MacBook, Envy, and Growth

A story about Enyata MacBooks, Me and turning sadness into hope.

Last year was very special, there was a pandemic and I had earlier in the year began to make myself independent from my father. In order to do this, I had to make money to sustain myself and be able to buy myself food and basic stuff for upkeep. So, I increased the price of my services, from flyers to logos, did some assignments on programming and mathematics for some guys abroad, and so on. Eventually, by the middle of the year, I was able to afford to feed, literally took care of myself, got a new phone, and I even saved up about 70k in my Piggyvest to buy sneakers and 200k in my Cowrywise to get a laptop—which I didn’t get eventually.

Due to the pandemic, I had free time to learn more about design and I became more active on social media—read as Twitter—where I began to see better designs and I was challenged. Before all these, I had the intention of buying a new laptop that was more powerful than the HP EliteBook Folio 9480m that I was using at the time which was why I was saving the 200k in my Cowrywise but by the end of the year, something happened.

One company called Enyata came and promised they’ll give 50 MacBooks to people, I was like wow! Usually, these things are scams, right? But in this case, it wasn’t. They had partnered with Consonance and I knew Consonance very well, been in the group since maybe 2018 or 2019 so I knew it was real. I took the first test but during the first test, I thought the test was just on a page. They were mental questions, and aside from mathematics questions, mental questions were my second favorite. I found out when I wanted to submit that there were other pages and I didn’t know because the Google form never indicated this hence I couldn’t finish so I lost the opportunity.

Some months later after few rounds, they chose 50people, about 5 if not more of which I knew either personally, online, or through various tech community acquaintances. When the news broke I was sad seeing these acquaintances getting new MacBooks and I wasn’t even though perhaps I may have gotten one if I had just passed the test and submitted. I decided I was not going to get my 200k laptop anymore rather I’ll wait for the next edition of Enyata MacBooks and hopefully, I’ll win this time.

My sadness was very evident on the Startup Grind page that day, Someone even messaged me to take heart and all. I even ranted on my status but eventually, I told myself I was being entitled. Who was I to expect to win, they didn’t owe me they were just doing it out of the goodness of their heart, and no matter what it wasn’t something I had a right to. When I traveled to my dad’s last year and I was talking with my younger brother, I told him in front of my dad that I was going to save 800k this year at least that was the amount I thought a MacBook or HP Omen cost and I was going to get one of them—with MacBook as the first choice of course. I then created a savings plan of Piggyvest for it, setting the goal to 1million Naira.

Here is a picture of the savings plan, as you can see I have only saved 76,000 Naira out of the 1million target, I promise it’s not my fault aha.

Unfortunately, the year wasn’t as hopeful as I had hoped, I got less work because I increased my prices and those around me felt they couldn’t afford me while those that could didn’t have me in their shared mind space—that’s a conversation for another day. I began to lose hope and I had to terminate my saving automation. I managed to stay afloat and one day I got a message from a friend in the US, their company needed a marketing designer so I applied, at some point the person that was supposed to hire for the role was indisposed so they needed a part-time person to handle a contract, he told me and I messaged the person in charge of getting the part-time designer, the person asked for my portfolio which is why I made that my Notion portfolio that day, he was impressed—even though I have no idea why and he asked me for my rate. I did the job which took about 8hours every day for 8days and I got paid close to 2million Naira for a job well done—case study coming I just think the words need editing—all of a sudden, I could afford my MacBook. I got a MacBook of course seeing as it was the first item on my wishlist for the year.

Here are the first items on the list, here is the full list, don’t laugh lol. I’m planning to edit it for my birthday next month.

So what’s the lesson from this story? you might be asking. It’s simple, I wouldn’t have dreamt of owning a MacBook had it not been for Enyata, people wining the MacBook showed me it was possible for me to do the same though now I wouldn’t register if they were given out MacBooks since I already own one that is even better than the one they would have given me last year if I made it. When people that you know or don’t know achieve something that you want to achieve, I can’t say you shouldn’t feel sad but learn to not become envious, control your emotions and make that sadness into hope. Tell yourself if they can make it, you can too. That’s what I have learned from this and that’s my mindset careerwise, in my job search, when I see a workspace setup I can’t afford when my “friends” or stranger on social media get jobs. I wrote this in response to Pixel Dahn, Risevest’s CEO, and Victor’s tweet about choosing hope instead of envy.

I’m still getting a hang of this writing thingy but I hope you got something out of it. I’m sorry for the long rant.

Cheers!