Author Archives: Spaunder

The not so good old days🛖

So yesterday I had my best friend from my secondary school days ring me up that he was going to be around for a couple hours. I sent him my location and he showed up a couple hours later and we were reunited once again. Looked like he had had a midlife growth spurt as he towered over me like a pro wrestler. He had gone 90% bald but really not changed much. He showed up with a female friend who was meeting us for the first time and took her sweet time to warm up to the many new faces. We chatted about how we regularly got into fights and get our asses handed to us in a matter of seconds

Fam time🎉

I called a couple of my sisters to let them know he was around and Rim showed up about thirty minutes later. She had other engagements so could not stay long enough but as always, she knew how to make an entrance. She wore a red dress and kept playing with her key fob. You would need to try very hard not to see the luxury brand on that key fob.

Rian and her husband showed up earlier than usual, we got the music going, a bottle of JD was cracked open, and boom! It was a party. We returned to our favourite conversation in this setting which is…. You guessed right, ‘relationships’.

Rian had told her husband a couple of weeks ago that she wanted out of the relationship, so he packed up and left. When I asked her what she wanted out of all of that, her response was “peace of mind.” If you know any recruiter from the United Nations peacekeeping unit, please drop their details in the comments section. I’d love to sign her up. Needless to say, they are back together and have made several concessions to accommodate their differences.

The purest form of feminism💅🏿

My friend’s female companion works for an investment bank and was of the opinion that African men are threatened by successful women. An example of the success in this context would be educational, preferably a post graduate certification, an illustrious career, probably working for a large corporation and holding a senior leadership and management position. My question to her was “are the men in your family threatened by your achievements?”, her response was NO. I let her know that all the men in my family were not threatened by her achievements either. At this point we had narrowed it down to men who were potential romantic partners. This group is not big enough to make a generalisation with. 

She asked me directly what I think about successful women, I told her the same way I think about successful men, I just don’t care. I will learn a couple of things from their heavily scripted success stories and that’s about it.

SMV 🍌

 I remember listening to Keven Samules who said Educational qualifications do not increase a woman’s SMV(Sexual MarketPlace Value). No man looks at a woman and goes damn… look at that woman with a PhD. He is of the opinion that men look for someone who they can grow together, accommodate each other and submit to their purpose.

I personally think that African men are the most feminist group of men, contrary to everything what is depicted in the movies for the purpose of entertainment. Patriarchy and toxic masculinity are western constructs we are trying so hard to tear down in our communities, without taking the time to look if they actually exist and if we actually tolerate it in our institutions and families.

She went further to let me know that if a team leader is not picked based on gender at work, that should be the same case in a household. I reminded her that the dynamics for putting together an effective  team vasely differ from those required to set up a successful household

Singleness problem 🧑🏿‍🎤

It sometimes feels like company is overly glorified and romanticised, while spending time alone demonized and discouraged. If we don’t learn how to be good company by ourselves, we can hardly be good company for others. We should learn how to be single and then being in a relationship will be a lot easier for our partners. Learning how to pleasure ourselves might take away the need to completely outsource this huge responsibility of our wellbeing to others. It is often easy to throw around words like self love as though we are entitled to love ourselves. We are so attracted to value so much that if we don’t do the work to create value, we would find it hard to love ourselves. We should be able to articulate what makes us special without making shit up that is factually inaccurate. Platitudes like “I know I am the smartest person in the world even if you nobody agrees” is something that will only go as far. The effort should come before the recognition. The moment we start to create a false sense of value and put the effort into believing it, we are setting ourselves up for an unpleasant experience

The reason why we prefer people who are independent for good company which is very ironical

Effort🏋🏿‍♂️

My understanding as to why we admire people who go to the gym, or wear make up is because we are inherently attracted to effort. The people who do well in school are often given preferential treatment by the educators. There are other factors that clearly influence our values which are beyond our control. What we have control over is the effort we put in to increase our value currency

The care paradox 💜

On one hand, it is important to quiet the noise around you to stay focused, but on the other hand, it is important to pay attention to the people who are very critical of us as they might help us improve. The question often arises on being ourselves, as opposed to being a better version of ourselves. Our authentic being is important for our identity and self worth, while our dynamism is important for our progress and value to our community

