In my head...

Lawyer||-Writer||-Lover of music and all things creative||-Manchester United FC zone

[Sir Dickson @Wizarab10]

I didn't know she sang all these songs. This one touch me.

See memories. Peaceful rest to her ❤️🕊

[Lukas Not Podolski @OtitoNosike]

Look at that Messi goal. Look at the turn of direction. This man is 38, 38 years old. At that age, you should not be moving like that. You really shouldn’t. But then it’s Messi, the greatest of all time. He has always had this strange habit of making age look negotiable. There will never be another like him.

[Pulse Nigeria @PulseNigeria247]

Nigerian artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby (@akunyilicrosby) reveals the process behind painting Barack and Michelle Obama’s portrait for the Obama Presidential Center. 🎨🇳🇬

She is the daughter of late Dora Akunyili, former NAFDAC Director-General.

[Demi | Tech PR & Media Strategist @DemithePRguy]

No lies detected.

I recently checked one of the highest earners on Upwork, and the guy has made nearly $16M on the platform.

What stood out was the fact that he built an agency.

At some point, growth stops being about how many hours you can personally work and starts being about how many opportunities you can create for others.

That's one thing many Indian and US freelancers understood early.

They built agencies, hired talent, delegated work, and created systems that allowed them to scale beyond themselves.

As Nigerian freelancers, we need to think beyond the solo grind.

More partnerships. More agencies. More mentorship. More opportunities for upcoming talent.

One person can build a successful freelance career. A team can build an ecosystem.

[Lukas Not Podolski @OtitoNosike]

I believe one of the best ways to improve your vocabulary beyond reading books is to watch movies. Not just any movies, but movies with depth, movies that care about language, movies that have something meaningful to say.

I cannot count the number of rich words and phrases I picked up while watching Black Bag. It felt as though every scene required me to pause, look up a word or phrase, then continue watching. I am currently watching Slow Horses and I have found myself exposed to an entirely different set of words, particularly British expressions and slang.

The trick, however, is that hearing a word once is rarely enough to incorporate it into your vocabulary. You have to actually use it. For example, I recently came across the phrase “hair of the dog,” which refers to drinking alcohol to cure a hangover. A friend mentioned having a hangover yesterday, so I deliberately worked the phrase into our conversation. Even writing about it now further reinforces it in my mind. I have found that vocabulary grows fastest when words move from passive recognition to active use. If you’re looking to expand your vocabulary, it is a habit worth cultivating.

[UG🇵🇹 @UgwunnaEjikem]

Tweeted it before: “silent treatment” or “ghosting” is when you reach out to someone and they ignore you.

If you don’t reach out and they don’t either, that’s not ‘ghosting’ & you’re not a victim.

[Mark Manson @Markmanson]

You don’t find your purpose. You build it, brick by brick, mistake by mistake.

[Michael Taiwo @AskMichaelTaiwo]

I am not against paying for AI Courses but I strongly think you can learn almost anything with AI.

Copy and paste this prompt to Claude.

You are a world-class expert in [Insert skill]. Train me as if I'm your apprentice, from beginner to mastery. Break it into stages, tasks, uncommon resources, and shortcuts. Include simulations or real-life practice assignments to truly internalize each level.

P.S: You may need to send some follow-up prompts to get the best of the prompt.

[Lukas Not Podolski @OtitoNosike]

Writing hack:

Never trust a sentence immediately after writing it. Every fresh sentence sounds smarter in your head because your brain still remembers the intention behind it. Readers only see the execution.

[SabiBoI Joshua✍🏿. @_SouthpawJosh]

Don’t 𝑏𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 the episode with Mama Joke Silva if you get offended easily.

1. Because after over 40 guests and counting on this show , I still don’t understand how people watch Bae U Barbie’s show and miss the whole essence of it.

2. You cannot compare this show to Ebuka’s interviews. You definitely cannot compare it to Tea With Tay. You go into these shows with completely different expectations.

3. I don’t know about anyone else, but despite all the negative reviews flying around, this episode was honestly beautiful to me.

4. And you know what this episode made me realize? Some of these legends actually come on this show just to relax. And by relax, I mean laugh freely, gist, loosen up, and test another side of themselves we rarely get to see.

5. This is a side of Mama Joke Silva I have never seen in all my years of watching her.

I never knew she could throw clapbacks at humour and deliver them so effortlessly 😭

6. She smiled after almost every response and still spoke with that calm, cultured English that only her generation carries so elegantly.

And somehow, while watching her, I kept seeing traces of Sir Olu Jacobs in her.

