SWAGGERVILLE

Welcome to Swaggerville

I bet you would have come across the word “swagger” several times; in music, on the internet, between conversations..etc. The word has become one to reckon with. Simply put, swagger could be defined as

“How one presents him or her self to the world. Swagger is shown from how the person handles a situation. It can also be shown in the person's walk. In other words swagger is to to move with confidence, sophistication and to be cool…..Urban Dictionary  
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Souvenirs at the Wedding

What is it with women and souvenirs at weddings?

I’m actually curious to know if we women pride ourselves in the number of souvenirs we get to take home from weddings. I was at my friend’s wedding a couple of days ago and there were these gorgeously dressed women who just had to have every single souvenir that passed their table. Is there some medal attached to the quantity of souvenirs we’re able to acquire? At the same wedding, there was a friend of mine who came at the very end of the wedding, yet she took home the most souvenirs.

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Long Distance Relationships; How to make it work

She stood there and watched him pull out his passport from his inner coat pocket and hand it over to the immigration officer.  The queue at the airport was extremely long, but she didnt mind; As long as she could steal some extra time with her fiance.

The airport couldn't have been busier, so many people traveling outside the country, not to talk of the ones returning into the country. "I’ll be back soon baby", he said with sadness in his eyes, as the tears flowed down hers. "When"? She thought. Drawing her close, he kissed the tears that flowed down her cheeks and unto her lips, then  reassured her of his love for her.

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It’s ok to make that purchase online

Setting up an e-commerce industry in Nigeria is somewhat challenging. What seems to be such a fast thriving and enterprising business in other parts of the world, is slow paced here in Nigeria. This market is still very much virgin in Nigeria so what is the main reason for the distorted growth of this industry?

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How Independent should a woman be?

Have you ever thought about why nobody ever says “independent man” ? I guess nobody ever expects men to be anything but independent. By nature, men have been tagged independent, so why not women? It seems we have to earn our rights as women to be able to stand on the same level with powerful men.

It’s very important that we women do not have to rely on men for everything. A certain level of Independence should be instilled in every woman. This is something that should be worked on from birth, teaching the female child to change the tyres of the car, driving herself around, teaching her to be strong willed and fight to earn her place in the society.

I have often a heard some women say to their husbands/partners "My money, is my money and your money is our money". We're talking like 80% to 20% here, with the 20% coming from women of course. Should this really be the case? A man will always be a man and that ego is always there, if they need your help financially, assist but without hurting his ego. Now dont get it twisted, be dependent but don't be too dependent that is to say, cut him some slack sometimes.

So how independent should a woman be? Certainly not to the stage where she tries to be the man in her relationship. Let the man, be the man and let the woman be the woman. African women, especially in diaspora tend to forget where they’re coming from. As women, we have certain roles to play in the family, yes things may be hard and you happen to be a working class woman, but always remember that your family should always come first in everything We need to prioritise by put things in their right perspectives. Think about how miserable you would be without your family and your husband.

Stand strong, we’re women and we’ve been designed to withstand a lot of challenging situations. Hope for the best and always live your today like it were your last

Organising your madness

Wow!! I thought I was the only woman on the face of this planet that didn’t have it together. When you look at some women, they seem to be so perfect, with their hair always neat and every strand in place, notes are always clean and together, rooms tidy and clothes folded up, I can go on and on.
I on the other hand was always the opposite of them, my hair wasn’t always so tidy, and neither was my room and my entire life. You see, what I discovered was that my disorganized nature reflected in my everyday life. I realized that I was never early to events, never prioritized and was basically disorganized in several ways.

I’ve taken part in a couple of stage dramas, something we did often was to organize chaos scenes and rehearse them so they look natural to the audience. The madness in everyone’s life has to be organized.

What I needed to do was to understand my problem and then I found out I’m not the only one in it. I started making a conscious effort to tidy things up for myself, cos nobody’s gonna do it for you.

