February - April Notes (2026)

For many years now, I've been posting my writing directly to Substack first, and then to this Blog as a second step. I don't always do the second step, so I wanted to post direct links to Substack for my February through April notes.

February Notes: Building Disposable Software, Buying Box Sets, and Post-Nursery Debriefs | On building tools for myself, choosing tangible things again, and translating work into toddler-scale language

March Notes: Friction, Weddings, and Toddler Logic | The case for some grunt work, wedding season, and why OG doesn't feed herself at home

April Notes: The Price of Distance, Lagos in 2026, and High Praise from OG | On staying connected to a home that doesn't wait for you, life in Lagos in 2026, and the bar for impressing a three-year-old

January Notes: Reading in the Age of AI, Backing Myself Again, and Inputs Thinking

Started the year with a quick hop to Marrakesh for OG’s birthday. It was great fun to be there during AFCON 2025.

While January often feels long after the festivities of December, this one has passed rather quickly for me. It’s not often that I arrive at the end of January with the same energy I started the year with, but that’s the case this year. I’m excited and very grateful to still wake up feeling like every day is a fresh start.

Here are a few things I’ve been thinking about this January.

*****

 

First, a quick reflection on reading and writing in the age of AI-written text. As a self-diagnosed addict to endless scrolling formats, I accepted this month that there are no safe levels of Instagram usage for me and finally kicked the app off my phone. It joined Twitter as a social network I can only access from devices I keep at home.

2025 In Review: Busyness Is Not a Badge of Honour

When your new girlfriend starts to seem more and more like your last girlfriend, know that it’s not because they are all that similar as people, but that their having been your girlfriend has shaped them, bringing out certain facets of their personalities... Own this fact, and you’ll know what to expect from your next beau. In fact, you met her when you met your first girlfriend ever. The same goes for the new company you’ve just started at, and your new boss there, and colleagues—soon you’ll see them becoming like your previous bosses and workmates, and you’ll know what experience awaits you just around the corner. - Anyan, Hu. I Deliver Parcels in Beijing: On Making a Living (pp. 187-188). Kindle Edition.

2008 was the last year that ended without me posting any of my writing to the internet. I was in my second year at university, George Bush was the US President, and the BlackBerry Curve had just launched. That feels like an eternity ago. So, when I realised last week that I had not posted anything to the blog this year, I knew I had to make time for a quick one.

For this post, I’ve gone back to the FT interview style, answering questions I’ve gotten from friends over the past few days. Here goes:

What did you read this year, and what stayed with you after the last page?

I finished 35 books in paperback or Kindle format and another five audiobooks. My reading list included familiar favourites like Morgan Housel’s Psychology of Money, James Michener’s Sayonara and Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air. I also enjoyed new books like David Jarrett’s 33 Meditations on Death, Dan Wang’s Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future, and Karen Hao’s Empire of AI. At the beginning of the year, I wanted to read more “useful books”, which in hindsight was a misnomer. All books are useful. In fact, the single most important thing I learned about myself this year came from a book I wouldn’t have considered “useful” at the start of the year: Hu Anyan’s I Deliver Parcels in Beijing. As to what stayed with me after the last page, my top choice is the quote I started this piece with. Go on and read it again. It’s relevant to the next question.

For Daddy, at 61

My dad's smile lit up rooms and was one of his most attractive features.

“As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.” - r/gsnow

During the deepest depths of the waves of grief that followed my dad’s death, I sometimes caught myself wishing he hadn’t been such a good father.

You might ask why I would think such a foolish thing. Well, my grief-addled reasoning was that I wouldn’t be in so much pain or be taking such a dim view of life without him if he hadn’t been such an important part of my life to begin with.

Been long you saw me

This post was originally posted to my Substack as part of a series to ease back into writing. The episodes described below are available at my Substack and I've added links below.

Hello hello!

Long time no see. When I sent my last email in April 2022, I didn’t think it would be nearly two years before the next one.

