Speeding Bullet

“My life is like a speeding bullet that hasn’t hit the target yet.”

— Scott Mescudi (Kid Cudi)

1.

June 2015. I’m a few weeks away from completing my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme in Ibadan, Oyo State. I’ve spent the last few days doubling down on my plans to create an online bookstore. In the past few months, I’ve read Brad Stone’s The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, Jim Collins’ Built to Last and Good to Great, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and Seth Godin’s Purple Cow.

I have a purple journal dedicated to this idea. I sketch a business plan. I’ll develop it later. I do a quick survey on my Twitter. People want this. I make a list of the books to stock my store with. I’ll start selling via my social media handles, then evolve into a full website like Amazon. It is a great idea, I am going to be a CEO, I am going to be rich.

Then reality strikes.

I finish NYSC and move to Lagos to live with some family friends. One month passes, no online bookstore. My purple journal disappears into the background of my life, slowly creeping into oblivion. After a month with no job and living on an irregular allowance from my parents and free food from the people I live with, I get tired and decide to post on Facebook that I am looking for work. Within a few days (or hours, I can’t remember), a young man named Kunle Jinadu, a fellow alumnus of my school, contacts me that I should come to Yaba for a chat. I oblige, I don’t have much of a choice.

I’d spent the last year working remotely as a part-time social media associate and content creator for an accounting tech startup based in London but with an office in Lagos. I was getting paid roughly 20k a month to add to my N19,800 NYSC allowance. I also had a brief stint as a social media intern at Alder Consulting.

So, when Kunle offers me a job as a content developer, managing social media and other channels, I jump at it. It’s work I’m used to, right?

For the first two weeks, I travel between Iyana Ipaja and Yaba every day, waking up as early as 4 AM and getting back home as late as 8 PM. At first, it’s not a problem. But after 2 weeks of travelling between cities and sitting in traffic for hours, I start to get worn out. One Monday, I pack a bag and decide I’ll spend the work week in the office and come back home during the weekends.

This is my first full-time job out of school and I’m not ready for the mental strain and the stress. I don’t fall sick, but I’m not healthy either. Something is wrong with me, I just can’t figure out what.

I don’t stay long at Kunle’s startup. I learn quickly how ill-prepared I am for the world of work. Everything I’d learned in school, everything I thought about my work ethic is put to question, and I am unable to answer any of those questions. I am terribly ineffective at my job, I constantly fall behind on deadlines. I can feel Kunle’s high hopes for me dissipate like water droplets on a hot plate. My self-esteem takes a massive hit. I fall into a depression, the first of many. Some days I sit in the office and I can’t do anything. The vigour and optimism I finished NYSC with are long gone. There’s a dark, heavy cloud hanging over my head, closing in on me. I feel the dam in my mind cracking, water trickling down the cracks. I’m this close to bursting.

2.

I quit Kunle’s company after a few weeks to join another startup, this time, a small media publication called Tech Cabal. Here, I see my work productivity improve a bit. I enjoy what I do and I’m learning a lot about so many things. I took a pay cut to join the company but it’s nothing I’m worried about. I finally see a big picture of what my career could be: a journalist that holds the world’s attention (or, at least, a small part of it).

After a few months at Tech Cabal, I’ve seen my writing improve in geometric proportions. I’m starting to learn what critical thinking and analysis look like. I’m surrounded by some of the smartest people I’ve ever met. But there’s a problem. I don’t feel at home. Something in me doesn’t click with the place.

I’ve dedicated my life to my new job. I move permanently from Iyana Ipaja to Surulere where the office is. I spend the day sitting at my chair in the newsroom and my nights sleeping on a brown couch not too far from my seat. I miss what it feels like to sleep on a bed. I survive on suya and Indomie noodles or garri every night. And sometimes, when I want to spoil myself, I buy chicken and chips from a grill nearby.

My whole life revolves around my job, but I do not feel appreciated. I feel like I’m giving so much and getting little in return. I’m learning new things and growing mentally, but sometimes that is not enough.

A few months later, I quit. I pack my bags and head back to Iyana Ipaja, unsure what I will do next.

For the next few months, I float around as a freelance writer, getting a few gigs here and there. Nothing major. I spend half the time reading and writing, and the other half coming in and out of depression, wondering what the hell I’m going to do with my life. I write and re-write a list of goals and plans for myself. But the problem remains — how do I pursue them? Where do I begin?

I feel the cloud gathering above again. It gets thicker, this time, worse than before.

3.

March 2018. I’m staring at my laptop, doing nothing really. My phone rings. The caller ID says ‘Osagie Alonge’. Why is he calling me? A thousand other questions run through my head within a second. Then I answer.

