Really, what?

In the first few days of January, I remember being home for Christmas and New Year’s in my mother’s house, brimming with enthusiasm spilled over from the eventfulness of the late part of last year. I was at an all-time high, and with that hope and starry eyes, on a sunny, quiet afternoon I sat at a table, pulled out my laptop, and laid out my roadmap for the year.

I made realistic goals. I made unrealistic ones. Some I knew there was a decent chance of achieving, and some were wishful thinking, but who knows? I went into detail, mapped out career goals, financial goals, personal goals and even side quests. I separated career goals and financial goals because, in this toxic industry that my seven-year-old self chose for me, money is not a twin but a friend who might not always move in tandem. It might even turn its back on you if it so wishes. Of all those goals, at the time of writing this in October, I’ve only succeeded at ticking off one.

The irony is that this was the first year at the beginning of which I ever made such a detailed roadmap. Usually the idea gods found me in the small moments, tossing in bed, sweeping, rinsing plates, or under the shower; they would drop a bright, urgent thought into my lap and I would spring after it, until the practical gods slowed down the momentum, making me, in fact, realize that I am not made of money. I would then settle for picking up a book and making a plan for how to execute it, the scrappy way. It could be a random Tuesday in a rainy July month, not during Harmattan in January, which is already laden and back-bent from the weight of carrying everyone else’s hopes for the year.

It’s October now. The sun today is especially scorching, but I’ve travelled back in time just a bit to grab the Tola from a rainy July in a year that’s not as maudlin as this one. She’s going to help me restart and plan for just one or two things, and we’re doing it on a random day in October. Together we’re a pair blaming the January me for placing such burdens on this year, even though I know I shouldn’t.

It’s not her fault that the plans kept falling through, that the country that was supposed to aid her kept putting blocks in her way. They told her to prepare to be the leaders of tomorrow, even though tomorrow is here already and the leaders of the past are still there. Do you think she liked having to pick up her phone and tell the people she’d loaded onto the train, to whom she had painted the grand plan of her next project, “Sorry, this train has been delayed, if you could just wait a bit”? She didn’t. But it happened anyway.

I can’t even bring myself to hold myself and use my words. So I use her; I’m holding her accountable. January Tola doesn’t like the way the year has gone. She would be… disappointed. It’s why I’m casting her aside, tearing her roadmap in half and writing just one thing on a sticky note. A new year doesn’t start and automatically draw a fresh slate, with old grudges and disappointments erased. It’s another day in a long continuation of days. I don’t think the year ends and I’ve automatically failed at something. There’s still a next day, even if it’s the first of something.

I don’t have any answers. I don’t have any grand roadmap or plans for the coming new year. I don’t have any solutions for you from this. I genuinely do not know what to do about this year that hasn’t gone to plan. If you do, let me know.