My regrets and mistakes so far

Like they always say, sometimes life throw to us what we expect least and we just need to accept it as it comes. Today I will be participating in the Steem4Nigeria contest and be sharing my view how far this year have gone.

Well looking back to the years, how I begin this year and some of the goals I set at the beginning of this year so far and how many of them have been achieved. Like every year which we started with full energy and having big plans and goals, same here for me. I actually have big plans. Beginning of this year, I actually planned to advance in my online skills acquisition because I am a content writer. I actually knew at the beginning of this year that if at any point, I will be going more better in this skills, I need to take some steps.

So I actually planned to take some course starting from the YouTube course on Content Writing to learn in depth about content writing. For the past two years I have been procrastinating it due to academics but this year, I made up my mind I will be taking the step. By the grace of God, I was able to complete it even though it was 85 videos course that took me almost 4-5 months to finish but I was glad I got it done. Trust me after the completion of the course, I knew a lot of things much better about content writing which I wish I knew years ago.

The second goal that I believe I set which I have been able to achieve what start saving consistently. I have always been promising myself to develop a saving habit but years after years, it looks impossible. At the beginning of this year, I made up my mind I must start cultivating the habit. Of course it was not easy at first but gradually and with the help of piggyvest app, I was able to develop a saving habit over the years which currently have been consistent. It is a monthly saving plan. Trust me I feel so much fulfilled achieving this goal because I knew it will go a long way to help my financial life in years to come.

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Well of course there are others this that I promise myself to do at the beginning of this year which I have not been able to do it yet. I will call it Goals left unfinished and I will the first one is to start a small side business. Even though at the beginning of this year, I was still a student, a final year student of Civil and environmental engineering in Kwara State University. I wanted to increase my source of income and promised myself to start a business but trust me, the academics demand most especially as a final year student with projects to attend to did not give me the time to carry out the goal.

The second major goal that I also wished I should have achieved which for academics reason was not able to is to explore Nigeria a bit much more than the previous year. I actually promised myself that I will be doing some couples of travelling to some part of the world like Lagos, Ibadan, Jos, Abuja, Port Harcourt as I have some of my family members there. I was so excited because I knew it will give me avenues to explore Nigeria the more. But like I said earlier, the academics demand of been a final year students didn't give me the space to do so. At the end and even to the point of writing now, I have not been able to achieve my travelling plans.

Well looking at how the year have gone so far, if I will want to point out what will be my biggest regret so far, I will say not spending time with my family. I was away all through this year from home due to academics reasons. I need to stay in school for most part of the year and this was not good because I discovered a lot was happening in my family which I wasn't aware of.

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During this year, my mother fell sick to the point of death but I wasn't aware of any of them because I was in school. My dad also fell sick but I wasn't aware. My elder sister was diagnosed with an illness which I also wasn't aware of for months until the time of operation. To me, it is one of my biggest regret because I wish I was around my family all those moments to spend time with them and stood by them during those difficult moments most especially my parents. Well I was able to learn a very vital and important lesson and that is we should always cherish every single moment we spend with our loved ones.

Of course I can not deny the fact that mistakes are not bound to happen. There are some mistakes I made across this year which I wish I didn't make. One of the first mistake I made was neglecting my health. I was so much busy with my academics demand that I didn't give time and attention for my health. Well along the way, I paid dearly for the mistakes because couples of time I broke down in school that I need to be rushed to the hospital by my roommate. The lesson I learn is that we should always create time for our health no matter what. We should always remember that health is wealth.

The second mistake I made this year which I will tag it to be financially related is the mistake of trusting a business deal I had with a friend. There was this investment opportunity that my friend introduced me to as I will not wish to mention the name of the investment for privacy reasons. I guess the mistake actually comes from me because I didn't do adequate research about the investment. It was out of desperation to make money that I invest in that deal and at the end of the day, it turns out to be a very bad deal. I lost a huge amount of money close to 300k. One of the lessons I learnt from that mistake is that we should always handle our finances with care and wisdom, we should always take calculated risk and make sure we make adequate research before venturing into any investment opportunities.

Lastly, the mistake I will say I make this year as this is specifically related to my academics is that I Procastinated a lot. There are times I should read my books for some courses but I always Procastinate to attend to something's. At the end of the day, it also affect my GPA I graduated with and I wasn't able to achieve my academics goals. Of course I learnt the lesson that procastination is the theif of success. Be the Now person and that is what I have strive to now be.

As I conclude and reflecting over the years, I will say it has been a year of growth, a year of lesson learnt and a year of blessing for me. There were ups and down but at the end of the day, they all summed up to make me a better person and I am so sure coming 2025, it will be a very much more better year compared o 2024 because I will definitely make use of the lessons i have learnt from this year.

I invite @lovelystar , @newekemini5 and @okere-blessing to drop a very constructive comments on this post and also to participate in this contest.