Happy New Year

I had an entirely different post written and planned out, but in the spirit of the new year, I decided to just open up a new post and free write. It’s been an interesting couple of months. On the 2nd of December, 2020, I launched a product. A notebook which one of my prints that I absolutely love. It was a very Nike moment- just do it. I put it up on instagram and twitter and dropped my phone like a hot potato. My plan was to give it one or two days and then post the launch on my blog and then another one or two days and then start messaging family and friends directly. I sold out in 30 hours. And cried.

As a society, we place a lot of emphasis on intention. I think we give intention and action the same weight of emotion. It’s why someone can say “I was going to do this for you” and be met with a feeling of warmth. It’s why we let people off for terrible things because they “feel guilty”. For the purposes of this post, it’s why the idea of doing something is matched with as much excitement as doing the thing itself.

We’ve all done it. Thought of an idea that was so great, so brilliant and execution was the less important part. We’ve been met with excitement for that idea - “wow, great mind, great idea, great intention”. But then what happens next?

I’ve wanted to sell my digital art for years. I had vague notions of a website and the sort of stuff I wanted my prints to go on. In the end, there was nothing glamorous about my launch. It was a lined notebook sold through DMs. It was an action, so it mattered more than all the thoughts I’d had in my head.

So, next- we rinse, we repeat. We think, then we execute.

Something I’ve struggled with for a long time- my whole life really, is accepting my gifts. I feel like I always sought out struggle because I felt like success and life in general had to have struggle to it. What I didn’t realise was that, even when you’re gifted at something, there’s still struggle in the consistency of it. I wish I accepted earlier that I am a talented writer, editor, communicator, artist, designer- that I am great at helping other people succeed . Even as I type this as a sort of “in your face” to my fear, there’s a niggling doubt in my mind. Am I, in fact, talented?

The thing is, I don’t think it matters. I can re-characterise that to “I love to write, to edit, to communicate, to create art, to design- to help other people succeed. That, is just as valid.

Just as we praise intention, we praise talent. What I love, what I admire, what everyone I’m a fan of has in common- they work. They show up, they are consistent. The thing is, not everyone can have talent- like beauty, like luck- it’s not distributed evenly. But work? Consistency? More people can do that.

So welcome to another year that can be just like the last or completely different. Some part of that shift, is up to you. Your life can look COMPLETELY different in a year, but you have to show up for that change.

My Weight Gain Journey

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I’ve never been the kind of person that hasn’t had weight fluctuations. I’ve gained and lost weight a lot of times for many reasons but the first time I gained a significant amount of weight, I was in my first year of uni. 

 On my first morning in student accommodation, I set off the fire alarm by using the microwave- don’t ask me how that happened, I still have no idea. When the fire alarm went off, it triggered an automatic all- halls fire alarm that meant every single person in my halls of residence (hundreds of people) was woken up and had to stand outside in the cold to wait for the fire service who had to show up and disable the alarm. It was a cold Sunday morning. I still remember how embarrassing that was for me and between that incident and my racist housemates (one of whom was Canadian proving that racists come from everywhere), I ate as many of my meals as I could in my room, which meant a lot of junk food. I gained weight really quickly. By the time I went to stay with some family for Christmas, three months after uni started, I had gained around 20kg/50lbs. 

I didn’t lose the weight until second and third year when I took up running and started cooking majority of my meals. I lost the last dress size by falling extremely sick and having to be admitted to the hospital. By the time I left uni, I was maintaining my weight loss and was also officially a runner.

For the next few years, I ran a lot and I walked everywhere. I always lived within a 30-minute walk from work, so I often walked to work, ran a lot and ate like a bird- little and often. 

Even at my absolute smallest, courtesy of two weeks of crying and sleeping after a breakup, I still dieted on and off. In fact, dieting to me was almost like a hobby. I can’t remember most of my diets but there were many.

I worked in fashion so people were always feeling so guilty for drinking diet coke and almost any size could qualify as fat since it wasn’t rooted in reality. I took so many “before” pictures and bought lots of extremely tiny clothes that I planned to one day fit into. I wanted nothing more than to be like a hanger (a not-great term used to describe skinny runway models) – thin and small and shaped really straight. I felt HUGE. 

In the midst of all of this, I moved back to Nigeria. I started to gain weight almost immediately from the sheer drop in my activity levels. I started law school where I was still running a lot and barely eating during the week, because the food options in law school were pretty dire. I pretty much maintained a small gain throughout law school and did a few half-hearted diets every so often. I started dating someone that would sometimes look at my old photos and say how he wished that he met me when I looked like that. After leaving law school, my activity levels dropped even more, and I gained more weight. I went to visit my partner who had now moved abroad for school and he was disappointed and angry at how much I had let myself go. 

At my post law school job, everyone knew me as the dieter- I was always on some diet or the other. I wasn’t alone in dieting, but I think I definitely took it to the next level- juicing, whole 30, vegan- there was always something.

In spite of the inconsistency, I basically went back and forth between two sizes.

I planned to leave my job in 2016. On the day I was going to resign, my mum called my aunt who called my cousin who called me to say my mum was panicking and I shouldn’t quit. What followed was one of the worst years of my life for mental health. I was miserable, I was bullied, confidence seeped out of me and the one thing I did was eat. I had close relationships with so many restaurants and food delivery services. I tried everywhere that sounded good. It wasn’t just ordering food or eating out, it was also interesting stuff in supermarkets, cooking the most gourmet looking lunches for myself, starting pancake Saturdays. Food was a bright spot in my life at that time. Eventually, I quit my job at the end of 2017, at which point I had gained A LOT of weight.

After I left, my mental health started to improve, even though now, I was facing something else I didn’t anticipate- the feeling of rootlessness that comes from being unemployed. Even with that, I was happier, and I actually lost some of the excess weight without trying. I also kind of started to not want to be locked into a constant battle with my body. I started to confront those feelings and was making a little progress, but then, I got engaged.

I’ve touched a little on the pressure to lose weight for your wedding but I definitely felt it. The difference is, I was reluctant to really do anything extreme in pursuit of that- maybe I was tired or maybe I had already started to unpack the body-hate and realise that it wasn’t a sustainable way to live. Either way, I lived my life. About 6 months before my wedding, I hired a personal trainer and when he suggested a diet/calorie limit, I balked at the suggestion. I just could not bring myself to do it- I just wasn’t interested. 4 or so months before the wedding, I tried to diet for a few days and just couldn’t, there were more important things at the time.

I got married and in the first year of marriage, I shut down on weight loss/ dieting etc. That was a transformative year for me because it was the year I learnt to accept my body. Those two years- 2018 and 2019 were transformative. I stopped buying clothes that were for a smaller body, I stopped letting my feelings about my body dictate my life. I stopped doing extreme diets and when people spoke about themselves the way I used to speak about myself, it was jarring, it felt weird and sad to hear. I left fitness groups I was in and just tried to figure out for myself what I wanted/needed. 

There have been a lot of arguments about fat people not being the only people entitled to negative self image. While that is true- speaking from my own experience, I suffered negative self image even at my smallest size, which was quite small, the difference is that with fat people, there are a lot of external voices. I find that people are a lot ruder and feel more entitled to say their negative opinions. It’s one thing to battle yourself, it’s another thing to battle yourself and a lot of other voices especially when the voices are confirming the worst things you feel about yourself. 