If you know me IRL or follow me on social media, you may know I lost my dad last year and had a daughter early this year. We lost the Koye Ladele and gained a Koye-Ladele. More than a year has now passed since my dad died, but I still miss him intensely. And when I’m being honest, despite my best efforts, there are still many ways in which I am only now re-engaging with life.

Happy-ish Birthday, Koye

Earlier today, in introvert paradise. Photo credit: Mosimiloluwa Koye-Ladele.

If you’ve read one of these before, you know about my practice of writing a birthday pager: a document outlining my hopes and desires for my next birthday. Last year’s pager included a father section. I knew we were going to have a baby and I was looking forward to becoming a father.

For Daddy, at 60

With daddy on the day we moved to the UK

The last time I saw my dad in person, we both cried as I left. Me crying on leaving home was not new. I had cried on leaving most times since I first left for university in December 2006. But tears in my dad’s eyes? That was a first. He had just recovered from an illness that had felt like certain death while it lasted. He had been surprised to wake up, halfway between life and death, to find that Simi and I had flown home to be with him. He was bashfully grateful. But now he had recovered. He had care from family and the church. I needed to return to my own home with Busola.

We prayed together. I hugged and clung to him. Then I hugged my mum. And then I hugged him again. I was crying by then – filled with gratitude for his recovery and sadness that I had to leave again. Simi took pictures of us, capturing those precious moments. At the time, I didn’t realise I had held him alive for the last time.

Happy Birthday, Koye

Slowing down, in Berlin

I have both dreaded and anticipated this day for several weeks. By “this day”, I don’t mean Sunday the 11th – my birthday. I mean Friday the 9th, when I have finally begun writing this post. Except for journal entries and reams of business writing, I have not written much else since April.

Writing again after a long pause always feels daunting. But I’m here now and I’m doing it. One word after the next.

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A friend recently asked what my biggest lesson from the last three years was. There was no contest in my mind what the biggest lesson was. My biggest lesson from the last three years is one I only learnt properly since my last birthday: slowing down.

Life Lately: The slap that was felt around the world

I mentioned The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles’s brilliant new novel, two weeks ago. When I woke up to the news this week that Will Smith had hit Chris Rock at the Oscars, I began thinking about the book again.

We are introduced to Emmet on the book’s first page. He has just been released from a correctional facility and is being driven home by the warden. Before dropping Emmet off, the warden says to him:

“…from my time with you, I can tell that that boy’s death weighs heavily on your conscience. No one imagines what happened that night reflects either the spirit of malice or an expression of your character. It was the ugly side of chance”.

We find out later in the book that Emmet punched someone, one Jimmy, on the nose after he said mean things about Emmet’s father. Not unlike Chris Rock, Jimmy mocked someone who was important to Emmet – his dad. Like Will Smith, Emmet got upset and hit Jimmy on the face. And that’s where the stories diverge. Because in The Lincoln Highway, Jimmy falls back after a single punch, hits his head, and dies.

Life Lately: Becoming Koye

Show me a better Saturday morning routine

One of my new favourite habits is reading the FT Weekend on Saturdays. It’s really nice to make a coffee and sit down to the crackle of the newspaper and the smell of ink. Every week, the FT magazine interviews a celebrity using a similar set of questions. I’ve been wanting to answer those questions for a while, so I thought I’d do so in this post. If you don’t know me personally, think of this as an introduction of sorts. (You’re welcome 😁). 

Here goes:

 

What was your childhood or earliest ambition?

I wanted to be an astronaut. I loved reading about the universe and the other planets in our solar system. I remember sitting outside our house as an eight-year-old lost in thought – reflecting on Pluto’s lonely journey around the sun.

 

Obviously, I did not become an astronaut. After I stopped wanting that, I thought I’d be a pilot. Then I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer but I could not study that in Nigeria, so I thought I’d study the next best thing – mechanical engineering. There was also a brief period where I wanted to be a neurosurgeon after reading Ben Carson’s Gifted Hands.