Keeping the Faith

Dear God,

If I am wrong, Correct me

If I am lost, Guide me

If I start being ungrateful, Remind me of my blessings

If I start to give up, Keep me going

Let me start with a disclaimer. It has been so long (years) since I last wrote in my blog, so I am just going to try my best in this one. Do not mind scattered thoughts and amateur writing.

It is May 24^th 2020 today, we are in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic also known as COVID-19. It is a deadly respiratory disease that started in the city of Wuhan in China, in December 2019. It was a story we used to hear on CNN, until it started killing thousands in Italy, and by March 2020 it had spread all over the world and declared a global pandemic.

It has been two months since I last stepped in the office, and we have been on a country wide lockdown for about the same period of time.

Now, this date in particular is important to me because I am counting down 29 days to my last year as a twenty-something. I turn 30 years old on June 23^rd (the best date in the calendar 😊).  As mentioned in my Instagram post, I have been thinking about my 30^th birthday since December. I had actually planned for a gate away, I had gone over the plans with a travel agent and we’d agreed I’d pay in March for the trip, luckily the pandemic was declared before I did because we know how difficult it is to get refunds from Kenyan companies. Coupled with the uncertainty of when we will start traveling again.

Anyway, this blog is not about my coronavirus experience, I will dedicate an entire blog for that. However, since it dawned on me that I will not be having any grand celebration for my thirtieth birthday, and the silence that came with staying at home, I have had a lot of time to introspect into my twenties. I have looked back at where I started, after campus, and where I am now. The dreams I had while I was in campus, the path my career has taken, the milestones I’ve made, the friends I’ve kept, those I’ve lost, the mistakes I made. The disappointments I’ve had, oh and have these been many but I have also had my fair share of luck. I have overthought (is this a word or can I add it to suectionary) sometime and had serious headaches because I didn’t think I am where I would want to be. I decided to write one thing everyday for the next 29 days about my lessons and experience as I introspect, hoping that it will inspire someone.

I started the blog with one of my favorite prayers. I saw it somewhere, tweaked and added my bits in there and it has become one of the simplest prayers I usually whisper.  I found this amidst one of the challenging situations I have gone through. A friend of mine asked me to pray to find the answers I was looking for. I told them that I hadn’t been praying much and my faith was weak. Now if you have gone through such a situation you know sometimes you start doubting God and asking a lot of whys. You know, like during childhood, when expecting Santa to bring you a present because you’ve been good all year long. She told me something powerful, ‘don’t let the devil win, keep the faith’.

Prayer, If I could define it is simply telling a Higher Power your thoughts and wishes and believing that the Higher Power is listening and will grant them to you. I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour and the son of God who is the Almighty. Other religions call to a Higher Power by other names, but what I believe is that we all have the same intention.

I have seen the power of prayer in my life, and the one thing that we all have to know is that the answer to our prayers is not always yes, sometimes it is maybe, sometimes it is no. It is hard to accept a no, I mean, in any situation. Usually the maybe takes you a different route, sometimes the yes takes a long time that the timelines we’d wish for.

For me prayer is more than resigning our fate to a Higher Power, it is a way of visualizing our wishes and having a strong conviction that it will be done. In Christianity we call this faith. And faith is what really makes that difference. You do not just ask, you must have a strong conviction that you believe you merit what you are asking for and that you are ready for it.

From interaction with various people and from reading, I have come to know this also as Visualization. And I think visualization is equivalent to faith, for those who do not conform to Christianity. I will talk about this in detail at a later date.

It is important to add that prayer must be accompanied by action, if you want something so bad, then you should work like you actually want it that bad. You cannot just wish and sit back and wait for miracles. You have to put in the work. We need to help God help us 😊

Finally, life may not make sense sometimes even with prayer, but we should never lose the faith. Pray, believe, count your blessings every day, we will be okay.

Ends.

How important is Social Affiliation?