 

 

 

I Took A 5 Week Break From Social Media- Here's What I Learnt

One day near the end of August, I felt like I had been on social media all day and all week and I was exhausted. It occurred to me that the only proper break I had ever taken from everything was a week long break and I remember feeling like it was really great. I knew this time, I wanted it to be at least a month long but I also knew that if I waited to start on the 1st of September, I may have lost my ginger – so there and then, I made a quick note to put on my blog related accounts, signed out and deleted the apps from my devices. The first day wasn’t a full day- I probably decided at like 2pm on the 27th of August and then went off at 4pm. 

 My fantasy when I decided to go off was something like this- I would become the sort of person that wakes up at 4.30, does a light mediation, gets out of bed and has a hot drink, then works out and then works for a solid 4-5 hours straight before relaxing into more engaged forms of entertainment. What really happened was that the first thing I realised is that I was…depressed. 

Depression manifests very differently for everyone and even for the same person, it can be different every time. For me, I was finding it difficult to do anything. I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t do the smallest tasks. This isn’t really a post about that but I can say, I’m feeling better now, and limiting my distractions helped me to zero in on the feeling and deal with it.

I did get out of bed sooner. I’ve always been an early riser- morning person, but i’ve often woken up and spent the morning in bed, just scrolling. Now, I was awake and out of bed within 10 minutes. 

In September, I read 27 books, but in the whole time I was off social media, I read about 30 books. I usually interrupt reading with scrolling on socials, but I was able to just read books from start to finish without stopping. The last time I was off social media for a week, I read 3 books on the first day. This time, it was more like a book a day for the first two weeks but I did a lot of other things too- like play a lot of candy crush, watch most of friends, download reddit on my phone for the first time and actually read some forums, read magazines and every lifestyle website I could find from multiple countries. I watched A LOT of youtube, listened to podcasts, learnt how to skip and started skipping and did a lot of writing, thinking and editing. 

I had extremely vivid dreams about everything. I had a dream about the characters of friends, about candy crush, YouTube -I think because I was focusing so much more on things, the things I dis become embedded in my subconscious and my dreams were deeper. I also slept earlier when I got into bed. With nothing really to distract me in bed, sleeping AND waking up were easier. 

At the beginning of lockdown, I did a lot of thinking. On this break, the thinking was x100. The difference is this time, I wasn’t just thinking- I was processing. I wasn’t just thinking things and pushing them down, I was working through my emotions and events I had experienced. 

One of the things I wanted to improve on when I took the break was Instagram shopping. I had started a phase of constantly shopping on Instagram. There were days were I would receive multiple deliveries of things I didn’t really need. I was able to stop that since I wasn’t on Instagram which was actually really satisfying. I spent more money on stuff I really wanted and I went to actual shops to buy things, which meant that I often made better decisions. 

It was nice to not constantly know what everyone’s opinion on things were. I was able to think clearly about what I wanted without getting inspired by other people’s lives. It made it easier to create a fitness routine that I’ve been able to stick to. I also got clarity about the illustration style and writing style I wanted to focus on developing. 

I did miss a lot of milestones, not just birthdays, but business launches, etc- some I’m aware of now, but some I will probably never find out, and that was definitely a disadvantage. However, I was more aware about remembering milestones without relying on stumbling on it on socials and asking more questions when I had conversations with my friends.

I had very very few conversations- there were days where I didn’t speak to anyone other than my husband. I’m mentioning this as something that happened, but it was neither a good or a bad thing. I don’t mind that I have a lot of friendships that thrive most on social media. I think that form of friendship is just as valid as calls or texts or constant communication. I didn’t feel lonely or isolated and I never had FOMO- mostly because I had no idea what I was missing out on. 

I’m looking forward to taking a candy crush break, ranting about friends (the TV show) and reading a lot less. The downside of reading so many books is realising that there really aren’t that many books that I WANT to read and reading for me is about enjoyment more than it is about metrics- I’m really happy reading fewer books and not running out of stuff to read. 

There is so much less content in the world than I thought. So much content creation is focused on temporary platforms, there is very little content (that I’m interested in) that exists outside of this, which made me extra determined to buckle down on creating some. If you’ve been looking for a reason to create longer lasting content, this is it please. There are literally hundreds of thousands of books published every year and so much of it, I’m not interested in. This made me feel so much more confident in editing my book because I realised that a world existed for it.

You may have noticed on the blog, but not being exposed to opinions often made me more confident. I blogged posts like this and this that I probably wouldn’t have published because the voices of disdain and attack would have been in my head. There is so much complaint and attack of people on socials. The only thing that reminded me of it was reading reader reviews on goodreads where people got extra offended by fictional characters being less than perfect. Fictional characters will continue to be imperfect because humans aren’t perfect and that standard applies so harshly on social media. We crowd source virtue and try to force it on everyone from the way people shower to how they cleanse their faces to how they live their lives even when it doesn’t affect anyone else. We police thoughts and words in a way that’s scary when you step out of it. In it, it starts to feel normal, but out of it and it’s like ARE WE INSANE? How can we feel comfortable expressing actual disgust at things like people not making their bed everyday or using the wrong soap to wash their face or whatever else. It’s a bit insane and I definitely would like to stay out of things like that.

I liked choosing what content I consumed and being in touch with my instincts more than before. 

I also realise that social media advocates for this sort of utopia where you only do the things you want to do in life and nothing else and that’s just not true of life. I touched on this idea here and will probably write about it again, but sometimes life takes effort and we have to do some things even when we don’t want to.

Even though I didn’t get out the fantasy I wanted from my social media break, I think I did get a ridiculous amount of positive stuff from it and I am so glad I did it. I don’t know how it will affect my usage going forward and how much I’m going to end up keeping all the lessons I’ve learnt but I’m excited to see and I’m glad this posts exists for me to remember the lessons I learnt. 

A summary of how periods feel in case you were interested

Women get a raw deal in society but one of the most criminal things that we experience is having to work on our periods. Every month, I am absolutely gobsmacked afresh at how horrible this thing is. The worst thing is it seems to just get worse and worse the older you get- it becomes an absolutely unfun game of “guess what new thing you’re going to get”. I have decided out of anger to list the absolute bare minimum that comes with periods- this is definitely a short list and things can be so much worse than this.

Cramps

Interesting how we just call it cramps- a cramp is something I get from sitting too long or from typing for lots of hours- period pain is not a “cramp”. For the few people reading that don’t know what it feels like, these are the layers- there’s a dull ache that sorts of starts from the top of your ribs, all down your belly, sides and back- it’s kind of like the background beat of the period pain sound. On top of that, there’s a stabbing pain that makes sure it randomises itself just enough that you can’t get used to it and it remains just as unbearable no matter how long it lasts. There’s also a kind of scrunchy pain that twists parts of your insides - you never know quite where it’s coming from, so that’s fun. Sometimes, when you take a painkiller, maybe it hits all three - maybe it hits one or two- but it usually leaves at least the dull ache, just to remind you not to get tooo comfortable.

Period shits

Don’t think there’s a lot to say about this- but bad enough that periods may induce their own special diarrhoea but who the hell wants to take a bloody shit? 

Fatigue

The exhaustion is often compounded by the fact that intense painkillers ALSO make you more exhausted

Feeling like your uterus is falling out

Fever 

Nausea

There’s just general nausea and sometimes there’s vomiting from the pain 

General discomfort

A Stolen Q & A

I’ve always read a lot of magazines- I still do and some of my favorite features are when celebs do a short feature answering random questions- basically a Q & A. This month, I’ve saved some of my fave lists and I’m going to answer the questions! This one is from Red Mag.