The idea is good enough 💡

The best part of any project is the the imagination stage of it. It is easy to think that our brains intentionally leaves out the multiple rejections, sleepless nights, difficult decisions, cutting off, laying off, hurting and falling out with people for the sake of these objectives. Every now and then when we have a goal, we might have to let some people go which is not often the easiest part. Sometimes the satisfaction we get from imagination about the way something will turn out is so perfect that the imperfection of actual execution is a let down

Not everyone can come 🐑

I remember reading a book my mum got for me when I was in the 4th grade. It had the story of Abraham going to sacrifice his only son on God’s orders. When he reluctantly complied, he took his son and two of his servants up a mountain after he had gathered enough wood for the burnt offering along with fire and a knife. When he got to a place where he had the destination in sight, he asked his two servants to wait there while he continued. The moral of the story is the fact that when he set his eyes on his goals, he he had to leave some people behind. It is often not very easy, but required. To get to the another stage, we might have to let some people go.

More could be less 👌🏿

I listened to a podcast which interviewed the founder of Deliveroo. He gave a very realistic representation on what it means to be the CEO of one of the UK’s fastest growing companies and for the first in a very long time, I kinda felt bad for a billionaire. He had sacrificed so much of himself and personal relationships, it almost felt like he was stuck. He complained about not having time to do the things he loved, and had become obsessed with making so many other people happy, he had forgotten himself. He also mentioned the fact that once you have your basic needs taken care of and not have to worry about financial difficulties, more money might actually make you less happy.

Just one more 👻

Very often, we procrastinate our happiness and make it contingent on the next milestone or achievement. We then find ourselves in this endless loop of waiting to be happy. We could always take some time off and appreciate how far we have come. The small gains we have made and celebrate ourselves more often than we do.

The full story 🏀

I watched a video of Paul Pierce’s induction speech into the hall of fame and he thanked a total of nine teams. He was genuine in his appreciation for how the teams impacted his career. The thing is, he never played for any of these teams. These were the teams that passed on him. In his own words, it gave him a fire to prove them wrong. I believe things really change when we get angry. Angry not hypothetically, but really pissed. There are those who would not believe in you, no matter how you feel about them, you need them.

The spectator/rival 🦴

Jay Williams talks about working out with Kobe and putting in his best best workout performance to impress the black mamba. After working out together for a couple of hours, he took a break because it was game day. Kobe went on for another couple of hours and dropped over forty points in a the game right after that. When Jay Williams asked Kobe why he worked so hard, Kobe’s response was “It was because I saw you come in. I wanted to let you know that I will outwork you no matter how hard you work. The people who watch what you are doing, even when they are saying nothing are important for your success.

The beloved critics 👌🏿

One of the biggest hinderance to our personal productivity is our attempt to evade criticism and adversity. I spoke to a brother of mine the other day who describes himself as a dove and describes me as a lion in reference to the way we approach issues. I reminded him that adversity compliments dialogue instead of prohibiting it. Once we overcome the fear of being criticized, we seize our ability to be ourselves. These are words that even when heard a 99 times would still have space for the hundredth. In our evasion of criticism, we always hope that if we seek perfection, our problems will disappear. I prioritize progress over perfection, and while I am at it I never forget who I am.

Too close to home🏠

I recently received some pushback for some of the content of the previous blog post. Sometimes it felt like I was naming people in the details without applying the proper nouns and other times, some of the presumed characters in my narrative could barely recognize the chain of events as they experienced it. All of these are accurate in that, if we don’t t remember it the same way, then we are not talking about the same event.

Pushback and its timing⏰

When we went to help my sister out with the packaging of the items needed to ship abroad, we had a lot of help from friends and family. We kept going at it and had normal conversations as we went along. We shared the meals and had people narrate their political ambitions which was very interesting.

