Week 27: Two weeks in one. Literally.

Regular programming. 

Sunday, June 22. 

Hi! I'm so happy to be on your screen again. Actually, I didn't know how else to start the newsletter, so I had to start with that. 

I'm happy, yes, but I'm really tired right now. I want to sleep, but I can't stop thinking about the things I have to do that I haven't done yet. Don't procrastinate, you guys. If you need to do something, schedule it or just do it immediately; don't procrastinate. 

The faculty week officially started today. There was a thanksgiving service, which I didn't attend. The movie night was also today. I attended, but I didn't stay till the end. The opening ceremony is on Tuesday. I will be launching the magazine then, I'm so nervous. 

I'm shy, I keep thinking about what I'm going to say in front of everybody. I haven't made the slides yet—this is what I procrastinated, but no matter what happens, things have to be done and keep moving. 

There's also the writing fellowship, it hasn't been entirely perfect, but it has been good. I'm learning to write more often and accept feedback. 

Whenever I write something and I'm expecting feedback, whether it's at work or at the writing fellowship, it always feels like I want to die. It's like I'm stripping myself naked so people can judge me. It's so interesting, but I'm learning to take feedback and criticism now. 

Last week (or was it for the week before that?), I wrote a poem, it was my first time writing a serious poem. When I say serious, I mean writing one intentionally. I didn't know what I wanted to write a poem about, but ideas started coming to me and I just decided to do something. 

Last week, we had to write flash fiction. Again, it scared me because “I don't write fiction or poems”, but I started getting ideas and I decided to just do something. That's the point of a writing fellowship after all—to write. 

I won an entry into a content writing class. Funny enough, I was just scrolling on X by 4am or so, when I saw the tweet and decided to go for it. I was even more excited because that was a class which if I had the money, I would have definitely paid for. 

I've never signed up for a content writing or marketing class. Everything I know about writing and marketing has been self taught up till this time, so I'm excited to see how this goes. Especially as I get to build my portfolio.

The crazy thing is, being a part of a writing class was part of my H2 goals, I literally just wrote it down and said it was going to happen, but maybe not anytime soon because I didn't have any money to put towards it now, but then this happened. Life is so interesting. 

I'm also working on a certification that's very important to me, not for any reason in particular, it has just been something I've always wanted. Well, I haven't started working on the certification yet, just a preliminary phase of it. When I'm done with the preliminary phase, I will share it here. 

How are you doing though? I hope you're good and you're taking care of yourself. Do write to me when you can. I was really happy to see the replies I got from the last newsletter, it warmed my heart.

 Thursday, June 26.

Today's crash out is one for the history books, I will never forget it or the people involved. At some point, I had to pause my crying and go “oh, Grace, you were such a fool”, I know we all love ourselves and all, but that's exactly what I was at that point (and that will be the last time). 

It was during the entire thing that I realised that I was actually so tired and at this point, I should just give up. I have this theory that if something is going in a direction you're not comfortable with, you should always speak up and talk about it, instead of keeping it to yourself. 

I wanted to follow this theory and talk about it, you know, why should I suffer when I can just talk about it? Anyways, I realised that if I did talk about it, it wouldn't be the first time, it also wouldn't be the fifth time. I've been talking about it and somehow I'm still here. Debating if I should talk about it for the 100th time. 

I cried myself to sleep and I woke up because my father called me. It was when I woke up that I remembered that I was supposed to have a meeting by 12pm, but it didn't happen. You see, I was having a full mental breakdown and I still remembered the meeting and showed up for it even though the last thing I went to talk about was Content marketing strategy for XYZ brand. 

I'm having a headache. I feel really hurt and I think I'm going to cry, but I'm just going to let myself feel all my feelings and hope that I feel better tomorrow. 

One of the reasons I hate this kind of thing is how unstable it makes your life feel—you can't concentrate, you can't do anything, and what even sucks the most is that this other person might be out there living their best life and I'm here. I hate it. 

It seems I'm still crashing out. The headache seems to be getting worse. It's raining now and I'm the only one at home, I have to focus. I have work to focus on. I have to read. I have my final year project. I have to write. I have to prepare for the class on Saturday. I won't let this fuck me up. I have to focus. Focus. Focus. I have to be happy, I can't let this happen again. 

Thursday, June 26, 4:25PM. 

I started crying again while I was typing and I went to sleep, I cried two more times after that and just kept drifting in and out of sleep. 

