Organized chaos.

The phrase that best defines my life, and the principle that will guide this letter about it.

Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. 

Starting off, I love ants:

I step out onto the wooden porch, goosebumps forming on my exposed arms. I briskly walk down the stairs, traversing a short distance of the rocky backyard before I stop, having found what I was looking for.

The City.

This is my name for the series of small dirt mounds that populate the area along the fence line. Scuttling in and out of them are hordes of ants, focused on what seem to be important tasks, completely unknown to me. 

I reason that all that hard work would make them hungry, and seeing no food scraps nearby, I pick some colorful berries from a nearby vine, placing several near each mound.

After only a few seconds, close to a hundred ants converge on the berries, each taking a miniscule piece back into their respective mound over and over again.

As I watch the ants go about their activities, some dissecting the fruit and others partaking in expeditions to elsewhere, I for some reason enjoy the consistency of their movements; each ant in their place, disarray a foreign concept to these hard working creatures. 

As I reflect on my own life, I see their unwavering industry as an inspiration, motivation to work just as hard at the task at hand. In whatever I do, I must give it my all, just like those tiny, but mighty ants.

I also have a fascination with the privacy-oriented cryptocurrency Monero:

“Can the ring size be increased?”, one reply to my Reddit post reads. Just a few hours ago, I had finished writing a post comparing the approaches to transaction obfuscation taken by Monero and Zcash, two privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies. I never tire of educating those newly exploring Monero or cryptocurrencies as a whole, as I remember being the same as them not too long ago.

I first came across the Monero subreddit as I was mindlessly browsing Reddit. It stood out on the Trending Communities list because while other subreddits had bright and colorful logos, r/Monero’s was no more than a discreet, blocky M on an Orange and black background. Although somewhat apprehensive, my boredom got the best of me and I clicked into the subreddit.

This was perhaps one of the best things I had ever done. 

Scrolling through the main page of the subreddit I found hundreds of posts about Monero, which turned out to be a privacy-oriented cryptocurrency, as well as financial literacy, digital anonymity, and corporate overreach. While these topics were of great interest to me, what captivated me about this community was the abundance of high-quality content and intellectual discussion occurring between members. There were no memes or seemingly witty one-liners present in other subreddits, or brainless price talk that has pervaded other areas of the cryptocurrency space. Their unwavering focus on privacy and anonymity drew parallels to the resistance movements in the dystopian novels I read, people who took matters into their own hands, fighting government and corporate overreach with whatever tools they could find.

My fascination with the Monero community led me to learn as much as I could about Monero, privacy, and cryptocurrencies as a whole. I began reading comprehensive books such as Mastering Monero and Why Cryptocurrencies?, watching informative Youtube videos on digital privacy and anonymity, and interacting with like-minded persons across various other platforms. Before long, I began informing the uninformed, sharing my knowledge with those who are just as I when I found the subreddit on that fateful day, contributing in my own way to a community that had so greatly piqued my interest.

As I enter the Monero subreddit every day, I am grateful for what the community has given me: a sense of purpose and participation in something greater than myself, a membership in a decentralized organization of individuals seeking to advance digital privacy, one block at a time.

My stint on my high school’s varsity basketball team was a transformative experience:

“I’m open!”, shouting as I come off the screen that was set up by my teammate. The ball sails over the heads of several players as it reaches my waiting hands. I rise up for the shot, putting up a three-pointer that swishes through the net. Before they can even congratulate me, I am already running back on defense, yelling at them to do the same.

I was not always this vocal. When I first joined the team, I barely spoke,  which caused a number of issues. During the drills, passes were dropped, screens misset, and shots taken at the wrong time because of my inability to talk with my teammates. The scrimmages were even worse, as I became virtually invisible, my inability to communicate prevented me from calling out for the ball or alerting teammates to my position on the court.

There was no single defining moment to which to attribute my transformation. Perhaps it was the result of being tired of having “sit-downs” with my coach about my reservedness in-game, fed up with my teammates constantly berating me for my lack of communication, and just being desirous of a change. 

I began to speak more, becoming an active part of the team’s offense and defense during games, while also developing close, personal friendships with several of my teammates that transcended the court, no longer an outsider on that 15-man roster. 

At the same time, my academic and personal lives changed for the better. Class presentations were no longer something to fear, as I could now talk boldly and articulately in front of an unfamiliar audience. Meeting new people in new settings was now actually enjoyable, now possessing the confidence and communicative ability to engage in conversation and develop relationships with others. 

So was crashing a go-kart:

It was my first time going go-karting.

My parents decided to take us during the last week of summer break, because they wanted my siblings and I to enjoy ourselves before returning to school After paying for the all-day passes, we walked around the Broadway Grand Prix, an expansive complex with all manners of attractions: tall rock climbing walls, winding race tracks, and bright green mini-golf courses. As I surveyed the park, wondering what I should do first, my eyes rested on the ultimate challenge: the slick track, polished to perfection. Ignoring the warning sign indicating the increased chance of injury, I excitedly ran to the entrance gate.

As I was just to step foot onto the wait line, my father stopped me in my tracks, concerned about my safety and worrying that I would lose control and injure myself. I balked at the thought of failing, as despite my inexperience I was more than confident that I could take care of myself. Only after more than ten minutes of continuous pleading was I permitted to go, my father telling me before I rushed off, “Be like the tortoise and not the hare. When you’re slow and steady, you win the race.” I quickly nodded my head in agreement, an assurance to assuage his anxiety.

However, as the overhead light turned green, I quickly forgot his advice, becoming the hare that he warned me against. I pushed down the accelerator pedal so hard that I thought I broke it, my only thought being to drive fast. In that moment, failure was not an option, with each turn having to be crisp, every approach tight, each overtake clean. I finished the first lap in less than 50 seconds, completely in control of the go-kart despite my father’s misgivings.

The same cannot be said about the second lap.

Despite holding a large lead on the other racers, I continued to speed across the track, pedal to the metal, like nothing else mattered in the world until…

BOOM! 

My vision went blurry, and I heard a soft ringing sound. I perceived vague figures rushing toward me. I was overcome with this sense of tiredness, but every time I neared closing my eyelids I was jolted awake. I stayed in this semi-comatose state for what seemed like hours, before gradually coming to amid sharp pangs of pain. I found myself lying down in a booth of a diner, one adjacent to the track, with a strange woman holding out a bottle of red Powerade and my family nowhere to be found. I began to recall what happened: my father and the track attendant motioning for me to slow down, my single-minded focus stopping me from detecting the fast-approaching median barrier, spotting it too late and realizing a crash was inevitable, right before driving straight into it.

The crash was as much mental as it was physical. As my thoughts were brought to a stop, I realized that all my life I had been speeding: speeding to and from school, speeding from one assignment to the next, speeding from one interest to another, never taking a moment to just slow down. Mental health, happiness, and work quality were strewn aside as I moved faster and faster, in pursuit of nonexistent deadlines and imaginary records. It took me nearly passing out to see the error of my ways.

Now, whenever the work becomes a little overwhelming and I feel the need for speed coming on, I take time to escape the rat race, make a pit stop to do things that bring me joy, whether it be playing basketball at the local park with my friends, reading a new dystopian fiction novel.

As I look back, I see that my father was right — the only way to win the race of life is not to speed up, but to slow down.

There is so much more that I could not share, such as my disdain of bubble tea, or the time that I lost an engineering project less than a week from the deadline, or my first trip to my homeland Nigeria, but I believe that I have made my initial point clear. These seemingly unconnected interests, experiences, and relationships have the appearance of chaos, but in reality are organized, a concerted effort to support my growth and maturity.