2020 In Retrospect

For the past few years, I’ve always wanted to write an “End of the Year Review” but never ever got around to it because it’s either I do not get enough motivation to write or feel there’s nothing worthwhile to write about but this year I decided do it because I have learned that I will never get better if I do not start at all. 

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Let me digress a bit, I have a soft spot for writers and always wanted to be one and often have ideas on things to write on but never got the courage to put them down because writing like every creative endeavour requires practice and grit so I make up for it by reading a lot. So this is my attempt at breaking the barrier and hopefully keep the ball rolling. I have come to terms with the idea of making mistakes (because I always dreaded the idea of making mistakes) and keep learning, practicing, and writing till I become better at writing.

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Back to my year in review, Like most people, this year has to be one of the most unexpected years and the one year that defiled plans and strategies because of the dreadful Coronavirus. The same year Australia fire happened, the year that saw the death of people who shaked everyone and everywhere, the year of Black Lives Matter, the year of End SARS (in Nigeria), the year that kept taking and taking. The year that shook everyone with several other events I can't even mention but grateful we all are here despite everything.

At the beginning of the lockdown, I thought to myself “Things should get back to normal in at most 3 months” and never for once did it cross my mind that 9 months later we will still be dealing with this.

Looking back to the beginning of the year, I had just finished one of the most strenuous phases of my academics which required me to write 16 exams in 5 days, despite the fact that most of the semester was filled with physical labour, urgh,  but I am grateful that is now in the past. In January, I was looking forward to resuming for my final year of study because I am studying a course that requires 5 years of my life to get certified and was hoping that by December I will be done with my undergraduate studies and be getting ready for my service year. Unfortunately, Coronavirus started around the time we resumed and the school was forced to shut down and ever since then is yet to resume. So now my Class of 2020 is now Class of 2021, which is not even certain because we are looking at the second wave of lockdown combined with an ASUU vs FG battle (premium tears). So I am in a serious case of “OMO!!!!” and “On God!!!”. And that is that about my Academic life.

Now to other things, Out of school, I am a Creative Designer working at the intersection of Brand Design, Photography, and Technology. As a designer one of my goal for the year was to learn motion design which I got started with but didn’t move fast as much as I wanted due to factors I couldn’t control like my laptop not being able to operate the software needed and having to hop on a friends laptop when he’s not using it, which you know is not the best condition for learning but nevertheless kept learning as much as I could before finally getting a laptop that could handle what I needed towards the end of the year. On the design side, I kept learning and I’m quite happy with the progress I have made because I got to work on projects I wanted to, though I worked on fewer projects than the previous year but earned more (The plan is to work on fewer projects but earn more).

At the beginning of the year, the central theme for me was “EXPLORATION and GROWTH”. To explore as much as I could and keep growing.

These two words, EXPLORATION and GROWTH, guided most of my decisions.

On reading; Like the previous year, I intended to keep the 2 books a month approach, sadly I was able to read 10 books the whole year because I just couldn’t get in the right frame of mind to read and assimilate as much as I wanted due to everything happening in the world and around me. After I saw I couldn’t read as many books as I wanted, I stuck to reading more online articles, I did more daily reading on platforms such as seth.blog, jamesclear.com, medium, and a host of others. This approach helped me to consume meaningful content in chunks and ensured I'm not being pressured to finish a 300paged book and not retain any tangible lesson.

On self-care; In a world where it is very easy to lose oneself, It is very important to understand oneself, Over the course of the 12 months, I got to understand myself better and discovered new things about myself. In all this, I hope to do better and treat myself better because this year I almost became an ulcer patient because I developed a very bad eating routine (my dear friend, please eat well and regularly, E get why). The experience made me realize how important it is to develop a good habit for all areas of your life because success in all these areas is a result of your daily actions and activities. At a point, I discovered I was spending too much time on social media especially Twitter. In a day I was spending 10-12 hours on Twitter alone and had phone screentime of 16hrs. I noticed that my first instinct after waking up is to pick up my phone and open WhatsApp and Twitter simultaneously and before I know it, 2-3hours is gone and not get to do the things I needed to do in the morning. With the help of some lessons I learned in the book “ATOMIC HABIT by James Clear” I was able to cut down my screen time. I successfully reduced my Social Media time and spent more time reading helpful content and researching things of interest and value.

In all, I enjoyed meaningful conversations and moments with my friends because most of them didn’t go home before the lockdown, so we were stuck together, lol. I also got to share beautiful moments with my family. Grateful for the memories ❤️ and hope to share more with y'all.

In as much as it is important to reflect, we shouldn’t dwell too much on the past. The idea is to learn from your mistakes and successes so as to know what to keep doing, what to improve on, and what to stop doing.

What Next?

In this coming year, I look forward to eating better (very important, as I had to learn the hard way😩), read more, write more, earn more, develop and grow my skills, travel more, take more pictures, make random videos, shoot my shots, become more intentional, and overall develop habits that will improve my life generally. I also hope I can get to treat my friends and families to some treat and send them funds (refer me for design Jobs and projects so I can have funds to send 😎)

If you got to this point, Thank you for taking out time to read this, and feel free to drop a comment. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram to keep the conversation going.

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