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On Stagnation, Exit, and the Discipline of Leaving

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Awake? Very. Not because of peace, but because clarity has a way of disrupting comfort. Heartbroken? Not quite. This feels less like heartbreak and more like consequence. Self-authored. Fully owned. I misstepped. I acknowledge that without decoration. But I also left, and leaving was not a mistake. There is a quiet violence in stagnation. A space where nothing grows, nothing stretches, nothing challenges. No love, no conflict, no evolution. Just a dull, persistent nothing. The kind that exhausts you without movement. The kind that makes your body feel like it is slowly shutting down. I have come to respect that feeling. It is a signal, not a weakness. I found myself in a connection that demanded neither my mind, nor my spirit, nor my softness. No exchange, social, intellectual, or even basic care. Just presence without substance. And presence without substance is erosion. At some point, I stopped participating and started observing. The questions became louder than the conne...
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Between Mountains & Muscles

  I haven’t climbed the big mountains lately. But I have been climbing. For the past few months, hiking has stretched me in ways I didn’t expect not just trails and ridgelines, but perspective. The gym followed. A few consistent sessions. A handful of runs. Spin classes that humbled my quads. A Hyrox Challenger Doubles with three fierce friends intense, wobbly, almost catastrophic, wildly alive. I have called myself strong this year. And I have also remembered that I am weak. Strangely, holding both truths at once has made me gentler. Strength without humility becomes noise. Weakness without courage becomes fear. Training the body has been training the ego too. Now I am resting. Not by choice, muscle wear insists. No workouts for a couple of weeks. The days feel longer. The evenings quieter. I do not like it. But I respect it. Because even hikers must pause. I may not have stood on dramatic peaks recently, but I have staged my own summits, in spin rooms, on gym floors, along mild...
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An End-of -Year Essay

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  It’s been a minute😄 That’s how I wish to begin my writing from now on...because life doesn’t announce itself when it shifts. One moment you’re counting months, the next you’re standing at the edge of a year, wondering how it moved so fast and yet carried so much. Lately, I’ve found myself back where the old souls live...in the aisles of hardcore literature . Montaigne’s essays. Shakespeare’s tragedies. Gibran’s quiet, piercing wisdom and having a background excitement of Clarissa Pikola's Women who Run with the Wolves. Words that have survived centuries and still know exactly where to touch you. Call me old school, but there is something sacred about literature that refuses to be rushed. And somehow, in between English poems, essays, hip-hop debates, and Spotify wrapped surprises, my soul remembered itself. This season has taught me one gentle truth: Slowness is not a vice. In a world addicted to urgency, choosing to slow down is a radical act. To sip your tea withou...
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THE ART OF MOVING SLOW - A YEAR OF STRANGERS, VIBRATIONS & BOLD TRACKS

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  There are years that rush past you like a strong wind on a ridgeline, and then there are years that carve themselves into your bones. This one did both. It ran, stumbled, lifted, tumbled, and somehow still held my hand through every sunrise. It has been equal parts chaotic and compassionate, a beautifully disorganized universe, operating with precision beneath the surface. As the year folds itself into its final pages, I find myself sitting still, not because life has stopped, but because I finally learned how to quiet my own noise. Where Strangers Become Stories If I were to measure this year, I wouldn’t count the trophies or the tired days.  I’d count the strangers. The ones I met on trails, sweaty and breathless on mountain ridges. The ones serving me dinner on evenings when I chose solitude over crowds. The ones in boardrooms, in parks, in supermarkets, in conversation queues of life. Strangers who became friends. Friends who became familiar. Some who drifted away wi...
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Rain, Ridges, and Reflections - Lessons from the Aberdare Traverse

  It’s been a minute since I did a traverse hike. And I must have been out of my mind to think I was back in shape for one. Say what? The weather in the Aberdares is always something else, wild, moody, humbling. This year, hiking has been what I’d call polite,  not easy, but kind. The mountains have given grace. But last week, I prayed for rain. I missed the chaos, the kind that tests not just your boots, but your spirit. The Aberdare trails answered generously. The ascent up Table Mountain was brutal. The kind that leaves you talking to yourself, bargaining with your breath. My rain pants stayed forgotten somewhere at home, so the rest of me had to make peace with the soaking. But the boots held firm, my Salomons biting the mud like loyal soldiers. By the summit, the wind came from the belly of the clouds, the cold biting deep. We stayed barely ten minutes,  there was no view to steal your breath, only mist, wind, and the silent kind of triumph that doesn’t need an au...
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The Mountains, The Stillness, and the Life-Death-Life Cycle: Lessons from the Wild Woman

  The Mountains, The Stillness, and the Life-Death-Life Cycle It’s been a while since I last wrote. I can’t quite explain what’s been happening, that strange vacuum where everything happens, yet nothing feels magnificent enough to record. No high-altitude mountains, no extreme gym routines, no extreme runs or walks. Just life, flowing quietly, steadily, and unhurried. Since August, that’s been me, just letting life happen. Maybe it’s Mount Kilimanjaro’s fault. A few months before, I would have blamed Mount Kenya’s altitude, but you know what they say, you come down from the mountain, and everything feels different. Only hikers might understand this feeling , a kind of serene emptiness that follows great heights. Runners call it the runner’s high ; for us, it’s altitude high sickness,  that beautiful post-mountain stillness where the body is grounded, yet the spirit still floats somewhere among the clouds. When the Mountains Go Quiet Coming down from the ...
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Movement is Medicine: Finding Balance on and off the Trail

  Just the other night, I lay awake staring at the ceiling, silently wishing it was Friday. Not because I had big weekend plans - no, because I wanted to cancel them and just sleep. But sleep wouldn’t come. And when it doesn’t, at least for me, it usually means one of two things: either I’m anxious about something, or I’m paying the painful price of skipping the gym for too long. This time, it was the latter. My arms, legs, back, and even the small muscles I didn’t know existed were staging a full-blown protest after this week’s workouts. Lesson learned: comfort has consequences. Still, I had a hike planned with my team, and there was no way I was going to bail. So I made a deal with my body - pain and I would have to coexist. We’d negotiate our way to the summit, spend the day in the wilderness, and hopefully come down not just alive, but renewed. That’s the paradox of movement. It hurts sometimes. It demands sacrifice. But in the same breath, it heals. Movement is medicine. ...
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