2021 Recap

 

2021 Recap

I started 2021 celebrating on the balcony of my apartment in Nairobi, shouting out my lungs and welcoming 2021 in style. I posted on my status a little short resolution saying “2021 a year of more traveling, a year of more service, a year to fall in love and a year full of blessings. To a year of growth and learning Inshaalah”

365 days later, looking back and reflecting, I feel like I had a big year. I am not one to feel pride in myself but the past 12 months has treated me well and taught me a lot.

My year started slow. I just got back from visiting family in Somalia and I was supposed to be in a great mood. There was nothing like that. January started with lots of hopes and goals but in the middle, career problems, loneliness, obstacles, depression  and pain hit me bad. I dealt with it as best as I could and made books my closest friends. I left social media and spent January either on bed sleeping or reading books in my little balcony on the 5th floor of an apartment in Pangani facing the sunset and sipping my homemade coffee. My routine was simple and always the same, bed or books. The digital detox helped and I ended January shooting a YouTube video to explain my slump and provide solutions to anyone facing the same issues.

February came with its own fun and it brought me back to social media, with a little focus knowing what I wanted to do. I shot another 4 videos for YouTube, numerous others for Tiktok and increased my reading to double taking my tally to 13 books in 2 months. I spoke on 2 stages and my hopes for 2021 became brighter. My February came to a close with a workshop on values and purpose.

March was all about more MCeeing, reading, speaking, traveling and serving the community. It started with travelling to Nakuru and Kericho and spending time in the green. I MCeed an event, spoke and mentored a boarding secondary school and took part in Ajarso Afuri- a program that serves the Eastleigh community by providing them with a month worth foodstuff for Ramadan.

My April kicked off with a public speaking workshop and trained 20 young youth. The impact this training had on a young girl was enormous. She came to the training not able to utter a word infront of others and today she confidentally speaks on stages. This is what she texted me two months ago “Assalam caleykum warahmatullah wabarakatuh, I hope you're doing good. On Sunday I'll be on stage for the 3rd time Alhamdulillah. I am very very happy and I feel like I am now living the life I have denied myself for 22 years of my life. Before I could not stand infront of even two unknown pple and talk. I was dealing with self esteem issues and zero confidence and this limited me from doing what a lot of people do but I remember the first time I met you at awjamac I didn't know that the workshop you held would impact me greatly and this is another day of appreciation ,Thank you so much And May Allah bless you every day”

The rest of April was enjoying the Ramadan Barakah, doing food deliveries and working harder on my spiritual side. My friends and I were able to conduct two Ramadan competitions for youth on general education and rewarded them at the end. It has always been fun for me organising and bringing together many youth.

On 7th of May, I have achieved one of my biggest goals of the year and launched my podcast. It is called Ismile Inspires show and it is available on every podcasting platform. We will have video series too on youtube starting this thursday 6th January. I also challenged myself to do a 30 day vlogs on my youtube channel and this has been teaching me discipline and consistency. We hit 1000 subscribers on youtube and May ended well.

June is the most important month of the year for me personally. People are born twice, once when they come to the world and also when they find themselves. This month happens to combine both my birthdays and I call it Birth and Reflect month. The tradition for the past 3 years was to take a break from 5th June, to pause, reflect and plan for the coming year. This year, I travelled to a nearby town, disconnected my line, went offline and took a week of solititude. I created new goals and plan for 12 months to come and I will reflect on this on June 2022 Inshaalah.

June also gave me more opportunities and I MCeed two other events, spoke on stages and did a workshop on finding your passion. My retreat week gave me more clarity and focus and I was working on a high speed again.

July was a low month again, I felt too bad about my state and I wanted a stop. From June’s reflection, my biggest problem was being dependent and I gave myself 3 month for that to stop. Having this feeling, I decided to move to family and spend sometime with them atleast to smile again. I travelled with family to Mombasa for vacation and came back to organise and MC Ambassador Americo’s book launch. These two have cheered me up and blessed my July.

August started with a mentorship talk to young boys followed by 3 other speaking engagements in schools and book launches. Apart from the talks, I journalled alot this month and looked for solutions to my dependency status. I had to stop being fed by family and be responsible for myself.

Lots of thoughts and journalling welcomed my September and I reached a random decision to move to Mogadishu. I saw a bright light at the end of the tunnel but I was scared to fail in Mogadishu. I had to move and try rather than stay on a comfortable zone and be dependent on my sister. I took a hard decision and arrived in Mogadishu on 19th of September. I did not have family or lots of friends apart from my online friends and a friend welcomed me to his home. Mogadishu welcomed me so perfectly and changed lots of online friends to real life friends and made new ones. The last two weeks of September in Mogadishu was the most amazing days of the whole year so far. Now I feel like it has been a correct decision moving here and I am loving it everyday.

October was all about meeting more friends, seeing new places, writing more blogs and doing two contracts on communication.

November was a busy month of work and fun. I started giving a 10 min talk at Simad University. I also had an online workshop with an organisation in the UK for youth all around the world. My topic was on finding your passion and it went well.

The stand out moment of November was my work trip to Uganda. I have been away from 17th to 28th of November and spent some beautiful days in Kampala, Nairobi and Garissa.

December had two big events planned and I was part of both. First up was the Mogadishu book fair where I did storytelling for school children representing Awjama. Next up was Mogadishu Tech Summit and I was part of the communication team that made the conference trend for 3 days on every social media platform. It was followed by my first workshop in Mogadishu on Personal Development that attracted over 100 youth for two days. 

I end my December on a retreat and reflection week and I travelled with a team to WarSheikh to spend 5 days here. So far, it has been very effective and taught me a lot and I hope I will be doing vlogs here too. 

Indeed, 2021 has been a year of travelling more, doing more service for the community, falling in love that later broke lol and I attracted lots of blessing which I am deeply grateful for. It has been a year full of growth and learning and it has led me to a different new city to live in, make new friends and get to work here. I read 100 books and I am so proud of achieving that goal.

If I were to rate 2021, I will give it a 8/10 and I am so happy with my progress.

I hope and pray for even a better 2022 and my biggest goals are to have an impact on 22 people, make 22k savings and marry Inshaalah. It will be a year of more impact, income and building a new family.