THE IP MAG

Hi, I'm Sam ,  It's very easy to brag about always trying your best to be in control of so many aspects of life even though so many things will try to remind you that always being in control is not always how things go. So the pride taken when things are indeed under your control is warranted and not at all out of place. I have finally come to understand it when people say " your comfort zone will kill you ". The first time I heard it, I legit thought they were being dramatic and unreasonable but like always, when you get to a point, you realize why people come to certain conclusions to the issues of life. Take me for instance. I believe I've come to that jarring point and I must confess, it's not a good feeling at all. I have done a terrible job at not realizing that I've been in my comfort zone for far too long and I have been labeling my comfort zone with different names instead of acknowledging it for exactly what it is and trying to get m...

Hi, I'm Sam,  There's an igbo saying, " mgbe onye tere, bụ ụtụtu ya " and it translates to " anytime anyone wakes up, is their morning " and just like so many things I heard when I was younger, this didn't really make any sense to me. It's one of those things they say, " you will understand when you get older" and I can honestly say I understand now that I'm older. As you get older, you don't need anyone to explain to you that life is really all about times and seasons and you live an easier, happier life when you understand that and live by that. When you're younger, it is very easy for you to believe that everything will work out at the same time and pace as your best friend who is of the same age and maybe gender as you. You sit and make plans how you will move from one stage to the next and you never really factor in life happening because really at that age you haven't really experienced what life could pos...

Hi, I'm Sam ,  I think at some point in my teenage years, to be cool was my ultimate desire, nothing else really seemed so important to me because they came easily to me but being cool was something I really wanted but somehow struggled with it and didn't know how to be that or even attempt to. I never really had any good reason as to why I wanted to be cool, I just knew that was what I wanted and I needed to get it to experience some sense of accomplishment and feeling of belonging. I couldn't really define what cool was either to me or to someone else but I figured I could pick one person who I thought was undeniably cool and replicated whatever they were doing then somehow I could be considered cool in some ramification. I'm not sure if I ever got to be cool despite my efforts and all but I'm glad the need to be or considered cool left me as fast as it came and as intense as the feeling was, I didn't feel any regret or hurt when it didn't happ...

Hi, I'm Sam,  Sometimes I don't know if I should be happy or sad that I somehow suppress emotions and memories. It's good when there are things I do not wish to remember and I don't have to lie or fight so hard not to remember them but it's sad in the sense that I've not really experienced any deep trauma that would warrant memory suppression but somehow my mind seems to think that no matter how I wish to describe those things as little, it will do me a favor by making sure I do not remember them. While we're here, I might as well blame my inability to remember names or people's faces on my mind choosing to suppress things and make them difficult to be remembered without any concrete memory attached to it.  There are things that I do not remember and when I am forced to remember them in any way, I just wish those things will remain in the past. I do not want them to remain in the past because they're too painful in the past and in the pre...

Hi, I'm Sam,   I will only admit it this one time and never again because I know the story is about to change, I have always had a confusing anxiety towards designs. Any kind of design scares me because I feel it's too much power to have to create something from scratch from your mind and playing around with different tools and elements and decide every little detail about it to the extent that some playfully say, " every mistake in design is a style " which is true in a lot of cases. I've always blamed humility for not wanting to wield that power and people have naturally just expected me to be very good at designs so they either ask for my input in design tasks or just expect me to lead the conversation when it comes to designs. Whenever they come to me, I either give a half-assed response so they don't feel some type of way and also don't bother to come back to me or I send them to someone else because I already do not know what to contribut...

Hi, I'm Sam,   One thing I will argue anytime and any day is that the more you do something, the better you get at it whether intentionally or not. Being present willingly or not and participating in doing something will make you better at that thing in no time that it almost becomes part of your muscle memory. When you've spent most of your formative childhood years moving yearly from one place to another, you won't have any other choice than being good at being the NEW KID and you will get so good at adapting to new environments that the anxiety you once had at being in a new environment and trying to make something out of it becomes anxious of you. I had to equip myself with some tricks that made me less upset about moving from one place when I was just starting to get the rhythm of the place. At the beginning,  adapting to a new environment, finding new routines and creating new normals was so daunting that whenever I find out that we have to move, i don...

Hi, I'm Sam ,  Its beginning to hit me that I will no longer be counted as part of the young ones in any gathering I find myself in lately  because I have gone up in age and this realization is making me question so many things I stood by growing up which I never thought would change and because I've never said those things out loud to the hearing of someone older than I am or even my mate, I've not received any advice with regards to them. The most common advice I get on a regular is that change is constant and I shouldn't be afraid to adapt to the changes. Change is quite easy to adapt to if it is somehow going the way you've planned it to be. You can just conclude that the change which you can see is just a manifestation of your desires and hard work. It can be hard to learn to accept changes even when it doesn't seem like its contained in my plans for growth, I've come to understand that things will always work out for my good even when I can...

Hi, I'm Sam,  Against all my efforts and mental notes, the unwanted somehow creeps in to try to become familiar. I can try to give myself rational and mentally sound reasons why this should remain unwanted, I dig deep and even consult outside help but it becomes a terrible case of the heart wants what it wants . But I still question what part of my heart wants this when there's a part of my heart that just wants to run as fast as my legs can carry me to take me far away from something that half of my heart desires and the other part of my heart wants no part in. Some say follow your heart, but that advise is going to be very hard to follow in this case, a part is trying to be rational and another is trying to leap holding on to nothing but blind faith.  The idea of what could come out of this keeps me interested while I try my best to stay away from it. I want to make sure everything flows through the parameters I have set out and I never want to entertain the thou...

