone ‘man’ to complete the romance?

Well, I’ve come up with a list of delulu to get a romantic Christmas.

Step 1

…break in transmission: xjgfubsifgh8gindagffsmflsb

I don’t know what to write forgossake and ideas are not coming to my head because tbh.. I have no romantic prospects at the moment and unless the Grinch gains 50 pounds and ends up with an Ijesha accent, there’s nothing romantic for me in the works.

But something just came to my head. How would I advise a delulu girl to crash find romance in 10 days?

Let’s attempt this again.

Step 1.

Choose where you’re gonna spend Christmas.

If you go to your parents' side..chances are family friends are going to come around, you’ll see that family from church and one of their handsome sons will be home for the holidays.

Yeah, that guy that used to have ikunmu streaming down his nose in Sunday school, that suddenly grew a beard and has the triceps of a trynosarous rex

Yeah, that one.

That will bow to greet your mother like 5 times, you could be lucky and his mum will drag him out to come see families and friends and then your mum will send you to their house to deliver something. E fit happen.

Now, if you decide to stay in your small apartment in LAGOS because you don’t want to answer many questions about your singleness, that job you are considering leaving next year, your ex that just got married, and why you have not joined your new church’s workforce..the chances of this Christmas being romantic are relatively slim..but let’s go on.

Step 2.

Go for concerts.

Not Asake or Davido or Mr-I-Will-Stomp-You-With-My-Shoes-Because-You’re-Not-Dancing’s concert.

Go for a Cavemen concert or one from Bez Idakula if he’s organizing one this year, or Asa, Johnny Drille, or Funbi and co.

This article is ‘How to get a romantic Christmas in 10 days’. I didn’t promise you’ll find romance, but you could feel romantic. They are two different things.

When you hear ‘Me You I’ or ‘Bibanke’ on a cold night at the beach, you’ll feel the lomance alright.

Step 3

Try Not to Do Any Work

Tell that annoying manager of yours to go fuck himself or herself. I mean, work is over, deliverables can wait and you need to live. Tell him to go and sleep and have a nice life.

This way you can sleep in and give yourself the illusion of being on vacation. Romance no pass like that..feeling of joblessness with a job.

Step 4.

Fix Your AC.

Everyone knows that you cannot conjure the feelings of romance without a little bit of cold and God in heaven knows it's hot as hell in this Lagos right now.

Fix your AC and put on your fan every night. It will help you feel blissful.

Step 5

Pay for Netflix, Prime, and Showmax this December.

After fixing your AC, you should add a romantic movie to the mix.

If you cannot borrow password, find one of your many atm cards that doesn't usually have money and use it to pay for everything. In fact, if you can, add Apple TV sef.

I mean what else does a romanceless person do with their life asides using feem to kee themselves?

Do Hallmark but throw away the ones that are overly cheesy.

I mean we all know one hotshot from the city will come to the village/countryside to buy out a bakery or a resort that has been in the family for years.

The guy or girl in the village is the best thing since sliced bread and all the townsfolk love her/him. Love happens. The End.

We all know how it goes, but if they use two ugly leads who don’t even look like they could ever fall in love with each other, throw the darn movie away.

Try How To Ruin Christmas on Netflix if you’ve never seen it or Last Christmas.

Step 6

Organize a Friendsgiving during Christmas

Don’t lecture me. Friendsgiving as far as I’m concerned is about the name, not the time of occurrence.

Call friends over, if your house doesn't look that bad. Buy snacks & wine. Y’all can split the bills. You cook if you don't have food poisoning as your primary cooking signature and watch old soppy movies like Sound of Music, Sisters Act or something. E go be like romantic feem.

Step 7

Hangout with other romance-less persons like you.

It might shock you to find out the number of people that are lonely during Christmas. Especially young adults.

There’s this thing I’ve being seeing recently of people saying they’re feeling sad about not having significant others to share some news with and whatnot, in their proudest moments. I’m not gonna lie, I get it.

So hang out. Shey substitution.

Do romance stuff with a friend. Muna go cinema, go watch stupid movies and laugh at poor filmmaking, send each other gifts, and create the illusion of having a romantic love in your head.

I did not say the deep things like secz o. Just fun stuff you’d likely do with a romantic partner. This is one thing I know that works

And dazz it ladies and gentlemen! I actually finished this article tonight. E bami dupe lowo Anlugbua.

I don't even know why I wrote this article tbh, but here we are.

Anyhoo, I take no responsibility if you encounter romance along the way or don’t.

Happy Christmas romancing!

PS: Muna no vex for this pishure o. Aswear, they get better in the article.

This article basically started in my head while I was traveling intra-state. Two of my friends had hooked me up on Bad BoyTimz ‘Have Fun’ and I couldn’t get it out of my head.

In case those two idiots read this article, let me just put it out there that I’d heard the song in passing before, maybe in a TikTok video or in one of those loudspeakers people blast on the streets.

This wouldn’t be my first time interacting with Timz’ music though. I remember clearly the first time I heard any song of his. There was a babe on Twitter that was dancing to the song and one influencer guy did this indirect dragging thing with it.

He shared her video and was like he admired the girls’ bravery for putting a video of herself dancing on Twitter, despite trolls. The indirect message: ‘Oh baby girl, your boobs flat gaan o, but you no even care about person wey fit drag you on this Twitter. Awwn, I’m so proud of you’ as the African father that he is na. Ode.

People dragged him that day sha, because as expected his tweet brought unnecessary attention to the girl and unsavory comments, she obviously wouldn’t have had but for his manipulative, misplaced empathy.

I sha remember loving the song and the girl’s vibe. She was just in her element dancing to the song and it was beautiful to watch. The song was ‘MJ’. So, I listened to it and liked it.

Now going back to my travel story. The night and even day or days before I traveled, I was dancing to ‘Have Fun’ all day. It was on repeat for hours and I was dancing like a crazy chicken in my room.

You know that kinda dance, where you’re dancing in front of a mirror (mine was my window sha) in a T-shirt and your underwear? Yeah, that was what I was doing.

So, the next day, I’m in a car blazing through different states at a moderate speed blasting ‘Have Fun’ repeatedly on my headphones. (correction, na earpiece, but headphone just sounds more poetic. Tainks)

But after the second or third listen, my mood changed or my perception of the song changed or the way I enjoyed the song changed and I’ll tell you why.

‘Have fun’ is a song that talks about a young guy who summarizes all he wants to really do in life, to 3 things:

1. He just wants to have fun

2. He just wants to spend money

3. He just wants to spend money and enjoy life with his friends.

Now coupled with the beats of the song, you have a piece of music you can bop to in the club and it surprisingly goes well with that new wrist dance we Nigerians have created; where we do our hands as if we want to ride okada. Yeah, that one where we do like we have tolotolo hands and our head have knock. It really goes well with Have Fun.

Surprisingly, like evil spirit, my demeanor to the song changed. Have fun is a nice danceable tune, quite alright, but the thing is that if you’re in a car, traveling somewhere, seeing the white mist, the hills, the greenery around Erin-Ijesha, and maybe add that with the fact that you’re a final year student taking online classes, you probably become a little introspective and this song has the perfect recipe for that to happen.

You know how they say ‘When you’re happy you listen to the beats, when you’re sad, you understand the lyrics’ well that’s what happened to me.

I wasn’t sad, but the lyrics of that song hit me because it was true. I just honest-to-God want to have fun and make money. Aswearrugad, right now, everything other thing is secondary to those two.

Four plus years in the university, a frustrating educational system, handing life generally, finding your path as a creative, maintaining relationships etc, all clip at the edge of having fun, making money and being happy with my friends and family.

