I started the compulsory National Youth Service Corps(NYSC) with lots of things to do and achieve. For one, I wanted to ace my management examination and finish two core digital marketing courses. I didn’t have time to waste nor time to even breathe at all. Life needed straightening…

Prior to this time, I had seen movies and read novels of people who “took life too serious”….the all work and no play type of people. I scoffed at that story. I never believed one would get so caught up working, that they forget how to just live.

My downward spiral started when I stopped sticking to my writing schedule. I calculated that the 15-30minutes I spent on writing everyday, could be spent doing something else. Besides, who reads stories and poems these days…right?. So, I felt justified.

I began to notice how i lived. I was caught up in becoming that I forgot to be. I forgot that becoming is balance; that no aspect of my life suffers at the detriment of the other. Maybe I had allowed the quest of “being more” rob me of the simple, little yet profound things of life. Becoming isn’t leaving a part of us behind just to pick up on another. It is integration. It is balance. It is synergy.

I realized that my quest to be one badass digital marketer required content writing skills, of which writing is paramount. And I realized that the more I left my journal empty, the more I felt less happy despite all I thought I was achieving.

The moral of my little story is this ; that we find a key to balance. That we do not end up being my uptight and over serious TV characters. That admist the bustle of life, that we create space to do those “little things” that gives us joy and makes us feel human. I’ll end with this popular nursery line with little emphasis of my own…”All work and no play, makes workaholic Jane a dull woman”.

Dulljane