One of the people who was helping us was this caucasian in his early sixties who was very instrumental to the facilitation of the logistical complexities. He was very conversational and he was very fond of my sister. She mentioned several times that he has been very instrumental to the entire shipping adventure

Subtle start 🎬

When I first came, he said he asked what time we were suppose to start work and I told him 8:30 am, and his response was “In African time, 8:30 means the next day”. I laughed reluctantly and even chimed in a bit despite the fact that what he was saying didn’t really sit right with me, but I thought to myself, just take a joke. This guy was just getting warmed up

Joke’s on me 🤡

Next he says if you are hardworking, it does not matter the color of your skin, you get equal opportunities. At this point I am thinking if the disproportionate unemployment in the black community is probably because the black man is not hardworking enough?. He had a lot more to say.

He went on to express his distaste for Megan Markle for her plot to bring disrepute to the throne. He also made mention of the fact that she has days when she choses to be white and other days when she choses to be black according to the narrative she is propagating at the time. At this point I am looking around if anyone has a problem with what he is saying, but everyone seemed to agree with him. I found it really strange. He was already in the mood

BLM 🖤

He went on further to say that the racism was just a political agenda propagated by the black lives movement and enhanced by the media, citing an instant where the head of the black lives matter movement was shot and the media initially blamed racists before an investigation concluded that it was more as a result of gang rivalry.

I had heard too much, and I pushed back after I realized that not only were that people agreeing with his falsehoods, there was no incentive to challenge his blatant lies and ignorance for fear that it might lead to a much longer conversation and probably put a dent on the existing harmony we have enjoyed.

Enough said 🤺

I stepped up to him and asked him what he meant when he said there was no racism. I told him it was disrespectful to dismiss the struggles of an entire group of people he knows nothing about. He had a handful of stereotypes and generalisations to work with, but his ignorance was even louder

On further probing, he revealed to me that his father was racist, but he had travelled enough to understand that we are all human beings. He used extrapolation to come to the conclusion that if his father was racist and he wasn’t, that means that is probably the case for every other household with a similar dynamic. I asked him if he took the whole of England with him on the trips he made to cure everyone of their racism.

My sister kept urging me to abort the conversation, but I was there already and I was passed trying to reason with this guy and was already at the point of shutting him down. I also pointed out the double standards when it came to the the treatment of the Megan and Kate

I expressed my disappointment with everyone who stood around and said nothing while this guy was showing all sorts of disrespect to a whole race of people. One of the people who was present came and told me that this guy came to him personally and told him I was stupid, and I asked him what he said in response. He said he did not want to say anything and I torched him immediately. I made him know that his lack of nuts was actually disappointing to hear. What made it worse if the fact that another guy standing there threw a tiny jab at me at that same moment and I torched him as well immediately.

The calm, or lack thereof 🌪

To put everything in context, there was one white guy and every other person there was a black African. My sister reminded me of the need to pick my battles better as well as the timings and venue.

My thing is, however Megan wants to identify to make her life better, why is it a problem. The answer is, there is actually no problem with this, neither is there any account of her doing this. The blatant racism of the British media has succeeded to convince everyone that she is doing something wrong, and the endorsement of thee falsehoods by the black community, further enables the racists elements who can go on to say, “see, even black people don’t trust her”. I will shoot that shit down if you bring it my way.

Just take the help 🥷🏿

Today started off to be a pretty normal day. By all means we would expect it to be uneventful. My sister Susan was shipping some items back home I had to make sure everything was going well so I had to be there to help with hauling most of the heavy stuff. Sometimes I would literally have to get in her way to offer my help. She has trained herself to depend entirely on her abilities so much so that she would not take help until you persist. She does all this without complaining and does not even find the need to.

Rags to bags 💰

I started a clothing brand in the middle of the pandemic and it is going better than I planned. I have had great response from people a lot of people, but I have not yet exploded. If I do explode, I might quickly implode, so I think the brand is doing just fine. At the beginning, I was expecting all my close friends to show up and endorse in their numbers. I had a couple of reactions from the people I counted on to make this work.

The supporters🏟

The first group contains the people who think that it was too expensive. They challenged the idea of me slapping my name on a hoodie and charging £50 for it. They assured me that if I ever came back to my senses, their generous offer of £20 would still be waiting for me. They are such kind and patient people

The bougie 🤑

The second type of people were the ones who said, they didn’t find anything they liked in the collection, so they didn’t care enough to consider responding or acknowledging everything I have done to put together this work of art

The non conspicuous 🔻

The third group actually complained that the brand name was too big and they would consider purchasing a copy if I made it small enough for people not to know that it was my brand name even if they were standing 1m away from them. They told me sticking with the size of my brand name was a deal breaker.