Like bro, that’s all I really want. Una fit collect this degree o and just gimme the money. Walai talahi. Mi o like stress mehn. I just want to have fun mehn. Nigeria is frustrating and sad enough on its own bruv.

This then brings me to the love relationship Timz has with Victor AD.

Festofost, calm down, they’re not gay.

Secondofost, I’m not even talking about brotherly love. Let me just quickly touch on the things that tie these two together.

They’re both young music artistes. Yoruba boys.

Timz looks like a young man in an old man’s body. Like the kind of person that will grow into a 60-year-old man that would like to go to parties with his friends, flirt with university girls and have a small, round tummy. He looks like he’d have the personality of someone named ‘Shina’ or ‘Jimmy.' He’d love dancing to K9’s ‘Ade Ori Okin’ at owanbes and he’d be a loving Yoruba father to his daughters and one of them would be named Yewande or Yetunde.

Don’t ask me how I come about these evaluations, I told you guys before that I have this weird thing about creating concepts or story profiles about people. Lewl.

Victor AD on the other hand… (ok..quick pause in transmission. Honest to God, I had to go and get his pictures and look at them because I can’t really remember what he looks like. The only picture coming to my head without doing a background check on him is that he has a similar fashion style, outlook & vibe to Bella Shmurda. I might be wrong.

Update after checking: Okay, Victor AD looks Gen Z/Millenial issh. Timz looks like an old man that is still disguising and calling himself a baby boy fi life. (Insert: I mean face caps look misplaced on Timz’ head. Let him wear abeti aja and you will see wussup) No similarities in their look

Anyhoo.. the love relationship these two have is based on the ‘chameleonity’ of their songs. I cannot forget when Victor’s ’Wetin We Gain” came out. Oh my God! It was that song.

The song you could dance to but could have you awake by 1 am in the middle of the night thinking about your life and rendering a small prayer to God even though you’ve not been to church in months.

This was a song that people were playing massively in clubs but was also a prayer point for a lot of people. Jesus! Nigerians connected to that song on bizarre spiritual levels. It was a street anthem for most people.

This song had Yahoo boys kneeling down in the middle of clubs and singing ‘Wetin we gain’ with all their heart.

Even millennials and baby boomers tapped into this song because you see the truth is this: at the very core of most Nigerians is that desire to make money and be comfortable.

This is especially true considering the fact that we are in a dancing competition to win the poverty capital of the world, and Nigeria can dance!

A lot of the violence, hatred, power tussle, stress and rife amongst Nigerians are under bellied with the overwhelming desire to have money and be able to take care of their own.

You know how they say there’s only one universal language, we all speak in Nigeria and that is football? Well, I think the other thing that ties all Nigerians together is the quest to have money &to be okay. Everything other thing is secondary at the end of the day. Wickedness and gbogbo rubbish that we use to do yen? Secondary shenanigans ni.

Over the years there have been this poverty bonding, stroke wealth aspiring songs that have bonded Nigerians together over the years and they are always a hit.

I mean look at Chinko Ekun’s ‘No More Insufficient Funds’. I’d have probably added Timi Dakolo’s “Amen’ to the group chat with Victor and Timz but Timi sounds a bit elite to me, so I wouldn’t put him in that class. Plus, you can’t play Amen in the club. Amen is a straight jacket song but you see those two love birds, them dey fly for night.

There have actually been times when I’ve heard songs that switched from fun and preppy to deep thinking.

They’re plenty but one that comes to mind is ‘Know Your Worth’ by Khalid ft Tems and Davido. You see this one ehn, everything was going normal and we were enjoying Khalid flowing into the Afrobeats they added to the song.

I mean, heck, the video for the original song was just people dancing and having fun but something happens in the remix. Someone comes onto the track and unplugs the USB cord and you lose all connection to the fun and the dance in the song. Davido did that shit.

Davido starts asking deep questions bruh!

He starts saying “Shey he dey treat you well, shey he dey make you smile.” These parts are deep but you’re still shaking away the underlying seriousness in those lines.

Then he introduces violence when he says ‘Are you happy’ I don’t about you o, but the way he said that ‘Are you happy in that song’ you go just calm down, pause and think.

It felt like being in a situation where you’re an undergrad who skipped school and went to party in Lagos. You’re dancing in the club with reckless abandon and then you see your mother from Abeokuta standing right there in Quilox looking at you. That’s exactly what that nonsense line did. You go jus dey start dey think about your life and the options you have.

I still love the song sha.

That’s the end of the article. There are no lessons. Enjoy it and get out. Bye.

Welcome back! This is the second article in Investment for Babies: a financial series where I teach broke people how to make better money decisions, how to invest, how to use some Nigerian fintech apps we have and share a few tips ‘ear’ and ‘dear’

Honestly, my hands are itching to get to the third article in this series, because that’s where the serious stuff is. Articles 1 and 2 make me feel like I’m discussing with my friends and in some ways, it feels weird to sound so informal talking about a formal topic. Anyway, let’s start off with our first list of introductions.

Number 1, if you missed the first article, you’re late to the party. You can catch up here

Number 2, the title is supposed to be a sample from Sir Shina Peters ‘Fuji Garbage’. If you’ve heard the song before, you know where this line is from and how he says it. Why did I tell you this? Because I didn’t want the joke to waste. Oya, laugh small like that that. Thainks. Ile ise yin o ni jona o.

Number 3, if you’re a rich please gtfoh. There are maaany articles for rich people. This is for the minority, the discriminated against, the broke ones. So, get out.

Number 4, this article is going to be giving out gender specific advice when it comes to living a fabulous broke bish life. Let’s get started bishes!

CHAPTER ONE
Characteristics of a Fabulous Broke Bish.

Number one, fabulous broke bishes do not ask for urgent 2k!!!!!(This was actually supposed to be point number 2, but o ka mi lara gan.

Fabulous broke bishes don’t need 2k urgently from people they are barely friends with and most especially the opposite sex. There’s a bro code and a babe code. If you ask your guy, ‘guy make I see 2k for that your side, sharp sharp.’ No problem, but don’t do it to someone you barely know or just got acquainted with. In fact, if you can avoid it totally, please do.

Number Two.
Fabulous broke bishes don’t compete. This is one of our ultimate secrets. In most settings, FBBLs usually create their own class, their own award show, their own settings. That’s how you can be broke and live a fabulous life. A competitive life is expensive, boring and honestly lacks personality. Step away from the ring and do your own thing.

When you compete, your entire life and style is based on what someone else does and it’s is reactive not proactive. Per exemple, if you’re competing with a yahoo boy that can afford to buy sneakers every school week, o ma je gbese nauw, or you’re a babe in the fab broke bish club, but o lo fi owo association ra bone straight; dazz a big problem because you won’t be able to keep it up. Your financial life will be in shambles.

Dazz how I went to greet someone one day and it was Nasco cornflakes that was inside pali Kellogs Frosted flakes. Wtf bro. For Why? Aside from the fact that NASCO was created for criminals, why would you do that to yourself? Who are you trying to impress? By the way, FBBLs do not eat Nasco. It’s the same price with Infinity cereal ffs.

The funny thing about life is that, societal preferences always change. The world would still swing to your side one day. Some people were wearing baggy clothes before it ever became popular, so…

Number 3
Fabulous Broke bishes pay back money they owe. Won kin je gbese anyhow. Stop borrowing money and disgracing your sef all over town please. Even if you look good, your yansh go dey smell and people will start saying that your big girl na borrow borrow. Abeg, we wee deny you o.

CHAPTER TWO
The Art of Bad Bishing.