My can’t-miss podcast is…

Obviously my podcast. Shameless plug aside, I am not yet a huge podcast person, but I listen to The High Low and I said what I said.

The candle I love to light is…

Mint Vanilla bean & peppermint. Vanilla is my favourite scent but it can be a little too sweet in candles. The peppermint balances it out perfectly and I just love it. 

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My Favourite Shoes are…

Impossible to pick but I wear these nikes and these Marni sandals a lot.

The book I keep on my bedside table is…

I really do not read physical books anymore, so I guess the book would be my iPad or kindle?I used to always have a notebook with me but tbh now I just type everything in the notes app.

My favorite hotel for a weekend away is…

Lagos isnt the ideal city for a staycation, but my easy go-to Lagos hotel is The Moorhouse hotel in Ikoyi. My favourite hotels are the Palace hotel in New York (which was a setting for so much of gossip girl i’m realising on my second watch) and The Blossom House in Amsterdam, which isn’t even really a hotel at all. 

The Blossom House was 10/10 stay

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Super excited about the view from The Palace

The albums I’ll never grow tired of are…

There are two kinds of music listeners- people that love singles and people that love albums. I love albums so there are A LOT of albums (and mixtapes) that should go on this list, but since this isn’t a post about albums, i’ve picked six- American Teen-Khalid, Lost & Found- Jorja Smith, After Laughter- Paramore, Love Letters-Metronomy, Indicud-Kid Cudi and Igor-Tyler the Creator.

My best holiday ever was…

Last year when i went to 6 countries in 3 weeks. Exhausting, expensive and worth it.


The thing I can’t stop buying for my home is…

Coffee paraphernalia, bottles and cups. 


The mantra I live by is…

Life is happening now.


My signature fragrance…

None right now because I’m currently using up all fragrance gifts I’ve received in the past two years. Funny story- There was a time in my life where for like a week or so, I decided to dab vanilla extract on my wrists as some sort of quirky “she always smells like vanilla” thing. I always smelled like baked goods and confusion and I went back to my Chloe fragrance really quickly!






Do I Talk Too Much?

I’ve always felt like I talk too much. Whether that’s true or it’s internalised from my family calling my honesty “unwise” when I was growing up, I don’t know, but in conversations, my subconscious starts a guage, measuring the length of my responses compared to the other person/people in the conversation- my guage always comes back with one response- yes, you do talk too much.

The thing about growing up is that you’re forved to confront things often- your relationships, your thoughts, your opinions of yourself and it can be exhausting and not lead anywhere. Even though I’m constantly examining this “talk too much”, I haven’t come up with solutions. Do I just need friends that validate my talk? Do I need to talk less? Do I need to channel my talk energy into something else?

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About 9 months into my relationship with my current partner, we spent 10 days in the guest room of another couple’s home. One morning, my friend said she heard me talking a mile a minute and my now partners engaged responses and that to her was a sign that we were meant to be together. When I was even younger- say 14 or 15, I sat in a parked car talking to my mum and a few days later, a friend told me he saw us and was fascinated by the fact that my mum was engaged in the conversation and was listening to me.

In both those cases, my friends were saying “it’s rare to find someone who listens, who is engaged, who cares so much”- they weren’t saying I talk too much. Of course, on the worst days when my guage has signalled that I’ve talked not just too much, but waaaay too much, I twist those instances and use it as justification that yes- everyone agrees I talk too much.

This is a problem that needs a solution. How am I to ever relax into relationships when that guage still exists, when I’m constantly replaying conversations and wondering “was that too much? just enough?”

All of this sounds like I’m a fountain of availability and talk in my relationships, when the overwhelming feedback from my friends is that i’m…cold. And often hard to read.

I’m extremely jealous of people for whom these things are effortless. But then, how do we know? If we don’t see into everyone’s head, how do we know if they have gauges and if those gauges are always showing them the opposite of what they aim for? 

I thought simply writing out my thoughts would lead me to a conclusion one way or another, but here I am, at the end of this, still wondering, do I talk too much?

The Reasons for my Social Media Break

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It’s been a little over a week since I impulsively decided to take a social media hiatus. I started to feel like I couldn’t hear my own thoughts and I was constantly immersed in details and thoughts of other people’s lives. I also realised that I had never really taken a meaningful break off social media. All of that added to a desperate impulse to take the break while I felt motivated to. I stuck a note on two of my accounts and deleted the apps from my phone. 

In the time since I’ve been away, some huge things have happened in the world and I’ve been able to read it, acknowledge it and move on. That’s very different to the usual, when one event can span a whole day of reading everyone’s thoughts and sharing mine on the same thing. Sometimes on social media, it feels like you are not allowed to take a break from hard things. You must be immersed in every pain and every suffering in real time. You cannot be silent, you cannot be unfeeling. You must take on every single pain and sign every petition. You must never look alway. And lord, it is exhausting. 

There is power in group change -absolutely. I love the way voices are amplified and change is made- it is a tool that has done so much, but at the same time, everyone cannot be part of every change everyday. We cannot all have the same weight of feeling for everything every time. Because as much as we have collective suffering, we still have individual suffering. And there is also a need for joy and for distraction and for laughter. I have privileges and I have disadvantages that I don’t want to acknowledge EVERY SINGLE DAY. 

Of course, no one puts a gun to my head and forces me to use my social media in a particular way but I’m only human and peer pressure is real. So is empathy. Having a front seat to real time pain and suffering, it’s hard to ignore and to look away. 

Of course, there are other things that bother me- when I finally like a style of illustration and then I scroll and see 20 other styles that suddenly appeal to me or I’ve decided to do photography a certain way and I see 100 other ways that I may like better. I’m trying to find my own voice in many aspects, the same way I have found my writing voice. No matter how many books, articles or blogs I read, I write how I write and there’s freedom in that. I want that freedom in as many things as possible.

I still have 3 weeks left on my break and I am extremely excited. I’ve been reading a book a day and having really intense dreams, I’ve been learning again to have opinions that I don’t share. I’ve been writing in that intense way where you start typing and words start flowing on the page in a way you didn’t anticipate. I have clarity, I have freedom and I know these feelings will change as the weeks go by and I’m excited to see how. 

My one month on 18:6 Intermittent Fasting

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I have been intermittent fasting since the start of the year. In January, February and March, thee number of days I did it increased and after intermittent fasting for about 12 days in April, I decided to commit to a specific window for May. If you’re not sure what Intermittent fasting is, I did a post about it here. In the 18:6 window, I eat for 6 hours and fast for 18, tracking my fasts on an app called zero. I usually eat my first meal around 9 and my last around 3. In May, the only times I didn’t fast for 18 hours were once when I ate later than usual for a date night and another time when I had morning cramps and needed to eat before taking painkillers. I fasted for 14 and 17 hours respectively those times.

Okay on to the highlights of my month long experience.

It was easy

This was the scariest part for me. I didn’t want to do a restrictive thing that felt hard day to day because in my experience, that has more long term detrimental benefits. I think what was key is that I experimented with different times and lengths from January to April and the fast I committed to for May was the one that suited me the best.

I didn’t lose weight

I need to get the weight loss out of the way because I know people take interest in a lot of lifestyle restrictions as a way to lose weight. I started this primarily as a way to control the way I was eating with maybe an added weight loss, which didn’t happen.

