Lessons from a Wasted Year

Greetings.

It is the 22nd of the month of December in the liberal year of 2017 and a quick check of the calendar shows that after this one (Friday) we have one more Richie Online Friday. This is the reason that I have decided to give the year a closing article in case I will be incapacitated next week. I mean.. I wouldn’t give the Rabbi (Venomous Hope) a chance to write the last article of the year. Got to say thanks to him for covering me up and giving us things to read when being a doctor morbidly took the better part of me though.

Having come to the end of the year like this, it is not rather unusual for every normal human to sit down and reflect upon the year’s highs and lows. I am pretty sure that most of Richie Online readers have already starters and that some will join in this reflection exercise. Rather interestingly, I will not be part of the bandwagon this year and this has happened for the simple reason that I do not have a yard stick for that kind of reflection. To make it simple, I for some reason did not have any plans (written or otherwise) or goals for the year. In view of that, I feel like I have no gauge for measuring my achievements or failures in the year. Whatever happened happened and whatever didn’t happen didn’t happen. On to the next one.

Some of you might have seen a couple of my social media posts dubbing the year as a year of liberals. What I was trying to say was that it was a year which was not bound by any sort of self-regulatory measures.

Talking of achievements and failures, I have wavered between the extremes for most of the year and this year has been flat with no significant crests and troughs. There have been no significant changes in my life in the year (apart from kusintha nyumba kawiri ndi kusintha ma department katatu). Walked in broke and I am still broke. Walked in single and I am still single. Started the year and intern Medical Officer at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital and I am still working at the same hospital. The lack of significant changes coupled with the fact that I had no written plan for the year sort of makes me think that this has been a wasted year. While it might not have been completely wasted, something tells me that it probably could have been better had I scribbled some blueprint for the year.

Being a medical doctor, I spent most of my time a work.  The four major departments I have been in have taught me an interesting lesson about purpose and selflessness. To be honest, medical work can be hectic and in as much as I had not expected it not to be any less tougher than it is, I can confess that I am not fully used to the hectic schedules of hospital work. I have at some point considered quitting blogging in order to redeem some personal time as my schedules keep getting more and more hectic by the day. Rather interestingly, it is through the same hectic work setting that I have learnt the importance of a good work ethic and the importance of commitment. I have had to overstay in the hospital when I could have left because I just had to sort out a thing or two on a number of patients and this has always been fed by the joy of seeing people recover from their ailments and return to normal function. This has in turn taught me that “small” as I may think I am, my little action can bring a major difference into someone’s life, be it at work or otherwise. Thinking about that makes me smile but at the same time it gets me scared when I think about the potential of negatively affecting people through the same reflexive actions of my daily life.

Away from work, I did not have much of a personal life to celebrate through the year. I spent much of my life in the routine of the same old places. I was either at home, work, church or at some place cooling the night of while listening to some live band. It wasn’t much of a progressive life if you look at it from my angle. While I was busy with my routines, there were many people who were making actual progress in their lives. Some of my friends opened successful businesses and others graduated from this thing of riding a couple of minibuses to work and got their own metal horses. While some of us were toiling in our singleness, others were proposing (and posting HD photos of the events), getting engaged and even getting married. Away from such, a look at my account balance didn’t really tally with the fact that I had spent about half a year receiving some sort of salary. At some point I snapped out and began to ask myself as to what I had been doing with all the days, weeks and months of the year thus passed. The reflection didn’t last that long as I quickly remember there none of that was in my plans for the year; or rather that I had no plans at all for the year. The guys who were doing it all probably spent a lot of time and money in the background planning whatever we saw in the open. I might have dwelt on these thoughts to console myself but these thoughts made me re-evaluate the importance of forging my own path and moving at my pace in my own lane. More often we tend to beat ourselves by rating ourselves using other people’s achievements as our yardsticks. This year has taught me otherwise. While it is good to look at others and emulate the good they do, it is important to make our own life paths with clear goals. If we are to be beating ourselves for lack of progress, it should be based on our own set goals and life plans.

The last big lesson I learnt this year was one on independence and self-reliance. When I was starting work in December last year, I was still a spoon in my parents’ house. Three days of into work, I decided to leave my parents place in Lunzu. At first, I settled with one friend of mine but I later moved into a lonesome less than a month later (sanandithamangitse but he left for school in SA). I enjoyed the lone wolf mode for about 6 or 7 months after which I joined forces with Lord Isaac in our conquest of the Brookside Flats where we happily live now. There was something interesting about the time I was living alone. Having worked for a period without any salaries, it was difficult for me to sustain life and more often than not I found myself knocking at my parents’ door seeking financial bailouts. That, of course, changed with time as I got to pick myself up along the way after making that determination to be financially independent. Looking at life in retrospect, I realize that financial independence was probably the least of my worries then as I had another issue I needed to settle; emotional independence. Rather unfortunately, it is a bit difficult to explicate this situation without stepping on a few toes but in short, there was a time that being away from dating got the better part of me and made me feel incomplete. That almost made me fall into a chain reaction that would have led into a downward spiral. Surviving such a situation has made me graduate into someone who appreciates completeness of the self. If you are to ask me what I have learnt from such situations, it is that everyone needs to strive for financial, social and emotional independence as it is important to oneself and people around.

Here we are in the very last days of the year 2017. If you are to ask me, this has been a wasted year and I have hardly done anything worth showing to myself. On the other hand, I feel like there might be some people who have looked at me and thought that I was doing the right things. Indeed, it might be a wasted year, but I have learnt a lot of lessons on living for others, defining one’s own life and living by the definition and lessons on self-reliance.
It is my hope that your year has been better than mine and that you have done more than I have. More importantly, I hope that we (you and me) will achieve more in 2018 as we move in our own self-defined lanes as we chase our dreams.

Merry Christmas to you and all the best as you make your 2018 yardsticks.

Richie