blankIts been many moons avid reader. But my absence has not been uneventful. On the contrary, it has been very noteworthy. While I was away, I got to meet fabulous people, travel to eccentric places, and got to know many self blind spots.  At some point I felt the true frustration of a writer’s block. Something happened to me in 2020 that changed the trajectory of my writing life. I say my daily journaling stop, and weekly blogging stop.  I basically fell off the face of the earth. When I look back, I note what could have caused this fall off. I was experiencing a not favorable living arrangement with a person whom I later concluded had mental health issues. I also moved jobs and moved cities. Somehow I was not able to bounce back to the thing I loved to do, journaling and blogging.

While the “fall off the face of the earth” stayed longer than I expected, I also started on a treacherous journey of self awareness. The “gurus” on Instagram made it look so easy and sexy. But, “let me tell you Maina”, as Kenyans like to say, it has not been easy.  At times I thought I was hacking it right before the universe throws a curve ball and I wanted to just quit and die. Fortunately for me, the very universe had brought to me a sister. A soul sister, who I knew before I started this journey. She is a “cousin” from another mother. We were not blood related but we still call each other cousin. This is a lady that at some point I “feared” quite a lot. I felt she was not someone I was inclined to talk to. I was ok with the 6ft pole distance between us. How she was transformed to be my awakening partner still baffles me. I could never have asked for a better partner for this this journey. She has been an awesome mirror and resounding board. It has continued to amuse us how we not only have physical resemblance but our life experiences are also similar in many ways.  She feels me, she gets me and so do I her. At times we are thinking the same thing or simultaneously share the same thing even though we are in different time zones. It has been an exhilarating experience and it continues to be. I look forward to every day with excitement as I await what lies behind the next bend.

Then today, as I sat on this recliner which is no longer as comfortable as it was, I begin to think about “what next” for this new year. As I click on Youtube, looking for calming music, I land on a video that captures my attention. It is a channel called “Life in Kajiado”. What a fresh breath of life. I get captured by every video in this channel. It feels like I am sucking on mother land’s fresh nectar. I get so fixated on the TV that I don’t smell the food cooking on the stove is burning.  I have never seen anything like this before. Such a young couple doing things some of us would not dare do. Relocating to the bundocks from the city. I cannot lie and say I did not feel envy and jealousy. I did. This is the kind of life I want. I feel this deep connection with them. I feel homesick. I wish I could just wake up, get my passport and move back home. But, as it is the nature of my generation, the GenX, the fear of not having a guarantee for physical security and income cannot let me do that.  We are more of HARDWARE  and the generations after us are more SOFTWARE as my cousin Edward G told me in our most resent conversation. They know how to make money by content creation. This is something I intend to learn. I need to study it, just the way I studied for my masters degree. This concept does not come easily to me. And I am ok with that. I am however happy because I can learn and start creating content such as Mackenzie and Amara. Check out their Youtube channel if you want to know what I am talking about. Note, this is not a paid advertisement for their channel.

Oh, while I was away, I also learned knitting and I have some very beautiful projects under my belt. I also started painting. An armature in both ventures, I decided it is not about competing with anyone. It is about the joy of creating something with my hands. The painting appended on this  article is mine.  I felt the urge to paint the state of my mind at the time. I called it CHAOS. It has been a chaotic mind for a long time. Many thoughts, and mostly not very encouraging thoughts have been running amok in my head. I realized it is something the mind does. Once the EGO has a firm grip on your mind, the thoughts that come out of it are usually full of guilt, fear, shame, frustration, disappointment and everything negative. This is what happens when you live for a long time unconscious of what you are consuming via your five senses. Many times we are on social media, mostly on the phone, flipping left, right, up and down without paying much attention to the information we are interacting with. Unfortunately, our subconscious mind does not filter out what is wrong. It consumes everything. Eventually, all the negative messages one as been consuming from everyone and everything around them comes to bite.  Sometimes I laugh when I catch a weird thought. I find myself talking to my mind, questioning how it comes up with such annoying and disarming thoughts. I now know that in order to change my thoughts, I must change the quality of information I consume.  I credit this awakening to God, the universe, whatever you prefer calling the omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent force that transcends all human understanding.  I am still working on myself and as hard as it has been, I cannot stop. I am intentional in emancipating myself from all mental slavery as Bob Marley asked us to.

For now, let me wish you a 2025 that is worthy only for the kings, queens, princes and princesses. You aught to live as one because you are. Till next time, to each his/her own!!