I stopped bingeing

I think up to about two or three years ago, I imagined bingeing as eating till you felt sick and were surrounded by empty junk food packets and waking up in the middle of the night to ransack the fridge. Basically, a caricature of what bingeing actually is, which I’ve redefined to mean eating large quantities of unnecessary food simply for the sake of eating. So eating a pack of chocolate chip cookies because im bored kind of thing. That has stopped.

I was (and still am) more thoughtful about what I was eating

when you don’t have that much time in the day to eat, you start to think some more about the choices you’re making. For the first time in my life, I started putting cake in the freezer for long term eating rather than trying to get through it in a few days.

I stopped having random cravings

I put this down to eating more real food generally, which i’ve never really been great at before now. 

I slept deeper

My sleep is actually really susceptible to my diet. I had great sleep when I gave up sugar for a while one time and when I went keto- basically the moment my diet is free of sugar, I sleep very deeply. Even though my diet hasn’t changed much this time and I still eat sugar, I think the fact that I stop eating so early (around 3 or 4) has had positive effects on my sleep. 

I’m still intermittent fasting and I truthfully love it and I see myself doing it till further notice. I think the key for me to consistency is picking what works for you and building in flexibility.

 

 

 

 

Lessons I Learnt From Blogging Everyday for 31 Days aka 1 month.

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1.    It’s hard to put your work out there constantly - even on days where I didn’t struggle with the content, I struggled with sharing it- when you create only when inspiration strikes, it’s easy to share because you feel like that’s something worth sharing- but when you’re creating no matter how you feel, those feelings of self consciousness are quicker to rise - the hardest part of creating isn’t creating, it’s sharing.

2.    When you find inspiration, you can find it again- I became less afraid of stopping things - before I would be scared that if I didn’t write an exact sentence down the way it came to me, I would lose it forever but then I realised that the inspiration came from me and that well of inspiration would continue to exist past the moment.

3.    If you don’t plan in advance, the quality of your work will suffer. Somewhere in the last 10 days, I started to feel 50/50 about the quality of work I was putting out vs the first week where I felt like everything was of the highest quality.

 4.    Consistency kills procrastination – there’s a post I put up this past month that I wrote in TWO THOUSAND AND EIGHTEEN. Like I didn’t have to edit it because it was fully written, edited and sitting in my drafts for two years. This is so common with creative work- when you’re not consistent, it’s easy to live with an imaginary standard of work vs actually taking the risk to put out something that you’re not sure of.

 5.    A month is a long time and it’s also no time at all- somewhere in the recess of my mind, I thought I would gain a lot of traction just by showing up consistently…for a month. I didn’t admit this thought to myself, obviously. If you had asked me, I would have told you I had zero expectations, but of course there’s always that tiny flicker in your mind that you refuse to acknowledge. Let me tell you something, the gift of consistency is consistency itself. Did I gain traction? Not really. Was I disappointed? No. 

 6.    It boosted my confidence and value in myself- this is a catch 22- I was able to complete the challenge because of the work I had been doing to see my work as having value, but doing the work itself increased my self value. For the first time in a long time, I started taking art commissions again, I started writing in general again, I started designing again. Things I didn’t even realise I had been making excuses not to do because I couldn’t see the value. I am a lot more self confident now than I was at the start of last month.

 7.    It also boosted my ability to be vulnerable- something about putting my words out in the world everyday made me able to tap into that vulnerability in other areas of my life. In the past month, I’ve been able to have honest conversations where I’m able to put my thoughts and feelings out honestly without fear. It’s very freeing. 

 Wow, It’s crazy that I got so much out of this. I am so happy I did it and honestly, showing up for yourself without any tangible and immediate benefit is the most satisfying feeling in the world. If I could bottle it and sell it, I would. 

 What did you think about the challenge?

Show Up For Yourself

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When I was a runner, for many years in my past life, the one thing that stood out to me about it was how it made me show up for myself. For the first year of running, I woke up before 6am to catch a bus to meet up with two girls I barely knew (one of whom is famous now, sorry to everyone that hears me talk about this every two months) to run for 12 minutes. In my second year of running, I ran 3 miles a day everyday for the whole year- come rain or snow or whatever. Evntually, I ran for longer and longer, waking up even earlier depending on work. It didn’t matter if I had someone over or whatever else was going on in my life- those miles were a promise to show up for myself and I always did.

 There’s something about living in Nigeria that makes you stop showing up for yourself- I don’t know quite what it is. Maybe it’s the paradox of people infantilising you and then expecting everything from you at the same time or the limits that society constantly places on you with judgment that shouldn’t matter but feels overwhelming all the same. The way vulnerability is really not a part of the culture and so you end up feeling alone, or sometimes foolish- for showing up- even for yourself.

 Lately, I’ve gradually started showing up for myself. I’m not quite where I used to be, because quite frankly, I was a powerhouse- but it’s the 19th day of blogging everyday and I haven’t missed a day. I’ve finished writing a book and have started another one and I’m generally taking myself away more seriously. I still have some way to go to get to the place I would like to be, but just as it takes time to build trust with other people, it takes time to build trust with yourself. I am enjoying the slow process of building that trust with myself.

 It just occurred to me the other day how crazy it was that I was putting 100 percent of myself into everything that wasn’t mine- every job- paid and unpaid- every favour, but I wasn’t even giving myself the bare minimum. I could work for hours on research for someone else’s thing but I couldn’t sit for 1 hour and create something for myself. I think the conditioning is so deep that you have to see productivity as beyond something that brings any tangible reward. You have to see yourself as worth the effort.  

Take some time to think of whether or not you’re showing up for yourself and if you haven’t been, it’s never too late to start!

 

 

Six Nigerian Instagram Creators to Follow

I feel like I spend half my time on social media looking for Nigerian creators! Issa struggle and I’m always open to suggestions! In putting together this list, I focused on creators that were a little less known and that were consistent! They are also mostly lifestyle accounts because that’s my favourite kind . Please send more suggestions in the comments and without further ado- here we go!

SiaInStyle

One random day, a couple of months ago, Ifeoma sacrificed her swipe up function to delete her entire account, starting over from scratch and her content is better for it! With crisp images and thoughtful captions, I love her account!

The Oddity

Her account has exploded in the last few months because of her infectious energy! Always on stories, she’s happy with laughing at herself and engaging with her followers!

If you didn't know me you'd think I was quiet and sane but for those who do 👀👀 comment down below one word you'd use to describe me! 😂 Better be nice 😂

5,208 Likes, 433 Comments - That Odd Girl 🤪 (@the_odditty) on Instagram: "If you didn't know me you'd think I was quiet and sane but for those who do 👀👀 comment down below..."

Nife Akingbe

With 65k followers, this is the person on this list with the largest following! She shares her day to day life as a newish mum and lots of fashion content. I really enjoy seeing her new content pop up.

Mr & Mrs Before our homegirl Ire . P.s I was too pressed to get this car "Olu I N e e d it" 😭😭😭. I have zero regrets because it's such a classic ride. We gotta recreate this shoot one day. Photographed by @femiosinowo

1,757 Likes, 77 Comments - Nifesimi Akingbe (@nifeakingbe) on Instagram: "Mr & Mrs Before our homegirl Ire . P.s I was too pressed to get this car "Olu I N e e d it" 😭😭😭...."

