Lifestyle Archives - Page 7 of 15

Creativity and life purpose

June 2, 2021

Creatives week; Day 2

I was determined to be early this time for my class. It was the only thing on my mind the previous day and I made sure I had everything I needed ready. My clothes of choice were pressed, my school bag packed, alarm set and my breakfast tucked away in the fridge awaiting warming in the morning. It was my first class in leadership school. All went according to plan and the whole time as I made my journey to school I kept peering intently at my watch just incase I had read the time wrong and find myself in trouble. It must have been the nerves now come to think about it. I do not do very well with new things, thanks to my fear for the unknown. I was at school in time with 20 minutes to spare. The very first person who I met was a young wiry fellow with sparsely distributed facial hair and a minimal sense of fashion. He seemed to put very little effort in what he chose to wear. To him clothes were for just one primary function, to cover his naked body and that was more than enough. With earphones dangling from his ears like spaghetti he leaned over with a wide smile and welcomed me into class.

In no time we were settled in having performed all the pleasantries and the tutor came in and talked about life purpose. Mark you this was the first time I was probably interacting with this term in detail and if you are thinking this was a long time ago, no you are wrong. This was at the beginning of the year 2020. You see the brain is one little hypocrite, at one moment you are buddies and the very next moment it is accusing you of something you should have done a long time ago. I remember getting out of that class looking back at the gamble of life I had lived for so long. I was a blindfolded pilot of my own plane and I knew this had to change as soon as yesterday. It was time to identify my life purpose and make necessary strides to living that already. Do you know what a life purpose is anyway? Or are you like me then, hearing it for the first time.

A life purpose is simply that motivating aim of your life. The reason you get up every morning to do what you do. Have you given it thought? Why you do what you do? The reason for stressing about it? Experts say having a purpose in life is one of the fundamental factors of happiness for without it, you’ll live your life less focused, less efficient and you’ll often feel restless and stressed because you don’t feel aligned with the things you do. You can read more about it here. Being day 2 of the creatives week, I will talk about the need to be a creative in line with your life purpose. Like we reflected yesterday about the past year and how all of a sudden very many people have become creatives over night, I think it is important to have a focus right from the start to reduce on frustration, stagnation and or burn out in your creative journey. Find out what I talked about on day 1 for context.

My life purpose is to improve livelihoods by promoting better lifestyle through informed healthy nutrition practices. If you don’t already know, you will find nutrition insights on this site and everything that I do on a daily is in line with my life purpose. What I am trying to say is that as a creative you need to figure out what your life purpose is and create things in that line. When I was starting out on this site I jumped on anything and everything to write and soon or latter I discovered that people would get confused. Someone needs to come to your sight knowing what they are picking from there. For lack of a better word you may call it specialization. What value are people getting from your creation? When you are allover the place you will lose people because they do not know what to come looking for.

2021 is the International year of creative economy for sustainable development. This was declared by the 74th session of the UN General assembly in 2019 and this proposal recognized the need to promote sustained and inclusive economic growth, foster innovation and provide opportunities, benefits and empowerment for all and respect for all human rights. This is an opportunity for all of us as creatives to join in this cause. Identify your life purpose and make creations that foster all the above. It could be a product or a service that you create, it could be an awareness that you raise, the opportunities are infinite and inexhaustible. Tap into the very things around you and or within you and let us make this year a better year than the last one. Remember a journey of 1000 miles starts with one step. I for one, for the next 5 years my focus is mainly on children below the age of 5 years and differently abled children with disabilities that affect feeding. I will continue to raise awareness in this regard and who knows, their lives and the lives of those round them could get better.

If you should leave with anything today, please remember as a creative, it is important to identify your life purpose, make creations inline with it and lastly participate in this year’s theme; International year of creative economy for sustainable development.

Lifestyle

MOTHER

April 3, 2021

This is a truly beautiful piece, please read this at a slow pace, digesting every word in leisure; do not hurry, this is a treasure. For those lucky to still ne blessed with your mom, this is beautiful. For those of us who aren’t, this is even more beautiful. For those who are moms, you’ll love this.

