THE ESTHERIAN BLOG

I will start by stating this, I am grateful for life. I am grateful for the opportunity to add another year to my life and the experiences the past year has brought me. I believe the need to state the level of my gratitude is borne out of the constant murmuring in my head, and the overarching message from others, “Where you are now is where you once prayed to be”. Source: Pinterest On my 22nd birthday, I wrote a post summarizing my experiences throughout my 21st year. I was truly grateful for where I was and looking forward to what was to come. Around October, I wrote something else that was a sharp turn from the positivity of my birthday message. I was disappointed with what I was seeing and my inability to help myself get better. That became the central theme of 22 which I have termed the age of disillusionment . I am not quite sure what I wanted 22 to be like, I didn’t expect it to be this. Disillusionment (noun). a feeling of disappointment resulting from discovering that somethin...

Connections. Earlier today, I had a Family medicine test. I believed the test was going to be a breeze, and that was reflected in the way I handled the preparation for the test. It wasn't bad and I was satisfied with how the test went. But that's by the way. The main issue was the way I felt before the test started. For reasons best known to our examiners, we did not enter the hall according to our serial number on the class list, and we were told to sit anywhere for the test. I ended up sitting near someone that used to be my friend. And with the way everything ended between us, I decided to stop acknowledging said person.   I had a mix of emotions ranging from sadness to anger because I had to keep seeing this person until the seats separating us were filled. I am not sure what brought about this range of emotions since I have been seeing him around for a long while now. My best bet is a conversation that I had a few days prior, where he had come up. I am not quite sure what...

Today counts as one of those days,  You know, the ones where you have a thousand and one things to do, and you aren’t quite sure where to start, so you hope and pray you figure it out before the deadline.  What is the deadline, you might ask? I am not sure. One thing is certain though, the timeline for my final exams is out, and I have concluded my final lectures in Med school - at least officially. I am not panicking which is a good thing but low-key, I feel like I should.  Hehe. I am in academic danger.  Hehe. And you know what, I am not too excited to exert myself because I got this. **Sees Neurosurgery past questions** Hehe. Serious danger. Hehe. I asked someone for their opinion on something that was bothering me, and it was either asking this person or sending a message to FK and Jolla, from the ISWIS Podcast, and the person gave really serious advice that I am going to do my best to follow. The downside to having this conversation is that I realised I haven’t ...

This is going to be chaotic. I am learning to embrace things that are chaotic because chaos is not as scary as I have always made it out to be. I have been listening to ISWIS podcast episodes in the past weeks, and the chaos there has been delightful.   The past week has been the most unproductive week I have had in a while, all I have done was sleep, find something to eat and sleep a lot more because what else was there for me to do? The answer is a lot. I am way behind in class and I need to catch up on that. My laundry is piling up and someone has to do it. There is the data collection for my final year project that I am way behind on, but all I have done in the past week was sleep. The sleep has unfortunately not been as refreshing as I expected it to be. I went to bed tired and woke up way more tired than before.  In my defence, I was battling allergies and later caught a cold and as of the time of this writing, my nose is still blocked. I am also homesick. I had ini...

This is not a cooking tutorial. I had people over at my place yesterday and was bothered about it not going particularly well. But it turned out to be fun and with that excitement, I was happy to give a brief summary of how everything went down with my friend. His reply was funny, and it sort of had an inside joke too.  So because of that, I have decided to share a day in my life and today happens to be a perfect day because the plan is to spend the whole day indoors and I am making beef stew. DATE: 13/05/2023. 10:32 am. I just go back in from a short walk to a store to get breakfast stuff and also onions. I don’t have enough onions to season the meat. I am now in front of my computer writing the intro to this essay. Before now, I brought out the beef and Pomo I got yesterday from Shoprite and rinsed it.  I had to add salt to the water I used to rinse the pomo because it was slimy when I brought it out of the fridge, I am not sure why. 11:28 am. Breakfast: Bread and eggs Mesh...

Sometime last year, I was asked an essential question about Church. When that question was asked, I couldn’t answer it because I wasn’t sure which answer rang true to me. The question was quite simple, and I am sure many people can answer it. The question was, “If you always have to complain about the church you attend, why are you still going?” I am not writing this to discuss why this question came up in the first place, instead, I will focus on the answer to this question that I realised sometime this year.  Omid Armin Source: Unsplash Many weeks ago, I saw a tweet that referred to Nigerian weddings as third places and it led me to an article on sharing third places, the mental implication and the narrowing of such places.  Coined by Ray Oldenburg; the third place is not your home (first place), not your work (second place), but those informal public places in which we interact with people. One fascinating thing about third places is that they hold spaces for people without...

Maybe it does get better. Photo Credit: Fidan Nazim Qizi pexels.com I. Last Thursday night, Naza joined me for a stroll. She was yet to decide what to eat when she saw me, and when I told her I wanted to get bread, she decided to get the bread with me. And that has been our game plan in the past few weeks, we take a stroll and buy whatever comes to mind for dinner, be it fried yam, pap, bread, or even biscuits. On our way back, we were chatting about things in general, and I remembered that a friend's induction was the next day, and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to make it. "Why?" you ask. Medical school is the correct answer. It was our unit's surgery day, and I have no idea how that was going to turn out. So because of the uncertainty of the day, I needed to send him a message to inform him of the likelihood of missing his day. He was quite understanding, and I was relieved. I ended up being unable to get to the induction, and I kind of got knocked out wh...