Rule Number One
Position Yourself for Greatness.
This sounds like a line from the Aspire to Maguire workbook but calm down my dia, I have something to say.
The truth is that there isn’t much you can do about this rule, but it is still a valid point and I must make it.
This rule basically says:
• Don’t be a firstborn unless you’ll grow up in your young adult years to be the same body and shoe size as your mum or dad.
• Have siblings of the same sex as you, who are older or maybe even younger that you can steal their stuff.
• If you don’t have siblings, at least get cousins you can steal from. Oluwa a wa pelu e.

Basically, you are a disgrace to all broke bishes, if you’re a bish with 3 older sisters and you’re not living fab.
I as a person, I’m only positioned for goodness. I’m the last born with only male siblings and huuge legs. I use a 42, and my mum should be three times my body size. I’m lucked out on shoes and dresses but I don’t think I’ve ever bought a bag in my life. Always my mum’s bags and purses.

See there are a lot of resources at your disposal if you’re positioned for greatness when it comes to family matters.
Your mom’s bags, jewelry (mine doesn’t wear by the way & she even steals my small earrings. Side eye mom.), your dad’s suit, briefcase, your sister’s heels etc.

I’m wondering why I’m writing this when you literally can’t do anything about it, but if any of ya’ll will become parents in the future, when the woman in the relationship is pregnant, start telling your unborn child to position itself for greatness, or just be a rich and generous parent that will buy all fashion needs for your kids.

Use All Your Millennial and Baby Boomer Resources.
One thing that can’t be underestimated, is raking in all the older people in your life. Uncles, Aunties, Big mummies and daddies, grandparents: if you have them and they are chill enough to throw an extra bit of cash your way.

An indispensable tool for an fbbl, is knowing how to keep a good rapport with these older people. Responding to their endless bcs, Sending them Sunday or Friday texts, remembering their birthdays and stuff. This makes it easier for you to tell them stuff like, ‘Daddy, I’m going to school next week, I just called to tell you sir.’ etc.

This rule is dependent on your family set up sha, because I understand that some of us don’t have close extended family members or even those that are nice enough to be able to ask them for money. Decide to be a cool aunt or uncle to your nephews and nieces today. Thainks.

Anyhoo, I need to add that I absolutely suck at this. I’m terrible with keeping communication with older people. Honestly, it is by the grace of God that we are not consumed. Lewl. If you do have this skill or you can learn it, good for you.

Tips for Broke Bishing
Clothing
Please stay away from wearing branded/designer clothing, especially if you normally can’t afford to buy the original one. When you’re a broke bish, people can think you’re rich but they know you’re not on some Dangote or Otedola class, or at the very least, they know your social class range.

We all know you can’t afford an original Gucci or Louboutin. I personally hate Gucci. I can stand others, but I hate Gucci branded items, especially their color combo. I do have one shoe I couldn’t turn away though. It’s cute. Sorry. 😂😂But, I’d never buy one myself.

There are tricks to this:
1. Have great fashion taste. There are ordinary, non-designer clothing items and accessories that look fabulous. Try them. The beauty of these things is that when you truly have great taste, and don’t buy cheap looking things, no one can tell exactly how much your stuff costs. Dyu get?

2. Buy uncommon colors. One nice trick that I know, is that choosing uncommon colors stand you out and make you look classy. I mean, you have to have black shoes in your wardrobe, but try getting a nude shoe and bag or an orange shoe or belt. The psychology of this, is basically the fact that broke people will use primary color items, because its cheap, easily available and can be paired with anything.

The exclusivity of colors like nude pink, orange, green, red etc, just always adds an extra booge to your outfit. Na olowo dey buy patterned suit or purple shoe. You get?

3. Thrift clothing. One great thing that works for broke bishes is that okrika has now been white washed, polished and rebranded as thrift. The hack to this is to always buy first grade. Always!

One other great trick is this: Mix okrika with some of your expensive or say designer stuff. People won’t be able to tell and you’ll still look like a snack. So, say you have this really nice okrika sneakers or heels that look new and boogie; pair them with an expensive gown or something, omo o ma dun bi lollipop. Your jeans can be original and your cool T-shirt could be thrift. Sha get rid of the smell.

4. It’s about the mindset. I always believe that there’s a cheaper place to buy stuff and that will still be of good quality, or there’s a cheaper variant of that thing. It was in secondary school that I learnt this stuff.

My mom used to buy all my clothes but yonno as a baby boomer, she didn’t always get what I wanted and I couldn’t afford to buy the quality of things she used to buy for me with my secondary school piggy bank money. My classmates that were street smart, used to talk about the place to get cheap but good quality stuff in the market, the market days that sellers get new shipping and stuff like that. That helped and still helps me a whole lot.

I need to add though, that in all your dealings, choose quality over price. We’re broke bishing, but essentially, it’s cheaper to buy a quality item at a supposedly expensive price than to buy a low-quality item that will spoil and you’ll have to replace or fix it, so many times. Quality is cheaper in the long run.

5. Buy uncommon things. Let me start like this, in the general cheap market, there’s usually an influx of the same design of a particular product. Now, while its cool and sometimes even necessary to have some trending items, try to buy the uncommon things and trust me, they’re always there.

You remember those ‘Ama kip kip shirts’ and the ‘My money grow like grass’? yeah? Don’t ever do stuff like that.
You will now go out and be twinning with 5 other people who all know the price of your outfit. Don’t do that bishes. Deliberately choose the uncommon but classy designs. Those pieces that the manufacturer didn’t make a lot of? Buy them.

Tip 2
Create a personal aesthetic.
I probably should prefix that with ‘affordable.’
So, let me explain. What is a personal aesthetic? Its basically creating a mood board for yourself. It’s the act of physically and socially branding yourself.

The part of the personal aesthetic that I’ll be talking about has to do with fashion. For example, if you see Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, she usually wears Ankara and has a signature head wrap style and if she’s using lipstick, its usually red. Kate Middleton wears conservative gowns and uses a lot of nude tones that make her look soft and dainty. Lady Gaga just does crazy. Janelle Monae has an eccentric aesthetic. She uses suits, hats and feminizes traditional male stuff and modernizes old 90s look, even her hair has a role to play in this aesthetic. Masego has a lot of rings on his finger and has an artistic vibe, Temi Otedola loves bareface has uses light,nude makeup and literally simple clothing and her hair is mostly always the same etc.

I hope you understand now?
To create your own personal aesthetic:

• Sit down and ask yourself what you’re most comfortable wearing?
• In what side of your personality are you mostly dressed in?
  If you spend more work hours in an office, your aesthetic is mostly corporate.
• What are the stuff you like?
• How do you personalize this aesthetic?
• What’s your signature?What would be the part of you that you would add to the part of this aesthetic?

I know people that always wear knuckle rings, I know a 22 year old babe that has a necklace for every occasion, I know a guy that used to wear old grandpa agbada to every event, some guys always wear face caps, I know a babe that only does braids and braid related hair styles.
Some people are never on makeup, no matter what.

You can also add how you want to be perceived as a factor to consider when creating your own aesthetic.

Choosing your personal aesthetic helps you to lean into the fab part of your broke bishing and also helps to reduce ridiculous spending.

My personal aesthetic is quite peculiar to just me. Here are the details:
• I’m on short hair. So, I’m not spending money buying on any bone straight. Now, this is a cheap personal aesthetic feature, but it’s something I’m intentional about. My short hair isn’t just ordinary low cut. I use a good number of products on it. My hair smells good all the time. That’s the fab in my broke bishing.

• My makeup life is usually very light. You’d mostly just see me on brows, eye liner and maybe some powder. What this does is that my makeup products last long, so I’m not spending too much on that. I also don’t use makeup that many times.

