tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41306886169739702182024-03-17T08:26:55.340-07:00The Modern Cedar"Just when a Caterpillar thought life was over, it became a butterfly."
Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.comBlogger568125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-18979418831569006572024-03-17T08:26:00.000-07:002024-03-17T08:26:20.510-07:00To My Sister -- Our Wildest DreamThere is a dream. There are even multiple dreams. And then reality comes and blows the dream so out of water, so out of bounds.It started with a whisper after dinner, once, when she was like 11 (12? 10?)—basically that age when everyone wants to be a doctor. But then hers grew into a dogged but steady pursuit; gently going through every single obstacle. Ha.I always say there are two kinds of Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-91920086022690557902024-03-08T17:44:00.000-08:002024-03-17T07:12:57.978-07:00International Women's Day 2024Call it being weary. Call it laziness. Call it being pedantic. But this year on International Women's Day (IWD) 2024, I decided there wasn't any point to writing anything original. As you know I've always posted on International Women's Day on this blog. This year is no different. Except for all the ways in which it is different. I'm pulling words from over the years that I have written on IWD. IIfeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-46716209910569004772024-03-08T12:25:00.000-08:002024-03-17T07:13:50.785-07:00It's The Usual ThingsIt’s the usual things. One of my fave YouTubers said she recently rushed to the ER thinking she was having a heart attack. It was a panic attack. If you’re a millennial who hasn’t had the heart attack scare, only to be told it’s panic/anxiety, you’re one of the luckiest ones of our generation. It’s the usual things. Health challenges. It’s the usual things. Career lows. It’s the usual things. Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-35367014159258206852024-03-06T13:17:00.000-08:002024-03-17T07:14:18.708-07:00Fools Are Multiplying Too Rapidly; We Can't Stay QuietI recently saw an extremely bizarre thing. It was a short clip of a podcast (we have to abolish these things once and for all. Podcasts are killing us, folks) where a man, let's call him Man A, asks another man, let's call him Man B, to say which animal he is least afraid of. Man B says fish. Man A attempts to correct him by saying "fish is not an animal". The rest of the almost two minute Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-75941988186680237012024-02-29T07:43:00.000-08:002024-03-17T07:14:38.296-07:00Book of the Month: Nightcrawling Welcome to The Book of the Month! Y'all... no need to explain the long absence from here. See previous post for an explanation. Alright, let's dive in. The book of this month is Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley. I am going to give extraordinary grace to this book because I honestly believe it suffered from the curse of being read after two Chimamanda Adichie novels—I recently reread Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-8089416909726493892023-09-28T09:23:00.001-07:002023-09-28T09:25:05.131-07:00The Blog is Ten, So Time To End It?This blog/site turned ten this year, rather unceremoniously. But yes, it was ten years ago I published my first post ever on the Internet. And there have been various iterations of this blog and quite frankly, of me too. I meant to make a big deal of the blog turning ten, but honestly life happened. The exact day (July 24) I was traveling for work and the farthest thing from my mind was thisIfeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-43529770090805107912023-09-26T14:00:00.001-07:002023-09-26T14:00:57.994-07:00Book of the Month: The Hopefuls by Jennifer CloseWelcome back to the book of the month! I love doing these because people love reading these haha. The book of this month is “The Hopefuls” by Jennifer Close. The thing about giving summaries of books is they are never quite enough. And I’m admittedly not the best with summaries but I’ll try. It tells the story of a young wife who follows her husband to Washington, D.C. to follow his political Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-72234845093773785052023-08-21T14:27:00.002-07:002023-08-21T14:27:17.839-07:00Book of the Month: Life Behind BarsAmerica’s carceral system is deeply flawed. It is filled with deep injustices and its criminalization of black and brown bodies can never be fully stated. Those are facts. More so, the American prison system suffers from the prison-industrial complex. Where to begin? The imprisonment of people has resulted in the massive economic profit and political influence for certain groups. Again, these areIfeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-46310410114207048962023-08-07T12:46:00.000-07:002023-08-07T12:46:22.025-07:00Don’t