Touch Down

Hey! Been weeks right? Yeah, maybe months. I honestly wish it didn’t take so long to touch down and get this here. Anyways, it’s feels good to be back again. Don’t worry; I’m not going to bore you with the stories for my seeming ‘silence’ which, in my opinion is obsolete by now. However, it perhaps is worth it to mention that the silence was both a pain and a blessing in disguise; a nagging pain because though I was extremely busy, my heart was here.

Many times I woke up determined to update; and actually started to write something but you know how it is in cosmopolitan Lagos; work can be terrifically frenzied as it can be incredibly gratifying. The pressure to meet or overshoot targets alone is enough to keep one’s eyes up for like forever, without the slightest look upwards. You indeed earn that wowing salary but certainly miss out on getting a real life, and they tell you the price is right! Fair enough aiignt it? Just that before you know it, life practically passes away under your nose and you do not smell it; the loved ones we do not have enough time for today get used to our ‘style’ and move on with their lives and we look for them the next day, and they’re not there anymore.

I remember seeing this sticker behind an old Volkswagen Passat on my way to work one early morning. It read “I had a life but my Job ate it”. Hilarious maybe, but it’s a sad reminder of the kind of life majority endure in Lagos. We really need to be careful how we take the little but important things of life for granted and how we bury our necks deep into something and forget to live life, or else, as a friend would say of her banker sister in humour “one day you guys would just wake up and discover that you’ve actually forgotten yourselves in the office!”

Have you forgotten the real you inside your hole? Salvation is still free. And who knows, if you hurry, you may still have your cake like I do, months after munching it. Oops?

Well, it all depends on how much importance you place on that cake. Life can be as crazy as hell i know but it isn’t always as difficult as we often paint it to be. It hadn’t seemed like that white space was ever going to come for me but guess what, I moved with my cheese! You can find your way through that maze by reorganizing yourself and resetting your priorities. And hey, finding new cheese may not so much be your key, all you perhaps need to do is to change the way you spend your time or do your job.

If you can’t get to the party, how about moving the ‘party’ to your hole?

There is never going to be twenty-five hours in anybody’s day and lamenting about the lack of time isn’t going to change it, if anything, it just drives you crazier. Perhaps that’s why many act insane in Lagos (you may not understand until you hit the road here. And um, try Monday mornings).

Really, there was no forgetting SasyRebecca; not when for like three times every other week, I’d get this prim pat on my back with a consistent and enthusiastic “remain sassy” from my new colleague at work. I’m not sure she realized how much pressure I was in at the time, or how much good she was contributing towards my touching down here again, but in any case, it has paid off. The blessing? I found a friend, and here’s a toast to her. Thanks dearie.

Moving forward, plenty has happened since the last time I logged in; I sincerely hope I can recollect all of them, especially in the order they did.

Going by the months, June and July weren’t nice to me this year; ah not at all – the torrential rains and eventual flooding of the road to my house, thanks to LCC and Hi-Tech and their conspiracy along Lekki-Epe Express way. Not only had they removed the signage at our junction – so you didn’t know when you approached it and drove past, and have to endure driving up nearly one kilometer to make a U-turn and then now drive slowly like you’re lost or something – they had also blocked the canal! Temporarily yes but really bad enough for water to cover up to the bonnet of a land cruiser! It was not funny – you either moved out or braved it with your four by four and the ‘luxury’ of sending a cheque to the dealership every other week to get your auto back in shape (never mind how I coped). When a neighbour first took his less-than-three-months old car in for repairs at the dealership, he was reminded that he had bought a car, and not a boat. “Unless you live inside the ocean, you car cannot have sucked in the amount of water we see in it”. It was that horrible and embarrassing.

And then, just when it felt like the blue days were over, news of Michael Jackson’s death sauntered in. I still have vivid recollections of where I was when he died, like I have of when the world trade centre came tumbling down. How about you? I guess many people won’t forget July in a hurry.

Actually, I think I’m beginning to really dislike July because of the too many awful memories it holds; the untimely death of a lil cousin, my experience with type-something-typhoid, the unbearable trials of a crashed phone, the mysterious and havoc-wrecking email from an obvious enemy, my baptism of fire at the office, and subsequently, the shock of witnessing retributive justice on supposedly big giants of the banking industry, in the wackiest twist of faith ever (Lagos na wa!).

Honestly, so far no remarkable event in my life dates July. Howbeit I know a couple of persons whose birthdays are in July but they never want to celebrate it, so there’s never item seven anywhere! Unlike in August.

August has always been a fabulous month; there’s the wedding anniversary of my Adam and Eve; the birthdays of a daddy, three aunties and one uncle who never disappoints; the anniversary of my first paid job; the onset of summer, and of course, the respite from the rains!

Thankfully.