• I don’t go to too many parties so, I don’t have a lot of bags and party clothes and because I’m the corporate, always-on-the-go, career babe, those tiny ridiculous bags aren’t that many in my harem.

So,if you see a tall slim girl on short hair with red lipstick, chances are, it’s me.

Anyway, if anyone wants more exclusive details on creating a personal aesthetic, comment and let me know. I might write an article specially dedicated to it.

Tip 3.
Food.
Gbogbo wa la gbodo je breakfast my dia. There’s almost nothing you can do about food, I won’t even advice it. Eat well abeg. However, there are some few hacks to this thing.

• Cook your own darn food. It’s cheaper, it’s healthier. Se finni.

• Go to parties or volunteer for events or join a caterer’s team. If all things go well, you could have a whole day’s worth of food in your fridge after the party.

• If you have to buy food anywhere, try to find places that have a perfect mix of affordable and sweet. Some affordable taste like shit. Don’t do that. Fabulous broke bishes don’t do that.

• Let’s say you’ve gotten into the deep of the broke bishing hurricane, one great hack about buying food is to know the foods that are filling.

Swallows are filling and cheap. A wrap of eba or semo or fufu no dey pass 50 naira. That’s cheaper and more filling than jollof rice. Another one is ewa agoyin and bread. My God! Ewa 50 is enough for 100 or 150 bread. It’s extremely filliing.

Sora fun awon ounje to wa outrageously expensive, oluwa a wa pelu e.

• Well, this next point might be good or bad. Go on dates. O tan.

Tip 4
Communal living.
Communal living is one great way of living the fab broke bish life.

Here’s how it works:
When getting an apartment, get a roommate. The crib you share with someone will definitely look better than you renting solo, because you have the buying power of two. More class, more chic, you just have to share.

Data. Data is cheaper when you buy bigger bundles. The only problem with this is if your network provider doesn’t have a way to share big bundles of data.

For example.
Mtn has a data bundle of 3500 for 24 gig. That’s at a cost of 145 naira per gig. They have a smaller plan of 4.5 gig for 2000. That’s at 444 naira per gig. Someone like me would most likely be fine with 12 gig data for a month. If there was someone to split things with, you’d just get it cheaper. Problem for MTN however is that there’s no way to send huge data at once. The highest you can send is 1 gig per day. Absolute ment if you ask me. Other network service providers probably have better plans to offer.

Anyway, communal living spills over to a lot of other things, Apple music family plan, sharing Netflix subscription money with somebody. If you like, make una be 20 on top one password, you sha dey watch feem legally? Make anybody way dey vex, goan kee theirsef.

Buying groceries, foodstuff in bulk is cheaper and so many other things. This is most likely impracticable for everyone, but it works. I feel like this is one of the reasons behind the institution of marriage. Life is already expensive, therefore, find someone, move in together and spend the rest of your lives sharing and splitting bills etc.

Anyway to conclude this episode of the series, the are a lot of great perks to being a fabulous broke bish. One that I didn’t mention is the fact that, if you tell people you’re a broke bish, they won’t believe you and that’s what makes it soooo wondafuuuu.

Being a FBBL is a phase and you can and Insha Allah, you will move up the ladder. Some of these things can and should be temporary. Shora fun wastage, oluwa a wa pelu e.

Living the Fab Broke Bish Life.

Yass!!Welcome! This article is the first of many financial articles in the Investing for Babies series, where I’ll be teaching broke people how to make better money decisions, how to invest, how to use some Nigerian fintech apps we have and generally share a few tips ‘ear’ and ‘dear’. If you have money, please, just log out, this ministry is for broke people only.

Introductions! Introductions. I am Precious O’Dahunsi, the Goddess of Creativity, Mother of Conversations, Crazy Conservative and on weekends I have an extra title: A Broke-ass Niggress and that’s why I’m writing FBBL.

There are a few ground things you need to know before we start.

First and foremost, the tips in this article will help everybody but they’re mostly geared towards girls and undergraduates.

Secondly, some of the tips here are extreme. They cannot and must not become your lifestyle. They are just to be used during emergency broke periods. But wahala be like bicycle and emergency lamps (lanterns) and emergency contraceptives. Nigerians no dey hear word.

Thirdly, one thing you have to understand about the fabulous broke bish life is that you must not look broke! You’re living a fab life. You’re not lowering your standards or some shit, you’re just going through a rough period or something. Your ‘I want it, I got it’ life is still coming. You’re the babe or the dude with the ‘I’m cool, in my own lane’ social vibe but you’re temporarily broke. Na broke you broke, you no kill persin and here’s how to live with it:

Rule Number One.
Don’t Be Broke.

You know that thing where you read a book, titled “10 Rules of Good Parenting’, you open the book and the first thing they write is ‘there are no rules of parenting” and you just get pissed? Yeah. I feel like I just did that right now. But chill, I know what I’m saying.

Let me tell you something, the best tip to living a fabulous broke life is to not be broke. This means that whatever it is you’re gonna do, don’t be at the lowest range of the broke ladder, there is no fabulous anything there. Let me explain it like this, no matter how much money you have, you’re always going to be someone’s version of broke. Shey, you get me now?

I have personal consultation sessions with people and in many cases that not, the truth is that you need to make more money. You can’t invest your way out of poverty bro. For real. You know that thing where they say ‘You need money to make money' Izz vely vely true. Investments multiplies money not necessarily births it.

You need to have more streams of income. Please, don’t ask me how to do that. That’s your personal problem. Na all of us dey find money.

I learnt this first rule late in my second year. For some strange reasons, I was very very okay with my allowance in my first year of uni. I got to 200 or 300 and things changed, so I devised a plan. I was very meticulous with money. I didn’t spend money anyhow. But here is the flipping truth: if you like spend like a snail for 100 years, if there isn’t any money coming into your account, you’re still going to be broke because that money is gonna finish.

If you like stretch 5k for 2 months. At the end of the 2 months, you will still be broke and you will need money.

Rule Number 2
It’s All About the Mindset.

So, if you want to live a FBBL, you have to develop a mindset of warfare, particularly if you over-spend.
Here’s what I mean, if you want to buy Sharwarma on that Tuesday night, just think in your mind, “Guy that’s literally 3kg of cooking gas, that you want to eat in one night. Gas that wee last 2months.’
If you want to buy yet another sneakers, remind yourself, ‘Babe, that’s your electricity bill for 3 months(PS: students living in student hostels pay as low as 1k/month, because they’re splitting the bill with over 1000 people), plus 3 rolls of tomato paste, 1 kilo of chicken etc.

Do you get the drift now? Develop the mindset of necessity over luxury. Depending on how broke/spendthrift you are, this should be a temporary thing. Everybody deserves to spoil themselves once in a while.
In fact, eh, you can do warfare mindset from luxury to luxury. Instead of buying Farmfresh, buy Hollandia yoghurt, why buy Coldstone when you can buy Supreme ice-cream. Instead of planning the trip to South Africa, go to Ghana fess. You get the drift?
Just saying sha. It’s your choice las las. Let’s move on to the next point.

Rule Number 3
Volunteer!!!
Hello! Hello!! Shey you see this point; odi vely vely important. Gosh! It has so many benefits.

So, let’s say Fireboy was coming to your school and tickets were selling at 5k for regular, 15k for VIP and some shit and that’s data money for the month plus money to fix your nails and you don’t want to drink garri…. my dear, volunteer away!!

When you volunteer, what you do is offer value or service for money. You’re a great event planner, omo volunteer, you have 1k+ contacts and an average of 300 views on your WhatsApp, volunteer for publicity plis.

These are the things volunteering will do for you, if you strategically do it:
1. You enter the party or the event free of charge, you could even be placed in the VIP section sef. If it works out well, you go chow better VIP food and connect with VIP guests.

