Dera's Diary

Hello world, It’s been a busy week and an even busier weekend but while thinking of what to write, I started to reflect on some of the life lessons that have been pretty salient recently. God is capable of making things that we would never have thought possible literally happen. Sometimes we notice it and we have that ‘no way’ moment. Some other times, the circumstances sneak up on us and we don’t notice the fact that we’re living in what were once just prayers and dreams unless we intentionally reflect. I’m friends with people that I remember meeting and feeling like I would never be friends with. I’m also friends with people that hurt me I ways I thought I could never recover from or forgive them for. I don’t know if you ever really forget where you started with someone or fully forget what someone may have done that didn’t sit well with you. Sometimes that could mean the end of a friendship. Sometimes it should. But sometimes, tough things don’t mean that relationships, or...

Hello guys, It's been a little while since I've posted on here. The last two weeks have seen me through moving across the ocean to Uni, having a week of international and general orientation and then having my first week of classes. It was a lot, but not necessarily in the ways I expected. Stepping onto campus for the first time, I wasn't as uncomfortable as I expected. My navigation skills are really not up to snuff and on such a big campus, that could easily have been a place of anxiety and worry for me. I thought they would be. Instead, it was exciting. I used google maps to find my way, admiring the picturesque area and not truly taking any time to sleep off the 23 hours worth of travelling. International Student Orientation started and I had to make my way with getting to know a new group of people. I actually saw a lot of personal improvement here in the sense that I was quite comfortable being and walking and eating on my own, but I also wanted to meet people and...

In my house, at least whenever my mum is around, CNN is always on at night. My mum likes to stay up to date with what’s happening and enjoys having CNN as background noise (weird, I know). Anyway, I happened to be listening the other day and one of the speakers (he wasn’t one of the normal news presenters) was talking about the Mar a Lago search with Trump. And he said (I paraphrase) ‘this is something we’d expect from third world countries, not from a country practicing the rule of law’, and this chafed a bit. Don’t get me wrong, even in high school, we were thought to think of Nigeria, our country, as a third world country. I remember cramming a list of qualities and characteristics by which you would classify a country as ‘third world’ or ‘developing’. It wasn’t until I came to the UK to study the IB and learnt some more about this and how these classifications leak into the way these countries are treated globally that it began to upset me. I’m not denying the fact that Nigeria a...

I was talking to a friend today and after discovering that we both struggle with this, I figured someone else out there probably does as well. Both of us were bonding over our mutual inability (sometimes) to just enjoy the good times as they happen. We either spend our rest filled, joyful, ordinary moments worrying about times when things will not be as easy, or comparing ourselves to people who seem to be doing and achieving more. This is pretty natural, I think. I've been doing next to nothing this summer, but when I hear about some of the amazing (and yes, productive) things that some of my friends have been doing, I can't help but wonder if I should be doing more as well. I think in some situations, a reminder can be helpful, especially if you DO have things that you should be doing that you have been postpoining and procrastinating. But (and this will probably echo some of my other posts), I think it's a bit too natural to consistently think that you are behind in so...

The other day, my siblings and I were talking about our high school. We went to a boarding school in a little known state in Nigeria for our six years of secondary school and my brother had commented on how much better our experience would have been if we were allowed to bring phones. My sister and I immediately jumped on his argument and disagreed, stating that we believed it would've made things really bad. Personally, I have very strong introvert tendencies. I'm more comfortable on my own or with well established friendships and my idea of a comfort zone is a situation in which I don't have to go out and talk to people I don't know or mingle and come up with small talk. The beauty of secondary school (despite all its flaws) and the camps that I was able to attend as a younger teen was that not having a phone MADE me stop and look at the people around me. There was no cushy comfort pillow for me or for the people around me to land on when we didn't want to talk a...

Hey guys, I thought I would do another recap of some of my favourite posts from the last 6 months... I'm tired of being scared January 28th 2022 - In this post, I spoke about our fearful nature and how I'm making strides in stepping away from that and conditioning myself to focus on what I can do. From: an introvert February 17th 2022 - This week, I wrote a letter from my introverted self to those who might seek to understand my nature and the nature of other introverts who can relate. The grass is greener on the other side March 12th 2022 - I explored a different side of this popular saying in this post and spoke about how we always look back at our past with rose-tinted glasses; simplifying and minimising the things that made all the difference back then. I encourage you and myself to be present. Get ready for a lot of challenging questions April 9th 2022 - I wrote about my own experience with learning to trust God over myself and I invite you to do the same. ...

I know the title is a long one, but hear me out... I was talking to my sister the other day about the future. I know everyone thinks about the future and stuff, but before I became 18, it was never really an intentional thought. But once this birthay came, basically overnight, I started thinking about the type of relationships I wanted to have in the future and careers and money and all that stuff that we can get away with being blissfully unaware of when we are in our early teen years, if you're fortunate. Anyway, I was thinking about the type of friends I wanted to have and the type of marriage I'd like to have, and my sister asked if I was working to become the type of person that would attract these friends and that type of guy. And I definitely had not been thinking about that as deeply as I should've been. Maybe you're like me. I feel like when we're trying to plan our futures and our standards in general, we forget the astronomic role we play in being the...