Iamdodos Style

With impossibly crisp content, it’s hard to believe that Dodos lives in the same Lagos we all live in. Her content is consistent, fresh and looks sooo good!

A little sugar & spice ❔

3,727 Likes, 96 Comments - I A M D O D O S (@iamdodos_style) on Instagram: "A little sugar & spice ❔"

Eniswardobe

With complete focus on fashion, it’s refreshing to see a feed that doesn’t try to be too many things at once!

Keep it simple with a pop of colour. I bought this jacket from @topshop a couple of weeks back and it's always so nice to get an item that can be so versatile that it's easy to style with anything.

191 Likes, 18 Comments - Eniswardrobe (@eniswardrobe) on Instagram: "Keep it simple with a pop of colour. I bought this jacket from @topshop a couple of weeks back and..."

In My Sunday Best

Wholesome, fun content! Her feed actually gives me that Sunday morning feeling- where everything is calm and the week ahead feels like a fresh start!

Anyone else still dressing up and putting on makeup just to sit at their desks for nine hours? 😂 Hope you all had a wonderful start to your various weeks. 🌸

503 Likes, 47 Comments - Sade (@inmysundaybest) on Instagram: "Anyone else still dressing up and putting on makeup just to sit at their desks for nine hours? 😂..."

Who are your fave Nigerian instagram creators?










The Breakout Stars of Lockdown

The world is in serious flux. People are changing habits quickly in a bid to adapt and give any degree of comfort to themselves. Because of this, there are people and things that have broken through our consciousness at just the right time and become stars.

Tabitha Brown

As her bio says, “worlds favourite mom” has really become the world’s favourite mom after her soothing voiceovers of her vegan recipes went viral. She makes so many people want to go vegan because she makes it tasty and easy and she uses a lot of spices. Within the space of a few weeks, her followership went past 1 million, she signed with an acting agency (something she had dreamt of for many years) and started selling merch with some of her most popular phrases and it feels like she’s been here forever.

Little known fact: I love Gerbera daisies and sunflowers! The colors make me so happy!! My baby girl @tyleahbh surprised me with these beauties today!! Thank you Leah!!! Love you!!! Sending out love to all the Mothers today!! #HappyMothersday #tabithabrown

91.7k Likes, 810 Comments - Tabitha Brown/ (@iamtabithabrown) on Instagram: "Little known fact: I love Gerbera daisies and sunflowers! The colors make me so happy!! My baby..."

Hill House Vintage

After a photo of her went viral because someone used it as the reason they deleted their instagram account, lots of people rushed to replace the hate with love and support. This former Elle editor has since featured on everything, including the NY Times!

Quacktails

Obviously going to talk about some local stars-Lagos drinks company quacktails could barely keep up with their cocktail delivery service that came up as a response to lockdown. Proving that people would buy cocktails even in their houses, lots of other cocktail delivery services have sprung up.

OyaNow

Introducing services such as “shop4me” and making it easier for anyone to arrange pick ups and deliveries, oya now, previously a delivery service used mainly by businesses, responded quickly to lockdown. Like almost anything in this country, services kind of fell off after a few weeks- but at the start, they were brilliant!

No Signal

Hate to discuss this people who were serious haters in their Wizkid vs Vybz Kartel battle, but objectivity has to win out regardless. Starting with a few hundred listeners, this radio show asking listeners to vote on track battles between different artistes grew to at its peak, 200k listeners (obviously Nigerians listening to Wizkid). They are now backed by Spotify!

Tory Lanez Quarantine Radio

This set the pace for so many of the instagram live events that started happening later on- a show hosted by Tory Lanez on Instagram live featuring mainly, women twerking. It’s popularity led to many more iterations of instagram live tv.

Things I did in my twenties that have contributed to who I am now

Guys, let me tell you something- it is incredibly hard to blog everyday. Wow. Guess what though? I’m doing it! I have been reading a lot more magazines, blogs and digital publications trying to come up with ideas of what to blog about and I read a post where someone wrote about stuff they did in their twenties that they are glad they did and I was like ooooh, won’t it be nice to write about the experiences I loved getting in my twenties.

Everytime I feel down about the fact that I haven’t had one climbing career since I left uni (which yields great life rewards), I think of all the stuff I’ve done and how it’s added up to who I am now.

Working in the industry/Job of my dreams

After I finished uni, I got a masters and sometime in my final year of uni and deep into my masters, I fell in love with fashion. No like, fell IN love. I started fashion blogging, immersing myself in everything fashion - I was obsessed. The first job I wanted to have in fashion was as a buyer- I don’t know that I was exactly sure what a buyer did but I just wanted to be that. I decided to try my hand at styling- literally the first person I tried to style, I was like this isn’t for me! I was unwilling to merge my vision with theirs, which you need to be able to do as a stylist. That’s when I researched more into buying and thought- I don’t know that this is me.

I didn’t have any fashion experience to apply for jobs - I hadn’t even worked in retail in uni (and I worked a lot in uni), so I decided to get a fashion retail job. My interview was shit, it was the lowest pay I had ever had in my life (in fact, I worked two more jobs at the time just to be able to afford my rent)- but I was working in fashion. Let me tell you, retail is rubbish - very long days- a nice dose of racism from my colleagues- pushing credit cards on people- but I learnt so much. I learnt about how people shop and by my second month, I knew exactly what items would go on sale from the moment they hit the shop floor. I also got a nice employee discount and guess what, it gave me the leg in the door I needed to get a graduate fashion role as a merchandiser for one of the biggest fashion retail brands in the world.

I was thrown into that job from day one- flung in. In my second month, one of my colleagues moved back to Sri Lanka and I was given her departments - the responsibility was huge. I LOVED that job. I tried to work weekends (but we weren’t allowed). I came in early so many times, I was on first name basis with the security guards (they were also Nigerian, so there’s that)- I also came in late sometimes, I’m not a saint. I loved that job so much that when I eventually left to move back to Nigeria and go to law school, that was the thing I missed the most. The job taught me so much about so much, but most of all, that it’s possible to LOVE work, even when the pay is shit (but we had a lot of sample sales and discounts).

Living Alone in London

More than the living alone in London was living alone in itself. I think it went a long way in just teaching me emotional independence- how to think and decide for myself without having to rely on the thoughts and feelings of other people. In the time I was living and working in London, most of my friends that I had for a while weren’t there and while I was making new friends, it wasn’t the same. I spent a lot of time just with myself- walking, running, writing, thinking and just examining who I was.

Working as a commercial lawyer

As much as I’ve always known that I don’t want to be a lawyer and my actual place of work was terrible for my mental health, commercial law taught me so many skills- I worked on extremely huge and complicated cases/deals- I sat in on board meetings - I drafted contracts and wrote minutes and learnt how to think in a different way. My writing and editing skills improved dramatically and that was the one job where I got confirmation that I had to write as a career. It also tamped down on some of the wild and wonderful dreams I had about Nigeria when I was moving back, nothing like seeing the black and white reality of how Nigeria works to give you a dose of reality.

Living in Abuja

Lagos people never leave Lagos except it’s to another country. After law school bar 1, instead of moving to Lagos, I decided to stay in Abuja because it just seemed like the better experience, and I’m glad I did. I spent a lot of time in Abuja itself and got to know the town and it was just nice to have a different experience of Nigerians- that’s when I realise that so many people in Lagos have zero social skills and it’s not at all normal.

