Part of me wanted to caption this, ‘shout out to when we were young,’ but with a snicker, I remebered I am still young, hence the additional ‘er’ to the last word.

Ok, so after reporting to the office to implement my own share of our skeletal services, I decided to cool off with a bowl of eba and afang (yea a chic’s gotta eat!) and then a blast from the past flashed across my brain….

…that when we were younger, our major concerns aside from ‘catching 1st position in exams’ of course, were things like, ‘have you started using bra, have you started you know, has your voice become deep, hey, I just saw a strand of ‘bia bia’ on your chin’ and other pubertic concerns.

Well, now we have grown and with that comes grown issues like, ‘how do I settle the bills, who should I settle with’ and the likes.

As I wash down my meal with water and prepare to take home unfinished assignments for this holiday (another grown up concern), I hope I will be able to think back to this moment and hopefully post on this same platform when my child is my current age.

Déjà vu you say? I call it the circle of life…

How convenient do you find it to shift the blame to others?

Passing the buck is often regarded as an easy way to pass on the responsibility of something (or the lack thereof) to another person. ‘But it was his fault,’ you say sheepishly. Well, maybe it was; but if you are the team leader or perhaps of a higher rank than the faulting party, it is not unheard of for fingers to come pointing at you when something goes wrong.

In such an instance, one may just have to take a deep breath and remember the timeless cliche that ‘uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.’ Remember that your leadership skills are actually more appreciated when things go wrong (‘God forbid!’ you might say).

So to all concerned -and that includes me- here’s to hoping that we all firmly resist the all too easy temptation of passing the buck in our daily doings. *cheers*

So, imagine you have sworn to yourself that you would never be caught dead at the office on a weekend…and on a Thursday you are informed by HR to present yourself for a performance appraisal session that Saturday. ‘Just peachy!’ you mutter.

Well, unless you’ve gotten an offer elsewhere or ‘miraculously’ fall very ill on that Saturday (of course with a medical report from a teaching hospital), it would appear that the available choices are limited.

One thing is clear, an appraisal session is tailored to measure performance and even if the appraiser is a true life judge, he does have emotions which you do not want to toy with. However, one truth that is not equally as clear, is that an appraisal session is also an opportunity, in my view, for you to measure your appraiser’s performance (even if it is only in your mind). This is because, each of us is the CEO of our respective lives and we should accordingly feel free to promote, demote or terminate as the need arises.

Cherio…

How many times have you considered changing boats in the belief that there’s fair weather on the other side? At least I concede I have.

While it is healthy in one’s view, to consider options, it should be noted that before a decision is taken to abandon one course of action for another, there should be a comprehensive review and stock-taking plan. This would help ensure that the decision to jump boats as it were, would be an informed one so that one would not be doused with the icy water of regret in the future. Because, let’s face it, although the grass usually appears greener on the other side, the reality is not always the case.

As one writer puts it, if the grass is always greener on the other side, then others must feel the same about your side. What may be needed in retrospect, may just be to water your own grass so that it would be just as green.

Once upon a true life story…

It was 9:30 am, court was to sit by 10am and there were court processes to be filed which were to be used that morning.

9:40am final comments were sent in; of course laptop and printer were not in sight. Gritting my teeth in grim determination, and thanks to internet on mobile phones, the processes were forwarded to a colleague at the office to format and finalise.

9:50 am, thanks to a charming smile, one of the court registry staff agrees to assist with his computer system and printer. But then, no bluetooth on the computer system to use to transfer the file. We try to send it to his email and of course, network chose that moment to disappoint.

Teeth still gritted, we decide to send it to his laptop which thankfully had bluetooth. Thanks to a love for technology, the file was transferred via blackberry to the laptop.

The laptop was plugged to the printer but no show! It wasn’t a plug and play printer and the the software wasn’t installed on the laptop.

Refusing to be discouraged, I reached in my purse and brought out my flash drive (yea, I like to roll like that!) and we do another transfer into a computer that was compatible with the printer and voila the document chugs out.

9:59 am, we rushed to file and put the processes into the court file….

10:03 am, the registrar yelled, ‘Court…’ and the rest they say is history.

My conclusion, where there is a will, there is often a way.

How many times have you felt so weighed down by a particular situation that it seems you can’t function properly?

Personally, I am no super-girl and I’ve had my own fair share of ups and downs…and now that I think of it, even our famous super-man never had a happy-go-lucky ride either…if my memory of cartoons serves.

One sure fact is life ain’t always gonna go straight; therefore, how crooked our individual paths get along the journey of life, is just a matter of degree.

At such times, one just has to draw from the reservoir of strength from within and rise above the situation because the alternative just ain’t pretty enough to contemplate.

Bottom line, a cliche says that tough times don’t last but tough people do. I extend this by saying that even when a tough situation appears to be overstaying its visit, the tough folk will always outlast it come what may, because if he or she refuses to swim, sinking becomes inevitable.

Have a beautiful week ahead.

So imagine you just barely finished attending to a troublesome email before your boss calls for you. You grab pen, paper and diary (you never know which will come in handy) and you rush in and say ‘good evening Sir,’ only for your greeting to be answered with a statement like: ‘you look tired and harassed.’ How do you handle this?

Do you retort, ‘But of course! I’ve been working for the past 8 hours part of which hours were spent under the hot sun,’ or do you smile shyly and pretend it was a rhetorical statement, or perhaps you smile and stumbling over your words, you chant, ‘Of course not Sir, I don’t look tired, this is my normal look.’

Whichever way you choose to handle the above or any other similar situation, you should bear in mind that while a quick-wit is sometimes equated with a smart mouth, they are not necessarily the same because while a quick wit can give you a safe landing, a smart mouth may likely land you in trouble and may not be much different from a dimwit after all.

So be guided accordingly.

How many times have you said to yourself, ‘I would never be caught dead doing/saying that!’ and barely have you walked away in defiant triumph only for the opposite of those same words to happen to you. Deja vu! you say?

In my little experience, I have discovered that a playout of something akin to the above scenario sometimes happens just after you have convinced yourself that you are immune to it…and sadly it almost seems that one is helpless to resist the seemingly magnetic pull to act or speak contrary to the previously spoken high-sounding words.

One definite way of not dealing with the above situation in one’s view, is feeling cocky that such a situation can never apply to you. In such an instance, you should remember the age long cliche that pride goeth before a fall. A more realistic way of addressing the situation could be by recognising it as what it is- a temptation- which should harden the resolve the more, not to fall into it.

So next time, you perceive that your words wanna bite you, you should be quick enough to recognise it for what it is and say to that situation, ‘O no! you ain’t got me this time,’ while holding your head high and walking away from it.