Being human is about being affiliated. Affiliated to your family, a friends group, your colleagues, some type of group. Even animals are affiliated, it is quite rare to see an animal grazing or hunting alone, well unless it is a cat. Cats are creepy, personal observation. I think it is better at this point to inform you that cats are not among my favourite animals, so whenever I write anything about them I sort of lose some objectivity and will tend to be biased, I hope I did not just loose a reader here *cringes*.

Getting back on the subject of affiliation, there’s always a little bit of care in every ‘I do not give a hoot about what people say’, ‘I do not care if anyone likes me or not’. It is simply human. No one wants to be alone on their birthday or to pop champagne alone when they get that promotion.

Why am I saying this? Because there are some people who come out as being so strong and seem as if they have everything together; who would travel alone, go to the bar alone and will not be shy to let the world know about this. You probably avoid being a close friend because your interests would not match. In other words, they are a bit unconventional. And we tend to leave these people alone. We feel like they prefer to be this way and any way to try and get closer will be an intrusion. They would show up at our special events, sometimes as a genuine concern, sometimes out of courtesy.  I know now you are thinking that you know this kind of person.

Photo by Rafael Amorim Bertacini on Pexels.com

They tend to always lead the conversations and since they seem to have it all together, we know they probably have a plan for their birthday or vacation and we do not fill them in incase we have these such plans. A simple note as courtesy would do, we think to ourselves. But deep down, these people crave affection, a little bit of concern, someone to invite them for coffee or magaritas and share some gossip or personal stories. A little surprise party maybe in the office on their promotion? But when they go back to their shell that everyone thinks is a comfort zone, these things crush them inside. It feels lonely to know a lot of people but none to care about you beyond the usual. It’s like falling on the pavement and no one to pick you up. The worst part about being strong is no one ever asks if you are okay. I would not like to call for insincere concern but I hope we can all be that somebody who makes everyone feel like somebody. Leave people better than you found them.

 

WHAT DOES COMMITMENT MEAN?

Commitment means different things to different people in a relationship.

For me is letting yourself be completely vulnerable to someone else and completely open and comfortable with them in the different levels that we connect with each other.

I have come to appreciate though that some people take longer to get to this level of commitment than others.

Another personality trait I’ve come to appreciate is that some people are tragic and others are realist. Some people would rather ‘let’s figure it out together’ and others ‘let me figure myself out first’.

Women from the past generations were the sort to let in their vulnerability to the men and let them take the lead. In this world of ‘independents’ finding these women is rare. Most of them are the ‘let me figure myself out first’, earn their paper, get to some level of emotional maturity and independence. It seems that the men in this generation are quickly adapting to this and they also want to marry a woman who has earned a title for herself and can chip in with the bills etc. Although there’s a considerable percentage of men who would love the traditional woman who will not seem to be in competition with them.

Whether this is good or bad, I’ll let us to judge it individually.

I should say at this point that my opinion is not based on any scientific data but through observation, movies, and most importantly, the lives of about 4/5 of my girlfriends of my age who we constantly compare notes.

The conflict comes in when, most women, they may want both things at the same time and most times it is so damn difficult. A woman would want to get her kids early,  especially with the famed ‘biological clock’ but at the same time want more to grow professionally and get some level of stability before bringing in a kid into the world.

The famous cliché in the world is probably that women don’t know what they want….if you are a woman reading this, what is your conclusion to this statement?

I would say that we know what we want, we want a good job, we want a good husband, we want to have kids and raise a family in a stable and happy home. Well at least 90% of us. Again not based on any scientific data but my interaction with society.

The problem is, we are in control of only a portion of this. If you’re hardworking you’ll probably get the career you want, but it will probably take you time to get you to that level you want. So in this ‘time’ I’m mentioning, you want to find love, and if your stars are aligned, you get married and have kids when you’re still on the road to getting to the pinnacle of your career. But sometimes the stars are faulty (this is where I’d have put the laughing and crying emoji at the same time, but I’m trying to keep this professional) then, your Love (noun) could take forever to get there, your Love could get there sooner but is not ready for that kind of commitment, or he is the ‘let me figure myself out first’ and you’re the opposite. That’s when some decide to forget the idea of romantic love and settle for stability (read a financially or professionally stable man) instead. Because, we are different in what we consider more important.