I always asked myself the question “How would you like to find that thing or place when you return?” “Don’t you wanna make it easy to find items you’re looking for?” so every time you get tired and lazy to pick up that piece of paper on the floor, you remember these questions.

There’s a popular saying that the only time a woman gets to rest is when she’s dead. We women are always busy. We have to look after our husbands, kids, cleaning up after them, feeding them and still have a 9am-5pm job. It sure isn’t an easy job to do what we do as women, but what can we do? We aint gonna rest until we're dead so we might as well get our acts together and organize our daily madness.

Picking up the pieces

How it hurts when that special someone dies or decides to move on without you. It leaves you feeling rejected and alone, wondering how to pick up the pieces of your life. You begin to ask questions like “why did it have to happen to me?” How did I ever get to this point”? In all of these, you need to allow your mind to travel way back to when you were happy without this person.

Picking up the pieces of your life is probably one of the hardest things in Life. Just as a shattered glass jar has to go through a remolding and reformation process, so do you have to remodel and reform your life after a loss. Nobody ever said it’s gonna be easy. However follow the steps below and see how these changes affect your life.

1. Cry:
There’s absolutely nothing wrong in crying, Crying is popularly known as being part of the healing process. Let it all out. It’s ok to cry.

2. You need to remove traces of existence of the person in your immediate environment.
• Delete phone numbers, text messages, block emails,
• Get rid of clothes, wristwatches, perfume smells, magazines etc

3 Take a vacation…if you can
What you need right now is to clear your head of all the happenings around you, take a break of 2-3 days (or more). Walk on the beach, take yoga classes, talk to friends, go watch a movie (be careful here, you don’t wanna watch anything that brings back memories), have a massage. All these would help set your mind at ease.

4 Talk about it.
Like the saying goes,

"A problem shared is a problem half solved"

instead of moping about, talk to someone that understands you.

5 Get busy
Engage yourself in the things that make you happy. Enjoy what you do, put a smile on that face when you go to work, let people know that you’re absolutely strong willed and you came out bigger, better and bolder.

Often times, you find your mind wandering and drifting far away to memories of that person but remember always that you’re a fighter and this battle has been won, whether you’re constantly deep in though or not, you deserve to be happy.

Healthy Office Politics (If u can’t beat them, join them)

Yeah, yeah, you wouldn’t be the first person to be hated by several colleagues in the office.Infact it seems to be a vicious cycle that just keeps repeating itself in every office environment.

So why do we have office politics at all? Well, this should be expected when a whole bunch of people come together from different facets of life? They tend to bond firstly with their people of common background; same tribe, same school, same religion, even the same age bracket.

Office politics can have its positive and negative effects. It all depends on what side you’re receiving from. Learn to make your office politics healthy. There’s absolutely nothing wrong in engaging in a little office politics, as long as your relationship with others does not affect the way the office is being run.

It’s only normal that in every work environment, you’ll always find people that are; snobs, gossips, hardworking, lazy, overly friendly, flirty and shy. Learning to accept people for who they really are and respecting everyone’s uniqueness is the secret to healthy office politics. Who says you can’t smile with that ever nagging boss of yours? You only need to find a common ground with the person.
What about that overly friendly new staff? Learn to accept the person and create a level grounded relationship for yourselves.

Think about this for a second “How can I make my boss like me for once”?
Your boss needs to know what you can bring to the table. Nothing makes a boss happier than seeing that the subordinates complete and even surpass their given targets. Maybe you need to stop believing its office politics that gets that colleague all the good reports. When you do your job right, you really don’t need much of office politics to get you to the top.

Definitely, there are always the ones who rely solely on office politics to rise, however what they don’t know is, there’s only a certain level your office politics can take you to. If you’re on top of your game in your chosen career, and you have the right connections (healthy office politics if you know what I mean?), you will certainly rise to the top and surpass even your own expectations for yourself.

I’m going to leave you with a little piece of advice, “If you can’t beat them at the game, then join them” and like the popular saying goes, “Don’t hate the player, hate the game”.