7. The smile. The calm delivery. The rise-and-fall tone when speaking English.🥹

8. It honestly made me realize that marriage goes beyond couples resembling each other physically. Sometimes, you unconsciously begin to take on each other’s mannerisms, expressions, and even verbal traits.

9. One thing that genuinely shocked me was hearing her say she didn’t know her husband was 19 years older than her before they got married

But the way she explained it made so much sense in her world. According to her, “How would I have known when he was handsome, young, and bubbling?” 😂

10. And honestly, this is probably the mentality that has kept their love beautiful for decades, even while the internet keeps spreading hasty rumours about Sir Olu Jacobs’ health.

11. Every chance she gets, she hypes her husband with so much love and honour. You can literally feel it.

12. And am I the only one who thought she came to promote a movie?Only for her not to mention any movie at all 😭

13. Instead, she just chipped in about future characters she still hopes to play or direct someday, especially stories deeply rooted in Nigerian culture.

14. Also, one thing I respected deeply, Bae U Barbie never crossed the line when it came to Sir Olu Jacobs. Not once.

15. Every single time his name came up, it was “our legend” this, “our legend” that. He even called him “Sir Jay” repeatedly, and I realized I’ve barely heard people in the industry refer to him that way before.

16. From the flow of the questions too, it’s obvious Bae U Barbie and his team actually communicate properly with guests and their management before recording.

17. I remember Chioma Good Hair mentioning her manager in her own episode, and Mama Joke Silva also mentioned Sodiq here.

18. At the end of the day, this show clearly isn’t trying to be CNN or Al Jazeera If you want deep seriousness from start to finish, there are other interviews for that.

19. But if you want to relax, laugh out loud, and watch legends feel human again, then this show will work for you.

20. And respect to Bae U Barbie for that final moment. Postrating and saying, “Thank you ma for coming.” That simple act carried so much respect.

And yes, If you get to see this, You actually proved me wrong in this episode by staying in your lane and handling the conversation around Sir Olu Jacobs with maturity and honour.
I genuinely enjoyed this episode, and I still don’t see any reason to stop watching this show.

As always, thank you for coming to my T€D writes ✍🏿.

#tedwrites #olujacobs #jokesilva #curiositymademeask #baeubarbie

[blue @bluewmist]

What you do in private, shows in public. Reading shows in a conversation. Your diet shows in energy. Your discipline shows in confidence. Your focus shows in your results. You are what you cultivate when no one is watching. Prioritize your time & focus on discipline/consistency.

[blue @bluewmist]

Ten lazy years can disappear the moment you lock in. Six months of discipline can erase a decade of drifting. Momentum is magic. It turns yesterday's failures into tomorrow's fuel.

[Foundational Nupe Lawyer @egi_nupe]

Don’t compete with people who are privileged.
Their race was rigged from the starting line. While you were hustling with no godfather, no connections, and no inherited cushion, they were handed the baton with a smile and a sponsorship deal.

Competition is only fair when the field is level. Stop measuring your sweat against their silver spoon. Protect your peace. Build your own table.
The game recognises real.

[Illimitable Man (IM) @SovereignIM]

Emotional intelligence is often treated as though it exists in opposition to general intelligence, when in reality the highest form of emotional intelligence is intellect applied to the comprehension of a soul. Empathy is not merely feeling what another feels. It is the accurate mapping of another person’s interiority, the ability to understand what they think, what they are likely to feel, what they value, what wounds govern them, what incentives move them, and how the accumulated data of their life coheres into a living psychospiritual structure.

And the smarter a person is, the higher fidelity (more accurate, vivid, nuanced and robust) their working model of a person is.

So when people say "emotional intelligence matters more than IQ," they are confused, because the serious part of emotional intelligence depends on the very faculties they are contrasting it against: abstraction, pattern recognition, inference, perspective-taking, probabilistic modelling, memory, symbolic integration, and self-other differentiation.

Emotional intelligence is empathy. But often what is thought of as emotional intelligence, is really just pleasantness: warmth, tact, politeness and moral sensitivity - but none of these things actually require empathy, only agreeableness. To be agreeable is not to understand others deeply and well, merely to placate them by acting hospitable and servile towards them, which when done well, creates the appearance of empathy without any true penetrative understanding actually taking place.

Likewise, emotionality (feeling deeply and frequently) is not emotional intelligence, and in fact undermines empathy, because when you become consumed by your emotions, you find it harder to accurately perceive others, because everything you analyse is coloured by your emotion, blinding you to some things whilst exaggerating others. So, somewhat counterintuitively, runaway emotionality lends itself to low emotional intelligence because it is anti-empathy. It makes it *harder* to understand others *precisely because* you are so emotional, and yet, you would think yourself *emotionally intelligent* simply because *you're in touch with your emotions*.