I also decided to check my period app. I started suspecting that this might actually not be me, I'm actually a cool girl on a normal day. Turns out, it's my ovulation day. Yay! 

I was going to say that other people feel really sexy and just want to have sex while they're ovulating, but all I get is tears, but then I remembered a TikTok that I watched sometime where someone talked about how these feelings are usually just triggered by things that have been lingering. 

So when your hormones and everything are acting up during certain phases, everything just comes to the surface and becomes worse. 

There were times I would crash out really badly during my luteal phase, looking back now, it was mostly because of the relationships (both platonic and romantic) I had then. Something was always going on and during my ovulation phase, I would crash out and just cry and keep crying—minus the times I cried outside of that period. 

When the relationships ended (or I just found myself getting over them), I didn't get those symptoms at all during those times. Of course, there were times where I was sad and all, but it wasn't as bad as those times. 

Now I guess there were just some things I was really angry about and kept ignoring, and it just came rushing in full force today. I'm actually not a crazy person. 

One of my biggest indicators that something is going wrong with my relationship with people is when I start asking myself if I'm going crazy. The logic is, everything should be clear as day, so I don't find myself going over and over things and starting to wonder if I'm the one who is overthinking anything. 

I guess writing this now, I've solved my own problem. I did rid myself of the other one earlier. It's quite sad, but it had to be done. I just couldn't let myself suffer like that again. I also deleted my social media apps because I couldn't stop opening them even though I didn't want to. 

Friday, July 4. 

The time is 5:40AM, I woke up like 30 minutes ago, I've been feeling disoriented a bit. I just finished reading a newsletter that talked about disrespect and being kind. 

It made me remember a situation that I was in yesterday. I wished the person was kinder to me. Maybe I wouldn't have spent the entire evening thinking about it, it threw me off and made me sad. Not sad about their actions per se (typical of them to act that way), but their actions made me feel a certain way that's reflecting in the other things I have to do. I will stop now. 

I haven't been able to update this newsletter ever since. I want to say I've been busy—and rightfully so—but I've also been lazy and I've procrastinated a lot. The plan was to send out this newsletter on Sunday, but I had just come back from the dinner night that morning, and I wanted to just sleep. 

All I did was sleep, sleep, and sleep. Procrastination used to sound like a “cute personality trait”, you know, something everybody does and still somehow manage to accomplish their tasks, but I'm so over it. 

If I have something to do, I want to do it at a particular time that I said I would and not later. I'm tired of playing catch-up instead of being involved in my own life. It's exhausting and that's how this week has been, a lot of catching up, this newsletter is also a form of catching up sef. 

Anyway, I said I was going to talk about the faculty week and the things I was involved in. First off, the annual magazine. Let's just say that if I was the only person in Rivers State that somehow recommends printers to people, the man who printed the magazine would never get any jobs or recommendations. The magazine printer has no work ethics and doesn't value his customers at all. 

Let's rewind a bit, we sent him the magazine designs to print on Thursday (June 19)—mind you, I had my IT defense on that day, so after the whole thing, I went straight to that man's shop. 

I understand that it was impromptu and at that point, I would expect that you'd say “Oh, I'm sorry, this is not a work I can handle at this point”, no problem, we would find another person. It was Thursday the previous week, the event was on Tuesday, we had a little time. 

But no, this man took the work, I got to his place on Thursday. He had not started and had no plans of starting on Thursday, but he assured me that he would be done by Monday, since we needed it on Tuesday. I was cool with it, because it felt reasonable and I wanted to trust him. 

The funny thing is, I didn't want to print with this man. The previous Editor-in-Chief recommended him to me and I had gone to his shop previously, I noticed that whenever I go to this shop, there are always at least 5 people dragging his attention and talking about how they gave him something to do since last year—I'm exaggerating, but it's always a long period of time, say 3 months).

The entire thing just threw me off and I knew that if I printed with the man, I was going to experience the same thing, so I told them (committee head and president) that I didn't want to print with this person, but I've also not found another person. 

Imagine my surprise when they told me they had found someone and—lo and behold—it was this same person, I didn't even know what to say, but remember what I said, yeah? I wanted to trust him. 

Brothers and sisters, friends and foes, Saturday passed, Sunday passed, it got to Monday. This man had not started anything. He had not printed one copy, he was supposed to print 50. There was even someone else from my faculty who had to get some materials from him for the rally we were supposed to be doing (that was the second day of the faculty week), he had not done it. 

