Lockdown 2020 — The year that changed everything
Edit: 3 years later and I finally found the time to complete this story and publish it! Hurray!
It’s been a while since I wrote here but why exactly am I writing this? I guess I have been preoccupied with work or afraid I’ll let you in on too much when I get very emotional. I have been meaning to do this for so long but I have been in my head doing more thinking than actually living. Well, I guess the inevitable is finally here. As you read, may you be blessed (by me of course).
So many beginnings I guess I’ll pick the most interesting one, after all, we are here for the adventure.
It was the 3rd week of February and I dragged myself off the bed and into the shower. I had classes that morning and as usual, I was considering quitting school, faking my death, moving to Venezuela and starting a music career or something. I shook off the thought and got dressed for school, wore my smile and left for another stressful day as the leader of my class (the worst thing I agreed to this year 👍🏻). To my utmost shock, as I arrived late, the class was very empty… My friend walked up to me and let me in on the reason; ASUU was embarking on a two-week strike! I think I hugged every classmate I could find and bade them farewell as I hurried home to do what I loved to do best, write code and change the world with it. My joy became immeasurable when school was to be dismissed entirely due to the effects of the coronavirus. I was sad that there was a life-threatening virus that could claim the entire human race but at least I could get a break from school legally to get deep in my craft. Regardless, the news turned out to be one of the biggest things that happened to my life to date. I could comfortably complete the projects I was working on at Varscon and use the extra time school used to consume to improve my skills at writing code. In case you don’t already know, Varscon is an elite developer squad comprising the finest hand-picked software developers who are young, creative and extraordinary. At the time it wasn’t really that though, lol. At the time it was a bunch of young software engineers who were tired of waiting for tech companies to finally send a “Fortunately…” email. Frankly, everyone who was part of the company at that time had received hundreds of rejection emails already lol. Most people would be convinced that they were not skilled but not us, Haha. We took it into our own hands and started our own tech consultancy company. A couple of us (bold AF) went ahead to use Varscon for our SIWES program later on because of the amount of time we invested in building projects during the lockdown. Okay enough about Varscon, This is supposed to be about me and my journey in 2020 so why don’t we roll the tape back to a befitting beginning, January 2020.
In January, I had no New Year resolutions, just like every other year before. I have never really seen the point in planning for long periods of time at once. I always break them down into smaller realistically achievable goals.
When I make goals they are usually short-term. For example, save this amount from my salary this month, Write a song this week, Go skating every week this month, Learn something new about graphics this week, etc. In transit to Nsukka from my hometown, I forgot my computer on the bus due to some complicated events that occurred which I would rather not describe. I was livid and sorrowful. I even gave up on my programming career then and there. I mean, I was broke and I did a lot of convincing before my parents got me that computer no way they were gonna get me another one and it was literally my only source of income at the time because I used my computer to do assignments for classmates for money in return. I had a pretty predictable life back then. I’ll tell you what it was like:
Wake up (always late because I probably slept by 3 or 4) to my computer and write some code. Then I would check my calendar to see if I had classes that day. If yes, I have my bath, package my computer into my bag and head out. After classes, I check my class group chat to see if there are any new Wi-Fi spots on campus that have fast internet. OMG, I used to be so crazy when I saw speeds of 1Mbps 🤣. I used to be so shocked that networks in Nigeria could be that fast.
So fast forward to me losing my laptop, I now had a huge part of my daily routine gouged out. Without a computer, I started to actually notice the little things of life; Like the fact that my class did not have a leader at the time because the former guy had gotten sick. And so began my political regime. Showing ambition was really 90% of the journey because the entire class already trusted me to handle the position well. I became the class rep and started living a normal life like every other person my age. I went swimming frequently with my friend who I still think is gay Haha. My life was not perfect but at least I had moved on from being a software engineer. I had really made peace with not pursuing the career since at the time I still had not made any money from it.
January ending, I got a call from Topdawg. He wanted me to work on a project for him. I swiftly dismissed him by saying I didn’t have a computer anymore so I couldn’t work but boy was he persistent. That, coupled with my inability to say no to people without feeling like a villain took hold of me. I agreed to do the project. I used my friend Emma’s computer to do it. He was willing to let me use it only if I taught him to code. I tried my best but there was no saving him LOL. Sorry bro if you are reading this. The computer was slow but it could get the job done. I completed that job. and I used the money from the job to buy a humble second-hand laptop from another friend Enigma. This new baby was faster although not the fastest but it got the job done.
Now we are getting really close to the COVID incident. I had my laptop back so the void that politics had filled was now being contested for. Luckily for me on that fateful day, COVID struck and all public gatherings were to be dismissed immediately. I packed my shit went back home and continued to write code. I searched for a job on freelancer.com and I got a gig from a Lebanese guy who wanted to build a real-time poker game. I jumped at the opportunity and it wasn’t a one-time payment. It was weekly so I treated it as my first job. Sadly it didn’t last two weeks before I had to quit. The weekly wage was 75 USD at the time and it was Western Union oh so it usually came out at around 25,000 NGN weekly after conversion. The reason I had to quit was because he had trust issues and always wanted to watch me write every single line of code and explain it to him and this made no sense to me. I couldn’t even take breaks because whenever he noticed I stopped typing he would call my mobile directly. It was such a restrictive environment and I couldn’t afford the internet costs of being on video calls all the time with that salary. I quit and luckily for me I quickly got a real job the next weekend. This one paid more (140,000 NGN) and it afforded me basic human freedom so I flew with it especially since it required less than 4 hrs of work daily. In the background, I was also working at Varscon and doing a lot of semi-paid gigs; Hehe you know what I mean, those jobs that pay for all your needs like fuel, and internet but will never actually pay the main money gan gan.
I did that job along with Varscon for most of the lockdown in Nsukka. It was extremely difficult to save money since the money I was getting was really small. I even had to take a salary cut for 3 months so I could get a used MacBook. Those were trying times haha. I booked a flight in September, my birth month (y’all better celebrate me) to Lagos to surprise my mum (lmao me wey no get any money that time oh). The mission was accomplished, she was surprised but at what cost? Went back to my hand-to-mouth life sha. On the eve of my birthday, I got a call from a handsome young man (I could tell from his voice). He insisted that I had sent my CV to them for a software engineer role. I didn’t remember doing that but I flew with it. He interviewed me on the phone and offered me a role shortly after. The salary was 170k and they were going to send me a MacBook to help with my work. I told my mum and she was excited as hell. To be honest everyone was. I quit my role at the old company and started work at this new company. It was perfect for me, the work culture, the people, the MacBook!! I met a lot of cool people working that job and it felt really cool to actually work with so many other Nigerians in a professional setting. I hadn’t been exposed to that before now and it was such a wonderful experience. I still miss Pelumi (the young man who interviewed and turned out to be the CTO of the company) sometimes because he used to motivate me a lot to work hard and his intelligence was sexy!
I can’t ever forget how nice that job was. The only reason I left it was because I needed a bigger bag to handle my problems but it was a really good job I can’t even lie. In retrospect 2020 was a really good year for my tech career but I am sure the better years are yet to come and that brings us back to one question….
Why did I write all this? To let you know that all good things take a decent amount of time. Currently, I am earning at least 25x the salary from 2020 but when I started it took me 5 years to make a single naira. What I am trying to say is if you want rack in millions in 1 year of programming you might fail really hard. Rather do it because you love it or are passionate about it and you will enjoy the process. Happy birthday to me in advance! Thank you for reading!
