The Gospel According to a Mutineer
On fine girls, hackathons, and learning to live before life lives you.
From one of my favorite films…
“Good morning, oh and in case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!”
— Truman Burbank, The Truman Show
it’s another newsletter on “living your life exactly the way you’d want to relive it if given the chance to do so.”
and i hope you haven’t gotten tired of reading about this, because i haven’t gotten tired of writing about it — and i won’t anytime soon.
I should really be cooking right now because I’m sooo dayummm hungry, and the worms in my tummy are competing for the coaster biscuit I’m eating.
Or maybe I should be reading, because my lecturers are doing the most and I’ve got to cram a whole load of things I don’t understand.
But chills — that’s not the point.
If I could zoom out of my life and take a reader’s-eye view, I think writing at this point in time would still be the choice I’d make over and over again, ad infinitum.
Back to why I’m writing
Most times, this imagination creeps into my head:
“that my life were a movie playing in front of a large audience and I were the main character — protagonist type shii.”
Because of this, I’ve tried to live a very conscientious life. But every now and then, I forget the camera’s still rolling — I slip out of character, miss a few cues, ad-lib nonsense.
And when that happens, I pause and ask myself, “Bimbo, what kind of character would you want to be in this grand play?”
I never really had an answer.
But after everything that’s happened lately — those random evenings I sit under the tree in front of the Catholic church, not really waiting for anything, just watching people pass and letting my thoughts roam — the hymns from inside always seem to find their way to me. I’m not even trying to listen, but somehow the songs float through the evening air, calm and haunting at the same time, like they’re sneaking into my head and settling there.
perhaps Mary, Jesus, or those Catholic hymns have gotten into my head and have something to do with this.
I seriously want to be a rebel, an outlier, a mutineer, a renegade — basically any word that’s the synonym of a rebel.
(yeah my name is Abimbola, i’m a guyyyyyyy — people think it’s for females only, but it translates to “born into wealth.” my parents named me out of faith, cause i wasn’t born into any wealth kan kan and i can’t think of any reason else. who am i to blame them for daring to dream sha 😅)
“Long live the pioneers (hey, la, la, la, la, la, la)
Rebels and mutineers (hey, la, la, la, la, la, la)
Go forth and have no fear (hey, la, la, la, la, la, la)
Come close and lend an ear (hey, la, la, la, la, la, la)”
— X Ambassadors, 2015
Maybe it’s the irritation for the scrupulous and obsequious life that pushed me...
in 2022, to walk up to Ryana — one fine girl like that in my GCE center — asked for her number and later went on to ask her out
in 2020, to run away from home (they caught me before I could — a story for another day 😅)
in 2025, to compete in a hackathon when I had close to zero knowledge of web dev while acting as frontend, backend, and machine learning guy
in 2021, to walk Abibola (my then crush) home almost every chance I got before she travelled to Manchester tough times those were mehnnnn. it’s not a romcom love story jare — she liked another guy and was unapologetic about it. besides, cane was waiting for me at home from momsii for coming home late. i guess i just didn’t care anymore.
side note: it’s Abibola, not Abimbola — her’s is without an M. I think I asked what it meant once, but i have honestly fogotten, anyways, no, I didn’t make a mistake and we aren’t namesakes — i just rhymed accidentally. mistakes, namesakes. brain, please behave. okay, where were we again? right, the story 😅
A little backstory
Ryana is still the smartest girl I’ve ever met. I tell her that all the time.
She’s tall — almost 6 feet. I was 15 in 2022 and barely 5’4. She’s got pink lips, that Fulani-Hausa face, she speaks sooo well, and she’s fineeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
And me? I was just a short black boy (that “you are broke, you are black, you are short” type shii) — her brother’s age mate — with nothing going for me except my brain.
That was the only thing I had, really. I even used to carry food flasks to my GCE exams because I couldn’t afford to buy food during the breaks between objective and theory papers — unless I wanted to trek back home.
(na who don chop fit to dey feel embarrassment.)
By no comparison, Ryana was the finest girl in the entire center. And as per “big big things nii mo like” — I mean this both literally and non-literal.
So, in the spirit of big, hairy, audacious goals, I told my guy Raman:
“I like this girl mehnnnn. I think I’ll collect her number before GCE ends.”
Raman said I couldn’t. I said I would. We made a dare. We even bet money (me wey no get money before 😭).
I can’t remember exactly how or what I said, but I know I walked up to Ryana on the morning of our chemistry exam.
She was teaching her friend chemistry. I started by asking her the molecular formula for a compound — she replied. I asked another — she replied again. And another...
omorhhh, omi yii mowe mehnnn.
Step 1 achieved, but I hadn’t won the dare yet.
The day of physics came. We had our alternative to practicals exam. I was sitting one seat away, adjacent to her.
I saw Ryana struggling with a question. I told myself:
“this is the moment you’ve been waiting for bimbo. it’s now or never. time to prove you are a scholar.”
My brain must’ve deleted the in-between scenes, but I know I explained things to her. And as I was about to finish, the wicked invigilator woman saw me and changed my seat.
(only if she were in my shoes 😅)
Even so — mission accomplished.
Step 2 achieved, but the dare wasn’t fulfilled yet.
I finished before her, waited patiently — I wanted my “thank youuuuuu.” 😂
yes, you can call me petty.
She approached me, and she said the “thank you.”
As an omo ogbon, I started a conversation — though fidgeting and stuttering (cause what do you mean a 15-year-old boy dey toast adult?).