I guess the most devastating thing is to be with someone whom you connect with well ( love) but your levels of commitment are opposites. I believe though that communication and understanding can solve this conflict, if both are committed to what they consider most important, for most of us, love.

If we could add to the fruits of the Holy Spirit like we do to clause of the constitution, I’d ask to add, the fruit of being able to manage our expectations.

I would love to hear your opinion on this. Please leave some comments.

 

 

 

 

 

HOW TRAVELLED ARE YOU?

These past four months, I have traveled between Boston, England, Bombay, Afghanistan, Amsterdam, Indiana and Cape Cod (pronounced Cape Card)

My favorite cities from the ones I visited are 1. Cape Cod, 2. Amsterdam and 3. Bombay.

Cap Cod is this town at the East Coast in America where even if you don’t normally run in the morning you’ll find the nearest Adidas Store (My favourite sports shoes) and get out on to the cool, neatly paved, boulevard streets every morning. Your running will probably land you at the beach, where you’ll run some more feeling the breeze from the sea, and you’ll start walking and watching as the sun rises beyond the calm seas.

You’ll run to the beach every time you feel this grown up world is shitty, somehow hoping the breeze from the seas will wash the feeling away.

You’ll probably meet your lover here or have your first kiss, you might ask your friend to meet up here to make up or your boyfriend or husband so you can break up with them.

Cape Cod is simply bravura.

Amsterdam on the other hand is… imagine a city raised above the sea, a city that is modern on the periphery but gets older and older as you move closest to the Centre. A city where you commute above the sea every day as you go to work and you take dinner watching the boats floating on water and in spring, beautiful snow-like flower floating on the seas, that annoy the Dutch but you just have never seen something more amazing. Buildings that are so old in the heart of town yet with magnificence full of culture.  You listen to Dutch men/women pronouncing those g, r and v\s in a way that fascinates you even when you don’t understand a word.

My third best city is a complete opposite of the first two. One word, CHAOTIC. People, cars, push carts, motorbikes, every now and then cows and elephants all fighting for space through the city. Smell of sweet spices, perfumes and locomotive fumes all fighting for the same space in the heated atmosphere.  Horns honking, business men shouting to attract customers, sirens, children’s hearty laughters, men in disputes, all hoping to get a listening ear. But amidst all these, this is the freest country in the world, no wonder the number of foreigners found here.

You might think this is chaotic but to me, the chaos in Bombay is an exhilarating experience.

I have traveled these worlds in a few months, through books.

Books are magical, a famous quote goes, a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, one who doesn’t read lives only one.

I get book hungovers.

Sometimes read two books at the same time, say, one in hard cover, the other on kindle, so I read the hard cover in the day light, and the ebook in bed or in inconvenient places. I sneak to my phone whenever I am bored with having conversation without anyone noticing I am withdrawing. I read in traffic and in waiting areas.

I read both fictional and non- fictional. Clichés and mysteries. The thing about the former is that as you read the last few chapters you sort of get the feeling that the author was just running through to finish, sort of he had come to the end of his/her creativity.

The reverse is one that the author lets you hang on, lets you conclude how or when the end will come.

I’m yet to decide which is more depressing, a cliché ending or a mysterious one.

But aside from the endings and feeling bad about the books ending, thanks to them… sighhhh… my bucket list has increased, I have to go and run in Cape Cod- pronounced Cape card and have dinner in Amsterdam watching floating boats and flowers floating on the sea or falling on my shoulders as I savor the discovery of Dom Perignon.

Being #WorldBookDay let me recommend my latest top five reads for this year.