By the end of the call, I hear a voice in my head, “Your life is about to change and you don’t even know the half of it.”

The Editor-in-Chief of Pulse Africa, one of the continent’s largest new media publications, just offered me a job to come head Business Insider Sub-Saharan Africa. I’m numb. I try to speak but I can’t, then I find my voice. I’m already considering another job offer for when I return to Lagos, but it’s nothing compared to this.

I’d just completed my media and journalism fellowship in Arlington, Virginia and decided to stay back in D.C., a much-needed break from Nigeria. A few days ago, I was worried about going back to school. I’d gone on a tour of American University where I hoped to get a Master’s degree. Days later, I’m getting offered a job to head a pan-African publication. A few years before, I was floating around life, looking for some sort of direction, unable to figure out what to do next. A few years later, here I am.

Osagie organises for me to meet with the Business Insider team at the headquarters in New York.

I board the bus to New York the next day, straight to One Liberty Plaza to meet with senior members of the Business Insider team. Our conversation is fruitful. It’s clear what they want from the partnership with Pulse that birthed their Sub-Saharan Africa edition.

After the meeting, I walk down Broadway, past the Wall Street intersection, past Trinity Church, past the famous statue of the fearless girl staring down the charging bull, and all the way to The Battery. Far into the distance is the Statue of Liberty, a blur in the horizon. The next few years of my life flash before my eyes. I’m exactly where I want to be. I didn’t see it coming, but I’m glad I’m here.

4.

June 2017. The moment I arrive at the entrance of Trumbull College at Yale University, New Haven, my head starts floating. I’m finally here. I didn’t think it would happen, but it did. I’m finally here.

I make my way through the heavy gates and it feels like I’m walking through the set of a medieval movie. I feel like Merlin walking through the gates of Camelot. Or Jon Snow riding on his horse through the gates of Winterfell.

The past month was a rollercoaster ride. From when I got the email telling me I had been accepted into the Storytelling for Modern Media workshop at Yale to when I opened the GoFundMe page to crowdfund my tuition and accommodation fees and plane tickets, to when Davido, a popular Nigerian musician who shares my name and surname (David Adeleke), offered to help cover some of the cost, to when GoFundMe flagged my campaign and took it down and I had to painfully defend the legitimacy of what I was doing and the fact that just because I’m Nigerian does not mean I’m a fraud, to the very moment I boarded a flight to the US, and out of Africa, for the first time, to the moment I landed in New York, feeling like Kevin in Home Alone, to the moment I had to ask for help on how to use the subway because I’d only ever been in a train once (if I could consider what I got into a train), to the moment when I learned that two New York trains can have the same letter and number but be going in separate directions, to when I first walked into Grand Central Station which I’d only ever seen in movies, to this moment, walking through the gates of Trumbull College, ready for the next chapter of my life.

Everything led me here, to Yale. The almighty Yale. This is a chance of a lifetime and I will cherish every moment of it.

I’m about to learn one of the most important lessons of my life at Yale — that I’m just as good enough and qualified for success as anyone else, that I’m not too young for any good thing that comes my way, no matter how big it is, that life is largely about the quality of the opportunities you get and how well you take them.

5.

Present day. In a few days, I’ll resume my new position as Head of Communications at Eko Atlantic. Most people I tell about the new job ask me if I’m nervous. I’m not. I haven’t been nervous about work since the day I stepped through the gates of Trumbull College.

Am I special? I don’t think I am, at least not in a way that no one else is. Am I lucky? Yes, very much so. My life is a collage of luck and insane opportunities with a dash of an innate desire to never settle.

I’ve lived a life of privilege — not from a position of power or wealth (my papa no be Dangote), but of good fortune. I’m fortunate to have parents who have dedicated their lives to making sure I have the best version of the life they can afford. I’m fortunate to have experienced a myriad of cultures that have shaped me into the person I am today (I spent the early years of my life moving from city to town to city). I’m fortunate to have met and interacted with some amazing and crazy people who have equipped and reinforced me to get to where I am today. Life has dealt me good and bad cards, mostly good, and I’m fortunate to still be alive.

Whenever I’m tempted to pat myself on the back or drink my own Kool-Aid, I remember the things that made me who I am and I’m incredibly grateful. It’s not often that a 25-year-old Nigerian gets to experience the things I’ve experienced. I recognise my privilege and I’m thankful for it.

I go into my new position with a particular quote by Toni Morrison I stumbled upon recently in mind: “…Remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.”

My life has been good mostly because people have helped make it good. My life has been mostly easy. I hope that to the best of my ability, I can make life good and easier for many more people because no one deserves to suffer simply because they exist.

I won’t disappoint. This bullet will hit its target.