Above The Grind.

After nine months of home online schooling, my baby sharks returned to physical school on Monday this week. I was elated to hand them over to their teachers who are the experts compared to their imposter daddy teacher. I suspended, expelled, and readmitted them back to home school many times last year. It’s been an experience we will never forget. Having school and work at home. We no longer worked at home. We lived at work (and school). That’s how it felt for us.

My kids were elated to return to school. They had missed their friends and the social factor in school. As mummy shark and I dropped them on Monday we prayed protection over them and their classmates and handed them over to the school. May they all be kept out of harm’s (read corona) way. It shall be well folks. I must commend their school for the effort they have put in place to ensure the environment is safe for the kids, staff, and teachers.

I got back home from the school dropoff and the house was strangely silent. I did my work with zero interruption. It was heavenly. I had missed that sana. The downside of back to school is the crazy traffic on the roads. Pick up from school has been a nightmare this whole week. I think our roads are in shock. They had been used to light traffic for most of last year. Now the busy traffic has moved from the corridors in my house leading to the fridge every half hour to the roads outside. Despite the traffic, I remain grateful that we have come this far. These small Kenyans have been real troopers and we have much to be grateful for.

I am especially happy to spend more time outdoors and having the freedom to do me more. Extroverts have had it rough being at home for so long. We get our energy from people and places yet that is exactly what we are being discouraged from doing to keep the virus at bay. Knowing that I have the freedom to leave home when working from home makes a huge difference. That lockdown was depressing.

My calendar is getting busy already and that energizes me because I have desired to be busy for a long time. Only this time I want to be busy with my purpose. Doing what is aligned with my personal mission statement. Using my speaking and influence to positively impact people’s lives and communities. This year I desire and intend to continue putting effort into what fulfills me but also positively impacts those around me. I choose to believe that the entries in my diary so far are the beginning of the manifestation I seek this year. With my baby sharks back to school I can focus more on myself.

But there is a caution. I need to ensure that I don’t forget what I learned during the lockdown. I did a lot of internal work preparing for the opportunities ahead. The definition of luck. That will now be put to the test. My concern is that my busyness might derail the gains I have made while in lockdown. Corona built a lot of us into better human beings. The busyness of life threatens to turn us back into human doings. We have to resist that one way or another. There must be a way we can continue feeding our inner man even as our to-do list gets longer this year. We have to rise (and stay ) above the chaos. That will not happen on its own. We must be intentional in choosing what to give our efforts to and what to let go of.

Corona taught us to travel light and revealed that we complicate life unnecessarily. If we forget that then we will have wasted a pandemic. And God forbid that it should be repeated because we missed the lesson. Take a personal audit folks and decide what you will continue to social distance from in 2021. Busyness means different things to different people. Choose what you will continue working on and let go of stuff that doesn’t add value even when it is tempting to go back there now that we have a measure of freedom.

So how do we remain above the grind? For me, I plan to continue seeking and consuming knowledge that will equip me to live my mission statement. I plan to tembea Kenya more and grow my photography, coach more and continue putting myself out there as I sharpen my gift. Last Sunday’s sermon in church gave a good illustration. To be a good swimmer one has to trust the water to hold you up and you also have to keep moving to float. Or a duck that appears just lazily floating on the water yet waddling its feet furiously beneath the surface. The miracle is in the moving. Guys keep moving just like Johnnie walker (keep walking) but get high on your goals and dreams as you move towards the life you desire and deserve.

Another tip is from Warren Buffet. He said that most successful people say no to almost everything. May we all have the wisdom to identify the few things that we will say yes to this year. That is how we will remain above the grind and get lucky.