I consider myself to be a writer. A published one. Like i’ve received a cheque in the proverbial mail at some point in my life for doing some writing. It felt great. It happened once, but I hang on to that memory like my life depended on it. Why once? Well, to be honest the way this life works is if you want it bad enough you go get it, or it comes to you. The whole law of attraction blah blah. At the time I was intentionally trying to be a published writer. I reached out to a couple of magazines, one responded, and just like that, Malcolm Gladwel and I were in the same league.

I don’t write as much as I would like. I journal, a lot. It’s one of the most therapeutic things you could ever take up. The macho man inside me i screaming, why would you tell people that Alex!? Well i just did. It works for me. I’ve dabbled in blogging in a myriad of ways over the last 10 years. I only wish i’d stuck to one thing during that period, i’d be big right now. Hi Mark Manson. But here we are, i’m still young enough to pull off another 10 years so maybe this is the first of many to come. Pray for me.

If you’ve bothered to read any other articles on this blog, then you know a couple of things about me. Like how I had an oopsie and became a Dad at 24. Like how I created a Company, raised like 12 million bob from investors and then the company tanked, leaving me millions in debt. Like how after 7 years of Marriage I called it quits, stayed separated for a minute, then miraculously got back together with the Queen of my existence. These are just a couple of stories in the book i’ll write when i’m 50, and rich, and famous, and still having a six pack. I’m kidding. I won’t be that famous. I’m thinking of calling that book ‘heka heka za Muriu’. You think that would sell? No? Ok, let’s put a pin on it for now.

When you are 20. Everyone, save for trust fund babies, seems the same to you. You all dabble in the fashion of the day, even if it looks ridiculous on your skinny frames. You all think 1,000 bob is a fortune. You are all dreamers. And if you are a country boy trying to fit into city life like i was, my guy you fake it until you become it. You want people saying, haiya, you are from Ol’ka where? Imagine i thought you were a guy from Strath school. And when I say people I mean the cute girls. The yellow yellow ones with accents that come out of their noses like ivy league mucus. Those ones. 

When you are 25, the universe starts separating the weed from the chaff. That boy from Kirinyaga that used to always top the class but hadn’t discovered the transformative power of deodorant yet joins Google as an engineer, with a starting salary that makes you want to flush yourself in the nearest toilet. And it gets worse, the character that spent more time in the Girls’ hostels than he did in class gets a scholarship to go study Aviation in Australia. If the key to an Australian scholarship was partying from Thursday to Sunday and showing up in class on Monday with breath that can only be described as a fire hazard, what was I doing drowning in all that reading? Then you hear Kamau got some minor celebrity pregnant, and they’ve move in together, and started a Youtube channel, that now has sijui 10,000 subscribers, and ati some real estate company gave them a house in Ngong where they shoot videos of everything from their kid pooping to God forbid their time in the shower. Your world is rotating, too fast, you feel dizzy. As you bend under the table of the Accountant lady trying to fix her CPU, you feel a darkness that devours your very reason for existence. Then you realize the silly Agatha hadn’t switched on the power and you want to grab her by her smelly weave and tell her to consider a Salon visit every once in a while. But you know, what you really hate isn’t Agatha’s weave, it’s your lowly IT support job and mediocre existence.

You see, it’s not that your life sucks, no. You are actually doing OK. You can pay your bills. You can afford a beer every two weeks or so. You have a cute baby yes, but the TV commercial people have just not discovered her yet, or maybe you haven’t bothered to send her oh so cute videos to the casting people. Either way, no real estate companies are rushing to give you a free house. You try your hand at biashara, selling flash disks, building websites, partnering with your Boy to set up that cyber in CBD, you even explore crafts like modelling and acting, but my brother nothing sticks. You either lose cash, or time, or your sanity. But what’s really driving you up the wall is the Comparison to humans who used to beg for a pint off your 70 bob worth beer jug at the campus local. Back then you were the shieet. You had done some computers before joining Campus so you knew your way around the Computer lab. You could type like a 60 year old secretary, and would charge Masters & PHD students by the word to get their thesises out on time. Thesises? That doesn’t sound right. Anyway. You were doing comparably better. 

When you are 30, the decks have been stacked, or so it feels. After a near bankruptcy, after finally realising you are a married man who can’t be running around this city like you aren’t, after you get your first school fees structure that gives you an instant migrain, after you’ve done the job hopping circuit and settled into a career that’s headed in some sort of direction, after you’ve come to terms with the fact that cha Muhimu in life is more than your paycheck, or celebrity status, or cool factor or 4 bedroom house in Ngong, or Bradd pitt’s body type, you start to look inwards. When Kirithu from Kirinyaga shows up at the Campo reunion in a VW Touareg you don’t start looking for the nearest wall to punch. When Curvy Cate from Pangani shows up looking like Round Cate from Pangani, you don’t secretly delight in the fact that she barely looked at you back in school. When Celebrity Kama shows up in a raving blue Subaru that announces it’s arrival from 3 kms away, and everyone knows he’s now divorced, or separated or co-parenting whatever you call it from his Mama, and that kumbe that whole free house in Ngong storo was all a lie, coz it turns out they had gotten a mortgage, tried to convince the Bank to reduce their repayments in exchange for “mentions”, and the bank refused, and they couldn’t meet the repayments, and got auctioned, and now he’s living on his Pal’s couch and his Celeb baby mama moved back in with her Mama, you actually empathize.

You genuinely want to know how he’s doing. You like(d) Kama. Actually you and Kama shared some good times back in school days, before he started hanging around the socialite circles and sold his soul to fame.
You are 34. Two kids in. Your debts from that failed Company are almost fully repaid. You’ve survived a horrendous second pregnancy. You’ve survived a strained marriage. You’ve survived a separation. Your biggest triumph however isn’t all that external stuff. No. Your biggest triumph is more subtle, more internal, more Spiritual if you may. In fact, you’ve travelled the world and realised that being grounded in God was the thing you needed all along. You now pray for 30 minutes every morning. You share bible verses on insta stories. You speak openly about your life, struggles, triumphs, and somehow, somehow, you have found a peace that surpasses all history, all Comparison (including that Robert who went to Harvard and now apparently is doing some ass kicking on Wall street, no no, you don’t resent him at all, ok maybe a little, but not enough to lose sleep).

You wake up, you pray, you go out and do your thing. Your close friends give a damn about you, and vice versa. You’ve never been more happily married, and your kids give you a joy you can’t describe. You’ve got passions, and a career, and a purpose, and faith and everything in between that was always there but you were too caught up in ‘Chasing the dream’ to see it all.

And you sit down this one Friday morning to write an article, and the only two words that come to mind are, IT’S OK. Your yesterday, your Today, and your future, whatever that may be, are all OK. It’s your story, uniquely yours, and no amount of wishing, and comparing and chasing winds will change that. Like someone once said, ‘Kila mtu na mtihani yake’. Now that was a wise human.