Pivot, pivot…

This MIGHT be the last blog post of the year. Savor it, share it, and slurp it up slowly, like a Matcha latte. I only learned what a Matcha latte is a few days ago, so this is a safe space for you.

I expect the late December fog that blankets the calendar and makes every day a Saturday to claim me as a victim. I expect clients to stop picking up their calls. I expect a certain government secretary, with their nose tilted to the ceiling, to tell me their boss is away. I expect the boss to fund his Christmas fun and frivolity with the money owed to me. I expect revelry, rancor, and ruin.

A friend of mine recently wrote about having an existential crisis and it set the ole wheels in my head a-spinning. Damn those wheels.

I dread questions about the future more than I ever have. Wait, that’s not true.

There was the time my work permit in America expired and I survived on the kindness of my host parents in Florida for close to a year as I waited for school, luck, and Jesus to re-legitimize my stay in America. In career purgatory, I babysat a cute 2-year-old, danced with depression, fought a crisis of faith, and juggled the occasional odd job. Do you know how hard it is to assemble a pool table? Do you know a solid concrete slab sits below that green carpet the pool balls traverse like pen strokes on a white piece of paper in a juvenile game of Syndicate? I found out. My back still aches. I think I’d be 6″5 and warming a bench in the NBA if I didn’t carry those pool tables.

There was also the time my American visa was denied. That concrete fortress the Americans erected along Ggaba Road, opposite the Total Gas Station and the office my tailor uses to dispense lies about deadlines, hasn’t always been kind to me. Like I said in a previous post, one day I’ll write about my visa experiences but let me wait for my green card to furnish my mailbox first.

With my visa denied, my education and—by extension—my career prospects were suspended like the ball in Times Square on New Year’s Eve with no countdown to rely on.

I dread questions about the future, but not any more than before.

2022 is ending and I am not sure what’s next. Not next week. Not next year. This kind of uncertainty is for artists and creatives shielded by trust funds and solitude. This kind of uncertainty doesn’t bode well for a husband and a father expected to make good on the dreams he sold when he got on bended knee.

I’m not sure what’s next, but I’m optimistic.

For the longest time in my life, I wanted to practice medicine. I wanted to wear a white coat, palpate patients and prescribe pills. I poured my dream of doctoring into every personal statement I wrote. I even exaggerated a little. Okay, a lot. I maybe even plunged my parents into poverty for the sake of admission letters.

A few, nay several years in school overseas and several harsh realities later, my career path began to shift in its seat like a toddler troubled by diarrhea. I still wanted to be a doctor but I didn’t want the often thankless job of being a doctor in Uganda. I surmised that by working in policy, I could do more good. I swiveled into policy and management like a child nestled in a barber’s chair and soon discovered the system was too big and too messy for me to save it. But why did I think I was the one to save the system? Do you know how many people preach the salvation of their poor home countries in their personal statements? I mean I get it; the white man must be conned as reparations but that brand of hubris is pathological.

After 5 years in the boxing ring, erm, Ugandan healthcare system, I’m sitting in the corner, bloody-nosed with a concussion that affects my memory, and quite possibly, my judgment.

I can’t do this anymore. Not like this at least.

The self-absorbed chore of saving the world is difficult work. Especially when you think it must come by your own hand. Also, the urgency to build a decent life for my family became dire when I had a son.

I must do what works.

I’ve been creating content and teaching online for about a year and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve earned quite a bit, too, so I know I can hack it. Explaining my day job to my dad was always challenging. After mumbling on about managing research programs in neurosurgery for a few minutes and watching the minions behind his eyes unscrew the lightbulbs, I’d just keep it simple—research.

Explaining my legitimate 9-5 job to my parents was like picking stones out of a plate of uncooked rice under the dim light from a paraffin-starved lamp. That being said, explaining the monetization of content creation to my parents promises to make that camel staring into the eye of the needle fancy its chances. I’ll use a language they understand though:

“A social media engineer; a doctor of ignorance.”

That’s fodder they can fling into a conversation and receive disingenuous nods of approval. People are often too arrogant to admit ignorance.

I’m not quitting my day job. Not yet. And this is not my sermon on the mount, urging you to risk it all. I’m simply crucifying my Messiah complex and making a concerted effort to use the internet as a vehicle to turn my God-given talents into value. Monetary value. (That assurance is for you, mum!)

I’m betting on myself.

Making money from content creation is not novel. In fact, with Twitter’s identity crisis, Instagram’s messy algorithms, and Facebook’s plunging relevance, this concept might be on the way out. So I’m pushing my chips to the center of the table and hoping my cards are flush. Hoping that my time is now.

I know nothing about poker, so I hope I nailed that analogy.

Have a great week and don’t be afraid to pivot, or start anew ✌🏾.