I'm Back!

#FirstPostOfTheYear #WhereIveBeen #NewYear

I know.

I know.

It is more than two months into 2024, and this is the very first blog post.

This is very, very unusual for me. I should at least have sent in a Happy New Year post.

Or at least checked in with you here. Let you know I was fine. Let you know I was doing okay, where my head was at, etc.

I didn’t do any of that.

And, I wish I had a more profound excuse than my laptop was just not working properly. It was really, really slow. And working with it to make blog posts was really, really frustrating.

I mean, I would come home, tired from a long day at work (or even a short day at work really), and the energy to write a meaningful blog post on a super slow computer just wasn’t there.

So, I kept deferring it. But we are back now, I promise you that.

The very first thing I am doing with my laptop is getting back on track, writing a blog post. And this is it, this is the blog post.

I’ve really quite missed it here. I’ve missed blogging about my latest interest. I have missed writing about the thing that caught my interest in the last week or so.

More than anything, I have missed hearing from you. The wonderful people that have been here reading my blog posts (and possibly waiting for a new one for so long?)

SO

Let’s get back to business shall we?

Let’s talk about all of the things that I have been doing, been interested in. And then in the comment section we can catch up?

Deal?

WORK, WORK, WORK.

Not to make it seem like I have been spending all of my time away working, but I absolutely have spent a significant time away working.

I think I am really starting to get into the swing of working with patients, and other people in the profession. Slowly, hesitantly … one might border on calling me a people person.

Okay. Maybe that is too soon.

But I have started to realize that there is something thrilling about working with people who come in really bad, and then you give them the care they need, a month later they are in the clinic for follow-up looking bright and better. It is quite rewarding. Since I am at that point in my career where I am trying to decide where exactly I would like to specialize, clinical medicine is starting to look like an okay option.

I mean, I enjoy working with the more practical aspects of my knowledge base, but I really just miss that regular, tasking, intellectually-stimulating learning that I got to do as a student.

And that I got to do as a writer.

Yes, I am saying it. I really, really miss having enough energy and interest to balance these two acts in my life. It is something that has always given so much colour to my life. I feel very lucky that I have more than one part to myself.

As a student, when the student-thing was getting a bit frustrating I would be like… well, at least I have poetry. I can write a great story about this experience.

Or, if the writing was getting too tough, I would have that really significant joy of going about my life, about the world with the knowledge that I was learning and working towards a career I really wanted.

The various pressures of adulthood have blurred these lines for me, I think. Or have completely obstructed my view of these really great gifts that I have.

There is so much to enjoy when you love the work that you do.

ART?

In the past two months, I have written one story (or, completed one story), and written (an unedited) poem that I like.

Still working on some others.

It has been a bit quiet.

But I don’t think I am too worried about these periods in my life when I am not writing so much. Because it usually means I am thinking. Very often, I look back at these periods and realize a very important shift in my creativity happened here. These quiet stretches of time are important.

I am working also, in a sense.

And, in all of my thinking, I don’t think I have come up with a lot of profound conclusions, or even simple and easy ones.

I have just realized that there is a lot that I know about the world now, and a lot that I still do not know about it.

As though, if life were a jigsaw puzzle of some kind, I suddenly have more of the pieces of that puzzle, and a vague memory – almost dream like of the picture the puzzle spells out. But I have forgotten what order the puzzle is solved in.

Or, if I am being honest, I have forgotten the reason we even bother with puzzles in the first place. Why try to fix it all up? We can just leave those pieces scattered about.

The Nigerian in me would say: after all, no be me scatter the puzzle sef.

Yes.

But today, I realized there is a certain self-absorption with that conclusion. Everything isn’t about me, or about how I feel. What if that puzzle is something someone else needs? What if that puzzle is the precise work the Creator would have me do?

What if it really matters if that puzzle is solved or not.

I think that one of the biggest gifts of art is that it challenges us to rethink our conclusions. And to dare to hope that what we do, and that our very existence matters in some way.

Sometimes, in the hum-drum of life, that tiresome, repetitive din where it feels you are only surviving on very small joys, I forget.

I forget that we matter.

I hope that now that I am back, this blog reminds me of all of it. Again.

GRADUATING

I know some people would be confused about this.

I mean… didn’t I write a whole blog post about being Inducted into the medical profession?

I did.

I absolutely did.

But being inducted into the profession is very different from being a graduate. Very weirdly.

I only graduated officially from school last month.

And it was a really big triumph for me because I got quite a few prizes.

I mean. I was the best graduating student.

I keep telling people where I work now that it was not something that I was planning from the very beginning.

It was only in my final year or so that I realized I even had a proper shot at such a victory. So, aren’t I lucky?

It is also even more meaningful that I got to do this, while also being the best graduating student in my secondary school.

Look at this photo!

I literally dreamed that this photo would exist some time in 2022, and it came to pass.

Wow. I guess dreams really do come true.

Here's photos of me with my awards.

If anyone wants to help me frame these, send an email, or a message via this blog.

OTHER NEWS!

I might not have been writing, but I have had some work out recently.

-        This piece, In Two Fingers, written from the perspective of a girl who has to leave home (and her mother very importantly), for the first time. It is full of a sense of longing, and belonging, and love that I did not think would translate so well on a page. But people responded really well to this piece. They found it touching. And the totally accidental formatting in the mobile version of the page this work appears in makes it read like a poem. What is better than that?

-        The above named piece (ha-ha) appeared in a monthly round-up of some pretty incredible works of flash fiction. It is on Matt Kendrick’s substack, it’s titled Mondettes and all the works on that list are incredible. I had a great time reading them, and I think you will too.

Here’s what the author of the list, Melissa Llanes Brownlee had to say about the piece!

Such Kind words!

-        I am working with A Coup of Owls again! This is super exciting (as it always is), I have a work of eerie speculative fiction forthcoming in the (Western hemisphere) summer. Here’s the line up of artists below.

Authors For the Other Worlds Anthology 2024

The authors of the Anthology - Other Worlds 2024!

My work is titled The Shifters of The Hills. I might write a behind the scenes of the story, as I have done for all of my A Coup of Owls stories, but I did a Q & A with the magazine for their blog. It comes out next month so I think it should suffice till I can write a behind-the scenes post.

Wow.

Like I said, I have really missed being here.

Happy New Year (it is never too late to say that ha-ha)

Happy New Month.

Happy New Blog Post!

I hope you have been enjoying yourself. And I hope you have been taking care of yourself.

Thinking about the joys and meanings of life both big and small.

Let me know what has been on your mind in the comment section. It’s your turn. How have the last two months been?

(You will be hearing soon from me)