2. You make connections with other brilliant undergrads, famous people and add can your volunteering experience to your CV. Volunteering also builds your social cred.

See, if you choose ushering or guest management, them fit dash you money sef if you’re graceful, dutiful and they like you or something. You could literally get your life on a different trajectory through volunteering.

3. If it’s one of those events where there’s excess, you get to keep souvenirs, excess food and drinks. You could literally volunteer and have food for a complete 3 square meal in your fridge. For real. no jokes.

There are rules to volunteering though.
• Know what aspect you’re volunteering for. Logistics people never truly get to enjoy the event. They’re usually busy. If you’re volunteering because you want to listen to Fela Durotoye talk but you don’t have money, Ushering or guest management will be better for you.

• Choose your events wisely. Some event organizers are disorganized, stingy or broke. You could literally end up spending money instead of saving money by volunteering for an event. I’m not joking o. I know what I’m saying.

Stories where you use your own money to buy refreshments for guest speakers, where they don’t even make provision for volunteer refreshments after working for like 6 hours. Don’t even get me started on people that build event organizing money from volunteers. They will tell you to contribute money towards the cause or file out. There are also the ones where you’re buying T-shirts of 5k to volunteer.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not in all cases that these things are manipulative or wrong (I mean things happen and event organization is not beans) but just know why you’re volunteering and let everyone come to the offering table with clean hands. Or shey we should we talk about when you travel to volunteer and these people didn’t even make plans for accommodation when they knew, but didn’t tell you, they’ll be ending way into the night. Don’t let all these things discourage you sha. There are really great volunteering opportunities and quirks. For example: Going for the after party. Whoop!! whoop!!


Rule Number 4
Be Selfish!!!!!
Actually, want I mean is Pay Yourself First.

This is something I learnt from the Richest Man in Babylon by George Clason. It’s sorta related to ‘change your mindset’, but this is a point on its own and it works whether you have a stable stream of income or not. What I mean is, it works whether you earn a salary or you just get an allowance.

Case study: When an average broke bish gets an unexpected amount of money, say stingy Uncle Akin from London gets a change of heart and sends you 100k, this is how their brain goes into overdrive:
• Finally, I can buy that new pair of sneakers.
• New wig alert.
• Been wanting to try put that new food spot at the corner.
• Dataaaaaa!!
• I think I owe Benji money.
• Melodia dress.
• Press on nails
• Pay tithe (maybe)
• Manage the rest of the money.

They eventually do spend the money like this and they feel like Superfly, but here is the real break down of the situation.

You pay MTN when you buy data, pay that your nail technician class mate when you buy the nails, you pay the IG vendor when you buy that sneaker, pay the restauranteur when you take that person on the pizza date. You’ve paid everyone but yourself. In reality you really didn’t splurge bro. You’ve made yourself happy(temporarily) but you didn’t make yourself rich(even just a little bit)

So, start dealing with money by being a little selfish. Pay yourself how much you think you deserve (put your expenses in consideration) even if na 5k them give you as gift or salary. Pay yourself 5H or 1k. Put this money in of these fintech accounts. Say, Cowrywise or Piggyvest or RiseVest or Bamboo or something. You can decide to pay tithe to yourself and to God. For real.

Extra Tips.
• Because we’re broke bishes, yeah, we usually end up in fixes where we might need the money we’ve locked up in our savings or investment account.

So, it’s good to have two kinds of plans on your fintech accounts. A locked one and one that isn’t. So, if you need emergency money, sure you can withdraw, but you’ll still have locked money for the future.

• Also, remember what I said about the mindset. Even if you’re in a fix, if you’ve sealed off your mind on not removing money from your fintech money, a solution to your money issues will present itself. I’m not joking. If you have the mind, you can work like this. It works for a number of people. The ‘I can never be stranded’ outlook on life.

• Lastly, one thing you should know is, once you remove that money you will survive with the remaining money left. I’m serious. It’s a survival instinct kind of thing. The ‘we go run am’ energy. You might think it’s impossible to save 2k from 20k or 5k from 50k etc, but I promise you ehn, you will live with that 45k and you wee not die. INSHAALLAH. Lagbara Jesu.
Be selfish. Pay yourself first.

Thank you, that’s all for now. I’ll bring out the gender specific tips in the next article. Then we move to the serious stuff about investments and what not. Bye.

Photo Credit: www.aplususpharma.com

Let me show you the first intro I had to this article.

Intro 1: So, first off, I’m actually very pissed right now. I literally wrote this article twice. Make that thrice actually. Imagine losing 8000 words in two days. Before, you start gasping for air, chill, the article isn’t that long.

Intro 2: Have you ever started writing an article and found out halfway into it, that, wait o, there is more to this topic that even I don’t fully understand. You discover that beyond your experience of a thing, if you want to give a balanced or wholesome view, you have to read beyond your filter of that thing. You discover that the spectrum is wider than you. Yeah, that’s what happened with this article.

I read nothing less than 6 articles, I think about 4 research papers. A friend of mine; Opeyemi Muilli even had to place a call to some of her lecturers. She’s a medical student for context.

Yup, all that freaking wahala for an opinion article. I mean, all I need to do is to add all the citations and references and this will become a class assignment turned in or a final year project topic started. It really sucks because I don’t think I do this much research for class assignments.

Anyway, welcome to the darn article.

I’m going to structure this article into five segments.

This is how this will work because the thoughts were just all over the place in my head.

First off, I’ll talk about mental health generally, then I’ll move on to my experience with mental health, next up will be me sharing a mental health bonding experience between four strangers, finally, I’ll share how to recognize if you’re using your mental health as an excuse to avoid responsibility or it’s really an issue you should pay attention to.

IN THE BEIN-GIN-NING
Let me start this discussion with a comment a Twitter user made when talking about an episode of Netflix’s Sex Education (a series I still haven’t seen by the way)

PS: I couldn’t find the original tweet, but this screenshot comes close to it.

She said, ‘You can put random men in a room and they’d bond over sports, but when you put random girls in a room, they’d bond over sexual harassment’

What does this have to do with mental health, you ask? Chill, I’m going somewhere.

There’s a new variation to these bonding experiences. If you were to put random young adults in a room, they’d most likely bond over mental health experiences.

I mean literally 1 in every 4 adult has or has had a mental health issue. Sounds like a stretch? Trust me I didn’t create that stat from my head. So, ‘WHO’ you ask? Exactly. You answered it. Think about it.

I feel like I should define what mental health is and that sounds so article-typical and cliché, but, ama do it anyway. Actually, I’ll explain it. I’m not called the queen of breaking things down for nothing.

First off yeah, mental health encompasses realizing the extent of your abilities, knowing your realities, being able to cope with the normal life stresses, be productive and function efficiently in society.

Just as your physical health has to do with the parts of your body visible either to eyes, x-rays or biology textbooks, mental health has to do with your brain, emotions and behavior.

Additionally, for physical health, just like how you can fall ill with diseases like headdik, diarrhea etc., there are also mental health illnesses such as depression, anxiety etc.

Also, the same way there are measures and drugs such as resting or using aspirins, anti-malarial etc. for physical health issues, some mental health issues can also be treated with prescribed medication or measures such as thinking positively and stuff like that.

There’s a definition of mental health that I got off Wikipedia that I used to like because it was effective whenever people asked me,

“How do you know if you’re mentally healthy?”

particularly for those that are new to the subject of mental health, and it is this:

“Mental health is the absence of mental illness’’

(Let me just quickly confess that one of the reasons I also liked this definition was because it was quite similar to the definition of health in my P.H.E class in JSS 2:

‘Health is a state of total physical, mental and psychological well-being and the absence of disease’

Anyway, here’s why that definition is okoto. PS: I’m not the only one with this opinion.