The young mother set her foot on the path of life. “Is this the long way?” she asked. And the guide said: “Yes, and the way is hard. And you will be old before you reach the end of it. But the end will be better than the beginning.” But the young mother was happy, and she wouldn’t believe that anything could be better than these years. So she played with her children, and gathered flowers for them along the way, and bathed them in the clear streams; and the sun shone on them, and the young mother cried, “Nothing will ever be lovelier than this,”

Then the night came, and the storm, and the path was dark, and the children shook with fear and cold, and the mother drew them close and covered them with her mantle, and the children said, “Mother, we are not afraid, for you are near, and no harm can come and the morning came, and there was a hill ahead, and the children climbed and grew weary, and the mother was weary. But at all times she said to the children, “A little patience and we are there.” So the children climbed, and when they reached the top they said, “Mother, we would not have done it without you” And the mother, when she lay down at night looked up at the stars and said, “This is a better day than the last, for my children have learned fortitude in the face of hardness. Yesterday I gave them courage. Today, I’ve given them strength.”

And the next day came strange clouds which darkened the earth, clouds of war and hate and evil, and the children groped and stumbled, and the mother said: “Look up. Lift your eyes to the light. “And the children looked and saw above the clouds an everlasting glory, and it guided them beyond the darkness. And that night the Mother said, “This is the best day of all, for I have shown my children God.”

And the days went on, and the weeks and the months and the years, and the mother grew old and she was little and bent. But her children were tall and strong, and walked with courage. And when the way was rough, they lifted her, for she was as light as a feather, and at last they came to a hill, and beyond they could see a shinning road and golden gates flung wide. And mother said, “I have reached the end of my journey. And now I know the end is better than the beginning, for my children can walk alone, and their children after them.” And the children said, “You will always walk with us, Mother, even when you have gone through the gates.” And they stood and watched her as she went on alone, and the gates closed after her. And they said: “We cannot see her but she is with us still. A mother like ours is more than a memory. She is a living presence.”

Your mother is always with you. She’s the whisper of the leaves as you walk down the street; she’s the smell of bleach in your freshly laundered socks; she’s the cool hand on your brow when you are not well. Your mother lives inside your laughter. And she’s crystallised in every tear drop. She’s the place you came from, your first home; and she is the map you follow with every step you take.

She is your first love and your first heartbreak and nothing on earth can separate you. Not time, not space, not even death!

Lifestyle

Some nights

February 5, 2021

There I was seated on my couch nursing an annoying evening that had given an ache to some random parts of my being. I decided to pass some time scrolling through twitter as I waited for sleep to take me on. As I begin scrolling, my eyes land on a community of writers (bloggers) that I subscribe to called Afrobloggers. They were announcing the opening of some awards that I came to understand were the “Afrobloggers awards 2020”. Over 140 bloggers had been nominated in different categories including vloggers, podcasts, tech bloggers, food bloggers, family bloggers, personal bloggers, lifestyle bloggers, business bloggers, wellbeing bloggers, news and entertainment bloggers and critical social bloggers. I smiled to myself and thought it was such an undeniably incredible opportunity to be nominated. The thought of me being on the list was no where in the picture. I knew for a fact that there is no where in this world that I could possibly be even thought of to be selected in the pool of hundreds of amazing writers in the whole of Africa. There is no way. I argued with my brain as it prompted to just check. My palpitations began as I run through all the categories. All the while I was saying to myself that there is no way I can be on this list and towards the end I see a category, “Food and Drink” and there I see my blog name. I just could not believe what I was seeing. I even refreshed my phone just in case my mind was playing games and I had began hallucinating. I jumped, turned all over the house, made muffled screams of joy as it was late in the night and also had some inner emotional cries. (Juliana the tears refused to roll haha)

Immediately I created a post to share the good news with friends and family and to seek for their support as well. The amount of support I have received over time is one I sure was not ready for. I write this on the day of the deadline and I can never be anymore proud and thankful to everyone who has supported me and pushed me to keep writing even when I was dragging myself. When I opened my website last year in this exact month I had no idea that one day I would appear in any awards. I am super super thankful.

To the brains behind Afrobloggers, thank you for promoting Africa’s emerging voices. The blocks that you have added to my journey will never be forgotten. To all stakeholders who have taken their time to vote, support, congratulate but most importantly read and share my content, I thank you. May the good Lord bless you for me.

