Long Time

#ItsBeenFiveYears!

The days now are so rainy.

The sun blends so well behind the clouds sometimes, that it is so hard to see her. To be sure that ever-present orb of yellow is still there. That we haven’t been left to the devices of whatever being turns the taps on in the sky, and keeps watching the water flow. On, and on.

(Of course, Lagos is flooding.)

I used to love the rain a lot more as a child, the way it can come out of nowhere and shift a bright afternoon with dark-blue clouds. Turn three pm into six-thirty pm in minutes. Turn the stillness of a hot day into wind and wet and a breeze that can lift everything.

And thunder. Gosh. That sound of the rain clearing its throat in the sky. The flashes of lighting that illuminate an otherwise darkening day.

Then, all of the wonderful things that come with the rainy season - one of them, I remember clearly is corn. Eaten straight off the cob, the sugary-salt water it was cooked in still clinging to your hands when the kernels are gone. Another is mangoes (I think, climate change might have done a number on this). Plantains. The new green added to a dying tree.

Of course, we cannot forget, that the rainy season is a bridge into the dry season. Then harmattan.

Then Christmas.

And a curtain falls on the year.

We’re not there yet - the end of the year. Still mostly in the middle of it. August might even be nice and give us gentler rains, maybe an entire “August pause” like last year -when the weather was so perfect. The right temperature, the right amount of breeze. The right amount of sun in the sky.

Whatever happens, seasons always change. Even how they change, changes.

(Because who knows if Lagos will still be flooded by next week - right there in August)

About two months ago (when I should have written, I’m sorry. I’m sorry), my blog had its fifth year anniversary.

Five years.

There is something spectacular about doing something for five years. Not just the consistency, but just the amount of time that has passed.

How things have changed, how the way things change has changed.

And really, how so much is the same.

I am still here, mostly thinking out loud, examining the quieter moments of my life. Examining what it means to strive to create a life that can hold art inside of it.

You know, about that, if there is one gift this blog has given me, it is that it has kept my head above water. It has allowed me to escape from whatever is going on in my life (both the good and the bad) and just be still.

It is not easy, to deal with the changes that adulthood forces on you (wake up, you need to make money!), and still come here to sit down and work.

Or, not work, because this doesn’t feel like work.

It feels a lot easier, and less pressurized than work.

This blog is one of the things that I have chosen to not monetize. To not push too hard for it to have REACH. Maybe one day, I might. Maybe one day this blog will exist in a much more curated form - many of the posts I made from my room in Uni archived, kept as momentoes for only my eyes.

That might change, but for now, it feels important that I have somewhere to just sit down and write my thoughts. Where I am not stressing out about capitalism pro max and all of the things it demands from me.

It feels like resistance, having this not change. Having this still be generally a quiet place where I can just think. Just share what I have enjoyed. Just be.

Really, it is so important, doing that.

Well, not doing. Being.

Being human, being here, being true despite it all.

I know this is a quieter piece, but tt really is this year's anniversary blog post; embracing all of the things that have changed, and all of the things that have stayed the same.

The thoughts I have grown from, the thoughts I have grown with. The joys, the worries, the moments I was forced to learn and relearn. And getting to do something like that, for five years, what a gift.

What a joy to behold, bittersweet as it is. That time has passed, and we cannot get it back. But then, well, we still have all this time yet, let me enjoy it.

Let us enjoy it.

Usually, in this part of the blog, I write about the things I have been reading so far. But, I think, I should share four of the blog posts that I have deeply loved, or have found to be defining.

Share them, and tell you why exactly.

1. What the trees said, to me.

   This was the very first blog post I published. And, it is a behind the scenes look at one of the first stories I ever published back in 2019. The beginning of my publishing career that has grown from those humble beginnings that I look back on with such fondness.

   Because of that, it is special - it carries a lot of firsts. Yet, even more than that, it was the beginning of me being brave enough to share my intellectual pursuits, and musings with the world. It really set the tone for how this blog turned out - a place to archive my thoughts (sometimes, even my thoughts about my thoughts ha-ha)

   
   

2. The Place of Poetry

   Another special one.

