Insecurity - How it affects women and why we must rise above it

Insecurity Part I

Wednesday Oct 15^th, 2014 10:42pm

I have made this blog about me and with this particular blog post I will be opening myself to judgements and attacks from people who believe they are gods but my friends know that I put my life out there and I do this because I know something that a lot of people don’t know or choose to forget and that is that only God can judge me, only God has the right to judge me and HE already knows all my sins so being a saint in any human beings eyes do not put food on my table or pay my bills.  Enjoy J.

Tonight Chibuikem Oga Dr. Udeke from Nigeria also known as Chibuikem or Aaron asked me to come and sleep in his bed until he falls asleep. He was taking too long to fall asleep (preferring to laugh like a silly cat that he is J).  I started singing him nursery rhymes and the nursery rhyme “My Mother” came to me.  I started to sing it to him and he finally slept while I saw myself shedding tears although I didn’t quite understand why.  I remember loving to sing that song a lot as a kid and never once do I remember it making me cry.  Maybe the fact that I am on my period is to blame or maybe its just that this song outlines some of the under appreciated work of women.  I have always believed that women are over worked and under appreciated, but the fact that right now, I don’t have a paying job yet I am always so busy make me wonder how we women cope with all that we do and why a lot of us down play these huge endeavors.  

Why do women down play their importance in this world?  So much so that the world has reduced our worth.  If you don’t think a woman’s worth should be more than it is now, close your eyes and imagine a world where men gave birth to babies.  How much would we have to pay for one baby in that world?  I say a lot! Why do women feel the need to be humble but men don’t?  Humility is a Christian virtue so why is it always described as a good thing in a woman but not so much in a man? Why are a lot of good women very insecure while the worst of men feel very confident in their self worth?  I always have so many questions about human beings, but not so much about technology as most engineers have.  This is why I have decided that a PhD in Psychology, or Sociology would be more my cup of tea than a PhD in Engineering.  Still deciding on which education path to walk.  Indecision some may say is a sign of insecurity.  I guess “we are all insecure” as a fellow woman recently told me. 

I shouldn’t talk about insecurity without telling you all a juicy story of my recent brush with the word and why it has been on my mind a lot lately.  Let me start by saying I have been very bad.  You know how you are supposed to stay above people who try to goad you.  Recently I failed in doing this and got into a LinkedIn (yes, I know of all places!) word war with the wife of a guy I worked with during my internship days.  I was looking at the comments on some of my old blog posts and I saw the same not so nice comment on two different posts left by the same person using a blogger account they opened with a fake name just to post those comments.  The comment started with “How is John Doe?”  John Doe is being used in place of the name of the husband of this woman who claimed in her not so nice comment that I had an affair with her husband and let me know how she prays to lay eyes on me one day so she could deal with me.  Lol!  At the time the name John Doe only rang a bell to me because I remember getting a LinkedIn invite from the name.

To Be Continued…..

Beautiful Imperfections

Here are the promised pictures.  Please totally enjoy the as they were somewhat tricky to post.  I still haven’t figured out how to get these pictures from Samsung galaxy to my Macbook.  I can’t help but wonder if Apple is indirectly telling me to get an Iphone.  Dear apple that won’t work with me.  I would rather go back to a windows PC.  Signed, my beautifully different self. 

NB: Apologies for the poor quality of the pictures, I totally need to upgrade my phone.  Still using the Galaxy S3!

Unhealthy Breakfast #Nofilter J

Before                                         After

Yes!  I do not always eat my fruits and veggies.  This breakfast here was a Monday morning staple growing up.  Back then my mom was not the badass cook she is now (cough) so most mornings we had bread and tea but on Monday mornings we had left over rice from Sunday lunch with tea.  J  I thought that this was a pretty normal breakfast everyone had until I got to college and my dear friend looked at me real funny when I suggested it one lazy morning.  She did enjoy it after she opened her mind to the idea.  So yep on some lazy mornings when I want a hot breakfast but cannot be bordered to cook, I eat rice and tea and I tell myself that because it is breakfast, I don’t have to put veggies in my rice!  And Yes! I skin an oxtail bone real good J

Fridge

They say you can tell a lot about someone by looking in their fridge so please tell me what my fridge says about me because I have no idea! 

Kitchen

 

I love the red accents in my kitchen.  Did you know my favourite color was green until I had kids and red became the favourite color of both my sons?  Now I really think that red is my new favourite color.  Don’t you just love motherhoodJ.

Dirty Laundry

I call this picture “dirty laundry” although the picture itself is showing my clean laundry which was left unfolded at the foot of my bed and on my dresser for a total of six days.  Now that I have literarily aired my dirty laundry in public, I must also tell you that it took a lot of will power to leave that basket there until I didn’t have to stay up late at night just to fold it.  Yea, I am that person who stays up late cleaning after the kids and attempting to restore my home into a beautiful retreat, ignoring the very important fact that I have to wake up early the next morning.  I have neglected sleep so much; it has now departed from me.  I hope you are still keeping my insomnia in your prayers.  I believe God for complete healing soonest because I need my sleep back!!!! I can’t believe how I took it for granted all these years; I used to look at people funny when they say they have a hard time falling asleep.

Kids Bathroom

I would like to think that the reason I caught this bathroom so neat is that my sons are finally grown and that they have been so well bred but last night I stayed up to clean and this bathroom was not so neat so I tell you, it’s just a lucky break.