There was also another woman who was shouting that he had not started her work at all even though she had given it to him since May. She came under the rain. It was so annoying because the man doesn't even know how to appease his customers, everything felt like a joke to him, making baseless promises, “don’t worry, it will not take time” and calling you stupid nicknames like you're friends. 

He finally printed a few pages and told me that I could go home and come back by 8pm or so, that it would be ready by then. Mind you, I had not even gone home since I went to school in the morning, it was at that point that I was like “okay, I have to stay in the hostel now, so I will just pack the magazine when I get it”. 

I went home, packed my bag, got to the hostel, and went back to his shop. Surprise surprise, he had not done anything extra, just the pages he printed while I was there, I was livid. I couldn't even deal, how can you be so unreliable and nonchalant, you don't even care that this is something important to your customers, you have no process to your job. 

If it's a lot, hire someone or decline job offers when your hands are full. I honestly don't get it, would you rather get a few jobs and do them well or get all the jobs and wouldn't be able to handle them? Why? 

I left that shop by past 9pm, this man told me to my face that he wouldn't be able to work on anything because he's so tired,  we should go and come back by 8am, he would be done by then. 

Mind you, he still had to sort the pages together, arrange them, trim them, staple them, and package them. He wanted to do that before 8am. Oh, I cried in his shop at some point, because I couldn't just imagine that I had gone through all that stress for the magazine only for a printer who has no work ethics and respect for his customer to just not deliver. 

I stayed in K’ hotel that night—shout out to them for accommodating me at the last minute. I had to prepare my slides that night because I somehow procrastinated till then. It got to morning, I left the hostel by 6am or so, I got back home, ate, prepared for the opening ceremony (this was the D-day), and I went to the man's shop. 

Guess what? He still hadn't finished, someone else from my faculty was already there and it was a whole thing trying to get the man to do his fucking job, he even claimed the person embarrassed him, but I'm just like “what did you expect?! Clearly, you don't care about the embarrassment, if not, you'd do your things on time, people embarrass you everyday for this same thing”, but okay. 

After a series of mental breakdowns, back and forth, we finally got it and went back to school, the ceremony had already started. Now that I'm typing this, I just remembered that he didn't even finish printing everything, he printed just 42 copies, it's supposed to be 50 copies, I've been so lazy about going to get the remainder because of how he is, I wouldn't be surprised if it's not even ready, but I will go there next week or so. 

Anyway, we got to school and we packaged the magazine. I was already really tired and just out of it, at this point. I seriously thought about leaving the opening ceremony and going home, but what kind of person would I be? I dissociated while presenting the slides and even during the entire launch process, but I got a few comments that made the entire thing worth it. 

I forgot to add that in the middle of this whole thing, I was somehow supposed to organise a quiz competition, the first part of the competition held online on Monday and there was supposed to be another round on Tuesday, but it didn't go the way I planned, so we had to do something else, but it finally ended, I guess. It was part of the reason I just wanted to disappear. 

That's how the whole thing ended. I wished I was more settled during the entire ceremony. I have no real memories from that day, like the ceremony itself. I don't even know who attended or what the speakers talked about. 

The next day's activity was the outreach, I didn't attend, then there was the trad night, I also didn't attend that one too. I think there was a football competition on Friday, I didn't attend that. I was honestly just tired and I was crashing out (the Thursday entry from earlier was during this week). 

The skill acquisition & dinner night was on Saturday, I taught a session during the skill acquisition, and let me backtrack a bit. I did my nails on Friday and let me just tell you, I don't think I'm ready for this baddie lifestyle, I was struggling. It was torture trying to type on my laptop or my phone. I almost removed it on Friday, like I was so close to removing it, but I somehow managed to finish up the slides. 

I taught the class, it was nice to teach. Sadly, there are no pictures from the event, but I was just glad I did it. I almost chickened out though. 

Someone (let's call them, S, so I stop saying “someone”) always says that I run away when things get hard and I'm beginning to think that's true, I was so nervous that I didn't want to do it anymore. 

I almost didn't go for the dinner night event, it felt like a lot, but I changed my mind. I already had my dress, my shoes, and I had even made my hair already when I somehow decided that I wasn't going to attend anymore. 

After the skill acquisition, I went home, got ready and went back to the hostel. Now, the dinner night (according to the flyer) was supposed to start by 8pm, right? 

Imagine my surprise when nobody acted like it. S told me that it would definitely not start by 8pm, I thought it was a joke. I was actually planning on going on time, first to the hotel, so I can change and just hang a bit, before I get to the venue. 