Emotional intelligence then is downstream (derivative of) general intelligence. It is not an alternative to IQ, but IQ humanised: abstraction, inference, pattern recognition and model-building turned toward the living interior of another person. The highest empath then is not someone who merely feels deeply, but someone who maps deeply. Emotional intelligence is deep empathy - intelligence applied to the internalisation of a soul through study - it is soul mapping.

[Lukas Not Podolski @OtitoNosike]

Guys, please take a moment to register and write as much as you can. We are currently building our algorithm, and for it to become as intelligent and as responsive as we envision, we need as many written pieces as we can possibly lay our hands on.

Every story you publish, every thought you commit to words, every paragraph you labor over helps us move one step closer to building something truly remarkable.

Remember, Zeya was built for you. It is more than just another writing platform. It is a home for your thoughts, a sanctuary for your stories, and a place where your words are welcomed exactly as they are, raw, passionate, unfiltered, and unapologetically yours.

So please, sign up, write deeply, and write often. In helping us build Zeya, you are also helping to create the kind of literary home many have spent years searching for.

[Elnathan John @elnathan_john]

As a self taught writer I spent years aggressively studying stories, novels, from contemporary to the classics (I had to catch up on a lot of classics because I did not grow up reading novels or traditional literature.)

I have spoken before about my father’s library having many books but most of them religious texts. The only non religious books I remember were Peter Drucker’s book on management. Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters. The Oxford Encyclopaedic Dictionary. Two volumes of Your Health and You. Where There Is No Doctor.

I came to prose by chance. A radio presenter in Kaduna, Tony Ibrahim Sagbe, asked me to do something for his Monday morning show. I was still a student (c1999) and told him I only wrote poems. He had read some of them and told me he thought I could write stories. I resisted at first and he promised to read whatever I wrote on the radio on Monday morning. My first ever short story was written for that show. It was a very sad story and when Tony read it people called in and complained that while they liked it, it was too sad for a Monday morning. One person said they cried. So Tony said well we have to do it again. So I wrote more short stories for that show.

They were not good stories but they seemed to move people. I had no idea about craft. I was just a depressed teenager writing about how horrible life can get. I kept writing these bad stories and sometime in 2006 I decided to put them together. A year later I self published a book (that still makes me cringe).

I moved to Abuja and met real writers who were doing serious work and I still remember a writer attending a reading I had at the Sheraton disagreeing with everyone in the audience who was applauding my stories. She said they were poorly constructed and she didn’t understand why everyone was saying they were good. It was the gut punch that I needed. She asked me what I was reading and shook her head when I mentioned the books. We went to a bookstore and she recommended some books. I began to gather books from everywhere. And I read like my life depended on it. I took apart every sentence, every paragraph, every page. I peeled back the layers of every story I liked. I read like I was stealing.

I identified patterns I liked, turns of phrase I liked. I played around with them. I wrote until I could feel something changing. Until I found a voice I was comfortable with. And then I started to experiment. With style. With genre. With craft.

I did this for years. And one day I felt comfortable enough to try something long enough to be a novel. I initially did not want to give it to anyone. But Jeremy Weate (then) of Cassava Republic heard I had a manuscript and bribed me with some fancy lunch at a Chinese Restaurant in Abuja and I showed him the manuscript. That is how Born on a Tuesday began its journey into the world.

I worked for every single word. I worked like hell. I learnt the rules just so I could play with them. So yeah I’ll be damned if I let some idiot on the internet drag me into a conversation about whether what I spent years learning and perfecting (and still trying to) is AI generated.

I will not even answer the question. I have spent too long doing this to have some motherfucker show up with Pangram to question my work.

[Osaretin Victor Asemota @asemota]

I've been reading about Hannibal and Scipio. Hannibal was arguably the greatest battlefield tactician who ever lived — and he lost to a man who studied him obsessively, mapped his constraints, and refused to bluff. Scipio did the unglamorous work. He war-gamed every scenario. Then he executed.

I went through a humiliating episode recently.
I walked into a high-stakes situation overconfident about where the challenge would come from. I was wrong. They came from angles I hadn't prepared for, and I knew it in the room.

No amount of composure covers that gap when it opens up. It stung. But it taught me something I thought I already knew. Confidence is not a strategy. Making the unknown well known is.

Most people rely on bluff and bluster because deep preparation is harder than it looks. I've been guilty of that too.

