Words from march

Praise, this may be a long letter.

Honestly, I do not expect anyone to read it to the end. I never read most long letters to the end. But if you do, I hope you take some time out to send me a reply.

I'd suggest you read this email in chunks. Usually, if written well, I should get multiple replies from you. If not ... well, I doubt it won't be written well.

Anyways, let's start.

March has been one hell of a month. To start with, I forgot my blood's birthday for the first time in 8 years — I met her in 2014. Even if we didn't talk as much as we used to, it was a terrible thing to do. In fact, I didn't forget her birthday. I forgot to send her a message.

How could you do that, you block-head?

Honestly, I procrastinated. I told myself, "I should send her a message" and then I didn't. And no, this is not me reporting myself to you.

I apologised to her the next day after accidentally seeing her status. We've had cold conversations before, but in my apology, I recognised that we were not going to be the same kind of friends again. We would no longer randomly video call each other and banter for hours out of the blues again.

It is one amazing friend gone because I thought my world would end if I spared 5 mins to send her my usual quirky message.

And to think I'd have learnt a lesson about being more intentional about friendships; few weeks before the birthday forgetfulness, I lost another one — not allegedly this time.

It was a case of assuming what her feelings were.

You must be an asshole.

Ah yes! I know I was. And I thought she did herself a favour deciding to never talk to me again. How did I know she was right? Cos in all my retrospection, I never considered her reaction as "too much". It felt just right.

You would flip out too if you were in her shoes. And yes, she wasn't just any friend. She was the kind you'd call blood too. It's interesting how months and years of carefully built memories and bonds can go down the drain because of one person's carelessness — in this case, mine.

And you'd be surprised that it took another example to get me to learn the lesson.

But hey! I haven't been all about depressing moments. Although, I wouldn't say I had any peak moments too.

Work has been — how do I put it — work.

But that's not your concern, at least not in this letter. A couple of my friends got into Toptal, and a couple more landed some foreign roles. Happy is an understatement for how I feel. And in true fashion of friendship (yeah, I still have some friends), they have decided to make me the fourth man in the fire.

You used that reference wrong.

Yeah, I know. But it is my letter. Lol. I did miss writing to you and thinking about your thoughts when you read these letters. I'm so sorry that I could no longer do this everyday.

About being the fourth man, for some unknown reason, I chose (in the short term) to be unreasonable. I say unreasonable because if I were not me and were my friend, I'd be pissed.

And hey, who says they are not pissed at me? Sorry Mudia.

I am about to use a famous Twitter buzzword, "existential crisis". At a point in March, I thought I had a crisis of some kind. While I'd somehow found a way to conquer the thought that I could never need help or be in a position where I'd have to "pour my heart out", this situation was a little different.

It was one that got me thinking, "I should talk to a therapist" — or someone that could actually ask me the questions I need to find my answers.

"Why won't you do your portfolio?", as much as it is noble, doesn't seem to solve the overwhelming feeling of uncertainty. You've probably felt it too. Moments when you are supposed to do some thing but don't do it because, in your words, "you don't feel like it".

It's like some sort of demotivation. You term it "burn out", but you know damn well that it isn't.

Usually, the go-to solution is to find the source and deal with it. But in my case, the source is too important to me to be dealt with the black/white way.

Let's leave it at that.

I prayed, for about 5 mins — for the first time in a really long while.

As I started to chat, I remembered why I didn't like to pray anymore. As you guessed it, it was quite a stupid reason. Usually, these days, I go mute whenever anyone asks me questions about faith. Cos honestly, I don't want to talk about it.

So I started with, "hi God, it's me again".

As a kid, I learned that prayer was a conversation with God. So I found it a little unique that people had to repeat their sentences when they pray. It wasn't strange at all because, hey, everyone did it. And when you lack the words, you start to speak in tongues.

But I always felt it could be different. I watched dramas that portrayed that God wouldn't answer prayers that are not preceded with elaborate worship. I listened to preachers talk about the Lord's Prayer as the formula for how we should pray (I do not dispute this).

However, my favourite prayer of the entire Bible comes from John 17 — and it was a conversation between a son and his Father.

There was also something else I learned about prayer. I wrote once, nine years ago, that God wants to chat as much as we want to chat. Interesting perspective to look at prayer, don't you think?

It is a shame that I don't pray as much as my 14-year-old self would have liked. But hey, I prayed — and it was a relief. Not just the prayer itself, but the awareness that I didn't have to deal with it (what I prayed about) alone.

And I think, despite all its inconsistencies and uncertainty, that awareness (which is called Faith) is what makes up the entire sense of Christianity. And I learned that from one prayer.

I never liked, for an entire year, the fact that I had to choose between craft and leadership. I didn't like that managers no longer needed to be craftsmen. More importantly, I didn't like that I was no longer creating at the level I wanted to create.

And despite this feeling creeping out slowly in conversations with other people, no one seemed to fully comprehend my dilemma. And I think it is partially because I seemed so optimistic about it — which is really dishonest of me. But who cares? I don't.

I love creating and even more than that, I love helping people create. I like to complain about Illustrator's annoying colour profiles or Figma's bugs. Even though I don't miss the client-bitching, I love telling them stories of how I created this art for them.

And in this line of thought, it gets on my nerves when someone says "you're no longer a designer" — not in an angry way, no. Think of it as just a trigger.

But I've not seen any of your work in a long while.

Have you not been listening? I have had to choose. And so, in March, I said I didn't want to choose anymore. It wasn't a straightforward decision, but when opportunity comes knocking, you open the motherfucking door.

Granted, I have slacked a lot.

I forgot to follow up on a potential lead, and didn't bother about the other one that ghosted me. It's almost like i don't like to make money. And the reason is quite glaring — I have become lackadaisical (lazy, for short).

I started watching Naruto in February and I do not think any show would have that same level of impact again.

It has caused me to re-evaluate how I do things — become, change, teach, learn, grow, practise, focus, organise, think. Here's one of my favourite piece of the entire Naruto franchise:

"My name is Naruto Uzumaki, and I'll become the Hokage someday. I'll never go back on my word, because that is my Ninja way".

Here's another:

"I'm coming after all that hate inside you too, someday!"

I think the most interesting thing about Naruto is that he is irrational about what he believes in. And the first step to getting there is to believe in something.

March taught me how hard that was. Fuck! It's really hard.

So, Praise, what did you think?

I hope you learned stuff or found something to relate to. In case you missed it, this is not for pity or a topic for future casual conversation. You guessed it right, I'd brush it off — casually.

I wrote this because, honestly, there's not a lot of people to tell this story to; and I have been dying to tell someone. So I thought, why not you? You know a little about me, so you can relate some more. Lol.

And here's my biggest lesson of March — "wait".

Anyway, we thrive.

Ciao.

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