It is a practical way of approaching life. This notebook is a prescription—one written for myself and for anyone who finds value in these lines. Here, I will write down rules and directives to follow, principles and the essentials of life as I see them. You will find my failures and my successes, my mistakes, my good and bad decisions.
I begin this book with a rule: Always tell the truth and nothing but the truth to yourself.
What is despair?
What is it, oh, what is it?
It is having nowhere left to go—yet believing that you must go somewhere. Absolutely.
That’s the problem: this idea that we absolutely must go somewhere. That word—“absolutely”—is where the real problem of life lies.
I have known this feeling.
That moment when every path ahead seems to disappear. When we watch our dreams collapse before our eyes. When everything we have fought for all our lives comes to an abrupt end.
And at that precise moment, we realize that all those things we once aspired to were nothing more than illusions of the past. We tell ourselves stories, we build castles in the air, create endless possibilities, invent exits, imagine new roads—until, eventually, life forces us to stop lying to ourselves and to stop dragging others into our lies.
It is up to us to hit pause.
It is up to us to put an end to these endless quests.
Once again, I have fooled myself. I have allowed myself to be consumed by illusions. And this time, the lowest of all—I involved a friend in my administrative struggles. I stooped to something I swore I would never resort to.
And yet, I feel at peace. Because if I could not stop myself from falling, at least she had the courage to stop me.
All of this—out of vanity.
All of this—supposedly to help my parents and my family.
All of this—out of fear of humiliation.
All of this—out of fear of something I am not even sure exists.
Shame.
That is one of humanity’s greatest afflictions.
You wanted to study psychology? Well, here is the real lesson.
What game am I playing?
The status game.
The pure and simple game of status.
A game where everyone wants the prestige of being here in Europe. The prestige of the West. That is what it is—wanting to do as others do, wanting to be seen.
That, alas, is what makes us miserable.
That is what makes me miserable.
If it had been the Devil, you would have sold him your soul.
You were lucky. You made your request to a friend who had the courage to tell you the truth.
Enough illusions.
Prepare yourself instead to return.
Gather enough money to invest when you’re back in Cameroon.
Live as if you could be deported tomorrow.
All I need is one reader on my blog and one more viewer on my YouTube channel. Then, the rest will follow.
Action Plan
- Invest in online investment platforms.
- Invest in a vehicle or any other business in Cameroon.
- Build my online identity and personal brand.
- Buy books, both digital and physical.
- Get a tablet and an e-reader.
These lines resonate deeply with me. I wrote them during a challenging time when I lost my visa. Shortly after that, I asked a friend to marry me, thinking it might solve my problem. I knew she liked me—she had openly expressed her feelings. However, I didn’t feel the same way about her, and I was honest about that.
I felt terrible for having proposed marriage merely as a means to secure my visa. She had a child, and I never considered the potential consequences for the child if she married me just for my visa. I’m grateful that she said no. It wasn’t right for me to use her as a shortcut to solve my visa issue. I was avoiding the long, challenging path of working through my problems the proper way.
Identity? 