Just like every other person, I was really looking forward to 2020. I just had this strong conviction that 2020 was going to be my year, and I would do great things in the year.
Normally, I come up with my goals for the new year during the last week of the previous year but for some weird reasons, I didn’t come up with goals at the end of 2019. Nothing seemed to be coming to my head, it felt really clumsy and I thought I would be able to write the goals at the beginning of the new year. Lo and behold, the new year came, and I found myself struggling, partly because I was still trying to adjust to a new job I started in October 2019.
Fast forward to February 2020, things started to pick up. I wrote my goals, I was beginning to do well in my job, I work as a Media Marketing Executive in a radio station in Lagos, and for a newbie in media marketing, I was already doing well as of February 2020.
The grass was looking very very green in March, and all of a sudden, the pandemic struck and the green grass all of a sudden started to turn yellow.
While fear gripped the whole world, the reverse was the case for me because I was daily connected to service. During that period, we had special online programmes daily, we prayed, we fasted, we broke bread, we strengthened ourselves in God, and like never before, there was a fresh hunger to win souls. Spiritually, this pandemic threw me even closer to God.
2020 made me value and appreciate the people in my life the more. Going months without seeing friends and family was not easy. You needed to see how I hugged my friends when I finally got to see them after the lockdown was relaxed. The whole lockdown made me realize how fickle life is, and how things can change at any given time. Most times, we take our loved ones for granted, or better still, we ‘see them finish’ forgetting how important these people are to us. 2020 reawakened the love we have for one another and value all the memories we have together, as friends and family.
I have been working for about 3 years now, and if there is one year that was the most challenging in my career, it had to be 2020. Like I mentioned in the previous paragraphs, I delved into the Media Marketing world in October 2019, and I was just picking up when the pandemic struck in March. As a Media Marketer, my job, in summary, is to bring adverts to the station, so you can imagine how difficult my job was owing to the fact that a lot of companies made huge losses while some shut down totally.
When things started picking up, and we were making little sales, another curfew was imposed on Lagos state as a result of the End SARS protest. It was a rollercoaster experience but the fact that I didn’t lose my job was something to be grateful for.
Talking about the protest, that period was quite draining. I had to shut down social media for a few days to maintain my sanity. I cried and prayed a lot. How the protest went from a peaceful one to the death of innocent youths was devastating. The hate on social media, the false news, the intimidation, just name it, was a whole lot.
Of course, the financial aspect of 2020 can’t be neglected! Thank God I didn’t lose my job but just like other companies, a part of our salary had to go to help keep the station running. Initially, I didn’t feel the cut considering there was a lockdown so there was nothing much to spend money on but when work resumed fully, I started to feel the impact. But again, the fact that I had more than one source of income actually helped. I was still able to save some money. I told myself, I’d not let a month go by without saving, and trust me, it is one of the best financial decisions that I have made. One lesson I learnt in 2020 in terms of finances is, as much as possible, don’t rely on just one source of income.
On the flip side, the lockdown actually came with clarity. It was during the lockdown that I niched down, creating only relationship-related content for my Instragram audience, and I also started my YouTube channel, something I’d been postponing for years. I met lots of amazing people on social media too.
If ‘nobody knows tomorrow’ or ‘never say never’ was a year, it would have been 2020. Nobody ever thought there would come a time where the whole world would be on lockdown but guess what, it happened in 2020. A lot of people that planned to travel this year didn’t know that would be anything like Covid to disrupt their plans. As a matter of fact, I got an all-expense paid trip to the US in July but could not make it because of the pandemic, it was painful but the fact that I am alive and healthy is really soothing and something to be grateful for about.
I told myself that I’m not going to put pressure on myself about the goals I was not able to accomplish. I’m channeling all my energy into thanking God for good health and life, and I think you should do the same too. Instead of focusing on the losses, count your blessings!