Let me backtrack a bit. There was an option to pay for a hotel room so you don't have to worry about going back home in the night, you just stay at the hotel. 

The normal way to think about this is, oh, the hotel we were staying in is the same hotel we were doing the event. That was not true, and there was no real directions or proper information, this is probably something you'll bring up and people will say “you’re doing too much”, but it was so annoying. 

I and some other people stood on the road (major road, this was past 8pm) for about 30 minutes or so, trying to get the location of the hotel we were staying at. Thinking about it now, it still makes me annoyed. 

Let me mention that we got to the venue first and when I looked inside the hall, it was so empty. You'd think they told everybody except you that the event was starting by 11pm and not 8pm. I was just like, whoa. 

It's even more interesting when you talk about the issue with time and people not being punctual, and people act like you're saying something really stupid, but it's annoying. 

If something is supposed to start by 8pm, why isn't it starting by 8pm? In a way, I understand certain things might have happened, after going through my fair share of disappointments for the magazine, but it's really important to pass certain information early. 

The event was… interesting. I can't think of a better word to describe it. There was a theme and there was no activity that reflected that. 

They gave awards, played a few games, and that was all. If you're going to do a theme, everything you do should reflect the theme, people went all out to dress accordingly and nothing happened. 

I don't know, it was meh. The only interesting thing for me was that it was my first time, so it felt good to experience it myself, but I couldn't just help think about how if you were at home, you'd think that you're missing out on something really fun, but you're not. 

The event started by 11pm or so, I dressed up at the hotel, and I got back to the venue with some other people. I was just glad that I saw these other people because thinking about the distance I had to walk back to the other hotel was making me tired and seriously considering just staying at the hotel room, especially at that time of the night. This road was not well lit and it was late, I was a bit over it. 

By 1am, I was tired of even sitting in the hall. I went outside to sit and then take pictures. The event finally finished by 4am. 

They said they were doing an after party, but I honestly thought there was no point because it was already morning, but okay. I was so tired and sleepy (nothing concern me, concern night life). 

I got back to the hotel, again, we used bolt (tbvh, it was not a walkable distance for that time of the day or night). We were about 7 in the room, so it was a bit funny trying to sort out the sleeping arrangements but we did. 

I couldn't even sleep for long, I woke up by past 6am. I wanted to pee, the toilet door just wouldn't open, it was so frustrating, especially when I was trying to be quiet and I was the only one awake. Someone eventually opened it for me. We left the hotel by 8am or so, and I got home. I slept and woke up by 12pm and immediately went to remove my nails. 

All in all, I'm glad I was a part of this, it was an experience. Oh, I forgot to mention, there was also a movie night on Sunday (at the beginning of the faculty week), they said a lot about not starting late, “there will be no African man time”, but they started late too. 

Apparently, it was supposed to start by 5:30pm, people were supposed to be there by 4:30pm, but it started by 7pm or past 6pm. African man time has really eaten deep into our souls, and it's not funny.

💕 Something new I learned this week: 

Take yourself seriously. If you do, your actions should also show it. 

Reminds me of a reel I saw on time. 

💕 Something that brought me joy this week: 

😔

💕 Something I'm looking forward to: 

My birthday (August 12). 🙈

No, it's not too far. 

💕 What I'm most grateful for this week:

The internet.

Books.

Sadly, I've not read anything so far. I will just share what I'm currently reading. Sigh. Recommend books, my fans. 

Music. 

💕 Songs I listened to this week. 

This week, I've been listening to a lot of Beyoncé. All Night and Tyrant are my current favourites. I've been listening to these songs on repeat. 

Movies, Series, YouTube, and everything in between. 

I tried watching The First Night With the Duke (kdrama) and I just couldn't get into it. I don't know, the FL is a bit too… calm. I like my FL fiesty. Be fire! Don't stand there and watch them slap your maid  because you're scared of the other person (🤬). I was expecting something like Mr. Queen, tbh. 

Oh, I've finished watching Squid Game season 3. I have no thoughts, it was a bit underwhelming and everything seemed to be happening so fast. My favourite season was season 2, I wonder why it's everyone's worst one. I actually didn't finish season 1, I saw way too many spoilers, I couldn't finish it. 

Gather round. 

💕 My internet footprint. 

This week’s photo gallery.

Thank you for reading. If you can, do well to send a reply. Muah. 

Bye x.