My 2016: Ife

​It is once again the first day of the last month of the year. Funny, it feels like it was only a month ago when I did the My 2015 series, this year really did go by pretty quickly.

Anyway, with another December comes another series and I have 31 awesome people lined up, to share with you what their year was like. This year, I figured we’d jump on the #HowWeMet trend and let you in on how I met all my wonderful contributors. So get comfortable and follow us into the new year. First up is yours truly!

My 2016

Like a lot of people, I started this year on a high. I was excited, happy and hopeful but unlike most years, I had a strong sense of certainty as to what I truly wanted out of the year. I set goals, made no resolutions and went full swing into making 2016 my most productive year yet.

The first quarter of the year was very rewarding, two of my closest friends decided to get married and I was asked to be the maid of honor, then I worked with one of the most talented people I know, to bring to life an outdoor circus show, which was a hit and a major learning experience.

I was reminded of just how much one’s mentality could  affect their ability to get things done and the quality of what they can produce.

The project also proved to me, just how much goodwill I had gathered over the years and put my resourcefulness to the test.

But the first quarter wasn’t all rosy trust me. One of the acts I had been managing became an emotional burden and I spent every meeting fighting to suppress my frustration, anger and annoyance. Thankfully, that chapter came to a close before I completely broke down.

By may, I was exhausted, broke and completely drained. All I wanted was a break and I took it for as long as I  could. The upside to the break was, I was at peace. The downside was, I started putting on the pounds.

Fast forward to June, I jumped into another project called the African Hair Summit, which took about another two months of my life and opened a natural hair salon with my friend at the same time.

Now that I think about it(or in this case, write about it) I’ve gotten a lot more done than I’ve given myself credit for. Anyway, back to the gist.

After the summit, came the opening of the salon and another well needed break but even that was short lived because it was time to start my maid of honor duties and begin the wedding planning.

The major downs of my year were general things like the recession, which hit me very hard. It was unexpected and stumped out a lot of things I had hoped to get done this year. It also made me more aware of the stability I lack in my life. Another down was facing family drama, i will spare you all the details of that little episode. Also, I watched a friend bury his mother and it broke my heart. I have dealt with the same kind of loss and I couldn’t handle seeing someone else go through it but life is what it is, you take what you get and work with it, however best you can. My health also took a major nose dive but God got me through it and my friends stood by me the whole time.

I will say that the biggest lesson I learnt this year was to not share my ideas with people, unless there is a written agreement. Sadly, my family friend turned out to be the reason for this resolve, I guess you can’t really trust people. I also realised that you can never assume what your place is when working or dealing with friends, you have to define your boundaries and the terms of engagement.

I eventually became a bit of a hermit and by the last quarter of the year, I just got downright lazy. My creative juices had gone on leave and I developed a major interest in Bollywood (not Zee World oh) as an industry, to fill up the void. Needless to say, I kept packing on the pounds but for once I’m not depressed about it, just working to shed as much of it as possible. If anything has suffered majorly this year, it would be my social life and my blog but I intend to work on resuscitating both.

Right now I’m in the middle of planning a wedding and the dopest bridal shower ever, putting this series together for you guys, setting goals for the new year and rewatching episodes of Bleach.

Hopefully, 2017 will be the year of birth… No, I don’t mean babies in that sense but projects of my own that will live on. I feel it’s time for me to bring to life a lot of the ideas I have been toying with for the past few years and I really hope I can do that next year. I also hope that 2017 is the year of ‘seizing the bae’ too.

How I met me…

No I’m kidding, I’ve known me all my life. I will tell you how I met the first guest writer in the next post though, Happy holidays everyone!

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