   This piece, upon re-reading it now, reminds me that I have not strayed too far from the creative and intellectual roots that I base my work on. I have never been shy about how art is one of the tools that I use to stir up hope, that I use to hold onto hope. It has been wonderful, considering the poetry in art, not as a rhyming sequence of words, but as the heart of art. The thing that gives it gravitas, that at the same time invites us to be elevated beyond our ordinary lives. Beyond our ordinary, common beliefs.

   
   

3. RECOVERY, a year in review

   This was written in December of 2021, right before the first Christmas after the pandemic was mostly over. I still remember where I wrote it; in a hostel in Akure where I got to be alone with my thoughts - in a good way, I must add!

   I felt as though the year had been a gift to me; I got to recover from the angst of the lockdowns, I was back in school and felt like I was moving forward. I had started the blog post I daydreamed about for years. I had even published a very sharp-witted essay in The Republic. Things were good. And wonder of wonders, in 2022, they got better.

   I still remember that I wrote in that blog post that I wanted to challenge myself to be even braver in the coming New Year. And I did that.

   (And, still write year-in-review blog posts)

   
   

4. TRAVEL, a trip to Idanre Hills

   I still remember this trip fondly.

   It was not my first time going to Idanre, or really, climbing the hills. But I remember going there in 2019 after some important medical school exam, and feeling so burnout from the stress of it.

   Getting to travel, to open my mind to the fact that there are more things in heaven and earth than some test score, did me a lot of good. It really, really did.

   When I think about that trip, at how simple it was but how it echoes through time still for me (the background image of this website is a picture I took of the trees up on those hills), I am astounded at how much life unravels in ways we do not expect. And, how it does so sometimes, in ways that are better than what we could have planned for ourselves.

   That trip felt like a homegoing (as Idanre tends to feel), but even more, it has made me have deeper conversations, deeper questions about what home means - and that is irreplaceable.

   Inestimable.

   

   Also, look at these pretty flowers from up above! Photo Credit: Rafiat Lamidi

   
   
   
   
   
   

5. A Celebration

   I will always remember writing this blog post, as a culmination of years, and years of hard work. Of showing up. Of fighting and losing, and fighting again.

   And then victory - how strange it feels when you finally taste it. When you realize that after all, you too will drink from this cup of the vindicated.

   This was the blog post where I announced that I was now Dr. Busayo Akinmoju!

   It felt so good. It was in June, my birth month, and also around the time when I published my first blog post.

   I don't know how to describe it but despite all of the things that I have gone through since then, I am so happy that I got to experience that moment when I saw my dreams realized; becoming a doctor, and doing it while being a writer.

   And three years later, doing it still.

   Many things have changed, many waters have passed under several bridges, but that is one thing I am still proud of being able to do.

Speaking of change, how do I feel about the rain now? Especially as I am much older, and can now see all of the things it means; a key part of agriculture, a nuisance when you have a meeting in the morning, the best sound to sleep to at night, a mouth that can swallow a whole child when it floods a street.

That is the thing, I don’t feel one way about it. I am an adult, and I think adulthood allows us to hold a position just as complicated as the position we find ourselves in.

What do I mean?

I mean that I love the rain still, and I still can ignore it when I am indoors. And I hate it when I have laundry to do (because who doesn’t love the smell of sunlight on their clothes?). And it makes me wistful sometimes, I have written poems about it. I have sent banal texts to people at work that it would make me late to work.

I have lived with it, and all of the things that it means, and I am allowed to let it mean more than one thing.

So, are the years of my life.

The years I have spent writing on this blog.

Some days, I come to it excited, some days I drag myself here. Some days I have approached it like it were a crucial part of my life’s work - publishing multiple blog posts a month. Some months, I have gone radio silent.

But I am still here. Like the rain. Even when I am gone, even when I have made you feel multiple things, I will still be back. You haven’t seen all of me just yet.

All of the things that come with being alive are so precious, and I hope you remember that, even when it is difficult. Even when it is really nice. Even if the past five years have been a mixed bag of emotions -things have changed and things have not changed.

It has been a long time, and it has all happened in the blink of an eye.

Just show up, even when no one expects you to (including yourself), like that random drizzle of rain in the afternoon, that comes down so light it is almost not there, but is still so present you feel it on your skin even before you see it.

Take care.