Nothing to see here 👩🏿‍🦯

Then came the fourth group that actually acted like nothing happened. They just be quiet and rather not say anything about it. My thinking is , maybe if they ignore it long enough it would go away

The best friend type 👯

Saving the best for the last is a little cliche, but excuse me just this one time. The fifth group is actually the people who placed an order when I just had the Digital concept. Other who got mad that I would not make enough so they can share with their loved ones. Some others wanted one of each color for themselves and their partners. Then came the ones who want a copy of every single item I have produced and insist on being the first to know whenever it drops

You would need all members of this group to have some success. You will learn how to target the right audience, expand your collection if you need to,

• Take off your brand name and put that of your friend instead 👈🏿sarcasm.
• Learn a few magic tricks so you can make things vanish 👈🏿more sarcasm.
• Not focus on the undesirable response, or just keep building👈🏿 no🧢
• Take time to appreciate the people who turned up for you👈🏿gospel

I learnt a lot from my sister’s willingness to do what she has to do without asking for help. It better manages her expectations and preserves the value of her services. If you are on an entrepreneurial journey, don’t expect favors. Go pay for what you need, and if you cannot afford it at the time, you should consider something else, coming later, or work harder. Begging is a lot more expensive and exhausting.

Every time we complain about the people who are not supporting our craft, we take off the time we could have been appreciating the people who actually do. It feels disrespectful and ungrateful

Stoicism postponed🤌🏿

When I woke up yesterday morning, while I was about to leave the house, I was a repairman bring in a new cooker and I thought to myself, no “naresare” which actually translates to “tie-heart” which is when a household decide to fast, not for any religious, fitness or medical reason, but because there has been a breakdown in the complex logistics that would have enabled them to prepare a meal. To my greatest surprise, my sister told me it came too late for her to do any preparations and I figured she wasn’t up for it.

Jacky’s timely intervention😋

Jacky called us later that evening to come eat fufu and eru and you know it is punishable by law to say no to fufu. Two of my sister Rian and Princess showed up at about 8 pm for lunch which was very early by their standards. We had a couple of other people join us and it was a pleasant company. Not much was happening and we did the usual drink and talk about our favorite topic which is relationships .There was nothing different from how we normally spent our time and it was looking like it was going to be a normal day

My both nieces hatched a plan to always interrupt which they executed with a lot of accuracy. One of them will knock the door and the other will scream at the top of her voice and when we open the door they start immediately start pointing fingers at each other

On your mark🏃🏿‍♂️

We were about to finish up what was left in our cups and call it a night when the girls were complaining about how marriages were so hard because the expectations for the women have not changed and have actually gotten more challenging because they are not only expected to take care of the house, the kids and the reputation of their family and that of their husbands and his friends, they also have to provide. The men on the other hand have outsourced some of the traditional responsibility to provide to the women.

Get ready 🏎

They complained that the standard for infidelity actually enables the men and shames the women for doing the same act . The men expect them to heal like wolverine and when they don’t, they are actually the problem.

In the middle of this conversation and me filling up my glass, one of my in-laws shows up so say something and a few people toned down their voices so he could join the others to talk over each other and these were his words “Every man cheats”. The room went silent. If you think he stopped there, think again. He then proceeded to say, “I Cheat”. At this point, a few other people stopped talking and now we were paying attention. He did not stop there, he went even further, “my wife knows”. At this point we knew that it was time to go home, but guess what, he was not done. He added “If she finds out and gets mad, I will book a holiday for her in a foreign country.

Go💨

At this point, we were all quiet and looked around if any other person just heard what we heard, and then we realized his wife was in the room with us. He has a cooking spoon in her hand and it looked like a murder weapon for a split second. That would not have been a good way to go out. Killed by a spoon?. We are now looking at his wife, partly waiting for a reaction and partly bracing to intervene incase she decided to give the spoon an alternative application.

