Don't Let It Break Your Heart

An unreasonable man shares his thoughts on a rollercoaster year

Hi everyone!

It’s the last Friday of the year and almost six months since my last newsletter. I don’t have enough words of apology to my subscribers who may have felt disappointed by my extended absence. It’s been a wild year for me — as I’m sure it’s been for many of us — still, have it in your heart to accept my apology.

On the last day of 2021, I wrote a newsletter summarizing my year. In it, I shared my highlights and lowlights and even my 2020 predictions for how 2021 would turn out. I’m going to do something similar here, so let me begin with what my forecast was for 2022.

If you’ve followed events from the past year, you’d know that my forecast was a mixed bag. And to answer THAT question, no, I’m not a millionaire :(

Morocco did themselves very proud at the World Cup in Qatar becoming the first African team ever to make a WC semifinal, so give me my flowers for nailing that. Argentina were crowned champions and lots of Messi fanboys are still in ecstasy over a title they deem long overdue.

Arsenal almost broke my frail heart when they lost steam towards the end of the season when finishing in the top four seemed easier. Driven by the disappointment of falling short and coupled with smart investing in the market and elite coaching by Mikel Arteta, the boys are on fire this season. They sit pretty at the top of the table now, five points clear. Fingers crossed we go the distance and win the premiership. Come On You Gunners!

It was a catastrophic year for crypto. Winter did come and it wasn’t pretty. Instead of heading north for $100k from its peak price of $69k, it lost around 80 per cent of its value, crashing to its current price of $16,487. I’ve not opened my crypto wallet in almost five months because I’m scared of what I’d find there.

Ran Neuner @cryptomanran

It’s been a tough year for EVERYONE!

The collapse of FTX sent crypto into a death spiral which had far-reaching impact. The tech industry whose stock correlates highly with bitcoin was among the worst-hit, with layoffs happening at a frightening pace. Nigerian tech and VC startups weren’t left out of the chaos as many of them had to scale back and revise their lofty growth projections.

I did contribute my bit to helping people reach their goals though. That’s an achievement for which I am most proud. The jury is still out on whether Nigeria has gotten a W. We’ll know for sure in a couple of months when elections are concluded.

Let’s get really personal now. When I started this newsletter last year, I made a couple of promises. One was that it would be honest, another was that it would offer hope. I haven’t reneged on those promises. I’m sharing this bit because I have a prompting in my heart that someone might need this.

At the start of this post, I said that 2022 was a wild year for me. For the most part I was out of active employment. In fact, I was without a 9-5 job for a year. My inbox was filled with so many rejections, I got depressed. Really depressed. There were days I couldn’t get off my bed. I was locked up in my room, tired of life. It looked like everyone had their stuff figured out while my life was wasting away. That’s not a good place to be in.

I’m not someone who knows how to ask for help. It’s not so much a question of pride, it just isn’t something I do too well. One reason may be because of my tendency to overthink. I often think that by asking, I may become an inconvenience. So I’d rather expend myself completely than coming cap in hand. If I’m asking for help, know that I’ve exhausted all options.

And so I asked for help, from would you guess? God.

I had heard back from this media company based outside Nigeria looking for someone to cover crypto-related news. I started reading up, watching YouTube videos and doing research. Because I’d gotten a series of Ls, I wanted to cover all my bases this time — both academically and spiritually. I prayed. And let me tell you something, it was hard for me. Hard because I simply didn’t know how to go about it again. But I eventually summoned up everything within me to get on my knees.

What followed was a month of interviews. Zoom calls across multiple time zones. The feedback I got during the interviews was good and I was feeling positive that an offer was on the horizon because I had done my best and had prayed. So imagine my devastation when the rejection email came after the grueling process. I wanted to die.

Tough luck. However, I remain grateful for the people I had around me which the more I think about, were God’s gift to me at the time. I was also learning some lessons.

One is that no one can go at it alone. Everyone needs someone in their corner and in my case they were my family and friends who rallied on my behalf. I had to ask for help and a couple of friends provided side gigs which I sustained myself with during this tough period.

I also learned that life doesn’t follow a template. While I remain a believer in hard work and consistency, there are times when in spite of your best efforts, nothing seems to work. In those moments I understood firsthand what patience truly meant. Patience, combined with hope that the tide will turn. And although I was running out of patience, I had not run out of hope even though it was, admittedly, in the reserves.

As Gil-galad said to Elrond in The Rings of Power, “Hope is never mere, even when it is meager. When all other senses sleep, the eye of hope is first to awaken, last to shut.”

No matter how bad it gets, never ever abandon hope.

I kept putting myself out there and eventually, the tide did turn. In October, I got a job offer to be a Citizen reporter covering matters relating to the economy, politics, social justice and basically everything about how to know when the government is f***ing with you and how you can unf***k yourself. Those are not my words, it’s literally in our header lol.

This should also explain why I don’t cover much political stuff here as I ordinarily would. Because I’m now being paid to do so as my day job. You can see what I’ve been up to here.

To circle back to the crux of my story, I’m telling it to let you know that if you’re feeling like your year hasn’t gone to plan, I can very well relate because I too have been there.

I’ve heard people say they’re jealous of me and I think it helps to put it out there that there’s nothing to be jealous of. I’m a struggling guy who just has the audacity to not give up. It’s why I became an optimist, because success can often depend on being “unreasonable” in the face of adversity.

I’ll wrap up with this inspiring quote by George Bernard Shaw who captured it best when he said: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Stay unreasonable friends, and see you again in the new year!