Selling Products

So for three Eat Drink festivals, I sold drinks and flirted with the idea of doing it as a full on long term gig. The experience was great- there’s something nice about the maths of buying and selling- it was a good experience, but it wasn’t something I wanted to do long term in the end. I also sold fabric for a year or two, which was a pretty good business with decent margins- you learn so much from selling, it’s good experience for anyone to have.

Getting Fat

Like many things we are socialised into, we are also socialised into certain discriminations. This is by no means the first time I’ve been fat- I’ve gained and lost a lot of weight before, but this is the first time I’ve been fat and not hated myself and wow- what a journey it’s been. I wouldn’t have gotten here without gaining weight. Another aspect of this weight gain that has been interesting is seeing firsthand the difference in the treatment of fat vs slim people. It’s actually kind of crazy! And it’s weird that it’s one of those things that society says is in the imaginations of fat people even though it’s clear. I have gained a lot of acceptance and respect for my body as is, than I ever did when I was tiny!

Living at home and spending time with my mum

After I finished law school and moved back to Lagos, was the beginning of the longest amount of time I had ever spent with my mum. She was retired from banking and working as a baker from her home office so we spoke a lot. I had a lot of resentment from childhood hurts and finally shared with her and we worked through it- not perfectly- but it helped me let go. After I quit my job, we spent even more time together- I think that ended up being her favourite part of me quitting. Those years are now everything to me, now that she isn’t here anymore.

Wow, writing this has taken me back to so many things I’ve done, I can’t fit it all here - I’ve done so much writing work and creative work- I started a clothing business and shut that down- made some fantastic friendships that changed my life - got my heart broken- broke hearts and just generally lived totally and completely - I love all these memories and all the different parts of myself! One day, I’ll put it all in a very long memoir.









A Simple Way to Set More Achievable Goals

Why do we always set goals that have nothing to do with who we are and what our lives are like? It frustrates me so much about my self but I’ve gradually stopped setting impossible goals and it’s so transformative to set goals that you can actually achieve.

Here’s the thing, you can do anything. You can achieve anything. What you cannot do is achieve things instantly, except with magic or extreme luck. I think sometimes when you say to someone to tone a goal down, what they hear is “You can’t do that”. I want to assure you that whatever it is, you absolutely can- you just have to be smart about how you proceed.

There are a million ways for you to figure out how to break a goal down, and I want to talk about an easy one and one of my favorites- using an anchor.

An anchor a routine or habit in your life that is unlikely to change quickly. It can change, like anything can- but it’s such a part of your life and routine and it likely won’t change in the beginning stages of setting your goal. So for example, if you have a job with fixed hours and you have to be at your desk at 9am, that’s going to be an anchor for a weekday morning goal. It is with that in mind, that you can start crafting your goal.

Say you want to start working out every weekday morning, rather than allowing your goal setting self to be like “I am going to wake up at 4.30 and work out for 90 minutes”, tap into your anchor. If you usually wake up at 7.30 to get to work on time, it will make more sense to wake up no more than an hour earlier, so it’s not such a dramatic change to your routine- all of a sudden by moving your goal to a 45 minute workout at 6.30, you’re more likely to stick to it.

By starting from your anchor, you also need to focus on the things in place that are already helping you succeed with that. If you get to work on time, what helps you? If you’re already sacrificing sleep for your anchor, will adding a new goal be useful? Or would it be better to figure out a better time or a different goal? So in this case, can the workout be in the evening instead? Can it be weekends instead? Can you start going to bed earlier? Once there is a fixed thing in place first, it’s easy to identify the things that will make it harder for you to achieve your goal.

Your goal cannot be your anchor. I know it’s tempting, but until you establish a routine, you need things to help you establish it, the routine won’t suddenly create itself and it’s the magical thinking that it can that stops so many people from being able to set goals they can achieve!

Let me know if you try this :)

Lockdown Journal- Episode 2

I am over cooking. I’m over baking. I’m over food in general. What started out as the highlight of lockdown has now devolved into something tiring. I don’t want to cook, and I don’t want to eat. My husband started working from home on March 16 and since then we’ve been out three times for less than 30 minutes each time to buy groceries. I’ve been in the house coming up to 2 months and while I feel really grateful that I have the opportunity to stay home, two months of being in the house is…a lot. 

 I’ve baked – two banana loaves, 1 set of carrot cake muffins, 2 sets of banana loaf muffins, 1 set of regular muffins, 1 set of scones, 2 brownies, 1 chocolate cake, 1 ginger loaf, 2 sets of flatbread, one loaf of bread, 4 sets of cookies and that’s just baking. I haven’t even started on cooking. I gave up drinking alcohol after the second or third week with one or two exceptions because drinking at home just stopped being fun. After eating two boxes of snacks, I decided to give up snacking as well- largely because I’m just tired of FOOD!

 I’ve been trying to finish my book edits and I’m telling you; writing is the fun part. Reading back on what you’ve written, especially when it’s a whole book, is hard. Plus, my reading in general has fallen off, it’s hard to get my mind to focus on blocks of text at a time. I feel like my mind is constantly racing and I’m finding it hard to keep up, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night to pee and I’m in the middle of some thought and I’m thinking, why am I thinking right now?

Final Cut Pro is free for three months (google Final Cut Pro free trial). Video editing has never seemed like my jam, but when something that’s usually expensive is free for a good length of time, it feels foolish to pass it up, so I’ve added learning how to edit with Final Cut Pro into my rolodex.

I didn’t think I could realise things further after spending a year in the deep realisation of things pre-lockdown, but lockdown is really surprising me and I am indeed, realising things. I have worked through things that I have been trying to work through for years, in weeks. What’s that about? It feels random and temporary because is it possible for things to just click in your brain in weeks when they haven’t clicked for years?

 I am definitely not bored, so that’s great. I am trying to maintain a routine and eat like an adult (more fruit, more veg, more protein). Some days are better than others. I am researching articles I have been meaning to write for years and showering every day. Somehow, I have been seeing that my work has more value than I have ever been willing to admit. I have grown past doing things half-heartedly. I either do them properly, or I don’t do them at all. When I choose not to do them, I’m kind to myself and I’m not trapped in guilt about it. Kindness to myself has allowed me to be kinder to others, and in being kinder to others, I’m able to self-reflect through their eyes. 

In areas where I have balked in the past at taking criticism, I am not more willing to understand where it comes from. I know exactly what my goal is for everything I’m doing. I know for me, this space is to build my community and I’m so excited about every comment, every DM, every @, every email. It means everything when people give feedback, and it tells me that I’m closer to the community of my dreams, one that isn’t just between me and you, but all of us together. 

Look at me on day 4 guy! Are you enjoying the daily blog posts? I know I am! What do you think? Can we go a bit longer on these posts?

 

A Case for Jealousy

Jealousy. It gets a bad rep. If I was Jealousy, I would hire a PR agency and overhaul my reputation, you know like when people started saying “I’m so jel”.

I’m using Jealousy to cover both Jealousy and envy. I think the popular distinction is that jealousy is fear of someone taking something that you have and envy is wanting what someone else has. Both are frequently used interchangeably so I don’t want to worry too much about semantics.

Raise your hands if you’ve ever said “I’m not a jealous person”. Like many other things in life, Jealousy has been reduced to the feeling you have about your romantic partner’s relationship with someone else. It is also used a lot in Nigerian films to set the tone for someone to poison someone else. Basically, it’s the basis of a lot of negative actions.

