Nyaruai

I can say I've lived though a technological revolution. In form 1, I remember learning about the Agrarian Revolution and it seemed like such a big event. Like any defining aspect of history, it is the fearless, the idea thieves, the rich and the shameless who get to enjoy the first fruit of change.  In one lifetime, I have lived to see VCRs die in favor of accessing movies thought a handheld device that can also make phonecalls, emails, serves as a camera and if you go a little further, a spying device to influence your consumerism. I have seen us go from "Do not enter a car whose occupants you don't know" to ordering a ride from a total stranger. Very rarely do we think " What if this is Joe from You?". I have seen 8 year olds rake up millions from standing in front of a camera and dancing or reviewing a box of bricks (Child labor in my opinion). All this and I'm not even 30. For some, they've been born into this madness, and if Tik Tok

I'm 200 words away from my last article of the day. Try as I may, my mind is doing cartwheels and is shut down for the day. No more sentences it says adamantly. So I download an episode of my current watch, Watchmen and get some water from the kitchen as I wait for it to complete. No one is at the office, except an academic trainer who I have never walked in before or left after. It is 6.20 PM on a sunny evening in a February so hot it could as well be a January in disguise. The download is complete. I pack away my laptop, lock it up in an office in the premises and gather my belongings and put them in my round rattan bag, which one time a makanga had asked if was a bluetooz dewice. I select the Homecoming album on a streaming app, plug in my earphones and get into the zone as I begin my walk home. It's a 40 minute walk and which I prolong because by the time I'm almost home, Mi Gente will be playing and I will go around the block to ensure its complete.  This h

  Guys, I love rainy days. Especially when I'm indoors? In my house, where I can be a comic book character in peace and test out recipes? Absolute heaven! There are so many things I could do on those days. When I'm daydreaming about rainy days, this is usually the kind of daydream I have, or what would usually happen(in real life) on such days.  Imagine you have the afternoon to yourself, having either adulted earlier. The sky is darker than a day in Gotham, and it is very likely to rain. You barely make it to your house before the first drops hit the ground. Safe and sound in your haven, you get rid of your outside clothes as you step into the shower. Connecting your bluetooth to Deezer, Giveon's soothing voice accompanies you as you step into the shower to wean off the day's chaos. Damn that man got pipes! The warm water beats onto your skin welcomingly, almost in rhythm with the rain gaining momentum outside. Squeaky clean skin and an album massacre later, you step o

S o I have this dress guys. I don't know who wore it before me, but I have a feeling they were very sad, and perhaps I now, occasionally, wear some of the despair in transference. It is an unflattering piece of fashion, that dress, and it is only meant to be worn in the safe cover of darkness.  I remember it was gifted to me by my mom, back when I was just beginning to navigate my twenties and I had not yet been contaminated by maisha ya anasa. I remember my mother had gone thrifting at Kawangware market and brought me the nightie so I could stop sleeping in t-shirts marketing barbed wire or cement.  You know for someone who walks around life on autopilot, I don’t know how I manage to attach fiction to my clothes. But is it fiction that if it rains every time, I wear that brown button-down dress? Or if every time I take a long-haul trip to rock bottom it usually starts in that blue dress with black stars? I think not. There are three significant periods of my life where I hav

  Reality checks. Growing up, there are those things we always wanted to do. We probably thought we would marry the first people we fell in love with. Imagine small Brian with the ashy legs and the rubber tie being your spouse. I know you looked him up on Facebook and time has not been kind, has it? Anywho, as time timed, you realized flying to space isn't going to work, so you double down. You decide maybe you should just go to uni and study business administration so that you can start as an intern and be a manager by the time you have your first child. You also want to be stable enough to build your parents a nice house. You owe them that much for sacrificing literal pieces of themselves to ensure that you had the best.  But life isn't a dramatic afrosinema and by the time you are in campus, you realize diligence and hard work is not a light at the end of a tunnel, it was a train headed for you and your sanity. You take out student loans to help reduce the financial burden o

  I'm in limbo. I feel stuck. I know there are things I should be grateful for, and I am, however, anytime I'm not creating I feel redundant. I don't know if other people feel like this, once in a while. It is the uncertainty that comes with being a creative. A curse of whether the boat will sink or sail. A feeling that steals your joy because sometimes the work flows like a river in a rainy season, but sometimes, it is stagnant sewer water in a Nairobi slum.  I hate this feeling. This constant loop of feeling like I should rest in order to be productive and that I should create in order to rest.  I have not written in so long here and sometimes I look back nostalgically at the numerous pieces that remain unfinished on my diary, random pieces of paper around the house or on my desktop, ships that sank before they caught the wave.  But as it turns out, everything in this life is done one step at a time and I will try to be more intentional. Ha! Who I'm I lying to? I'