It felt for a second that Siri asked youtube to pause the song that was playing. My sister responded, and she did not disappoint. She responded “it is ok for men(her husband) to cheat and I am not remotely concerned about that. “. Now nobody is saying anything, and I just picked up the rest of the alcoholic beverage and relocated. This is not how these conversations normally go, but this one took and unusual twist. It was about 2pm and we were ready to leave. Mind you this is when my sisters Princess and Rian normally show up

I’ll Weigh in📝

On one of my blog posts, I spoke about polyamorous relationships. Polyamorous is being in a relationship with multiple partners. It differs from cheating in that there is the agreement from the jump that you guys will be able to see other people. I think that the ways we relate to each other has evolved a lot. Relationships now are not only down to the binary options of monogamy and polygamy. People are now finding their voices and they value the ability to express themselves without being judged. I don’t think that we should project onto other what we believe is the ideal way of going about our business. I could be looking at the very first polyamorous people I know. I will have to do more research on that and improve my tolerance with that regard

After the storm, comes the Hurricane🌀

I arrived home at 4am, and at 9 am, I was up for my morning run, and I decided to crack 7.5km today. I came back and my sisters Keys and Liz had not recovered from what they heard the previous day. They were in total disbelief for the fear that this thing which once sounded like a taboo is now talked about openly in family gatherings and a part of them just wonders if and when it would happen to them. They sounded exhausted and doubled down on what they were saying for the most part of the night “Marriage is hard”. I don’t know if this is the right time to drop the quote that says everything you want is on the other side of hard. That is all I had for them. I’ll try to get more next time.

How often? ⛔️🧢

Im not even going to lie, being consistent is hard. It is hard enough already to have an eventful day to write about, but worst off, it is even harder to do it every single day. I have began to question this consistency BS. How often is considered consistent, and is being consistent even necessary. Maybe it is not adding actual value, so giving more will cost more than it would benefit you or your audience. I might rethink how consistent I want to be based on how much value I bring in that period of time.

You already know.🏅

During my morning run, I could barely find any content that would trigger some deep thinking so I could share with you guys. I bounced around for a little bit but never came across something deep enough. That made my run really hard, but 5Km it was.

Support is gold.🤜🏿

I watched the last episode of the medical drama series The Good Doctor Season 4 and it was a great watch. Something jumped out to me at the end, when Dr. Shaun told Dr. Brown “You are good at this, better than you know”. This got me thinking of how comforting and assuring these words were and how little we use them.

My niece once came up to me and told me her friend was offended by the fact that she said his music was not good. She said she was being honest and gave him a rational take on how his music sounded. Her friend was not happy with her feedback and she could not understand his reaction. My advise to her was, your friend doesn’t need to be criticized by you, they need your support. There is already a lot of people out there doing that.

The best response I have received when I failed a module was from my best friend. When I said I failed a module her response was “congratulations, what have you learnt”, this is so important for people to hear because most of us are already too self critical, we don’t need any more of that.

Dimes 💎

If you believe you are not thinking enough, read a book, If you are thinking too much, write a book.

Love, the part 2 👰🏿‍♂️

My sister is considering getting back into her marriage of 12 years that ended in a messy divorce. After a seven years divorce, she is looking to give it another shot. I have tried not to think or talk about it, but she needs my support, and if I am to support her, I will need to understand what is going on and to do that, I need to think and talk about it. I consider my self a fearless person, but my biggest fear is watching the people I love get hurt. I sometimes do what I can to take part of that pain to make it easier for them. This is not one of those cases where I can or should be heavily involved. She loves to be in control so she will hardly ever get drunk or fall in love for fear of the temporary loss of control. The only area I see her outsource control is when it comes to her religion. She hates to show weakness and she can be sometimes difficult to show love to because she always looks put together and often ignored and people hardly ever find the need to just genuinely check on her on the assumption that she has everything figured out. If you want to take care of her, you literally have to get in her way and be persistent.

Linking on Linkedin🧑🏿‍💻

I spoke to another company today and damn these guys were smart! Most of them were Harvard graduates and I have a sorry excuse for a formal education. Like I said in the previous paragraph, It would take a lot more to make me question my ability. We had a good conversation and for the first time in any of these conversations, I referred to myself as a “productivity enthusiast”. They were visibly impressed and showed me a lot more respect than they started off with. One thing I always remember to do is to train people how to treat me.