I think this is unfair. We’ve used the extreme to define the entire emotion, when an extreme of any emotion is negative. At it’s core, jealousy points to something you want, or something you wish you had. That in itself isn’t negative, it can be a catalyst to work on dealing with that desire, because you more than likely didn’t know it existed.

Say you’ve been trying to decide what to do for a career and you still feel like “I have no talents or interests” and then you find yourself repeatedly feeling envious of people with careers in accounting, you should look into that. Say you find yourself jealous everytime your partner is laughing a lot in conversation with someone else, then you probably feel like they don’t find you funny and it bothers you. Jealousy is an emotion, and like most emotions, there’s a source. It becomes negative when you ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist. You miss your chance to really confront whatever it has shown you.

We all feel jealous or envious- every one of us- even the people that say “I’m always content and I never care about what anyone else has or may be doing”- be that as it may- we all feel the emotion. If you accept that it’s natural, you will become more attuned to whatever it’s showing you. My jealousy has always shown me my deeper desires and forced me to confront it. Absence of jealousy always shows me what I don’t want- it also shows that I’m secure in that area of my life.

I hope I have convinced and not confused you that jealousy as an emotion isn’t necessarily bad.

Is this a Lockdown Journal or a goals update post? Let's call it a Lockdown Journal- Number One

May! Isn’t it crazy how time passes no matter what else is going on? When I was looking forward to this year in December and setting my goals in January, I could never have seen this pandemic coming- no-one could have. Now, it feels like we’ve been here forever with no real end in sight. When this started, I wrote some posts that I thought would be helpful like a pandemic shopping list, dealing with anxiety and maintaining productivity. As time started to pass, living day to day became easier mentally. One thing I wanted to do was journal, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it (I still haven’t started journalling even though I’ve put aside a brand new notebook for the cause).

As April ended, I started to look through my old journals starting from 2013 and one thing that struck me was how easy it is to carry the same goals for so long without realising it. I did this at the start of the year but in light of recent times, I felt the need to revisit. I came away feeling like goals are temporary and flexible things. Life isn’t guaranteed, so there’s no point constantly looking ahead to a hypothetical future at the detriment of the present. I decided to take on the goals that were still relevant and get rid of the ones that weren’t. I can always come back to them if they are useful in the future, but anything I can’t work towards now has been tossed out.

So goal update- If you are a frequent blog reader, you’d know that I set out a list of goals for the year in January and gave a February update. Now, I’m going to revisit those goals and talk about new goals going forward.

Health And Fitness

Over the years, I’ve had so many “fitness goals” that boiled down to one thing- lose weight. For the first time in my life, I’m going to do something that feels insane to me- not diet- at all- not once this whole year. I’ve gone on 100s of diets since I was a teenager and it’s just not something I’m interested in doing anymore. So my goals for health and fitness are really about health and fitness for a change and not an euphemism for weight loss.

I’m glad that I’m mentally still in this space where I’m chasing holistic goals.

Run a 10k and a half marathon- cancelled.

Walking – I’ve started doing Leslie Sansone walking workouts. I feel like I’m 30 years older when I do them but they are fun and a way to keep walking without going outside.

Learn how to do a push up- cancelled.

Get a full health work up- This pandemic has shown just how important this is and I can’t wait to get this done as soon as I can when outside opens up again

Eat more protein- this is such a daily struggle, as I type this, the new protein powder I ordered is on its way.

Career

I think I’ve always underestimated how much of my life I actually control and continually waited for outside feedback, but this is an area I’m taking more control over.

Love

Work on giving with no expectations- I’m getting better at this for sure.

Grow stronger friendship and family bonds- I think I’ve definitely stopped chasing ideas of relationships and started focusing more on developing the relationships I have.

Give gifts- bruh I should surprise someone with lunch or something.

Say Yes To Attending Things

There’s nothing to attend, stay indoors!

Get Rid Of As Much Clutter As I Can

I’m just choosing to be kind and patient with myself in this area because hmmm.

The Present

Okay so that brings us here to May 2020, in line with the new realities of life. One thing I saw that I wanted to do in an old journal is a year of monthly challenges. I think monthly challenges are good because they interrupt the voice that tells you that you should stop what you’re doing and try something else. For people that have problems with follow through, this tends to be the problem. For example, you decide to walk everyday for an hour and on day 9, you’re like “hmm this is boring, why don’t I try running 5km everyday instead”. It means that you never commit to anything and never really have a “finished product”. Monthly challenges are good because you usually get past the phase where you want to give in to your whims and can set you on the path to consistency.

I’m starting this month with three main challenges. Now, the reason I’m doing 3 is because I’ve already been consistent with two of the three goals for a while and I want to continue.

drumroll please

The three challenges are

  1. Blogging everyday

  2. 18:6 Intermittent fasting

  3. Leslie Sansone walking workout

I’ve set myself the challenge to blog everyday lots of times but I’ve never once actually done it. The closest I came was late last year and it set me on a path of fairly consistent blogging. This time, I believe I’m in the head space to follow through and I’m looking forward to doing it! I hope you’re excited too :)

I’ve been intermittent fasting for a while- starting from 13:11 and kind of working my way up. I was always reluctant to commit to a set time frame because I didn’t want it to get extreme but after a while, I decided to just do it. Now, doing it as a 31 day challenge is going to take it even further and I’m kind of excited about that.

Leslie Sansone walking workout - walking is the low impact home workout of my dreams and I would like to commit to it. I think if you’re home all day, it’s important to commit to moving your body everyday for part of the day and this is the way I’m choosing to do it. It might sound excessive to work out everyday but that’s why it’s a challenge, no?

I really wanted to say so much more, but this post is over 1000 words long now, so I’ll save some words for the remaining 30 days of the challenge.

Let me know how you guys have started thinking of goals going forward

Also, follow me on socials! Instagram and twitter.




How to deal with anxiety

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It was only a few years ago that I realised that not everyone lives with anxiety. Not everyone has a crushing unidenitifiable fear of everything/anything that stops them from being able to act. Anxiety for me feels like someone sitting on my chest- it’s the inability to make myself do the simplest things like fill a form because I’m worried about some unidentifiable fear of what the form will lead to. If you are reading this now and realising that you may have anxiety, you’re not alone. Anxiety is one of those things that everyone thinks they have. Everyone feels anxious sometimes, but not everyone has anxiety.

These things won’t cure your anxiety, but one or a combination might help you to feel better, for an hour, a day or longer and honestly, when you’re in the depths of a crushing anxiety attack, any little help goes a long way.

Limit the source of anxiety

Reading every single headline/ report/ think piece/ tweet updating you on the very thing that’s causing you anxiety is not a good idea. Limit what you can. If you don’t use social media for work, consider stepping back- if you do, consider putting filters and mute words in place. You don’t need to see everything.

Develop a routine

When you’re stuck at home, taking a break from routine can sound like the most freeing thing in the world, but a routine establishes some sort of order in your mind and goes a long way in controlling anxiety. It doesn’t have to be a crazy routine- you dont have to wake up at 4am and wear a suit the whole day. It can be as simple as waking up in the same time frame, always making a coffee when you wake up, always eating the same breakfast, always working from the same couch position etc. A routine is anything you repeatedly do- it doesn’t have to be something draconian.

