Month: November 2025

It’s raining. I have started writing this at exactly 4:37pm. I’ve been wanting to write all day, but my creativity has felt scattered lately. And I’ve been a bit scared of disappointing myself, because writing is one of the things I enjoy most… well, alongside the sketching habit I’ve recently picked up. (I sketch like a two-year-old, but I love it anyway.)

Sunsets. Golden hour. Evenings softened by people who make our hearts melt. Witty banter. Shots of good tequila. Then that strange cocktail that started as a joke and somehow worked. I’m surrounded by delightful weirdos…people who take tea right before a bender, people who surprise me every other minute. Some weeks..like this one.. carry these small, unexpected joys. And the “cocktail” that wasn’t really a cocktail? Water. Ice. Tequila. Whiskey. Delmonte. Lemon. Chaos. Magic.

Then the photographer arrives. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t like having my pictures taken but I love taking pictures of other people. He has these interesting dreadlocks. He takes beautiful silhouettes of the sweet souls I am with, then I’m asked to go try one. I stand up (miraculously not staggering) and tell him I want a shot where I’m gently holding the sunset. He says, “Say no more.”

The lake is beautiful. The sunset is breathtaking. 

But I doubt he’ll capture it well.

His battery dies. He assures me he “already got a hot one.” I laugh because.. yeah, right.

He disappears, comes back, shows the picture to the soul beside me. They go, “daaamn, hi ni kali.” I stay unimpressed. I keep staring at the lake. Then he shows me the photo… and I’m like, “daaamn! it’s actually good.”

The evening unfolds. Live band, then the DJ.

The lake shimmering under the night.

And I keep watching people my favorite habit. Quietly, without making it awkward. 

The tiny, strange things you notice about strangers? Fascinating.

Then I get into a conversation, of course I love a good conversation. Then back to silence. Then a lot of trips to the washroom.

My toes feel weird. Wrong shoes. Feels like stepping on sand over and over. Not the grounding I had in mind. Mental note…. wear better shoes next time. And I do want a next time…to feel everything I felt, to listen to the lake more intentionally.

These are the moments I treasure.

The evening disappears quickly, the way all good things do. Darkness wraps around us. I barely touched my phone. I just existed. I took it all in the softness of the moment, the music, the laughter, the lake, the warmth.

To more days of chasing sunsets.

It’s now 4:58pm. The rain stopped without me noticing. I was too lost in this.

Today, I slowed down. I feel calm. Peaceful.

It’s not too late to wish you sweet souls a beautiful weekend.

Cheers.

Today in the morning, I do the curtains, and there’s this shadow cast on my bed. It’s coming through the window because my bed is right there by the window. So in my head I’m like, “Okay, so earth is doing that thing where I notice shadows in very unusual places.”

I raise my curtain slightly to confirm whether it’s just the curtain but no, it’s not.

And I love realizing these insane little things I can’t explain like a normal human, but they happen to me often. Like those late afternoons or early evenings when weird shadows fall on buildings… it’s the usual sunset but in a completely different way, and it happens maybe twice a year. I usually notice this mostly in August. 

According to my findings…which, please, don’t fact-check, because even I don’t fully understand what I’m trying to say…it makes perfect sense in my head though, okay?

But I just know that on my lazy days, I can never actually stay lazy in bed because the sun is usually directed right at me. (I bet God did that intentionally because He knew.)

But today? I can’t feel that sun, and it’s sunny outside. Very sunny.

Okay, let me stop with that.

I’m going back to YouTube Premium specifically because I haaaaaaaaaate this ad….“Do you suspect that you’re being cheated on?”

Come on, please!! I loathe that ad.

And before you even say, “Val, it’s probably your algorithm,” no sir!

I binge on Joyride, countryside content, therapy and wellness videos, workouts, and this doctor I love who teaches self-healing without medication….it’s hard to explain that part. I watch geography stuff too. Like yes, please, I want to understand Madagascar in all its uniqueness.

So I genuinely don’t understand how YouTube thinks I suspect I’m being cheated on (I am yelling). Because first of all…by who??? 🤣

But say, for instance, I ever found myself in a situation where I suspected someone was cheating on me (God forbid…Riswaaaaa)… I don’t think I’d go snooping to find out. Woooooooh!

That’s literally walking myself toward pain. Hapana!

I’d rather have it find me when I’m not looking. I don’t like stress, please.

In better terms, I’d call that detachment not ignorance.

Knowing that either way, I’ll be okay.

