The painful exit of mediocrity

Where do I start from?

My life is in phases, and right now, I am at that phase where everything that seemed clear is looking blurry, and the direction I thought I had seems like it has eluded me. And what do I do when I come to the end of myself like this? I begin to ask questions.

So, as I drink my flavoured tea — a mix of chamomile and honey — and listen to BNXN play over my laptop speakers, I will outline my past in phases and draw a map from the Toluwase Olugbemiro of the past to the one writing to you now. I will title this piece, The Painful Exit of Mediocrity, because each time I decide to advance into a new phase, I consider the previous version of myself a level of mediocrity I have tolerated, and the painful experience that comes with that decision to evolve and be better than my previous self.

So, as you read, I hope you are as curious to know what the next phase of my life will look like. I am curious, and to find clarity, I take to writing among the many other things I will do.

Welcome to the painful exit of mediocrity.

Phase 1 — The Curious Child

This phase of my life has so many inconsistencies; however, I am grateful and would not trade my experience for anything, yet.

I will skip the boring details surrounding my birth and my early adventures away from my parents. The memory that has formed in my head is a product of several stories and faint pictures of a childhood that was constantly filled with wonders.

I had a cousin named Oyo — as for where he is now, I do not know. The only memory I have of him is of when we were kids and I saw tattooed on his stomach what looked like the Sun and the Moon, and I had asked him what the tattoos had meant, and his response was something about how his parents believed he was destined for greatness. So, the tattoos were a signet for the life they believed he had been called into.

Maybe his name was also a signet to the great Oyo kingdom; I would never know. But I can remember being curious as a child, and I questioned why the sand underneath my feet burned like a desert, or why the man who sewed clothes beside our family house was named Tailor. I also wanted to understand why we ate termites and why there was a solitary Tangerine tree in our compound — the only shade against the scorching sun that shone overhead.

I learned how to make a gun, went hunting, and snuck out of school to drink Garri, with groundnut I took from home, and cold water taken out of a large clay gourd.

But the most fascinating part of my childhood was when I found out that slates, which I used in my first year of schooling, were a primitive technology, and the world beyond my village was used to blackboards with white chalks, and the students had notebooks, while I wrote on stone tablets.

I know it’s very hard to believe, but if you didn’t live that reality, my childhood might seem like a scene out of a Nollywood movie.

I would move to the city, Port Harcourt, to be precise and learn how to speak English within a week of my arrival. I would explore different choices in schooling after the experience in the village, as my parents were indecisive whether I could cope with ‘regular’ education, as whatever I had experienced was an aberration.

In a string of occurrences, I would end up in the same school as my siblings, and chaperoned by my curiosity, I would move from the last in the class to being the top 3 and eventually besting everyone right from Primary 3 to Primary 5.

In those years, I would believe I was a genius, a rather intelligent and special child. I would endeavour not to settle for less, however, not confront decisions made on my behalf to be in front because I was smart, even though I was shy and socially awkward.

I would eventually accept that I am special, an outlier, maybe even an aberration, until I met people who, like me, were ahead, and they owned their own light, something I had not yet done.

I recall that during my conversation with Oyo, I had told myself that I would travel, if not around the world, at least I would visit the Oyo kingdom and learn more about it. Writing this today, I had visited Oyo state, but I had lost the light in my eyes to find out more about the culture, its people, and the dreams they harboured.

NB: I have remembered just now that one of the things that made me special was my insatiable appetite to know how the world works. Maybe, in an attempt to conform to the world, I had toned that down so much, now I find it hard to find the light to the next phase of my life.

When I discovered anime, or rather, when it discovered me, it ushered me into the next phase of my life, as I now became a dreamer, seeing a world of many experiences, hope, possibilities, and more than anything, seeing that with my heart, wide like the ocean, and my hands, I can shape my life to look just like my dreams.

Nothing prepared me for the life of a dreamer — it was all that and more.

Phase 2 — Dream! Tolu, Dream! The World is Yours!

Who said no good thing comes out of sitting in front of the TV all day watching cartoons?

This next phase of my life is characterized by dreams as lofty as they come.

The first time I realized that was as a child born to parents in a lower social strata, the only thing you might be able to afford is to dream big, let your imaginations run wild, and though your present reality might not catch up, you can always afford to dream and wish for the biggest and bests things in life.

Grateful to my parents who made the sacrifice to ensure I found myself in an environment that exposed me to the affluent, rich, and people whose reality was all I could afford to dream about. Though in this stage of my life, I would become aware of the gap between the social strata my parents belonged to and the one directly above them, and the ones extremely above them. Being underprivileged became something I could relate to, even though, to an extent, I had a certain level of privilege.