·         Shantaram – Gregory Roberts

Why you should read it; Go through a fugitives struggle and I mean it when I say STRUGGLE, from leaving his family and the search for a second chance of a new life to make up for his faults

·         The Fault In Our Stars –  John Green

A heart wrecking story of two teenagers battling a terminal illness, trying to make the most out of their remaining time.

·         The Tenko Club – Elizabeth Noble

A story of four women on loyalty, career and family.

·         A thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini

The struggle of a woman fighting for freedom amidst the strong Arab culture against women empowerment during the period of the fight for freedom in Afghanistan

·         The Compound Effect – Darren Hardy

This one has done wonders helping me get consistent in EVERYTHING I do. Highly recommended.

·         Girl Code- Alwill Leyba

Women entrepreneurs sharing their journeys. Inspirational, eye opener. Bottom line, Women go further if they uplift each other and ‘one woman’s shining lamp doesn’t dim another’s’.

If I may quote a line from my favourite latest reads, ‘the world is not a wish granting machine’. Send me a comment after you’ve figured out where this line came from.

Are you a Fanatic?

     From a sports perspective, fanaticism is defined as an abnormal level of affection and commitment towards a particular sport team. Further, fanatics may contravene social norms in their quest for their beloved teams or sports personality. Moreover, fanaticism usually alienate people close to these fanatics and their zeal always upset them.Sports fanatics are always knowledgeable of any upcoming events that concerns their favorite teams and would always research on the same. These fans would always research on the upcoming games; the starting team, the substitutes, those players with injuries and even the duration that injured players will take before spring back into action. Similarly, they would gather as much information concerning their opponent teams and try to justify why their team always stand out against their opponents. This can vividly be depicted in the movie Fever Pitch, by Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore; Ben, the main character refuses to accompany her fiancée, Lindsay to Paris since he will miss Red Sox’s three games consecutively. In real experience, my classmate once calculated the number of goals his favorite team needed to score an average of two goals in remaining three matches in order to win the English Premier League.

What kind of a fanatic are you?

Social Media Measurement Process

Understanding the reach of social media is imperative since many social media venues demand commitment because of the ever-changing trends in the social media. Social media is not conservative; users need to evaluate the social venues regularly in order to be updated.

As far as the social media measurement process is concerned, five phases take place. To start with, is the concept phase, which primarily focuses on how an organization can define the activities it does. Here, the organization tries to figure out if the activities it does, bring the organization closer to the clients. Additionally, in the concept phase, the organization tries to define how it will know that the activities it is involved in succeeded. During the concept phase, activities such as mapping measurement objectives to business goals, identifying the chief performance indicators that go by the organizations objectives and identifying performance targets to evaluate success are factored. The second phase involves Definition in general. This phase typically involves designing an outline of how of social platforms can be incorporated in order for the organization to interact with its target audience, thus promoting its brand. In getting closer to the brand’s target audience, the organization’s objectives will be supported. The third phase in the process is Design; through design, specific tactics and venues that are suitable for the brand’s active social media presence are laid. Measurement activities such as establishing performance data sources and methodology, setting up reporting tools and enumerating the specific technical tracking hooks take place. Fourthly, is the Deployment phase. Here, the organization confirms that what is in the social venue is indeed what the organization wanted to project. Components such as editorial calendars, workflow, brand voice consistency and content are closely monitored. The final stage is Optimization. Here, all the activities that were done in the initial four stages are brought together to form a report that would give an insight that would evaluate the overall social program performance in light of the organization’s objectives and goals.
Understanding the reach of social media is imperative since many social media venues demand commitment because of the ever-changing trends in the social media. Social media is not conservative; organizations need to evaluate the social venues regularly in order to be updated. Brands should always consider engaging actively in the social venues thus understanding the reach of social media. The organizations resources, though bulky, should be succinctly deployed across the social dialogue in order for the customers to understand the brands well without being left in the dark. Key messages reach the customer through the social discussions where clients get ask questions about the brand and in turn, the organization addresses all the questions through either a memo or a product description on the social sites. Alternatively, the organization can cultivate relationships through the conversations and later broadcast its perspective.
The pillars of social media include Reach, Discussions and outcome. Through Reach, the organization can monitor the number of mentions as well as the quality of the authors. Naturally, authors are different and even if they could be talking about the same brand, not all will influence the readers. Some authors have more influence than others do depending on level of activities on their commentary, which based on the number of funs they reach it is always imperative for the organization to keep tabs of the most influential profiles. Ultimately, it is also important to know where a discussion about a brand takes; this could on twitter, MySpace (i can see you rolling your eyes at this ) or Facebook. This will help the organization to know or rather understand how key information enter and circulate the social media. The second pillar is Discussions. This pillar requires an organization to understand topics and the sentiment composition. It is imperative to the organization to know what authors are talking about in the social media in terms the brand and the products attributes as well. The organization should listen to what topics the social media focus so much and consequently choose the appropriate tone whether positive or negative before letting the brands perspective to mingle anyhow in the discussions. It is worth noting that brands influence the topics and perceptions, which are discussed in these platforms. The final pillar is Outcome. The pillar encourages organizations to diagnose behavioral engagement indicators of customer’s intention. For instance, purchases and leads. The main purpose of brands being in business is to make money as such, monitoring the outcomes helps brands to evaluate any economical value resultant of the social media efforts.
The Application Programming Interface helps the brand to access the main social insight activities that may not be seen in the mainstream social media such as Twitter Insights for private-access profiles, they are usually used on unique cases for the social programs.
This article shows that social media is a significant marketing tool in the corporate world today. Though informal and social, it can build destroy a brand within no time. Very special care and attention should be given to the social media and a lot of study based of the changing trends should be put into consideration.

