11th Hour Quality

 Today’s post is going to be a word-vomit style entry (as per I have much on my mind), but expect a beautiful photo at the end. 

Quality over Quantity.

This is has to be the phrase that underpinned my 2023. Much of my endeavors this year centered around this, from smallest of things to the biggest. I will proceed to give examples: 

Career: I focused less on numbers, i.e. how many filings I was able to churn out in a given period, and more on providing quality work to the few clients I took on in Q2 + Q3.  

Purchases: I identified items that sparked joy for me + invested in them/waited till a particular period to make the  “big purchase”. In other words, I’m aiming to fill my space and person with meaningful things and not just “things”. Every month this year, I made 3 or fewer purchases (sans essentials and my birthday month).

Relationships: my day-to-day this year was spent cutting out noise + focusing on few. While I am friendly, my personality does not require that I speak to more than one person a day. I have become more comfortable with this, and in as much as that number may or may not increase next year (we shall see about becoming more active on social media), this comfortability will remain a constant. Building quality friendships takes a while and I am willing to wait for/develop the few right friendships than to be a revolving door to many. 

Food: I take strong interest in cooking a variety foods, not just the typical nigerian plate or menu. 

Goals: honed in on two, as described here. 

These are just a few examples of many ways in my life that I prioritized quality over quantity this year.

Reading

I spent alot of time yesterday thinking about how much of my core memories of my childhood was made up of my penchant love for reading. I barely spoke, with core (read: repressed) memories also equally consisting of a strong shyness that at times had people wondering whether I was mute. Yesterday, I just wondered whether both traits lended neatly into one another, or was I just a victim of circumstances? Whatever the case is, I really wish I had someone tell me then that my strengths in reading and writing were equally as great forms of expression/consuming content as was speaking. In a way, I am going back to said lifestyle given that I take count of my words nowadays, but this time I am confident in it. 

Reading Quality

With only a few (read: 5) more weeks left in the year, I want to pull an 11th hour goal of getting through my reading list for the year (mostly from the summer). I really enjoyed reading then, and I want it to be a strong part of my lifestyle now, so why not?

Here’s the picture I promised from the Plaza at Preston Center, Dallas, TX. 

Funmi Oke