Number 1, it is rooted in the ignorance of the difference between mental illnesses and mental health conditions.

For example, there are certain physical health conditions like asthma, allergies, blindness etc. that are pretty much long term, but this doesn’t mean people with them are unhealthy. A blind or asthmatic person can be in perfect health but they just have that particular health condition.

This is exactly the same with mental health. You could have some conditions like Attention Deficit Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), autism and still be mentally healthy. You could have these conditions and be able to cope with the normal stresses of life, not have depression or anything like that.

Examples of mental illnesses would include depression, post-traumatic stress disorder etc.

Essentially, in properly understanding the distinction between mental conditions and mental illnesses, just understand that someone could have a condition and still be able to function well in society and cope with life and be happy and not suicidal or stuff like that.

PS: Remember when I told you that I had to read many articles and research papers because of this article, it had to do with that concluded point: the distinction between mental health conditions and mental health illnesses.

I discovered that there isn’t an answer that all scholars in the mental health field agree to. It’s a heavily debated issue. Some believe they’re one and the same, some think they’re different. This is just my opinion after reading and listening to different experts and juxtaposing it with my experience and knowledge.

I also arrived at this conclusion because it helps to make sense of the opinion of scholars that fault that Wikipedia definition of mental health as being an absence of mental illness or mental health conditions.

You might want to do your research and make your findings on your own, but I can assure you that it is a very headdiking adventure.

Anyway, that’s the end to the confusion, we can move on to other things that are not controversial now.

My Mental Health Experience.

Photo Credit: mymcmedia.org

My filters: depression and anxiety.

It was 2 months to my 18th birthday. I remember this, because I vividly remember that WhatsApp conversation with a classmate, where I told him that I really didn’t want April to come.

I really didn’t want to be 18 just yet, because I felt like I was finally going to be an adult and I’d not achieved anything meaningful with my life.

I spiraled into this self-loathing loop and my anxiety peaked. I mean the big 18 was finally coming and all my shortcomings and weaknesses just stayed glued to the windows of my mind and would not leave.

It was like a flood. Every shortcoming, every weakness, every failure (wait, I hadn’t even failed yet by that time sef) just wouldn’t stop bugging me. I guess it didn’t help that I felt that it was definitely going to be way harder and close to impossible to break bad habits now that I was going to be an adult.

You’re probably wondering what these bad habits and weaknesses were, yeah? Let me gist you a little bit.

First off, I was, well still kinda am, a no routine person. There was absolutely nothing constant about me. I was largely scatterbrained and I wasn’t disciplined enough to have procrastination on percent zero.

I was also angry that after reading No Excuses by Brian Tracy and all the stupid temperament books that over teach you about the problem you already know you have and give you absolutely nothing to tackle it, I still couldn’t kick some habits beyond a month of spiked motivation.

It probably didn’t help that I had this fancy notepad I’d gotten as a gift from a Caribbean aunty, where I’d written the big plans I had for age 18 till like 25.

It was orange, spiral-binded, with a picture of six cute girls in front of it, and on its first page are all the fancy names I gave myself like Maddison, Ashley, Fabrianna and a lot of names that ended with ‘ana’ on its first page. God! This is so hilarious.

The book is still somewhere in my white book stand in my room at home, surrounded by my old Enid Blyton books, Twelve Candles Club series and others like that, but I still remember some of the things in it.

I remember that at age 21, I was supposed to own a shoe factory called Little Feet, Big Feet, that would provide all shoe sizes for everyone. For those that wore the little size 30s and the big female 44s and their gender equivalent. Every pair of feet were sha supposed to leave the store with a pair of shoes they liked not just the ones they had to choose, just because the shoes they liked were not available in the region of their size. I even had a picture of the logo in my head. Lewl.

It was also not helpful that I was very confused about what my career and future would be. Since when I can remember being able to remember stuff, I’ve always been wide-spectrumed, liked a lot of things, been talented and good at a wide variety of things.

I’ll always fondly remember one time when one career advancement group came to my primary school. We were told to give ourselves adjectives for ourselves and I remember that that was the first time I would stumble on the word ‘versatile’.

I also laugh whenever I remember that one other group came to my school and told us to write what we wanted to become when we grew up and I wrote a list of 69 careers.

Don’t laugh please. Why was it that long? Well, I liked a lot of careers, plus, it probably didn’t help that I had stuff like Tennis coach, assistant tennis coach, basketball coach, assistant basketball coach ati beebeelo on the list. I promise there were other stuff like medical doctor, nurse, lawyer, pilot, air hostess on the list. God, this is so silly.

I was in the university, and though in retrospect, my likes had considerably narrowed, law was looking like shit at that time and my other creative talents were bobbing up their heads, so, it was a very confusing period for me. It was quite ‘the' time.

This would go on for a year and on God it was a horrible experience.

I remember that there was a point where I avoided crowds (which is weird because I’m such a people person) I’d intentionally take the back stairs of my faculty to avoid meeting so many people.

I was being less and less in the mood to be passing around compliments to everyone I greeted; which is a ritual of mine, when I was feeling like crap most of the time.

I wasn’t ready to fake-smile at anyone and pretend like I was okay when I wasn’t. It was a mix of good and bad days.

I also remember that I tried to ‘unfriend’ my friends. Lol. I’m actually serious. I tried. I told my closest friends that I didn’t want to be friends again.

I thought I blamed them for some of my flaws, for example, the fact that I wasn’t so disciplined about academics, like the inability or unseriousness to read for 8 hours and stuff like that.

Thinking about it now, I didn’t blame them, I just thought that I needed to find more serious people, people that were cold or so serious and rigid to get my life in order.

PS: They technically told me to come off it. Lewl. Plus, they’re one of the best things that have ever happened to me.

I remember feeling blank on many days. Days when it felt like the sun was shining too brightly, when the atmosphere would feel light but heavy, days when the rot in systems were more visible to me, when my senses were sharpened and I could smell the hopelessness of the Nigerian situation in the air, as I went back to my hostel after classes.

I remember those days when I just felt like floating, like floating on a cloud on dark starry nights, crying my eyes out on a rooftop (well, not so much of this actually) and having a blanket of a light, warm cloak of love or adequacy envelope me or cloak me against the cold of the night.

Days when I wished the thoughts in my head condemning myself could dance and not smirk whenever they heard a junior colleague say they wanted to be like me.

I remember those days when the days seemed too long, classes seemed (or actually were) too boring.

The funny thing for me, or should I say the lucky thing for me was that during this almost one-year period I never had suicidal thoughts. Surprises me sometimes. But I think what was responsible for that was something rooted in my belief system.

I had something called blind faith. It was a state of mind where I instinctively knew that I had a bright future ahead of me, that I would still be big, but it was the process to get there that I didn’t know and was confused about.

And yeah, I think it was literally when I was out of it that I realized that it was depression. Lewl. The absolute ghetto, the irony.

The Bonding Experience.

Photo Credit: www.shutterstock.com

Anyway, let me tell you how I was a part of a real life, teenage adventure movie. It’s just that there was no romance in this one. There was mental health.

On a second thought, I think a romance brewed somewhere, but I sha wasn’t a part of it.

I went on a 2-day tour trip last year with a group of young people. We’d all been strangers before we met the morning of the trip. We’d visited interesting places all day.

After a night of fun at the mall and almost everyone else had retired to their hotel rooms, four of us were downstairs and we started talking.

A little while down the line and we discovered that all of us had one thing in common: we had all been depressed at different points in our lives.