Kids Bedroom  I told you they weren’t grown.

Dining

I love having this dining table neat; so much that I make my sons eat most of their meals on the breakfast bar.  Yep, I am a horrible mommy too!

Living Area

 I have lived in this apartment for two months now and still don’t have a sofa.  Apologies to all my guests that have had to endure this torture but I will get to it soon.  I promise.  I may even share updated photos with you all soon.

Pantry (Lagniappe) –A little extra

Wandering if this reveals something about me besides the fact that I live in an apartment that has a really tiny pantry!

Last but not Least....

My Imperfect Desk

 

Enough said.

Have an awesome day dear friends and family!  Thank you all for taking out time to leave me comments via e-mail, face book, texts and Whatsapp.  I truly appreciate your nod of encouragement to keep writing. 

God Bless.

My “Irresponsible Action”

Tuesday September 30^th, 2014

There is still a lot I want to share with you all about my beautifully different life but a lot of people have been dying to hear about my “irresponsible action” so I am going to put them out of their misery and just say it already.   As long as I live we will have more time to get to know who I am and how I became who I am.  Or I should probably say as long as I blog. Ok.  Here goes.  Wait, before I start let me apologize for the delay on getting the pictures from last week to you.  Still trying to up my technology game but you will get it, I promise.

Ok. Drumroll please J. Today September 30^th, 2014 is my last day on my first full time job, the only job I have had since college.  This in itself is not irresponsible but the fact that I am walking out of a six figure job without a job lined up can start to paint the picture for you.  So to put it simply, my irresponsible action is that I have decided to embrace joblessness as a gift from God and take an unplanned sabbatical for the next three months but that is not all, please read to the end to find out the worst.  I have always felt cheated that I didn’t get to take my three months backpacking Euro trip after college.  I was broke, 7 months pregnant and definitely in need of health insurance so walking out of college and into a good paying job was not only the responsible thing to do, it was the only thing to do, or so I thought.

Unfortunately I don’t have a backpacking Euro trip planned for the next three months so I guess I will still keep feeling cheated of that but what I look forward to this next 3 months is not having any deadlines, tasks and targets, meetings and engagements except the ones I set for myself and yes I have set some of those up already.  Oh!! The pains of being hopelessly responsible!!!  I am registered now for four classes at Rice University and I was actually going to register for one more class until I started my commute from the Energy corridor here in Houston to Rice University two weeks ago.  Now I am already feeling over committed.  The good thing though is that two of the classes I am registered for are going to be so much fun that most of the work will be making it through Houston traffic to class on time.  My Artist’s Way class already started and its pure joy, I tell you!  My short story writing class begins in two days and I am sooooooooo excited just thinking about it.  For better for worse I would be taking a tiny baby step towards the burning desire I have had for years to write fiction.   At this point my fellow engineering buddies and responsible adults are probably thinking I have completely lost it.  I am sure they will be relieved to hear that I am also registered for a GMAT prep class and I have given myself a target to take the GMAT by late November.  I am not even sure I want to go to Business school right now but unfortunately you can’t just completely turn off being responsible.

More than anything what I look forward to the next three months is being able to listen to God, without the noise of routine or the fear of having to quit my job because I believe he is calling me to do something else with my life.  I am hoping that since I am now jobless, the fear of quitting won’t keep me too scared to move towards God’s Purpose for my life.  Yea, I can hear some of my Naija people already blaming America for sowing all this lofty ideas into my head and yes some of us Americans take this “pursuit of happiness” thing too seriously J.  It is one of the things I love most about being American.  Knowing that not everyone would think you are crazy for wanting to leave a great job and a perceived great life in pursuit of happiness.  Having lots of people who has stepped out in faith to pursue happiness and self fulfillment and succeeded in this great nation helps make the daunting task ahead of me easier but the fact that their story is not mine and their life is not mine still makes the road ahead me seem very rough, very untraveled. 

 I have enjoyed a rewarding engineering career these last few years and the lessons I have learned, the great friends and wonderful mentors and humbling mentees I have been blessed with, all combine to make me know that my career so far was not a misstep as I tell myself some of those times I call me a failure.  I believe that the last few years have prepared me for something other than a traditional engineering career, I believe that God is calling me to be something other than a Petrophysicist.  So what is my “Irresponsible Action” again?   Leaving a cushy engineering job to pursue my passion, to pursue a career I am passionate about.  What is this career you might ask?  I don’t know; ask me in three months J! That is one of the questions I will be looking to God for an answer to these next three months.  Some of the other answers I will be listening to God for are to questions like; should I start venturing into this new career with job hunting or graduate education?  What graduate education should I pursue?  I can already hear some answers but they are not quite clear just yet.

So to my 9 siblings and my 93 cousins, all my mentees and my adopted younger brothers and sisters I say this, I don’t really have it all figured out myself even though I feel like I should.  For how else can I expect to be a good example to you all, how else can I expect to give you advice on your careers and your lives?  I hope and pray that soon I will again be a wise counsel to you all, but you would have to excuse me for now, especially for the next three months because I will be busy being irresponsible J.  Then again this means that I will have more time on my hands so you should definitely call me if you need to talk, because that is truly a part of my responsibility that I enjoy immensely.

Wishing everyone a fruitful 4th quarter of 2014!

God Bless