You though I was going to forget the 5Km? 🦮

You already know . Got jabbed right after that and had to nap for most of the day because of the effects. One of my friends called me while I was waiting for my teurn to let me know that she has heard a couple of stories about a range of side effects associated with the second dose. The nurses overheard her and where throwing up signs to not listen to her. They tried to get me jabbed as quick as the could to make sure that I wasn’t talked out of it 5 minutes to getting it. After I took the jab, I called up this friend of mine and began barking like a dog. I told her to add this side effect to her laundry list of conspiracy theories. The line just cut for some reason. It is probably the network in my area

Miscellaneous 🥱

I wrote a very few lines of code and listen to more youtube stories about how people used a couple of months to get to six figures with with a few 3 month certifications.

I did some work for Incredible Consulting and advised one of my friends who called me about her boss not caring about her. I reminded her that is not part of her boss’s responsibility. Her husband might need to step up. I concluded by letting her know that if her boss doesn’t think that her work is good, she could either find out what more she needs to do, or find a new job. This is a cold world, the early we come to terms with it, the better we can manage our expectations and recalibrate our standards

Moves 🏁

Guess who did not need a nap post the 5km run, followed by 50 push-ups and 50 deadlifts. You are a genius for getting it right.

More Moves ♟

My sister Jacky sent me a couple of pictures of her newly acquired property. This is the third in 3 months and she is not planning to stop anytime soon. She is a little bit of a show off and that is exactly what motivates her. To have something to show off, she needs to acquire it and to acquire it, she needs to bust her behind really hard. It gets harder by the day because she we cannot “wow” at the same thing twice, so she steps up her game regularly. She is a warrior

Jordan Peterson is a beast 🦁

He has a fascinating take on why people don’t want to stand Out. He compares this with the reason why Zebras keep their black and white stripes in their herd. They are actually camouflaging against their herd. This makes it harder for the lions to hunt them because the lions need to target one Zebra which could easily get lost in the herd. They have a specific set of criteria they use to identify which zebra to target and look for anything that would make them stand out. Biologists marked one of the Zebras with a red ink, and it was almost immediately eaten by the lions.

It is the same thing with human, we camouflage against the herd and prefer to stay closer to the middle of the herd to stay safe. If you stand out, you will be targeted.

He concluded that people do not what happiness but rather want to avoid pain. There is real danger to being visible. Peoples fundamental motivation is that they they want to be invisible and to be left alone

counsel from a guys who has got moves⛹🏿‍♂️

While listening to Chris Paul on Gilbert Arenas show, I heard a few mind blowing quotes which I am just going to list in bullet points

🌑Everything you need is on the other side of hard👈🏿This is deep

🌑If you cant be on time, be early

🌑Well done is better than well said

No Degree, no problem?🙅🏿‍♂️

I listened to Elon Musk talk about how nobody cares about Degrees and he sited a couple of people like Bill gates and Steve Jobs who did no have degree. Here is my thing, If you do not have a degree, you have to find another way to prove that you can be productive. You might need to show a business you have built, or a product you invented, only then is a degree going to be irrelevant. If you don’t have these, then you might need that degree at the end of the day

It is too early for this🤦🏿‍♂️, we stay ready

Jcredible’s lunch got mixed up with one of his friends and his teacher had some unusual words when I asked for an explanation. Let’s just say she knows better now. I will make sure the point get home.

Oscar Performance 🏆

Ruff J finally picked up the Spaunder T shirt and it really looks good on him. He is so dramatic. The last time we spoke, he had to go pick it up form the post office. Today, he sent a video of him opening up the package and he had staged it in front of his porch as though the post man dropped it off and he was seeing it for the first time. He deserves and Oscar

StartUps are hard 🪖

I did some work for the Incredible Consulting and today was one of the days where nobody had anything positive to say. I have seen this so many times and that is one of the things you can hardly get used to. This is were you have to tap into your inner stubbornness and defiance. I always remind myself that if people don’t see value, it just means they don’t see it, not because there is no value. Value is very subjective so it is not a huge task. Stay focussed!

Not Writing enough code</end>

The heading is self-explanatory. No elaboration required