Hasn’t this year started with a bang! It seems like it was just last week when I was yearning to resign from my job and open my own business. Just yesterday when I was looking for office space and furniture, and simultaneously advertising myself and services, shamelessly so. A hitherto oft disdained practice. And here I am, tying up loose ends, paying up rent and signing new contracts to establish myself.

And my clients? As difficult as human beings come. And partners who oppose my every move, and chide me for having dreams too big. Whose arguments sharpen the edges of my ideas and clarify my goals for our future. I feel challenged. I love it all. I take a deep breath every morning in wonder. How did I get this lucky? That we have businesses asking for our advice, and no one has complained. And who recommend us to colleagues and friends. About our services, no one has complained!

And besides business, I have dived head first into voracious academic readings. And to exercise, when the last I attempted it was in high school, more than 10 years ago. I feel pulled apart. And I still want it all. I once read that my deadliest sin could potentially be greed. And that terrifies me,  because it embodies my life as I know it now. I try this, I shift here, I think back, I move forward. If I’m honest, sometimes I get tired of moving. And I remember where I was last year and laugh like a lunatic. These are my problems now. That these are my problems! Alhamdulillah.

But I can’t completely live in my head. I have people to relate to now. And for as long as I can remember, I have always detested the art of making social niceties. It has invariably appeared a too inauthentic business to win me over. Smiling too, kills me. And now, not only do I do all these with aplomb, but I further absorb my clients’ energy, positive or otherwise, and offer back encouragement to revert with more issues to resolve, professional or otherwise, urgent or otherwise. I feel like a professional shrink. And I must admit that every such episode exhausts me. But I grow every single day. I learn about my profession, and the complexities of human nature every day.  I recall, with nostalgia now, a challenging and fulfilling experience I had interacting with a client. Who having expressed pleasure at the services rendered and nonchalantly directed to be billed forthwith, complained to my partner after I had directly so followed their instructions. And my instinct was to take out the business money I had used to render these services, and return the rest back to them, to shame them into recanting my alleged injustice to them. But I had to understand that that is part of human nature. To never be satisfied with everything. And you know what, I don’t fight it. I accept it all.

But it leads me to question this path, and these days, thank God, I tackle this psychology and emotions business with complete sangfroid. Am I in the right field? Am I a business woman? Or do I want to be a humanitarian? Is money my motivation , because to be honest with you, I don’t place as much value to billing than I do to the quality of service that I give to my clients. And the value addition it has facilitated in their lives. And I also realize values, inconveniently so, do not always align with a quest to accumulate wealth. And so again I ask, do I need to look at other career options? Or should I hire someone to look after my wealth, and pray for honourable clients and the easing of my partner’s mien and attitude towards my ideas. But isn’t that too easy?

Courtesy : Bukky Asehinde, bellafricana.com

I’m laughing here writing about this- these are my problems. That these are my problems! How beautifully my Lord has honoured me.

And so as I attempt to discipline my wants and needs, I fail miserably. I mean, even my duas are greedy. I must admit that I do get embarrassed sometimes, of always asking for it all from The All-Prevailing One. And when I give in to those voices and restrict the breadth of my demands, I still ask for the most untraditional of dreams. I do wonder if I have lost my mind sometimes. Is this what happiness does to someone? This manic flare of melodrama? My dearest readers, I highly recommend it.