WHAT'S NEXT?

Thinking can be a very poky process. You seem to have got it right then when you execute the idea, it turns pukey. Then you wonder what the problem really is. Many times, you find yourself in those situations where you really have to think hard. Then amid all the web of jinx, you find you have no idea at all of what you want to do. Your plans are in shambles and you have no financial clout to execute the irradiant thoughts you hand in your mind. When you get into such a situation, you become lackadaisical.

Sometimes life usually hits a dead end. There is no much progress you are making and the little that you think you had is nothing to be proud of. It’s situations like this that make you ask yourself candidly, ‘What am I in for?’ Well, there is so much that we want to achieve. You may be in a catch 22 situation like I am currently in. Nothing seems to be working out right.

There is usually one big problem that normally arises when one finds himself in tricky situations. For example, you are employed, you work because you are supposed to. Nothing is enviable there. It reaches that point where you become like a carousel. Doing things because you are programmed to do so. There is virtually nothing to motivate or take you to the next level. Progress seems impossible, and the mind is kind of lethargic. You want to make headwinds. The more you try, the less you feel like you will ever make it.

I finally sat for my exams. If I can remember the hours that I did put into study, the fact that the exam sidestepped me for once and the possibility of a masters (repeating), I feel obliged to write about it here. Yet I am short of the right words to drive the point home. As such, it does not hurt to digress. 

I also lost my phone after finishing my exams. I remember running like a mad person on the streets hoping that I will finally trace the person who stole; nothing much. A trace of the last place where I was online indicates it was next to the exam room. I wish I had an iPhone. It has one of a kind security that local cryptographers cannot crack. You lose it and you are sure it is never going to work again. The circumstances under which my phone got lost is an experience that has served to broaden my perspective about the Samsung phones that I have owned. Are they cursed, and they normally get lost in downtown Nairobi. Yet, I still love the brand when it comes to a mid-range phone. Probably, I will get another before the end of the year, but in the meantime, I shall remain phone-less to be able to remove myself from the world that I have to be in amid it being networked by mobile phones. I want to feel the pinch of not having a phone.

Back to exams, I cannot say I was fully prepared to do the exams. It was a fifty-fifty thingy (I loved the way a certain home-schooled nine year old used this word 'thingy' and also got hooked to it). You know you have the exams at hand, time has flown so fast that it has been difficult to put your act together, but still you sit for it. Perhaps I should have studied just a little bit longer and harder. Perhaps I should not have strained commingling between two jobs, and study. Perhaps I should have not been so much motivated by money. Perhaps! Perhaps! Perhaps! Perhaps! Perhaps!

When I look back, I tell myself, the situations you put yourself into were more than you could handle. They made you lose out. You lost weight, lost meaning of why you are working, lost friends, lost it in terms of happiness and now you have lost your phone. The most prized possession after the laptop that you own. It was a sign that you can work, make money and start buying new things.

I am officially back to job hunting. I read a very interesting article written by someone about graduates. It was a scathing attack that belittled education, a personal opine that illustrates the situation of a plebeian graduate. You graduate and enroll into the system of search for work. You spend years looking for work and when you find it, you spend the rest of the time being enslaved to the job, by the time you know it, you are in midlife crisis. You have a nagging wife, a family to take care of, a small car to fuel to show that you are somehow doing well, a loan the bank does not give you space when you are not servicing it because they will CRB list you and a tattered perspective about what you want to be other than reporting to an eight to five job, waiting for someone to determine your destiny at the expense of shaping it.

There is a certain colleague who loved phrases like ‘see you at the top’, ‘Flourish! Flourish! Flourish!’, ‘Blossom! Blossom! Blossom!’ and many others that when you meet him, you start uttering them even before he does. I asked one of the friends of my sister who works with the guy closely and she was unrelenting in her description of their professional status back at work so much so that they were not in talking terms. I was left flabbergasted for lack of a better word to use because the guy is really a celebrity back at the office where I used to work. He does not fear speaking out his mind and will encourage you with a bible verse here and there spoken in fluent Swahili.

It’s amazing that a prophet is never accepted in his hometown. That is why sometimes he finds it easy to preach for those far and wide because Kenyans love the gospel but not practicing it. They get motivated by his word and even give offertory when he is allowed to preach whenever he has pitched tent. A certain salesperson who saw him collect over ten thousand after payday of some civil servants narrated how he had wished he could be sliced a percentage of the offer but given that andu a nyumba is so magnetized to mullahs, he had to kula kwa macho.

On my part, I sometimes feel I lost it. I concentrated so much on looking for ways to pass an exam then forgot to focus on my job. Yet I really tried. I am not a multitasking kind of dude. Probably it has resulted in the situation I am currently in where I will have to be a freelancer just to be able to make some few peanuts and also look for ways of getting to the next phase of life. I want to finish my exams, then, if will result in a job in the investment industry, I will be glad, if I fail, then this writing has to go to another level.

While I am pondering on what next, I remember that I have this blog. My only source of solace when I think I have no one to out pour my tribulations. It has been real working with this blog. It has made me go through situations that are well worth writing about. It has taught me to remain strong even in the face of adversity. It has tremendously improved my writing skills. It has made me more of a daredevil and still a cower at the same time. It made me work as a salesperson. It made me visit corners that I would have naturally not gone to. It has gotten me abused for being a good Samaritan. To sum it up, it has been a heuristic platform.

Well, I am now looking for new opportunities. I have not been able to break even in the past few years. I would like to make a new start. I would love to be a free bugger from the jaws of penury. I am now adjusting back to normal life after perusal process.

When you have been preparing for an exam for a colossal amount of time of  the year, and the line manager you are working with only thinks of what the employer will think of you when you have taken some short study leave, you feel obliged to decide whether to go for it or not to. The best decision is that which you engage in and never regret about it


What is however quite a task is the fact that when you leave work, you must program your mind back to having long hours of idleness. You still wake up early as usual. The only presence they will never find is your normalcy in social media. Sharing those forwards, videos and nobody ever realizes that you are phone-less. You wake up instead of going to work, you head to a cyber cafe to finish some tasks online. They give you money. After that,you head to Uhuru Park, there you sit next to a a certain hobo who is reeking of stink with grime filled attire. It attracts flies, but you are looking for a short story. When you get tired, you go to your former office, where because you were in good books with the sentry, courtesy of giving him tips, he willingly allows you in.

In this transition period back to normal life, no serious job and having to find meaning in my objectives, there is only one thing that keeps hope alive. That stories to tell never end. the experiences in life keep on twitching and they provide a good learning ground. All in all, there are books to read to get a new twist and most of all, the desire to have a breakthrough when push comes to shove.

Hasta la vista baby.

[Picture Source: My own]