Year Four, In Review.

This is the fourth time I am writing my Year in Review on this blog.

And I am a very different person compared to the young woman who had just lived through a pretty harrowing global pandemic, was in her fifth year of medical school, and was learning how to trust herself (and the world) again.

Now, I am a little older. I am writing this in the middle of the week where I finish my National Youth Service Program. At the start of this year, I was coming out of 2024 in a state that I can only describe as emotionally and spiritually exhausted. My goal for 2025 was to not have a specific goal.

I just wanted to be.

Guess what? I did that.

I am that.

I got to exist as a human being. The big questions I would usually ask about the world seemed so needless to me for most of this year.

It got to a point - in July or so - that I was asking myself who I had become (ha-ha). Who is this person and what has she done with the real Busayo? This person who goes through life lowkey accepting whatever comes at her. That is not me.

And to be honest, I do not know what to do about this version of myself. If it is something I will shed off eventually, or if it is something that I will incorporate as I go on.

We will see.

For now, I want to bring you up to speed about where I am in this exact moment that you find me; in the last few weeks of December. The fireworks have started going off every night where I live, there is a concerning absence of harmattan, and all of it feels so uncanny. Deeply familiar, but like something crucial underneath changed while no one was looking.

MY LIFE OF ORDINARY DAYS

You know, I have come very far from the sixteen-year-old who had an identity crisis when she no longer had being “book smart” as most of her personality. Being the academic star. That took a lot of work to grow from. Years of it.

As I have come to learn, the problem isn’t so much defining yourself by success as it is about defining yourself by work.

A week or so ago, I saw a tweet floating by about how people who were called “bright/gifted/intelligent” in their childhood have a hard time adjusting to life in “the real world” where there are no grades, no academic markers to pin your self-esteem on anymore.

Or to measure your "progress in life".

It barely struck anything inside of me. In fact, I considered that take a bit boring. I know that there are quite a few people that think I should feel this way. That I should be anxious about whether or not I can translate my skills in academics/academia into the "real world" But I don’t care. I am not buying any of it. I am worth more than any success that I can ever have.

All of the piles of gold and accomplishments in the world? I am worth more than that.

This year really put that statement to the test.

Because I spent most of it having very few markers that I was actually doing something big, or impactful, or "smart".

I got the most banal, thankless job in the world working at a primary health center. It was so, so boring.

The 2023 version of me would vomit at the thought of not doing something that pushed me intellectually, but I am so grateful for the work I got to do, despite how it should make me feel.

I mean, let's be honest, I was deeply and terribly bored. I was using way less of my mental faculties than I was comfortable with on some days. But I still gave it my best. Because honestly, under-resourced patients deserve their doctors’ bests just as much as anyone else.

And I think working through that kind of boredom built a very specific kind of mental resilience that I am sure will help me later on.

That was the “real world”. I had no markers to point me that I was going in the right direction, that I was climbing uphill and not straying off the correct path.

I didn't even know if I was on a path or standing still on most days.

There was no blazing through any to-do lists. I just lived.

Lived.

I mean, that is such a revelation to me. That I can spend my life going through my days one after the other, not thinking poorly about their unimportance, and still be mostly happy.

Some days, I find myself whispering that these have been some of the happiest days of my adult life. The time I got to do nothing.

And it is absolutely blowing my mind.

THE LIFE INSIDE

Of course, leopards do not change their spots.

So, while I spent my days shuttling between boring weekly CDS meetings, diagnosing yet another child with boring old malaria (instead of something fun like pleural effusion secondary to tuberculosis), and making too many smoothies, there was an unrest.

There is a part of me that just kept saying: Busayo, this isn’t really you?

You are not some feather in the wind content to be blown about by every wind and fancy.

You like intellectual work. You like ambition. You love to-do lists. You enjoy being analytical.

But a deeper part of me just kept saying; yes, I do. But not right now.

There were two feelings warring inside of me that I wish I had more room to explore. I wish I were braver in asking myself how these feelings were in conversation with each other.

The part that wanted to take it easy because really, when next will I get the chance to do so?

And the part of me that wanted to continue with the track-record of excellence that I so carefully (and painfully) built over years.

That kind of dilemma requires a radical honesty that I am not sure I was prepared to have with myself. Because for me to know how to move forward; some things might have to give. I might become a lot more relaxed at life. I might decide that I want to go on a different path than the one I have been going on along for years.

I might decide that actually, I like where I am going, but I do not like the way I am doing it; my self-care practices need to be better, etc.

It could be any of these things. And every one of them is as scary as the other.

So, even in that quiet, that paradise of simple days, there was a cyclone rustling closer to shore. And when it was far away, it was safe enough for me to consider it as a pretty wind current that will blow away with time.

But here in December, I don’t think it is as far away as I used to think.

Remember when I asked that question; what is important? It was one of those rare occasions where the not-entirely-chill part of me had to be addressed fully. And I am glad I did it.

The relationship you have with yourself sets the tone for the ones you will have with other people. With the world.

If you cannot be fully honest in that relationship with yourself, have you not missed road?

WHERE LIFE MEETS US.

There is a story I read long ago. About a man who lived a pretty ascetic life. He met a woman who brought actual color to his world. But there was some issue or another about how it would look if they got together because of a social class divide (among other things).

But the man said to himself that if he missed out on that opportunity, he would be missing out on one of the rare occasions that life offers its hand out to us bearing a chance at happiness.

Do we take it? Or do we remain cowards?

That first Year In Review that I spoke about earlier, I read it again before writing this. And I was struck by that thing I said; that good years, and good things happen.

That we must be prepared for the good things that come our way as diligently as some of us choose to worry about the future.

I think this year offered me a rare chance at peace of mind. Something that I badly needed given the year I had before it. And you know what I did? I took that offering with both hands and ran with it.

But I don’t believe that is the only thing life offers to us, in fact, I want to work hard to challenge the notion that when life offers us a good thing in one hand, that it has a dagger hidden in the other hand ready to strike.

It is not easy to be not pessimistic while Nigerian – yet, I find us as people with some of the wildest amount of delusional belief in what is possible. To the point that we sometimes exist in clear, harmful fantasies about what the future holds.

I have always preferred to be called a realist. I lean more into optimism, I think. (ha-ha)

But I want to look at life as it presents itself, and as it can be molded based on the things that we can do.

Real. Not a fantasy. And not sadistic.

Real.

Real.

May we be more real.

One of the gifts this year gave me was the gift of crochet. I mean, I have made a lot of things that took a ridiculous amount of time. And some that took barely any.

Check them in the slide show if you feel inclined.

And, I got two stories published this year. Stories that I ADORE.

-          The Belly Of The Rock

-          Lungs

I am grateful to be alive. At the end of the day, I succeeded at my goal for the year.

I got to be.

I am being.

I am Busayo. I had an incredibly quiet year full of small moments and simple pleasures. And that took nothing away from the years where I stood at the mountaintop. Or when I was wondering how I ended up in a wilderness.

I hope you had a good year. And I hope you share whatever kind of year you had with me in the comments below.