The fascinating thing about it was that, we had experienced different variants of the same thing.

One of us went through all the extremes of depression. There was a point where she was sleeping too much and would rarely go out and there was a point where she couldn’t catch sleep at all. She said she even started taking sleeping pills but her eyes would literally be open all night.

There was also a point where she was eating too much, another one that she couldn’t summon or conjure an appetite. She said it wasn’t even till she was out of it that she knew she was depressed. All she knew was that she was not herself for that entire period, and just like me, nobody knew.

Another person’s variant was clinical depression. This person had to be hospitalized for a short period. He said he also slept a lot and for some reasons he couldn’t fathom, he didn’t want to go to classes anymore and this affected his academics and he just basically spiraled down that dark hole. If I remember well, he was suicidal at a point.

Then the last person that shared had something we all agreed to call philosophical depression. We actually laughed over his own experiences when he shared them, well, because they were hella funny.

Now that I think of it, all of us laughed at our situations when we were out of it.

Anyway, this guy’s variant went like this: He said, he was just always thinking. He could be having a conversation with someone and he wouldn’t know when he was lost in his head, like, he’d be gone, gone.

He said he also used to think about what would happen to him and his only sibling if their parents died.

That thought particularly scared him because he depended largely on his parent’s allowance, plus something like that had happened to his mum and things had been tough for them when they were growing up. He described it as being lost in an unending tunnel in your head. Thoughts create thoughts and birth other thoughts and you’re just lost. Like you feel like your mental space has too many cobwebs and it’s hard to brush them away.

He said he never had suicidal thoughts. He said he didn’t have the balls to do something like that, was literally too cowardly to do it but he would wish something bad would happen to him or kill him.

For example, he shared that sometimes if he was travelling, he’d secretly wish the bus would have an accident or if he was crossing the road, a car should just lose control and hit him there and then.

The last person? You’ve already heard my own story.

Anyway, these are the stories of four strangers who bonded over stories of their mental health experiences. Some people have had it worse, some have it better than others, some have never even had issues before.

THE QUESTION.

Photo Credit: www.pixabay.com

To the topic of the article: Is your mental health an excuse or an issue?

I wrote this because there’s an increasing spate in people stocking their toxic attitude, rudeness and lack of principle to their mental health. It’s somehow in the same WhatsApp group with the ‘I’m like this because I’m a Scorpio’ and other ridiculous things.

For example, is your anxiety the reason you haven’t had the courage to take up that public speaking streak you have or do you really have ADHD or you’re just lazy or uninterested in what you’re studying, do you actually have bipolar disorder, or it’s a self-diagnosed condition and a get out of jail free card that you deal whenever you want the joker part of you to come and play?

You see the thing about this question is I can’t even give you a 100 answer.

But, here are some things that I know are true anyway:
1. That question can only be answered by you. Do you know you have the capacity to do better than you’re currently doing? You can literally go back to the definition of mental health. Do you know the extent of your abilities? Have you exhausted all your help options to know you’re really limited in what you think your mental health is limiting you?

2. There’s this line that Tupac Shakur is famed for saying. Something his mum always used to tell him;
“To thine own self, be true”

it might take a little bit of self-reflection but the truth is, you would know if you’re just over indulging yourself, choosing not to take responsibility for your actions or if certain things in your life are really because you’re suffering from a particular mental health issue.

3. See or talk to a psychologist just to be sure of whatever you’re suspecting that you have. Just in case money is an issue, there are a couple of mental health bodies you can talk with for free. In Nigeria, there is Mentally Aware Nigeria (MANI), TFDWH, Peaceful Minds Foundation etc.

4. Also, you have to understand that mental health actually is a journey. If you do discover that you’re being lazy and blaming stuff on your mental health, or you really do have mental health issues. Relax. Calm down, understand that it’s a process, getting better will take time.

Don’t start shooting guns at yourself when you finally discover what’s up with you. Trust me, I’d know this.

5. The thing some of us don’t realize is that being diagnosed with or discovering that you have a particular mental health issue is not a bus stop, it’s not a free invite to a pity party owanbe, it’s not some wedding by the beach that you grab a chair to have a seat.

Discovering you have a mental health issue is like the beginning of a journey where the destination is definitely not where you started from, it’s usually to get you to a place of total healing or a place where you can cope or live with the condition you have but still live your best life.

You can get better. You will get better.


6. One of my mantras and I think one thing that sustains me personally is that we are limitless. There’s literally almost nothing I can’t do.

There’s something I remember from one of those random scientific books I used to read as a kid: we use less than 40% of our brains.

Lorokan, we have more capacity than we can ever imagine. I mean, I thought I wasn’t disciplined enough to work out, but look at me during Covid-19, I’ve been on consistent 30 days, all I needed was a partner, a reason and visible signs of improvement.

7. And then, you might want to draw lines that polarize what you have to do and what you want to do. A lot of times, what is pulling us back from working on our attitude, ourselves, from pursuing our dreams really is because we don’t want to.

You’ll never be a consistent reader for college if you really don’t want to, the book you want to rad doesn’t interest you or if you can’t find your why. For anything I’ve ever badly wanted to do, I always did it.

One hack for me if it’s something I have to do, but do not necessarily like doing is that I create a reason.

8. Also, truth is, some of us find comfort with the pity story. You like being the life of the party, the center of attraction at the pity party. You love the attention, the ease of passage having a sad story brings. It’s a loop that will swallow you up, if you don’t ditch it.

One day, your pity story will be stale and people will move on, the straws you’re desperately trying to cling to will finish, because you’ve chewed them all.

In fact, let me tell you, no matter how many times you host your pity party, the party will end and you will be left with the leftover dishes, the truth you don’t want to face, how bad you truly feel about yourself will stare you in the face and there’d be nothing, no one to distract you.

Ditch it my dear, ko come off it.


9. Lastly, I love the serenity prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr a lot.

I think it was part of my new year message when I came out of depression and I remember how significant and important it was to me then. It goes like this:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference”

Hey, it took me a lot to write this. Research, digging up memories and personal stories, time (this has sat in my drafts for literally the longest time.

If you got here, thank you and I wish you love, light and peace on your journey to mental health.

Love, Precious.

Quick answer? Open to the book of 21 Savage ft JCole, Chapter 2018, verse December 20th, which reads: ‘A lot’

PS: I wrote this on a Sunday, it’s not my fault. Anyway, have you missed me? Awwn, me too.

Apparently, fairy tales have done a lot. In fact, you might want to add, ‘what has Hollywood done to us?’

My brothers and sisters in the lord, things. E be things. Things of catastrophically magnificent magnitude. That probably doesn’t make sense but they sound like really big words, so, it works.

Essentially, they’ve caused diseases. I know you’re surprised, so, I’ll be your doctor for the length of this article. Let Aproko doctor comman sue me.

1. The Cinderella Story Syndrome.
You see, the interesting thing about this syndrome is that its origin was actually good. The syndrome has a similar story with cornflakes.

Cornflakes was originally an experiment by a scientist to create a drug to treat something, but of all things the drug could have turned out to be, like say chalk, Mentos, Vitamin C or some shit, it turned to cornflakes.

The funny thing was that one of the things it was supposed to treat was masturbation. Lewl. Basically, the original story has a lot of good intent but the adaptations, leemau.

In the original story, Cinderella is an orphan that lives with her evil stepmother. One day, there’s an invite to go to a ball and probably get picked as a wife. Some high patriarchy shit, but it’s a ticket to the good life. So, who cares?

Anyway, she answers the door when the opportunity: the invite, came. She considers herself worthy of the invite (self-esteem), she makes effort (sewed together some of the satin from her late mother’s aso ebi) and Cinderella was ready to go.

