01 Dear Diary , It is midnight here and you are the only one I can dump my feelings on. So, I am to begin an intensive coding journey next week but I am scared. I am scared that I won't meet up the high number of hours needed. My fears are valid because I live in a country where electricity is not regular. In fact, in Benin city here, we have only 8-hours daily - and it is not at a stretch. It is like 4hrs-on, 4hrs-off, 2hrs-on, 6hrs-off and 2hrs-on (next day). How will I have access to electricity for 10 hours straight?

I also need internet data. It is like gold in Nigeria right now with telecommunication companies selling lower bundles at higher rates. They claim that you are buying 10gb of data but what you get is about 6gb. Now that I am out of a job, buying data is another problem.

Also of importance is the furniture that supports long hours of coding without developing muscular-skeletal disorders.

I am determined to give it my all. One step is to document my struggles, my feats, my failures and hopefully, my success story.

One way I tried to overcome these challenges is to raise funds to start a food business that will allow me time. I have a beautiful wife and a son to feed. So I need to get a side source of income. But all my efforts to raise funds have been futile. I have people that have helped me at one low point of my life or the other. They are not my family members per see but I call them "aunty" and "uncle" because they are far older than I am. Aunty YO will probably tell me to struggle harder as a man. Aunty AA in UK will just read my messages and tell me that she needed to pay for her children's flight or travelling. AH in Canada would have helped but she has a lot of black tax on her already. Uncle AA, a top police officer will just read and ignore. He actually loaned me the first N70k to buy this laptop during Covid.

I no longer need urgent 2k. I need something that can boost my journey out of the trenches. Well, Diary, I have partnered with an author to market her books. The more books I sell, the more my commission. So before ALX resumes, I must go to at least 50 schools to sell books.

Then probably look for schools that may need my HTML and CSS skills. The point is to raise money to buy bulk data - 6 months plan-, and get the right chair. I can always spend time in areas with better light supply or use alternative sources.

I hope that when I look at this page in 12 months, I will be glad that I did not give up. I hope to inspire others. Cheers to another journey of >> print("Hello World")