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Religion Debate

I’m religious, I believe in God and Jesus Christ as our savior. I’m fairly liberal in the sense that I believe in reducing income disparity, implementing tax reform on corporations, going green with energy production, equality in social justice in treatment of all people across ethnic, sexual and sexual orientation grounds, etc. I know religious people are a diverse group with an inherent motivation to discuss what they believe.
Overall I enjoy talking to people. I enjoy exchanging points of view, even when they diverge largely from my own.
Religion is slightly different since very often the argumentation can rest on two points. 1, the argument for the miraculous elements or 2, the value of the teachings. While there’s value to the miraculous component, I’ve always been a bigger advocate of the Jesus values. Now I get the world is full of people that don’t believe in Jesus. Fair enough.
The point of the diary is that because I enjoy different arguments on contemporary life,  I inherently enjoy the people that come to my door, not because I’m looking for an intense battle of the minds but because I want to see the angle they approach with in the debate. So I was pleasantly surprised that my current visitor opened with warnings concerning the dangers of global warming, climate change and the potential destruction of humanity by our own hands. She was a small white woman. At best she was five foot four, with wide, round glasses that magnified her face and a sharp accent.
So what did I love about the debate. Well.
1.) The line of reasoning. More than anything I enjoyed this line of reasoning using modern changes in the climate and the potentially destructive influence that has on global lifeforms as a potential fulfillment of ancient prophecy (science was blended with the faith component).
2.) The human interaction. They seemed like good people. Her tall, white, male, old and overweight companion hovered behind her. I think he might have been a form of ‘discussion coach’ intended to back her up if things got rough. But I won’t make life hard on you unless you start telling me lines of argumentation that are meant solely to deprive people of rights.
3.) Moments. In life you only get so many. They woke me up because my day starts at about 10am and runs to close to 8-9pm. I got to meet an excitable short woman and a tall portly white man that I may never see again but much like two drops in a bucket, the ripples of our lives touched briefly. You don’t get those moments back and you can process them as a part of your life any way you want.
So in the end this is a Slice of Life Diary. You don’t have to like it. Some of you will probably latch on the religious part. Not everyone who comes to Lifeedia will read it. And many of you will be too busy worrying about important things like elections. But then again, these are called diaries for a reason.