Follow Your Passion; Here is What You Should Do InsteadI have written in bits and pieces, on this blog, about not being married to an idea. Even outside of this blog, I’m sure you’ve heard it before: don’t follow your passion. I am here to reiterate that advice or to provide additional nuance to buttress that point. It is not that following your passion is bad per se. It’s that any idea that is so romanticized is bound to fail. Even when Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-4327790081255042342023-06-28T11:24:00.002-07:002023-06-28T11:24:13.583-07:00Book of the Month: Hamnet by Maggie O'FarrellWelcome to Book of the Month! The Book of this Month is a historical fiction titled Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. I know people say awards don't matter (don't believe them by the way) but I still want to start off with the awards this book has won. It won the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction and the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. It was named "Novel of the Year" at the Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-16268405391399555992023-06-21T11:12:00.003-07:002023-06-21T11:13:08.263-07:00A Juneteenth Post: How DEI Initiatives Are Stripping Black People of Dignity and SafetyIt was Juneteenth on Monday and as far as I'm concerned, we are celebrating all week long. As I said in a previous post on this blog, these past couple of years, more than ever, I have learned more and had more conversations about emotional safety, belonging, and vulnerability in the workplace. More importantly, I started to better understand that vulnerability needs to be earned; that you Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-27239397405144294832023-06-16T12:08:00.000-07:002023-06-16T12:08:17.194-07:00Why Silence Can Be IneffectiveWhen Chimamanda Adichie wrote the masterpiece, "It is Obscene", one line stood out and has stuck with me since then. Okay, more accurately, I recently found it again and posted it on Instagram. "Sometimes, silence makes a lie begin to take on the shimmer of truth."People that are close to me know that I'm what you can describe as "too much". I can be intense for very many reasons and one is Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-80592967341995158932023-06-14T10:04:00.000-07:002023-06-14T10:04:30.463-07:00On Serving and Being a Part of Something BiggerThere was a time I was so particular (I don't want to say obsessed) about serving in my community. I truly believe in service. I believe every single person should be a part of something (or some things) bigger than themselves. Normally, this is work. But work sort of feels like work. In any case, I think that being a part of something bigger than you can bring immeasurable purpose. I also think Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-42355230215764231092023-06-09T14:37:00.004-07:002023-06-09T14:38:04.434-07:00Friday Reflections 1.) The Netflix show, "Indian Matchmaking", tells women to compromise, but this woman refused to do that. 2.) Sorry, but Nigerian parents can be UNHINGED. My God. This man sexted his daughter's boyfriend because he wanted to set a trap and catch her in the act. 3.) I saw this old article about a Christian gay woman who married a man and how she never really became straight, and Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-16472365422211828852023-05-31T14:31:00.002-07:002023-05-31T14:31:40.134-07:00Book of the Month: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John MandelWelcome to the Book of the Month! Let's get into it. One important thing you need to know about the book of this month is that it is about time travel. Yes. I will be honest that I didn't know that before going in; I knew nothing about the book before going in. If I knew it was about time travel, I am not sure I would have gone ahead with it. There are also some other things that made me a littleIfeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-13289426543833293332023-05-24T11:50:00.000-07:002023-05-24T11:50:09.359-07:00In Honor and Memory of Tim KellerOn Friday, May 19, 2023, I was writing about something else and was about ready to hit publish when I heard that beloved pastor, mentor, preacher, and teacher, Timothy Keller had passed away. He was 72.Tim Keller, as he was often called, is the kind of man you write about. So here we are.I want to start by saying that I am generally very wary of pastors. I don't like how people fawn over them. I Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-86170106777087287102023-04-25T15:03:00.003-07:002023-04-26T10:01:11.239-07:00Book of the Month: Verity by Colleen HooverWelcome to Book of the Month. The book of this month is Verity by Colleen Hoover. I cannot possibly continue with this post without