So, I became the dreamer boy — the child that could only afford to dream when others picked their bags and lived in a reality their parents could afford to create for them.

Here are a few of my dreams:

1. I wanted to be an astronaut, astrologer, or astronomer, travel out of Earth, touch the stars, and maybe even own one or two.
2. I wanted to buy an island.
3. My wedding was going to happen on a cruise ship heading to an island where we would take off into space. My reception would happen in a spacecraft bound for the International Space Station (ISS), and my honeymoon would be a few days on the ISS before heading back to Earth.

Like I said, I had enough bandwidth to dream, and not feel like I was overreaching, after all, it’s my dream, and that’s what dreams are meant to do — scare the shit out of you with how ridiculous and impossible they might appear.

But the more I asked questions fueled by my dreams, the more I was met with realistic responses, and as I grew older, I agreed that there are things reserved to be dreams alone, and there’s no amount of work that would bring them my way.

Here, I would learn that the world does not deal kindly with dreamers — it breaks you, makes you surrender your dreams at its feet, and then feeds you with a rude wake-up call.

So, one day in the university, I wrote on a sticky note, ”Tolu, dream big, but wake up and work for your dreams”.

I had realized that most of the dreams that would come to pass, I would have to shape them with my own hands.

This wake-up call morphed the dreamer into a madman — where you become so obsessed with what’s in front of you that the world narrows out of frame.

In this phase, I learned how to break my dreams into bite-sized versions and start working towards them. Wherever I end, I rest, and leave what’s left for whoever picks up the baton.

Phase 3 — The Madman. It takes a certain level of borderline insanity to make a change in this world.

I read Note to Younger Self put together by Tobby Rhodes, and it was one of the earliest books that changed my life and how I saw ambition, impact and change.

What do you call impossible?

Why is it that whenever we tag things overambitious, it is never the person who has that thing in focus that has tagged it?

I mean, if I want to buy an island, and I share this thought with people, they immediately define it as crazy, wild, impossible, overambitious, etc. But is it really?

To me, it’s just a regular goal I have set for myself

So, to this world, you might need to be insane. If you submit to conventions, you will be the norm.

So, what have I been up to?

Here’s some backstory you didn’t ask for.

NB: I took a few days’ break before coming back to finish this.

I started my career in 2019 with what people would refer to as vibes and insha allah. No prior experience except for a few things done as a member of a campus fellowship. I was inarticulate and disorganized in my approach. This is why I give people a lot of grace today, especially if you have a spark in your eyes and an eagerness to learn.

As expected, I flunked my interview; however, I followed my brother’s advice and I asked if I could still be in the company as an unpaid intern. I wasn’t after the money; I just wanted to learn how to put two and two together.

My life spiralled in a direction I didn’t expect, and the key to my advancement was my curiosity. I asked questions unhinged. There was a day I walked up to the facilitator of one training program that happened where I was working, and I asked him if he’d be willing to hire me, as I was interested in working with his company.

I told him I was a newbie, but had a huge interest in learning, and if he bet on me, I would deliver like my life depended on it.

I joined that company later that year as a designer and a social media manager intern. Before I left, I headed a pivotal project that secured a $44k grant, and the project was eventually endorsed by Microsoft and amplified across different states in Nigeria.

Now writing this, I can say that my curiosity has been an important tool in my growth, and lately, I have forgotten how to be curious.

I let growing up and many rejections dull my curious side. No more!

Well, my curiosity led me down a rabbit hole, and I grew from a social media intern to a graphic designer, brand designer, brand strategist, brand comms strategist, content writer, storyteller, community manager, and now a founder.

Yes, back to what I am building.

I am building BCP Origins, a growing community that helps young Africans connect, learn, and grow through powerful events, community spaces, and curated opportunities.

Our goal is to bridge the gap between ambition and access by creating platforms that empower emerging talents and builders across the continent to scale their vision, find community, and take bold steps in their journey.

I am still working on a cool way to talk about what we do at BCP.

I am building a career as a community manager, brand storyteller, and comms strategist. But lately, I have found myself flexing my skills as a digital marketer.

Phase 4 — What comes next?

Writing this, I have realized that I have downplayed two key ingredients in my growth so far — curiosity and the audacity to ask unhinged questions.

Not being curious enough to try new things has kept me stuck in my head, and not asking questions has kept me from knowing and growing beyond the chaos in my mind.

So, I have introduced external elements that will spur me to curiosity and audacious questions. The next phase of my life will be built on the many failures of the past few years — dead dreams, rejections, pain, hurt — and will be fueled by my desire to be world-class, and for that, there is no room for mediocrity.

This is the last day I will be mediocre!

Watch me blaze a trail through the world.