On the first day of the new year, I woke up feeling refreshed and rested, and what followed was a series of preparations for church. It was the regular old routine of getting my clothes ironed, shining my shoes, lining up the gadgets for work in church, and then getting myself ready.
Prior to this moment, we had celebrated the cross-over night by, you know, crossing over to the new year. This is like a tradition for Christians here. We spent the last night of the year all gathered together in church for some special programming to charge into the new year.
Now, I play the piano for my church at home. So I spent most of the night working my fingers up to the tunes in the air. And it had been so long since I had played, so I felt fatigued pretty early, but I managed to finish. And after we crossed into the new year, it wasn't long before I went to bed. Yeah, pretty boring. I would normally have been on different calls for hours with different people, but somehow, all that didn't happen, and so I just went on to Hive to do some doings...you know...
So, the fact that I did wake up feeling refreshed was a bit unusual, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that I began the year by kissing my dress with the iron. If you don't get it by now, it means I burned a part of my clothes with my iron.
This really never happens to me, and this is because I am always careful and am indeed skilled with pressing clothes. But somehow, the universe was trying to give me a sign that this year is going to be hot (in a good way), and my cloth was the offering.
Anyway, I pondered it for about 6 seconds before concluding that the burn was inconspicuous in any case. So I looked past that and proceeded with the day.
Service started, but a little late. It didn't matter, though, because we'd all had a short rest after the previous night's cross-over night session. And then again, I played the keyboard all through the service, which was another session of fatigue.
Service went a little differently this time. Usually, we'd go by the normal order of service, but the pastor suggested we all just sing and pass the mic randomly for people to suggest their song in the moment.
At the end of the service, we all went out to do one thing we really never did: take photos together.
Oh, wait. Did I mention that I wore an agbada that day? I mean, it was the first day of the whole year; I had to do it in style. Agbada is just some form of overall clothing that Yoruba men wear for elegance.
Anyway, I had some ladies with whom I was just really connecting for the first time. They turned out to be pretty interesting, chill, and down for photos. So we just shot all the way.
After a marathon of shots, we all retired to our homes. The pretty ladies went their way, and I went home to, you know, think about them slap my PC keys with a lot of random things I do.
Shortly after, I realized that I had an assignment that was due by midnight. I had been procrastinating on finishing it for over four weeks. I immediately became sad because it was so frigging long and would take a lot of effort and time to finish. But I had no choice, so I immediately began.
You see, there were five sections and 53 questions in all. This would not have been much of a problem if they were just simple questions that required one or two answers. But no, they were questions that used the terms "discuss" and "explain."
I found this very annoying, to be honest. I mean, that was just too much. And worst of all, we had to do a plagiarism check.
Passing a plagiarism check really is no problem for me, as I am very well used to it on Hive. The problem here is that I needed to read from many articles and then give my own explanation in my own words, and that was going to be extremely tedious for myself.
I sat for hours and hours working on this assignment, and I was working on my toes as I needed to beat the midnight deadline. What a way to spend the first day of the year! But luckily, with the help of ChatGPT, I was able to get the information I needed for most questions, thereby making my research much faster. Eventually, I turned in the assignment early enough, but I had spent too much time on it.
After that, I needed to unwind from all of the stress, so I turned to my comfort zone: movies.I have been following this series, "Recruit." I find it pretty interesting, particularly for its comic relief. I just grabbed my device for movies and streamed away.
And to top it all, there was our first ever game night in the City of Neoxian, held by our first and newly appointed Game Master, 
We played 21 Questions, where anyone was randonly selected to ask just one question and everyone that participated had to give answers to. It was super fun as everyone provided funny questions and answers, as well as deep questions and answers. I got to ask a question too. It was, "Is there anything you would change about your early days on Hive? What would you do differently?" And then people shared really amazing answers.
If you want to know about this game, and about the game night itself, do well to check out our Game Master's post here.
To be candid, I'd say my first day of the year was pretty much "just there." I didn't do much or anything fascinatingly spontaneous, but I didn't mind. I needed the peace and quiet, as I had been physically down prior to that day. And it didn't mean much as it was "just there," because I know I am going to have a great year this year.
All Images Are Mine
โ๐๐ช, ๐๐ ๐ช๐ ๐ฆ ๐๐๐๐ ๐ช๐๐ ๐ฅ๐๐๐ค ๐ก๐ ๐ค๐ฅ, ๐๐๐๐๐๐ช ๐๐๐๐ง๐ ๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ฅ, ๐ฃ๐๐๐๐ ๐, ๐ ๐ฃ ๐ฆ๐ก๐ง๐ ๐ฅ๐. ๐๐ฅ'๐๐ ๐ค๐ฆ๐ฃ๐ ๐๐ ๐๐ก๐ก๐ฃ๐๐๐๐๐ฅ๐๐.
๐ฎ๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐พ๐ ๐๐ฝ๐ ๐๐๐๐ . . .