acknowledging the HOLD Colleen Hoover has on the reading community. If this woman was Nigerian I would legit accuse her of using some sort of spiritual power to captivate people, because people LOVE her. She has a large cult following and you literally cannot walk Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-70518006109288057372023-04-21T13:57:00.003-07:002023-04-21T13:57:20.961-07:00Friday Reflections 1.) Adam Sandler accepted his award for the Mark Twain prize in comedy and the speech was very humble, grounded, and reflective of everything that contributed to his success.2.) With another mass shooting this week, a gentle reminder that the thoughts and prayers of political leaders wont do. 3.) I have been writing this for a while. Since I wrote that, no kidding (NO KIDDING), there Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-65870395724386688702023-04-13T09:35:00.002-07:002023-04-13T09:45:17.651-07:00A Case for Shame ?I have been reading a lot about shame, courage, vulnerability and the intersection of those three emotions. This, of course, means tackling Brene Brown’s work, which I absolutely LOVE (check out her special on Netflix; powerful stuff). That said, I’ve been struggling with some aspects of her work as it pertains to shame. She mostly argues that shame is a useless emotion, that shaming people neverIfeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-10257546766255545612023-03-31T11:08:00.004-07:002023-03-31T11:12:10.135-07:00International Women's Day 2023This post is coming about three weeks late but better late than never! We have a serious IWD series on this blog and we are not about to let it go this year. So on the very last day of Women's History Month, let's talk about it.One fear I've had in recent times is that our generation has taken to underestimating gender inequality. After all, we have had female leaders, athletes, corporate Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-16107032618887829062023-03-30T03:56:00.002-07:002023-03-30T04:10:38.939-07:00Book of the Month: We are the Brennans by Tracey LangeI bet you thought we were going to end March without a book of the month, huh? Think again! Haha.When I got midway through the book of this month, I remember thinking finally! I deserve to read such a great book. True story. I haven't had that wow factor with most of the books I've been reading this year, and when I say this book made up for all that, I am not kidding. Let's get into it. TheIfeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-55321877566479777272023-03-28T07:32:00.004-07:002023-03-28T07:32:53.516-07:00On Loss, Strife, Being the First, and Loss Again...I recently had laptop issues (is it me or I seem to have those a lot?) and lost lots of the data on my computer since they had to reset it. I was so devastated. So devastated. Then I remembered some of my worst moments this past year and realized I would rather lose my files every single day than have even just 10% of those happen to me. In other words, it could be worse. Perspective.I'm still Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-11201753284288772632023-03-10T13:49:00.002-08:002023-03-10T15:46:11.018-08:00Friday Reflections 1.) Why pronouncing names correctly matter. 2.) My three fathers. This is the most beautiful essay on love, adoration, strength, and acceptance. The underlying theme is the love of a father for his children. Just beautiful.3.) I've always known that while romantic love is the most celebrated kind of love, it is often the least dependable and most fleeting. So instead, I bring you this Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-73389543254885134092023-02-22T13:20:00.003-08:002023-02-22T13:20:40.835-08:00Book of the Month: Black Cake by Charmaine WilkersonHi folks,It's another Book of the Month. Let's jump into it. The Book of this Month is Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson. I went into this book really excited and just assumed it would be a HIT. I had really high hopes for this, and while in a lot of ways it met those expectations; in others, it fell short terribly. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's dive in.Black Cake – a debut novel –Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130688616973970218.post-85098696764060681652023-02-03T12:19:00.004-08:002023-02-03T12:24:13.236-08:00Friday Reflections 1.) Happy New Month of February! This is a very Nigerian thing to do/say: "happy new month". But it's also the reminder of the importance of time, and endings, and beginnings. 2.) Never ever underestimate yourself. I think it's fine for others to underestimate you (I quite like this) but it is important that you have an objective assessment of your abilities: don't give yourself more Ifeoluwa Ohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233550818097042893noreply@blogger.com0