rooms your light haven't met yet...

Dearest gentle reader, welcome to the beginning of the end!!

This is the part of the race where the music gets softer, the air gets heavier with nostalgia, and we start asking ourselves the honest questions: How has the year been? What did it give? What did it take? What are we stepping into next?

But before we dive in, how was November for you?

For me, it was a cocktail I didn't order but still had to sip. 😅 One night, I whispered to God, "Dear God… until I die?!" and the funny thing is, I meant it in every sense of frustration and exhaustion. The year really tried my gangster more than once. But slowly, gently, I'm learning to take life in stride. I'm realising that life is rarely ever just one thing. It's always a little bit of everything: joy and ache, clarity and confusion, laughter and late-night sighs and even when it tilts more toward one side in a season, it's all still part of the ride. None of it, not one bit, is ever wasted.

One night while walking home, I passed by a tiny roadside kiosk. As expected, there was no electricity (classic Nigerian things ✨), but the owner powered a small lamp that glowed just enough to light the whole stall. And in that moment, it hit me: purpose determines intensity, capacity, and demand. That same lamp would look weak and irrelevant in a massive hall. A bigger stage would naturally require a bigger light, not because the original is faulty, but because the scale has changed, and so have the stakes.

And that made me ask a question I now want to hand over to you: what if you've been playing small, not out of humility, but because you didn't realise just how much your life actually carries? What if your capacity feels "just okay" because you've been lighting a stall when you were built for stadiums? It's wild how we begin to move differently when understanding clicks and conviction kick in. So as we round off this year, pause for a second and ask yourself what rooms you're built to light, what intensity your purpose truly demands, and what needs an upgrade — not because you're lacking, but because you're expanding.

And remember, you don't have to have every answer by January 1st. You just need to start asking better questions. That's already a rebirth in motion.

Before I head out, Happy New Year in advance 🎉🍾✨ may 2026 meet you softer, stronger, braver, and brighter. Thank you so much for riding out 2025 with me in your inbox. It's been a gift to share these tiny revelations, even in months when the lamp felt small.

Till we speak again, I love you, I'm rooting for you, and may your light get audacious enough for the rooms you're heading into.

With all my love,
Dolapo Tej 🤍

P.S. Here's to the beginning of a new year. I'll see you at the start of the next half of the decade. Beginning of 2030s-ish vibes 🥂 We will speak again then, older, kinder, wiser.