Back then, I had dreams that felt bigger than me. From the SpaceYaTech days—long shifts, steep learning curves, trying to prove myself in rooms where everyone sounded more certain, more polished, more ready than I felt, chasing opportunities that sometimes disappeared faster than Nairobi tokens during a blackout.
There were wins, but also quiet losses nobody claps for. Rejections. Self-doubt. Financial pressure. That slow feeling of being left behind while everyone else online seemed to be moving ahead without resistance.
…But I died. Just not physically. Emotionally and mentally, I didn’t have the energy or the will to continue in the same form.
That was October 2024. No loud ending. Just silence, withdrawal, and the slow disappearance from everything that once felt normal. Tech didn’t feel like a space I belonged to anymore. It felt like a room with the lights too bright, too loud, and no exit sign that made sense.
So I left.
Socials went quiet. Messages unanswered. The version of me that was always “on” became a high-functioning shell still moving, still existing, but detached from anything that looked like direction. Depression doesn’t always look like collapse. Sometimes it looks like showing up while nothing is actually inside.
Somewhere in that blur, SpaceyaTech was part of the backdrop. Long shifts. Some days with no offs. Work that demanded output even when internal systems were down. You learn quickly that exhaustion can become normal if you stay in it long enough. It becomes routine. Not healthy, just familiar.
By the time I left that space, I wasn’t looking for clarity. I was just trying to stop the noise.
At the end of 2024, I went to Mombasa.
No reinvention story. No “finding myself” arc. Just work. I did odd jobs. Some days blurred into each other. Some shifts were painfully long. Sometimes there were no off days. The pay wasn’t great, but life had reduced itself to simpler mathematics: get through today, then figure out tomorrow later.
Oddly enough, the ferry became one of my favourite parts of the day. For a guy used to Nairobi chaos, something was humbling about crossing that water every morning and evening. The ocean didn’t care about career timelines. The ferry didn’t care about your failed plans. Life simply moved.
Eventually, I came back to Nairobi.
2025 didn’t arrive with answers. It arrived with rebuilding.
It was not glamorous. It was not linear. It was work, reflection, and trying again without any guarantee that “again” would work differently. But somewhere in the middle of it, things started to click in a way that wasn’t emotional; it was logical.
Retail became the unexpected classroom. Long hours again, different environment, same discipline requirement. But this time, something shifted. I started seeing patterns—how products moved, how customers behaved, how decisions were made without real structure behind them. And it hit me: this wasn’t just retail. It was data in disguise.
That was the shift.
This wasn’t just retail. It was data, unorganised and unlabelled.
And that changed how I saw everything.
Helping businesses make decisions without guessing suddenly felt like a real problem worth solving. I didn’t just enjoy tech. I enjoyed the structure. I enjoyed making sense of noise.
January 2026: DataCamp.
Back to structure. Python. SQL. Discipline over motivation. At the same time, I had conversations with Daisy (co-founder at Lux Dev HQ, a sister in more ways). The idea of joining Lux wasn’t new. It had just been paused.
February disrupted things again.
Life has a way of testing whether your plans are real or just well-written thoughts. That month knocked me down harder than expected. Recovery took about two months. Through it all, DataCamp continued. I earned the SQL Associate Certification along the way. Small win on paper, but in reality, it was proof of consistency returning.
Then came momentum again.
I joined the June intake, Cohort 8, with a clearer direction: data science. Not as a trend. Not as an escape. But as a deliberate path forward.
Looking back, the journey wasn’t clean. It was not optimised. It was long shifts, uncertain pay, quiet nights, ferry rides that felt like rest, and rebuilding phases that didn’t announce themselves as progress until much later.
But there were people throughout it.
SpaceyaTech team: Juma Law, Sharon, Jimmy Tron, Fred, Hudson, Hellen, Wacuka, and everyone else who kept the system moving even when individual parts were struggling.
Friends and anchors: Achinga Chris, Moracha, Terry Kirung’o, Ian JavaGuy, Wayne Gakuo, and others who showed up in different ways at different times. People who didn’t necessarily fix anything, but made the load lighter without needing to say much about it.
You don’t always notice support in real time. Sometimes you only understand it when you look back and realise you didn’t actually walk alone.
If there’s anything the last few years taught me, it’s this: collapse is not always the end state. Sometimes it’s just the forced pause before rebuilding with better structure.
And now it’s about building with intent. Better questions. Real outputs. No noise, just progress.
This is not the end.
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