
Cheers to 2025
Every New Year holds promise, as though it is any different from the turn of
“If you’re searching for that one person that will change your life, take a look in the mirror”
The countdown to valentine’s day has begun and this year I want to make up for all the years I never got a gift, a date, a cake, flowers, gifts, cards, or sweet lovey dovey messages. How do you intend to achieve this baby girl? Well, a few days ago I came up with the ingenious idea to be my own Valentine for this year, to gift myself a Valentine experience to remember and cherish, complete with flowers, cakes, gifts, the whole works and yes! I am doing it by myself, and for myself; simply because I can.
I am dedicating Valentine’s day to myself; in other words, this year I must do Valentine by fire by force LOL! I must receive flowers, and other nice things that go along with the day. I know this might sound cheesy but tell me isn’t there something you have always wanted, but it just always eluded you and you couldn’t even share with anyone for fear of being laughed at or sounding silly. Well, this is my silly and it sure feels good not to even care what anyone thinks for a change. I feel giddy with excitement as I think about executing my perfect Valentine’s day. The thought of going all out for myself has me smiling foolishly and loving every minute of it.
I have never been one of those girls who looked forward to Valentine’s day and all the array of gifts that came with it, there was rarely anything to look forward to, but I always secretly wondered how it would feel to be one of those girls even just for a day, just for Valentine’s day. To experience a day filled with choice gifts, cakes, and all things fancy and sweet.
Wait o! hope this is not what a mid life crisis feels like? Naaaah! this is just me letting go and allowing myself to do me for a change.

So, what’s the plan? Well, I am thinking of getting a cake from Salt Lagos, this will hurt my pocket a bit, but it is go big or go home baby! It is every girls Valentine cake fantasy. A Samsung S21 Ultra, gift wrapped and beautifully tucked in the middle of a bouquet of flowers is sure to have me grinning from ear to ear. An exotic perfume should definitely be on the list and I am thinking Bvlgari Rose Essientielle, I just love that fragrance. In the spirit of bone straight frenzy, I am considering adding a 20 inches bone straight wig to the list for that wawu factor. Hmmmmm! Am I not wawuing myself into bankruptcy like this?
Anyway, I just hope I don’t chicken out once I put a price to this dream Valentine’s day of mine; and may my serious minded self not speak sense to me before I am done executing my plans.
Seriously though, Baby girl deserves some pretty little nice things, and she is going to get it come February 14.
This is me choosing to act on my silly.
What’s your silly?
AyaOba is daughter to an amazing Father, she calls Him Abba. She is a wife and a mother, and she works a 9-5 somewhere in the busy streets of Lagos. She is reserved and can be too serious-minded, but she is learning not to take herself seriously all the time. She loves the theatre and can be found at most stage plays happening in Lagos. She used to be an avid reader and wants to go back to her reading habit. AyaOba is courteous but never the first to extend a hand of friendship, probably because she is shy or fears rejection. Writing has proven to be a good outlet for her, and she hopes to make something great out of it someday soon.

Every New Year holds promise, as though it is any different from the turn of

I want to tell you something about confidence that most people get spectacularly wrong.
And I mean that without arrogance — because I got it wrong too, for longer than I care to admit. I walked into rooms with my chest out and my chin up and told myself that was confidence. I practiced certain expressions in the mirror before big presentations. I rehearsed answers to imagined tough questions in the shower until the water ran cold.
I looked confident. I performed confidence quite convincingly, if I do say so myself.

There is a conversation you have been postponing.
You know the one. It has been living rent-free in the back of your head for days, possibly weeks. You have rehearsed it in the shower. You have drafted opening lines in your head while stuck on the Third Mainland Bridge. You have imagined seventeen different versions of how it could go, and approximately sixteen of them ended badly.
So you have said nothing. You have smiled when you did not feel like smiling, agreed when you wanted to disagree, and quietly let something important fester because the alternative — the actual conversation — felt like detonating a device in a room you still have to live in.

There is a category of question that polite intellectual company tends to avoid: the kind that, if you pull the thread long enough, begins to unravel not just a specific mystery but the entire fabric of what we think we know about human history. The Pyramids of Giza are that thread. They have been standing in the Egyptian desert for roughly 4,500 years.

Let me take you somewhere. Not to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean — at least, not yet. First, to Lagos. Nigeria. Sometime in the late 1980s. A teenager who should probably have been revising for exams is instead sitting cross-legged on the floor of a library, holding a book that is older than most of the furniture around it, reading about a city beneath the sea.

This is my story of discovering a film that challenged everything I thought I knew about the gift of time, every pulsating detail documented to inspire you to leap beyond your limitations and appreciate the beauty of growing old.
This story explores the paradox of immortality and why a movie from 2015 still resonates so deeply with audiences today.
I hope you find it worth your time.

This is my story, every pulsating detail documented to inspire you to question what you know and leap beyond your limitations.
This story is about the audacity of belief, the power of a well-told lie, and the journey to unlearn the things that poisoned my teenage mind.
I hope you find it worth your time.

There is a category of question that polite intellectual company tends to avoid: the kind that, if you pull the thread long enough, begins to unravel not just a specific mystery but the entire fabric of what we think we know about human history. The Pyramids of Giza are that thread. They have been standing in the Egyptian desert for roughly 4,500 years.

There is a peculiar kind of madness that does not arrive with hallucinations or trembling hands. It arrives quietly. At two in the morning. In a small desert town in New Mexico. It sounds like an idling diesel engine somewhere in the distance — except there is no engine. It sounds like a bass note being held by an invisible orchestra — except there is no orchestra.

Let me confess something. Long before LinkedIn articles, podcasts, and leadership keynotes became my world, I was a teenager sneaking to the library

In an era that increasingly demands hyper-specialization, Akin Akingbogun stands out as a refreshing anomaly. He is a man who refuses to be confined to a single box.

There is a particular kind of silence that falls on a man when the phone stops ringing, the proposals go unanswered, and the diary that once groaned under the weight of appointments sits quietly — almost mockingly — open. If you have ever been there, you know it.

Let me tell you something uncomfortable: the most generous person you know — the one who volunteers every weekend, donates quietly, never asks for anything in return — is probably getting something out of it. Not money. Maybe not even recognition. But something.

Adaeze had been awake since 4 a.m.
Not because she was anxious — though she was — but because this trip felt different. After eighteen months of follow-ups, phone calls, and PowerPoint presentations polished to a mirror shine, the deal was finally ready to close. An investor meeting in Abuja. A partnership that would change the trajectory of her small but gutsy consulting firm. She had triple-checked her flight, her documents, her outfit. She had prayed. She was ready.
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1 thought on “Dedicating Valentine’s day to myself”
Nice,sure you had fun,spoiling one’s self is really necessary occasionally