A few months back, during my final year in the university, I felt I was living through the busiest period of my life. In partial fulfillment of my degree, I had to complete a project on any topic of my choice. While some of my coursemates chose to pay people to help them write their projects, I and many others chose to write it by ourselves. I had every reason to write it by myself. For starters, I wanted to do it for the experience and more importantly, my conscience wouldn't even allow me to do otherwise. My days were tough and tight. I was always running shelter skelter from one office to another, trying to meet deadlines. It was as if I had no life outside school and my project.
To make matters worse, I barely had time to chat with friends, not to talk of watching anime or doing some other things. Somehow, I had to find a way to balance my project and school activities; tests, and classes. My social life declined significantly. I wanted that phase to pass. I wanted it to pass badly. I truly believed that once that phase was over, life would slow down. But I was wrong. Because the last month has been crazy. Over the past few days, the word “crazy” has somehow made it into my daily vocabulary. Whenever someone asks about my day, I say, “It was crazy!” The craziness started a month ago.
NYSC camp happened.
For those who do not know what NYSC means, it stands for National Youth Service Corps. It's a compulsory one-year program for graduates in Nigeria. The program begins in a camp. Corps members are required to live in a camp for 3 weeks. Even before I graduated, I had been hearing many awful stories about NYSC camp. Past corp members shared their experiences about how daily life in camp is tightly structured. And when it was finally my turn, I also experienced some of those things.
From early morning drills, to boring lectures, to long hours under the sun. To make matters worse, I had to stay up all night every night to work. I barely had time to work during the day, and the only time I could make up for the lost hours was to sacrifice my sleep. I thought I wouldn't be able to survive. But one day became 2 days and then the 21 days were over. It was so childish of me to think it would all be over. Camp ended about a week ago, and since then it's been me running up and down, traveling from one state to another for documentation (post camp documentation).
The past month has been crazy. What surprises me the most is how poorly I am handling myself. I thought I was stronger than this. I thought I had learnt how to manage pressure and life’s draining activities. Instead, I find myself tired all the time, mentally drained, and easily irritated. Everything is just overwhelming. A lot is going on in my life and even with that, I still have to work. What if this is not the busiest period of my life? What if there is more coming? More busy days coming?
Image in this post is mine.
Thanks for reading.