Hi, I'm Sam ,  There's only so much I can do to ensure that something goes a certain way or an event sticks to a drafted agenda. I like to think that I take my time to analyze my actions and draft how things should go, what should go first and what should come after and I've learnt over the years to try to be realistic.  I can dream big and have wonderland wishes but I still try to make everyday grind as realistic as it can be while accounting and acknowledging all that can go wrong. There's only few things I can control and as for the things that I cannot control, I try as much as I can to not let it control me by ruining my day or changing my mood to what I won't enjoy feeling. Some days I feel like acknowledging everything that might not go as planned is accepting defeat or wishing bad on something that is already well thought and planned out and some days I take it as the natural thing to do and have a response for it when it happens. How much time ...

Hi, I'm Sam ,  I read somewhere that it takes at least 18 days for a human to form a habit. I've always seen myself as a creature of habit because I love to live a routine life, not that I don't mind occasionally stepping out of the norm and doing exciting things. As a self proclaimed creature of habit, I do not enjoy changing or creating new habits no matter the advantages I stand to gain from the new habit, I just want to stick to what I currently have and not put in the effort to change anything and have to start adjusting to the new routine and fine tuning these new habits. Sticking to the familiar has saved me from so much unnecessary headaches and it has also made me very predictable in any kind of relationship I find myself in. I feel like an open book and enjoy the fact that I don't have to say much before my actions are believed. Its very easy for people to know what I can do and what I cannot be caught dead doing. Some days I feel joy towards being...

Hi, I'm Sam ,  Its one thing to wield power and its another things to know that there's a kind of power you wield, its also one thing to know that there's some kind of power you wield and another thing to know how much of that power you wield and its pretty normal to not care about how much power you wield. I always like to remind myself that as little as I may be right now in the world, there's some sort of power I proudly wield and I am not interested in knowing how much of the power, I just want to always acknowledge that I have powers and one of those powers is the power to change my mind.  Coming from a place of not realizing that the power to change my mind is such a powerful power to have, I've allowed myself to be in such terrible and unpalatable situations because I wanted to play nice and not be tagged as " indecisive " and that is a tag I was very unwilling to have stuck on me, not because I was actually indecisive but don't want...

Hi, I'm Sam,   Isn't it ironic for someone who dreads the end of things, I love beginnings?, I have this unexplainable excitement for the beginning of things, like I have a clean slate and unhindered imaginations to write or draw as I wish. I feel like the principle of lines does not apply to my painting on this slate and my excitement cannot be contained in any way because somehow everything seems fair and everyone is automatically on the same playing level, but in reality that's not it, however, intrinsically, these feelings give me the right amount of push and encouragement to take on new beginnings, with nerves but not fear, with hope and expressive imagination.  I love Mondays, I've never been one to whine or complain about Mondays even when I had a not-so-great job, I still found a way to get ready every Monday morning with this excitement that I usually lack words to explain. The way I see it is that, if the previous week was bad, the next Monday is a...

Hi, I'm Sam,  I see a story teller whenever I look at myself in the mirror as much as I see it in others, we tell stories everyday we have the opportunity to live. I am the writer of my own story and I can change the story whenever I decide that it's time to write from a different angle. I've been writing stories with my life which means I've been writing as long as I've been alive but I still find it very unappealing writing an ending to any chapter especially when I do not have any desire to end anything going on in my life at a particular time. The reverse is always the case that when I want something to end, it takes so long to end that when it eventually ends I won't know it, it just hits me one day when I have completely done my best to remove myself from the story, and the things I wish could last for as long as I desire tend to slip through my fingers at the slightest mistakes. One of the important things with writing my stories with my life ...

Hi, I'm Sam ,  They easily say to me " water is life " but I end up finding out myself that too much of it will cause devastating harm to me. Some have also argued between lack of water and lack of light in the house which is worse, and it doesn't matter which side of the argument you defend, the general truth is that too much of anything is bad, be it too much lack or too much possession of something. Every aspect of life is supposed to be met with balance, it could be two or three things but no matter how many things there are, the gift to master balance in every aspect of things I do or want is what I always desire and strive for. I just realized recently that I'm a memory hoarder, and no one pointed it out to me, I figured it out after it dawned on me that people come to me to remind them of something that happened a long time in the past. In some instances, I don't even need to be there, just the fact that they told me about what happened, th...

  Hi, I'm Sam, We respond to what we are used to,  no matter what we tell ourselves or what we do, we will always effortlessly run to what we know is familiar, not because it's the best thing or the right answer in the moment but because it's what we know and what we think can help us get some rest while we try to figure out what's next, and while we're there, we think we will still take the next steps but time flies by and we realize that we have been in the familiar longer than we planned. The realization that you've been in the familiar a while longer than you planned can be one of the hardest pills to swallow. The realization is not always innate, something external triggers it but to a degree. A degree that you realize you're not where you are meant to be and just complain and whine about it but not enough to do something about it or a degree to realize that you should be farther than you are but not to regret your reality but also willing to get to the...

Hi, I'm Sam,  There's a piece of advice that we hear that is not our own but is also our own. It comes from within and we do have the creative freedom to call it whatever we want. Our spiritual inclination actually helps us decide what to or what not to call it but we all experience that advice or suggestion. Asides the creative naming, another thing we have is the ultimate decision to listen to it or not, act as we've heard or completely ignore it or act on the modified version. It is very possible to have this instant regret when we do not listen and act on the suggestion because we can not see the long term effect and it is also possible to see the consequences of ignoring that suggestion in the long run. My innate desire to always listen to that voice didn't just come over me suddenly because I felt like listening to something, but after I've had the experiences and seen the outcome of listening and not listening, I didn't think I needed anymore...