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Journal your feelings

Journalling is one of those things that everyone tells you is good for you but you can never seem to bring yourself to do. You don’t need a special notebook, you don’t need to light a candle, it doesn’t have to be in the morning. It can be in the notes app in your phone, you can send a message to yourself on your phone, you can write it on a random piece of paper. the goal is to get the thoughts out of your head and somewhere. Most times, anxiety comes from a place we can’t pinpoint and that can feel overwhelming, but writing it down (most times you don’t even know where it’s from before you write it down) makes you see exactly what it is. You’d be shocked that your anxiety is from something that’s easy to fix and even when it isn’t, it can give you some calm, however temporary.

Pay attention to your diet

For most of my life, I’ve had a hard time sleeping through the night. Being able to sleep better is probably the biggest perk of married for me, because my husband’s presence is calming for me, and my sleep is generally better. Over time, I’ve tried a ridiculous number of diets. The ones that had a biggest impact on my sleep were magnesium supplements, fasting, and any diet that limits carbs/sugar. I say this long thing to say, just pay attention to how your diet affects your moods, your anxiety and things that exacerbate anxiety like lack of sleep.

Workout

The only workout that has ever given me endorphins to the extent that it calmed my anxiety is running, so I’m including it in case it’s something you want to try. There are so many workouts to try that may have the same effect- walking, yoga, pilates- try different workouts and see what works for you.

Meditation

The one thing meditation does is teaches you to be present and to really hear yourself think. It can be hard to get into if it’s not something that you naturally do but over time, it’s worth it. Start as simply as possible, with a five minute app meditation. Try and do it at roughly the same time everyday and overtime, it will become something you can do when you need to.

What are the things that help you with your mental health?




2020 Goals- February Update

Wow. 2 months down already! I started the year with such a blaze of energy that I was really surprised when February rolled round and I was hit with a wave of exhaustion and overwhelmingness that refused to shift the whole month. I could not motivate myself to do anything, I couldn’t focus, I woke up a lot in the middle of the night and tried to calm myself back to sleep, I barely spoke to or saw my friends and/or family- I just felt drained. Luckily, by the end of Feb, stuff started to pick back up and I hope that new energy lasts all March.

Health and Fitness

Run a 10k and a half marathon- well, well well, I walked a 10k, so that’s…something. I still don’t know what half marathon I’m doing and I’m definitely going to start specific training this week.

Walking- Still walking, still boring (although when I have a particularly interesting Netflix episode to watch, I just walk through it).

Learn how to do a pushup- So I started this and realised my core and arms are weak! Starting the push up training definitely improved the focus of my workouts.

Get a full health work up- no comment (but basically haven’t done this or made any plans to do it)

Eat more protein- I definitely am doing a lot better on this but there was like a week where I was so tired of thinking of protein, I just didn’t. It definitely takes conscious effort to meet my protein goals. I’ve noticed that sometimes even though I’ve been eating all day, I’m still quite hungry (even when my fibre levels were great) and it occurred to me that low protein was to blame some of the time. I think this is something I will have to continually work on all year.

I went to the gym 16 times this month which was 6 times more than January, so yay!

Career

I want to pass on updating this, but I’m sure a couple of months later, I will wish I did. This is still non existent- I’m tired of talking about it, I’m tired of thinking about it. Someone asked why I don’t illustrate more and honestly, doing creative things for profit takes so much mental energy, I feel like it may drive me insane. I’m going to pause on thinking for what I want to get out of this in March and throw my energy into other areas of my life because I need a mental break.

Love

Work on giving with no expectations- I really didn’t have a lot to give this month- You can’t pour from an empty cup, blablabla.

Say yes to attending things

I did say yes, in spite of how I felt, so go me.

Get rid of as much clutter as I can- lol.

In summary, March can only be better.

 Where are you on your goals/resolutions?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2020 Goals- January Update

Early in the year, I wrote a post listing out my broad goals for the year. I thought it was about time I moved from my childhood resolutions of “fluent in French and lose 20 dress sizes” into actual goals that I could refer to and work on without being a superhero.

As the month comes to an end, I’ve decided to kind of see where I’m at in these goals so that I kind of have a clearer picture going forward. I would like to do these check ins once a month so I can see how well I’ve done in turning the goalsinto actionable things and how the goals evolve over the course of the year.

Health and Fitness

Run a 10k and a half marathon- well, well well, this is off to a not great start. After procrastinating 10k training, it was two weeks to it and I knew I would physically be incapable of doing it so that’s out the window. I could have walked it, I could have tried anyway etc etc, but I just wasn’t willing to jeopardise my consistency and practical approach to run the 10k so in the end, you win some and lose some.

I also haven’t signed up for the half marathon yet, but that’s something on my to-do for the week.

I have gone to the gym 10 times this month, which is probably more times than I went in total last year (wow). Most of those times have been in the last two weeks, so I’m only really just started to get into a routine.

Walking- with a goal to start running on the treadmill, I started by walking for an hour everyday. It is boring and it is sometimes long but I’m definitely already adjusting to the feeling of being on a treadmill (no hands, yay) and I’ve moved on to incline intervals.

Learn how to do a pushup- this is something I’m probably not going to worry about for the next few months.

Get a full health work up- no comment (but basically haven’t done this or made any plans to do it)

Eat more protein- so in order to see how much protein I usually eat, Ive been tracking my meals, and it’s been a dire situation, wow. I’ve started to supplement with some protein shake powder that has been languishing in my kitchen cupboards (don’t worry, it’s within the use by date) and generally trying to rework my meals in a way that there’s enough protein. I also started adding collagen peptides to my shakes and that’s pure protein which is a happy accident because I didn’t buy it for protein sake. I even swapped greek yoghurt brands for protein sake! I started the month on like 30g per day and I’m now up to 70-80g a day. The goal is somewhere around 120g a day so a ways to go still, but on the right track.

I really wonder how so little protein had affected my satiety levels and so on. I really think February will be the month where I’m hitting those protein levels consistently.

Career

This is one that’s as usual, harder than I expected it to be. My standard fear and self doubt kicked in and actually threatens to undo all the progress I’ve made pushing through to finish my first novel manuscript, write more etc. However, I’m hoping to have my manuscript ready for submission by the first week of March and really up the ante there.

As for that communications job, I implore the universe to send it to me, because I’m not going to lie, I am exhausted by job hunting.

Love

Work on giving with no expectations- I am happy with how I’ve given this month but can also see that there’s a lot of room for improvement. And reflecting on this point, I don’t tend to give with expectations anyway, I’m just not very giving in general. So I think this is more a case of giving more in general. Not just things, but myself etc.

Say yes to attending things

I cant really say where I am on this, but I feel like I’ve been very “yes, give me a time and place” recently. I’ve definitely met up with quite a few people this month, so it’s a step in the right direction.

Get rid of as much clutter as I can- I honestly consider this at least once a day and then do nothing. I really have to break down what I need to get rid of and get to work. I think this would work best if I break it down to the barest minimum and start from there.

In summary, generally, I’m happy with how the month has gone. I didn’t really want to start the year with too many things on my plate, so I basically ignored all the numerous things I put on my plate, and am picking them up one by one. Old me would be dying at how little I’ve achieved this month on paper, but new me can see movement which is my main goal for the year. I want to keep moving forward, even when progress is slow. I’ve tried for years to do everything at the same time- to set impossible goals and it hasn’t worked. I’m trying something different and there is movement and that’s what I’m focusing on.

 Where are you on your goals/resolutions?