Lastly to my mother who will probably never understand what this is all about I am grateful still for all and of course to God who has continued to give me this opportunity to share with the world this talent he has given. May the best person in every category of these awards win.

By their fruits you shall tell

January 12, 2021

The writer of the book of Matthew in the bible writes; “Beware of false prophets who come to you disguised as sheep but underneath are ravenous wolves. You will be able to tell them by their fruits. Can people pick grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, a sound tree produces good fruit but a rotten tree bad fruit. A sound tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor a rotten tree bear good fruit. Any tree that does not produce good fruit is cut down and thrown on the fire. I repeat, you will be able to tell them by their fruits.”

I write this from the eastern part of the loveliest continent God ever created, Africa; in a country that is surrounded by nothing but land, many like to just say a landlocked country, with a population that is about 42 million or so and the biggest percentage of the population being youth, every energetic people. If you have not already guessed it, I am talking about Uganda. Oh did I mention that we are just a day away from changing government? Oh yes we are.

This period has come with a lot of mind blowing experiences and things seen unfold, unfortunately many of these have been undesirable and unfortunate to watch. We are living in the time of the fourth industrial revolution and if you have no idea what this is, it simply represents a fundamental change in the way we live, work and relate to one another. It is a new chapter in human development, enabled by extraordinary technology advances commensurate with those of the first, second and third industrial revolutions. These advances are merging the physical, digital and biological worlds in ways that create both huge promise and potential peril. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is about more than just technology-driven change.

To put this in the simplest form, just see the magnitude technology has swept every sector in the world. Nothing has been spared right from health care, education, social life and even parenting to mention but a few. In a very profound way we have seen a very big movement of mindset change when it came to these elections unlike the ones we had in 2016 as social media has played such a big role.

Unfortunately this came as a double edged sword. A lot of things that had been done and hidden under wraps, came to be seen by anyone and everyone who could afford an internet bundle. The camera became the strongest weapon one had to be heard or at least believed. When such information got into the world, it increased the furry of both those affected and those causing it. Both parties felt they had a right to do what they did and justified their actions. It is unfortunate that it reached a level of losing lives without any remorse or ownership taken however this takes me back to where we began, the bible says, …..you will be able to tell them by their fruits.

This is a very volatile time we are headed for and all we can do is wait and pray. Now that many of us have been able to ‘tell them by their fruits,’ my only prayer is that we all go and exercise our right to vote and vote wisely. Do not do what you would not want to be done to you or your loved one(s)

May the best person win. For God and my country.

Vulnerability is sexy

January 7, 2021

It is a life that she did not want to taste even when all she wanted was to experience it thanks to her fears. She grew up mostly in the presence of her mother with so little clue of the relevance of men in one’s life except for the brothers who were nothing but just siblings. To her every man was a liar for she believed that they would soon or later be absent just like her father.

For the biggest chunk of her teenage life she stayed away from any emotional friendship and this went all the way into her university days. As she was about to leave university, She let her guard down to a man who had lured her for quite some time. She decided to take her chances but she carried her fears along with her. Just like any other new journey it was exciting and she knew she had hit the jack pot. She removed her fears from her sleeve and hang them not so far away. One thing for sure is that she was in love and determined to make it work.

It was not long before the turbulences began but for fear of rejection and the branding of a failure kept her there. Some days were good but many of them were not but she held out hope. She believed in a God who could never fail and this of course was no exception. She bent the rules of almost everything she believed because to her this was her version of submissiveness so if she started it this early the better it would be; practice makes perfect right? As the red flags flew high past her she ignored them because she was not ready to dwell on ‘negative energy’. She bandaged her wounds each time with a few cries and was strong all through

For three and a half years she prayed, fasted, hoped and did it all. Instead of letting go, she held on even with bruised hands unfortunately it never got better. It is good to hold on faith and believe, fast and wait out but sometimes it is better to let go. Sad as it may sound, not everyone is meant to stay in your life forever and also it is okay for the strong to be weak. Remember this today, reach out when you need help and allow yourself to be vulnerable.

Vulnerability is sexy, never let yourself tear apart alone and do not ignore the signs, even the small ones matter. Not all signs will be big.

To everyone out there who is wearing their fears on their sleeves and are afraid to move, talk to someone, go to therapy, find help somehow. It will be almost impossible to do it alone.