2023 came with a lot of personal growth for me. To be more specific, I added over 20kg in the past 12 months. While this would not please my gym instructor, it does give me a valuable perspective on how much has changed since the year started. I would be a fool to believe that I could properly capture this year using a few words, but I would be a coward not to try. I am a brave fool.
In every sense of the word, 2023 was intense. Under normal circumstances, I would boldly declare it the most intense year of my life so far, but 2022 had too many dramatic twists and turns to be disrespected like that, so I'd call it a tie. 2023 was tough, this time unarguably. I crown it the toughest year of my life so far. Very ironic, because from the outside, this was also the year of so many visible victories.
I feel like my life has several, flexible partitions, frequently intersecting with one another, but for this piece I'd like to look at them within their own individual spectrums.
Competitive debating has been a very important part of my life for the best part of the last decade, and this year was no different. In January, alongside some friends, I convened the very first edition of the All Nigerian Youth Debate Championships, and it was a resounding success. In a tournament with several highs, I especially loved getting to meet fresh faces within the Nigerian debate circuit. I look forward to convening the next edition next year in Awka, and hopefully advancing more quality discourse amongst our young people.
In other news, in my last competitive outing as president of the UNN debate club, our teams emerged national champions in both the novice and open categories, where I also picked up the 3rd best debater medal. Super grateful to have led such amazing people, and I can't wait to cheer them on as they go for the double next year.
I love high adrenaline situations, and as a result, my default approach to work is to seek ventures that lead to the most exhilarating outcomes. If you were to judge my work life by that metric, then this was a great year. I had the privilege of working on several exciting projects, and delivering very impressive returns. Of course, this helped me grow, financially, professionally, and otherwise.
At the same time, the thrill brought with it a fair share of chaos.
One of the most chaotic experiences this year was watching the 14-person team I led at work progressively drop down to 8 persons, and then to just one person - me. This was a very testing phase for me, as a leader who had a responsibility to support and protect his teammates. It felt like I had let my people down; people who trusted me, and committed to their work with the utmost dedication. I understood the implications of any kind of layoff, and while I knew the incredible talents within this team, I was still heartbroken by the struggles that lay ahead for them in the job market.
I have learnt a lot from this experience, especially that the feeling of indispensability that comes from doing good work is only just that - a feeling. As professionals, we must understand the inevitability of sharp changes in the workplace and be ready for them - build savings, invest, upskill, grow your network, to mention but a few.
Next year, I'm hoping to do more boring, but valuable work, especially at iorad, an organization that has shown immense faith in my abilities over the last few years.
In 2021, myself and a few friends decided to build a full stack growth agency, leveraging on our respective skills to support organizations through the entire life cycle of their growth - Branding, GTM, product development, marketing, etc. We called this agency Scala, because we considered ourselves catalysts for scale, to help businesses scale and reach their potential.
A concatenation of factors meant that we were not able to launch Scala until this year, and despite our heavily packed schedules, we decided to begin this venture, on the smallest scale possible. The scale at which we've grown has been nuts.
For context, in April, we were approaching startups and offering free work for visibility, and by September we were working with a State Government on an investment portal, and we're nearing another agreement with another State Government on a growth project. It's even crazier when you consider the fact that we have no website, or a presence on social media.
This journey has further convinced me of all the amazing things that can be achieved by simply just starting, and I can't wait to show the world more of us in the coming year.
The reason I respect hate so much is because of the amazing things it can make you do. Myself and a few friends, who all had thriving remote careers, had an issue - doing our jobs was excruciating. There was always something to worry about - today it's the terrible internet reception, and tomorrow it is a city wide blackout. We hated this situation so much, and so we decided to build a solution to this problem, not just for ourselves, but for thousands of other young persons across the country.
Our plan was simple - build smart facilities with 24/7 access to power supply and high speed internet, build a community that supports remote workers with education, mentorship and opportunities, enabling them to thrive in their respective careers.
Just over a month ago, we introduced the world to our first ever co-working facility, and the support has been massive. Since then, we have facilitated over 5,000 hours of productive work, and our work has been recognized by several reputable entities, including The Anambra State Government and TechNext.
Next year is for consolidation, and I look forward to building on all of this momentum, spreading our impact to more young people across the country.
Last year, I seriously considered accepting an offer to begin another undergraduate degree abroad, abandoning the 4 years spent pursuing a degree in Materials Engineering from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. I was frustrated and burnt out. My program was crawling and it didn't feel like I was getting value for my time.
One year and three semesters later, I feel a lot better. I have just one more semester to go, and I've been working on my final year research, on a topic I am quite passionate about. I've found that I enjoy research a lot more than other academic activities. Who knows? There might be a future for me in Materials Engineering afterall.
This year came with an incredible amount of pressure, and it made my life a lot worse. Growing up as a special child, there's an incredible amount of pressure to maintain excellent grades, and to be the best amongst your peers. Having the financial and professional breakthroughs I had in 2022, this year challenged me to match, and even better those heights.
And it is possible that all of this pressure was self-inflicted, but it pushed me to stretch myself to insane limits in school and at work, in order to meet the expectations of myself in my head, and all of this usually left me frustrated, burnt out and hating myself.
But in all of this, I also became more and more ignorant of my privilege. I began to believe my own hype - that I was the most talented, hardest working chap around. I began to expect success in all of my endeavors, ignoring the heavy role that luck and human connections had played in my journey.
The last few weeks have given me some more perspective - there is nothing about my life so far that makes me deserving of all the good things in my life. Not my background, nor my person, nor my hard work. If anything, there are countless incredibly talented people who are equally, or even more deserving of everything that I have. I have just been luckier, and that makes me feel… ordinary.
From now on, I want to approach life with a heavy consciousness of my ordinariness, humbly acknowledging my blessings and privileges.
I want to show more gratitude for everything that I am, - for the good days and bad, for the people and love that I get to enjoy. And when I can, I want to show as much love as I can to everyone around me, because in that way, I could become a catalyst for someone else's luck. Bring on 2024.