The reminder I'm carrying forward: study the full terrain, not just the parts you're comfortable in. Scenario-plan rigorously. And whatever you learn — put it into practice. Knowledge you don't use is just decoration.

Grand strategy isn't only for war. It's for every room you walk into.

[Sir Dickson @Wizarab10]

On Marital Kindness

Now the dust have settled on Uvo’s divorce, it is important we address the elephant in the room that has made everyone mount the wall of Jericho in their personal lives. Many people are afraid of investing in a partner out of fear of being hurt in return and made to look like a fool.

But marriage unites and relationships come with responsibility. If you’re going to marry a person, you have a responsibility to love and to cherish. You have to make them believe because you believe, and give them wings to fly. That is why your vetting process must be thorough and you must take their behavior seriously. There are no guarantees , but it is always better to err on the side of due diligence than blind faith.

Many of you have so much to lose and you’re partnered up with someone that has nothing to lose. Long term, investment in the union is mostly one sided. If you are in such kind of partnership, it would be assumed that it is what you like. The sacrifices and investment you make in your partner is meant to improve their life and the overall welfare of the family. Half the time, it works fine and the other half brings tragedy.

Nobody can ask you not to love your partner because you chose them and you have a responsibility to love them. However, the words of Jesus must always find its way in your heart - “where your treasure is, that is where your heart will be.” A marriage unites two people as one, including their finances. While there are no guarantees, the odds of commitment are infinitely higher when both parties are fully devoted financially to the union. It already takes devotion to commit your finances, and because your finances are invested, your heart will always be there because you want to reap the rewards. It is easy to be indifferent to a relationship where your finances are not invested.

Making money is not enough. You need to understand the bond between the heart and finance. You would think you’re good by carrying all the financial responsibility when you have a working partner, but it might just be the very thing that cracks the wall. Everything you have belongs to the family - quite alright. But everything your partner has also belongs to the family. If you’re the only one investing your finances in the home, it is only your heart that is guaranteed in that home. Investing financially into the home is not just about money and who makes more, it is about ensuring devotion. A person’s heart is always where their money is. Don’t you want to at least be certain your partner’s heart is present? What exactly are they using their money for if it doesn’t go into the family because wherever that money goes, that is where their heart is.

It is not unkindness to not want to be the sole investor in a union of two. It is actually kindness that wants mutual kindness. You are both putting the relationship first before self. Even if it goes wrong later in future, at least you know you both brought your best foot forward and invested in it. There would be no malice as with when you solely invested and you’re lamenting about how much you invested into the other person while they did nothing. If it works fine, you can both drink to your deliberate act of love and commitment to each other. Again, where your treasure is, that is where your heart is. There is no exception. Don’t odogwu yourself into self harm. Nobody who loves you holds back their finances. NOBODY!

[Sir Dickson @Wizarab10]

On love and Soulmates

Our romantic ideology often sound cute due to Hollywood exposure but they have long term dangerous effect. Most people who believe in the concept of ‘soulmate’ seem to think someone somewhere who matches them perfectly was created exclusively for them to love and to cherish, and without them, the other person should feel incomplete and troubled until they find each other. It is delusional at best and madness at worst. Nary a time has it ever been true.

The greatest gift the universe gave to us is choice. You choose whom to love, whom to date and whom to marry. You have a choice in this and in making this decision, you should know it comes with responsibilities to invest all of yourself and your resources to make it work. Once you begin to value your choices more, you invest more into the relationship you chose for yourself.

The problem with “soulmate” as you paint it, is that, you keep looking for what is not lost. Many times, you see people in relationship and marriage still longing for a soulmate that will never come because they have failed to accept that the person they are dating or married to, is their soulmate rooted in choice.

Life happens - the person you love may not love you, your relationship with your first love may not work out, your good relationship may nosedive and come to a halt, the person you thought you knew and love may bring out a dark side you’re unfamiliar with. It is unfortunate but such is life. You can always start afresh and make new choices. Nobody was uniquely made for you. We simply accept the love we think we deserve.

As a corollary, I’ve seen people in healthy relationship claim their partner is good and perfect, but they cannot love them because they are not their soulmate. You see how ridiculous that sounds? You chose them but actively choosing not to love them because your eyes are outside. It is the relationship Chimamanda described in Americanah as being content in a house but always sitting by the window and looking out. You’ll not love your partner if your eyes are hunting for a perfection outside.

Respect your own choice. There is no soulmate anywhere. The person you choose to marry is your ‘soulmate’ and love of your life. I hope life is kinder to you that you marry once and marry right.

[Briana Shaneè @hottiebillion]

I think everyone should pick a book & read it this month. Illiteracy is running rampant