Yesterday, I introduced myself to the Hive community.
Today, I want to tell you something more personal.
Not because I want sympathy.
Not because I want anyone to feel sorry for me.
But because I think there is value in telling the truth about what it looks like when you're trying to rebuild your life and things don't go according to plan.
Right now, I am in one of those seasons.
And honestly, it has been one of the hardest seasons I've experienced.
I finished my university education.
I completed my NYSC service year.
I had plans.
I had skills.
I had experience.
And I believed that the next stage would naturally lead to something better.
I was wrong about how easy it would be.
After my service year, I began looking for work and opportunities.
I applied.
I reached out to people.
I explored remote jobs.
I investigated online work.
I started thinking more seriously about entrepreneurship.
I kept moving.
But months passed, and nothing stable came.
And when you're looking for work because you simply want to improve your life, rejection is disappointing.
When you're looking because you desperately need income, rejection feels very different.
Bills don't wait for job offers.
Responsibilities don't wait for interviews.
And debt doesn't care whether your plans worked or not.
At one point, I was working on a deal with an international organization.
The opportunity was significant for me.
If everything had gone according to plan, the arrangement was expected to bring me not less than $3,000.
For someone in my situation, that wasn't pocket change.
It could have changed the direction of things.
I worked on it.
I invested time into it.
I moved through the process.
And then something happened that still bothers me when I think about it.
The deal failed when it was approximately 97% executed.
Think about that.
Ninety-seven percent.
Not at the beginning.
Not when the idea was still being discussed.
Not when there was no agreement.
Almost at the finish line.
And then it fell apart.
That experience taught me something I don't think I'll ever forget:
Being close to an opportunity is not the same as receiving the opportunity.
You can do almost everything right and still not get the outcome you expected.
That one hurt.
But life didn't stop.
This is the part people don't always see.
When an opportunity fails, your existing responsibilities don't disappear with it.
The bills remain.
The debts remain.
The plans remain.
And eventually, the pressure becomes very real.
There were days when getting something as basic as food became a serious concern for me.
I don't say that for dramatic effect.
I'm saying it because it happened.
There is something humbling about having dreams that are bigger than your immediate resources.
You know what you want to build.
You know what you are capable of doing.
But you look at your present circumstances and realize that capability and resources are two completely different things.
There were moments when I seriously wondered what I was going to do next.
But stopping would not solve anything.
So I started looking for another way.
I began exploring online work more seriously.
AI-related opportunities.
Microtask platforms.
Writing.
Transcription.
Digital work.
Business opportunities.
Anything legitimate that could help me generate income while I continued building something of my own.
Some opportunities didn't work.
Some weren't available in my country.
Some required equipment or resources I didn't have.
Some simply weren't worth the time.
But I kept learning.
At the same time, I started developing my business vision.
Again, it hasn't been a smooth journey.
There have been equipment problems.
Financial limitations.
Delays.
Uncertainty.
But I have refused to interpret difficulty as the end.
That brings me to Hive.
I discovered Ecency and decided to give it a serious try.
I created my account.
I set up my profile.
I published my introduction post.
And something unexpected happened.
People I don't know voted for my writing.
When I saw the estimated reward on my post, I wasn't thinking, “I've made it.”
I was thinking:
“Maybe this is another door worth learning how to use.”
That's why I'm here.
I'm not coming to Hive pretending to be a successful entrepreneur who has already figured everything out.
I'm coming as someone who is still building.
Someone who is still learning.
Someone who has experienced disappointment.
Someone who has had opportunities collapse almost at the finish line.
Someone who is trying different legitimate ways to create value and earn from that value.
And I want to document that journey.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about what this season is teaching me.
One lesson keeps coming back:
Your current situation is not necessarily your final destination.
A failed opportunity is not the same thing as a failed life.
Being broke is not the same thing as being worthless.
Being delayed is not the same thing as being denied forever.
And having to start again does not mean that everything you've done before was wasted.
I still have my education.
I still have my experience.
I still have my skills.
I still have my ideas.
I still have my faith.
I still have the ability to learn.
And I still have another day to try.
So I'm trying again.
Not with a perfect plan.
Not with unlimited resources.
Not with certainty about how everything will work out.
Just with the decision that I will keep moving.
I'm rebuilding my career.
I'm building my business.
I'm learning the digital economy.
I'm exploring Web3.
I'm learning how Hive works.
I'm writing.
I'm looking for opportunities.
And I'm trying to turn what I know, what I've experienced, and what I'm learning into something valuable to other people.
Maybe someone reading this is also in a difficult season.
Maybe your opportunity failed at 97%.
Maybe you lost something you thought was already secured.
Maybe you're starting again.
If that's you, I don't have a perfect motivational speech for you.
I'm in the process myself.
But I can tell you what I'm telling myself:
Keep moving.
The chapter you're living today may be painful, but you don't know what the next chapter will look like.
I'm still writing mine.
And this time, I'm going to document the journey.
Welcome to my space as we grow together
