richardbalenzi.blog

Is 40 the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? I have had many sleepless nights these past few months wondering what the future holds for me as I turn 40. As I turn 40 today, I look back to the dreams I had as a 19 year old. One afternoon   in   my final year at St Mary’s College Kisubi, my 8 Literature classmates and I had an impromptu discussion about our dreams. We all had big, big dreams. Amongst other things I shared that day, I said I wanted to be a big shot criminal lawyer. And I planned to switch to becoming a novelist at around 40. A bit like John Grisham, one of my favourite writers. In my mind by 40, I would also be married   and have 3 kids. Looking back, things did not turn out exactly as planned. I became a business lawyer, I am not about to become abandon law to become a novelist and I am married with 1 kid -for now -). But along the way, there are a few things I am learning;   1.        Your purpo...

  I moved to Rwanda fresh out of school in my 20s. I was keen to make friends and quickly realized that socializing at that age often happened over a drink. So I decided to accompany my brother, Barns, who is more sociable than I am, whenever he met his friends for a drink. At the time, none of us were married or had kids, which meant that we had relatively few responsibilities to worry about. Friday nights were the highlight of the week- we would gather at a small Kiyovu joint from around 5 pm and stay out until the early hours of the morning. There were usually about ten or more of us. At some point, we would relocate to a house party. We mostly discussed business, politics, culture, history, art, sports, relationships and faith. I use “we” loosely since I did most of the listening while the rest of the guys did the talking. Sometimes someone would complain that I was being too quiet to which I had no response. The truth is often times I wanted to chime in but my mind would g...