I know pain too well, and I’ve learned to embrace it, so…

I wanted to talk about the sketch pad I was gifted and how my sketching is coming along, but my intrusive thoughts won again. So I guess that will be a story for another day.

Sending you love and light from Gimarakwa village.

Cheers🌸

I wanted to have a rant….a whole crush out but sitting on it has made it sound less intense than it felt a little over two hours ago.

Then I picked up my pen and asked myself, “Val! What exactly did you want to write about?”

While working, I’ve been listening to this brilliant lady for about three hours. Okay, no….her videos aren’t that long, but I’ve watched around five of them back to back. In one where she talks about storytelling and how impactful it is, she says, “This country has always dehumanized sociology, philosophy, art, creativity… and that’s why we have so much but are doing nothing with it.”

I nodded so vigorously, I wish she’d seen me.

The background to this was her insistence on how marketing is downplayed. She’s lived in France and was musing about how someone can own a simple bakery at a street corner there, close for two weeks to go on vacation, and still live comfortably. She was really trying to understand where we’re going wrong as a country. And I know it’s many things,.. but that’s a subject for another day. I mean, it’s Monday and we don’t want pressure, right?

Still, what she said about the power of storytelling and how much we’ve downplayed it really stuck with me.

Back in campus, I started feeling misplaced. I realized I didn’t like publicity, yet I was already too deep in to turn back. Studying Communications was my childhood dream, so I had to run with it. I chose to narrow down to Public Relations and Advertising.

But even then, the confusion stayed. I still felt misaligned until recently when I noticed that I actually do really well behind the scenes.

One day, while I was still working corporate, a man from church (he’s a teacher) asked, “So what do you do?”

I answered enthusiastically, “I work in marketing.”
I saw his face drop. I could instantly read the condescension in his eyes.

It stung.

All through school, people would say things like, “You know comms is easy,” making it sound like studying communications was for dummies. It really messed with my esteem and so did that teacher’s reaction.

For the longest time, I hated being asked what I do.

Then the other day, Kwame asked me about the nature of one of the gigs I do and I stuttered. Inside, I was yelling at myself for downplaying my work. That moment made me realize I still wasn’t fully embracing or owning what actually keeps me afloat.

So I sat with myself the next day. I remembered. I felt the shame of being made to think my career was “lesser than.” And I released it because, honestly, my career is dope, man.

I talked to Carl that same day. I’d posted a WhatsApp status that said, “Working in marketing means your friends and relatives will never understand what you do for a living.”
His response to that was  “There is a lot in marketing than what meets the eye… Alafu watu hukuona kama dunderhead all the time.”  I told him, “I promise , one time I told this man from church I work in marketing he gave me  this awful condescending look. I just stood there like wah!”

He laughed and said, “Mimi bora it pays me, sina shida 😅😅😅.”

We ended the convo with me saying I want to be him in my next life.

But by evening, I decided I already am him.

I see the value in what we do in marketing and communications.

My favorite lady on TikTok, Julian Rozz, always says, “I help businesses scale visibility.”
And I promise, you’d be blown away by how much value visibility brings to a business. Not random attention, not some sort of a digital applause  but earned attention that actually builds something lasting.

So this random day, I get a call. The person is super specific about what they want. I try to explain, from my expertise, what’s realistic,  but they brush it off like nonsense. Fine. I go quiet. Then they ask me to quote my price. We go back and forth about their “budget,” and when I tell them my minimum charge, they gasp. Not the good kind.
At that point, I was livid.
We ended the call,  but I made a mental note never to work with people who look down on what I do.

You can have a team of brilliant software engineers, but brilliance alone doesn’t give you an edge in this digital space. So much psychology goes into this shit.

I’m a patient person, but one thing I can’t stand is people who look down on other people’s careers.

That said, I value storytelling deeply.

The last few days have really made me stop and respect my craft, and what I do for a living, even more.

Coming from someone who’s always been vocal about self validation, I see now where I was still falling short on my part.

Anyway, I was talking to Trizah the other day, and in between our conversation, she randomly said, “Sure, btw, have you ever thought of doing psychology ama counseling?”
My response was a little private, but she followed it with, “You should rethink it. You’d make a good therapist 🤭.”
I smiled. Thought about it for a second.

Besides comms, psychology was actually my second choice. I just went with comms,  but maybe someday, when the money’s right, I might study psychology and counseling. Just to tick off another box.

I know this was all over the place and a little heavy for a Monday but well….,

Cheers