I asked where she lived, she replied, we talked a bit, till her friend finished and she left.
And yeah — she gave me her number after our final paper. Honestly, I’m sure it was out of reciprocity, not interest.
Still, we’re very, very cool friends — even now.
But between that first “Ryana, can you give me your number so we can talk after GCE?” to us becoming real online friends (we talked almost everyday bruh, we both knew everything going on in each other’s lives), I had asked her out a thousand times.
And Ryana would reply with something like:
“I just can’t date someone who’s my junior brother’s age mate.”
not exactly those words, but you get the gist.
Looking back now, I ask myself — was I hysterical? What was I expecting her to say?
18-year-old girls and 15-year-old guys don’t fall in love, do they?
(i think i had watched a lot of movies at this point 😅)
Regardless, the point is — I dared to ask her.
In the hypothetical movie of my life, I don’t want to be the one looking back with regret. I want to be the character whose choices, bold or foolish, leave no space for what ifs.
So when that GCE scene plays, nobody — not even me — will say, “He should’ve asked for her number.”
Because he did.
i hope i haven’t bored you? and if i have, you’ll have to endure my hackathon story. it’s short though, i promise.
I applied for a hackathon this year when all I knew was the Intro to Python book by Eric Matthes.
I had to build a web app and a machine learning model — and I didn’t know jack shit!
My chat history with ChatGPT was wild:
“How do I connect the frontend HTML code to the backend Python code?”
ChatGPT would give me steps, and I’d be like:
“Nooo, give me the exact code, boboyii! If I sabi am, I no go dey ask you naa!”
Don’t even get me started on the machine learning model. I installed random libraries that almost crashed my laptop.
I didn’t even know what it meant to host a website until a judge asked me — and I said rubbish with composure (nobody knew I said rubbish 😭).
For two weeks straight, I was on a coding sprint — frontend, backend, ML, even UI/UX.
(the UI was so terrible I’m ashamed of it gawddddd 😭)
But somehow, my team won. We won the hackathon.
And if I hadn’t applied because “I only knew Intro to Python,” that ₦500k would’ve gone just like that.
I’d have watched the winner take pictures, hold the giant fake cheque, and smile for the camera — while I scrolled past it on Instagram whispering, “That could’ve been me.”
And trust me, that feeling stings more than losing.
p.s : A judge gave us extra ₦250k making it ₦500k
Or the numerous times I’d walk a girl (Abibola and others… 😅) I liked home in secondary school, telling her my house was close by, knowing I’d have to trek and trek till I got home.
I’d eventually get home so late my parents would complain, and momsii would beat the hell out of me, saying I’d joined cult (Nigerian parents and melodramatism ehnnn).
You know how African mothers act naaa.
And I’d continue the cycle again and again, and they’d keep complaining again and again — till they didn’t anymore
Today, I don’t regret a thing. Even though most of the walks I took beatings for ended up being futile, and I never dated any of them.
But that’s not the point — the point is:
I walked the girls home.
I applied for the hackathon.
I collected Ryana’s number and asked her out.
And I’m writing this now.
And I was scared every freaking time.
“what if momsii reached home before me and i chop cane today?”
“What if I lose, and people laugh?”
“What if she says no? (which she did)”
“What if people don’t read what i write?”
(me and my 10 subscribers against the world 😤)
But I did it anyway.
That’s why I can never have the hicks of what ifs.
So dear reader, I hope you drop everything and live.
I hope you get excited about being above life, not beneath it.
Because in the end — maybe a hundred years from now, if we’re lucky — we’ll all be buried six feet under.
And on your gravestone and mine will be two dates.
Mine: 2007 – till God knows when.
But what really matters isn’t the start or end date — it’s the hyphen, mehnnnn.
The freaking hyphen.
What’s in your hyphen?
The memories made.
The impressions left.
The lives touched.
The books read.
The goosebumps felt.
The lovers loved.
The songs liked.
The walks taken.
What the hell is in it?
What’s in your hyphen?
And by all means, live your life.
Ask your Ryana out.
Tell him you like him.
Write the book.
Take the course.
Start the business.
Just do something.
It won’t be easy.
Things won’t go as planned.
You’ll fail and fail again.
Dem ladies will say no — or worse, they’ll say “ewwwwww.”
Your first few tries will flop. The book won’t sell. The business won’t profit.
But still —
“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”
Start with your hands shaking,
your voice trembling,
your heart beating fast like you ran from Orile to Ojodu-Berger.
You just have to startttttt.
Yes, doubts will come:
What if you fail? What if you fly?
And even if you fail — which you will — you’ll fail your way to greatness.
What if the plan isn’t good enough? A bad plan is better than no plan.
What if I’m not ready? The journey is what gets you ready.
What will people say? People will always say something — why care?
Nobody at the top knew the end from the beginning. You aren’t God.
Stop waiting for the perfect time — you’re late already.
And the worst thing that can happen is to be haunted by what ifs.
Give life a fight, champ.
Allow yourself to love again, to live again, to fight again, to say “fuck you” to life again — and live your life exactly the way you’d want to relive it.
(I’m off to cook now — I’m starving.)
Learn. Grow. Change. Become.
— a mutineer and a writer,
Abimbola.
See you whenever.
This was a great read, and it's come at an almost supernaturally auspicious time for me. I love it
Love this perspective, although sometimes I wonder if living life like a movie doesn't add an extra layer of pressure we don't allways need, but I totally get the sentiment of wanting to make every scene count.