Then, for one of the first times in history, her village people turned up for her positively. Her grandma turns up and kits up her home girl. Decks her with her own ride, some Vera Wang level ball gown and makes sure she’s the finest thang at the parte!

Now, that’s a great story. Quite didactic, it teaches that when opportunity meets preparation, that’s when magic happens and inspires people to say God When.

But you see the other Cinderella stories, the one with Selena Gomez, Hillary Duff and alla dem, they’re different but have a general similarity.

Usually, Cinderella is in high school, she’s either a good singer or she’s a radio DJ or some shit, but she’s shy. She doesn’t let anyone know who she is, or she’s behind the stage mopping the floor when others are trying out for some singing competition.

Something now happens and the lead singer falls sick or she didn’t know she was on loudspeaker, and boom! we discover that Cinder-Ella, omo ologo is the one with the angelic voice. Eventuarry, she gets the boyfriend, the job, the scholarship or the contract.

There’s something stories like that can do to you. They make you crave for a golden moment when someone will seek you out or bully you into showing your talent because that has a better romantic appeal, a more interesting feminine grass to grace story.

You keep your talent to yourself and wait without doing shit, for some magic moment, some handsome Prince Charming that will save you from ‘I’m-hiding-my-talent’ blue-balls.

Festoffost, do you think you’re white and you have curly hair abi? You better start putting yourself out there. Sugomu. Be your own hype man!

You might be lucky to be discovered like that, but what if you’re not? Heck, Justin Bieber had to put his darn video on YouTube before he was found demmit!

There’s this thing people say that I’ve often found to be true,

‘It takes ten years of preparation to blow over night’ Think about it!

Lorokan, if you’re the kind that waits for things to be perfect before you do anything, blame your immobility in life on lack of opportunity, or you hide what you have and are content with watching the surprised looks on people’s faces when they discover you have a particular talent. Congratulations, you have the Cinderella Syndrome. Fix up!

2. The Cinderella Step Sister Syndrome.
This one emanates from the original story.
After the invitation to the ball, Cinderella dances and loses a slipper. Would have said she was probably doing some zanku, but let’s leave that alone.

By the way, you know one of the reasons why I said Cinderella’s village people are good is that when she lost her shoe, her grandma didn’t smack her and tell her to goan find it. I trust Iya Dahunsi, you wee find that shoe or else, no dinner for you.

Anyway, the prince then organizes a search party and instructs his courtier to make sure every lady in the kingdom tests the shoes. Cinderella feet fits and she becomes a princess (did you feel my rhyme?Emi baddest!)

Before I get into the syndrome story, may I just say that this particular part of the story intrigues me, because I’m sure with the number of ladies at the ball and in the kingdom, it is impossible that Cinderella is the only one with her shoe size.

That brings me to my conspiracy theory that Cinderella either has tiny feet and uses a rare size 32 or has large feet and wears size 45. 32 seems more likely sha.

Anyway, to the crux of the matter. The courtier carries the shoe all around for all the fair maidens to test, in order to find the person, the shoe fits.

Yonno in hindsight, that prince must’ve been some lucky mf because I’m sure if Ibos were around that time, someone else would have become queen. Yeah, I said it.

They’d have gotten to a particular house and a conversation would have ensued between the courtier and the girl’s father. We’ll call him Lord Cletus.

Courtier: (after making vain attempts to get the girls foot to fit the shoe) Sire, the shoe doesn’t fit. It’s not her size.

Lord Cletus: Commot there, make I do am myself (adjusts shoe) E enter her na. Chichi, na your size

Courtier: But it’s tight on her leg sir.
Lord Cletus: E go expand na. Leave am. See as e fine. Chichi, Chimananda, no off am. Na your size. (turns to the courtier) Oya, go and tell the Prince that we have found his wife. Epp me greet my in-laws o.
(THE END)

Anyway, when they brought the shoe to Cinderella’s house, her step sisters tried it but it didn’t fit.

Here’s the thing: I’m dead ass sure they would have tried to squeeze in their legs, shifted it to the left, used a foot slider and all that shit but the shoe just wouldn’t fit.

What’s the problem with this syndrome? You try to force something because you want it, even though you know it’s not yours for the taking.

I can relate because, it has happened to me before. I’ve always been a big foot. Finding school shoes was a hard task back in secondary school. It was so bad because momsi had a lot of shoes and she’s two sizes smaller than me.

I vividly remember always trying on her shoes wishing my legs would shrink by a size or 2 so they’d fit them. In fact, I stubbornly wore some of them and that explains why I had cramped legs back then and spoilt a lot of my mom’s shoes.

Anyway, this syndrome is why you’re in a relationship with a douchebag that you don’t like, just because you badly want to be in a relationship. That’s why you’re trying to please idiots that aren’t even your true friends.

That’s why you’ve been lying to yourself that that girl is playing hard to get when you know she actually doesn’t like you.

That’s why you’ve been lying to yourself that you’ll come back to buy back the building when you know deep down, that this rap yaar doing is not your calling.

That’s the ‘why’ for a lot of shit. Don’t force it, it’s not yours darling. Stop stalking her IG, she no like you bro.

3. The White Dwarfism Syndrome
I wanted to get a little creative with the name. This one is actually about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
I would have left the story out, but, you’d be surprised at the number of Nigerians that don’t know Snow Whites’ story.

Snow White is a princess sha. Her mother dies and she gets a step-mom. This step-mom as you can guess is wicked &vain. She has an insecurity issue, that’s why she asks her magic mirror every freaking morning:

‘Hey, mirror, how far? Who the hell is the fairest in the kingdom?’ and the werey mirror too will say ‘Nna, my queen, your highness, na you na’

So, a day comes when Snow White has developed a little bresss and bumbum and the pimples on her face clears a bit, to be noticed by the mirror, so, this snitch of a mirror tells its madam that Snow White is the fairest of all.

Like the proverbial Mama G, the Queen orders a huntsman to kill Snow White. The guy no get liver sha, so he spares her.

Snow White wanders through the forest and stumbles on the house of seven dwarfs and she ends up living with them. They tell this forest princess that she should not allow anybody enter the house while they’re away.

And as you can guess, the Queen’s mirror has ogbange spirit and instinctively knows Snow is not dead. So, when the queen asks again, ‘who is the fairest in the land?’, it says its Snow White.

She’s furious and she goes out under an old woman disguise to kill Snow.
She’s lucky Snow is a dunce because she manages to poison her three times, by enticing her with lace, a comb and an apple. The dwarfs were able to save her the first two times but the apple really knocked her out, but as usual, along came a prince and kissed the poison away. OG! Awon eeyan Hush Puppy!

I just need to add for the culture, that this fairytale has served as an inspiration to many.

Lil Wayne got the concept of his Mirror on The Wall song from Aunty Snow. Also, there are some girls that supposedly used a poisoned apple on an ex-president of Nigeria, and that’s all I’m going to say about that. Thainksz.

So, here’s the problem with this syndrome: it sorta eats your brain and your intuition because if it’s not that Snow White dinnur have sense why would you know that somebody wants to kill you, but you accept gifts from an old woman deep in the forest.

Like why would you even do that? You no dey fear village people? What would an old woman be doing in that side of the forest? For chrissake. Oloju kokoro oshi. Why would you trust the same person that screwed you over, again and again?

The symptoms remove your skepticism and makes you keep trying sources that have failed in the past. Playing the fool multiple times again, being stupidly trusting or shelving your intuition.

You gotta be your own Prince, sis. Kiss some sense into your own head.

There’s actually another part to this that treats what Hollywood and Nollywood done to but I’m done for today, bye… and get sense!