About Me — Williams Oladele
An interesting once upon a poet?
My friends call me Olaidozen, a moniker I adopted many years ago when I was only a teenager. A cousin gave me the nickname, and it’s since stuck.
I wear many hats. You wouldn’t expect less from a fast learner with an artistic mind. I’m a writer, broadly speaking. I like to say, “I used to be a poet” because I’ve not written poetry in a long time, but it was my first love as a writer after I stumbled upon The Canterbury Tales in my father’s library as a teenager.
Well, I’m a published poet. My first book is an anthology — The Juvenilia (Didactic Narratives and Other Poems).
These days, I’m more of a non-fiction writer in the personal development, productivity, and creativity niche. A quick scroll through my stories on Medium will show you both sides of my writing.
Outside of my writing, I’m a freelance writer, and I’ve earned money writing all kinds of stuff, from ad copy to academic research, from web copy to entire manuscripts (fiction and non-fiction). I design websites too.
When I’m not writing, editing, or publishing books, I’m a management consultant with a 9–5 job in a small consulting firm. Here, I work with a team to help companies unleash their people's potential for peak performance.
And more, and more…
Enough about what I do. Let me tell you who I am.
I like to think I’m an old soul in a young body (just knocking on 30). I love the classics, whether it’s literature or architecture, music or manners. I find old things oddly fascinating and fancy them over their modern counterparts.
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My favourite movie is The Lord of the Rings. Admit it, it’s the best trilogy ever—such a wonderful adventure and an absolute cinematic masterclass. I highly recommend it if you have not seen the movie.
I love fantasies, and I’m enchanted by beauty and nature. Nothing’s more beautiful than nature, anyway. Just look around you and see the poetry that nature is: the trees, songbirds, oceans, the sun, moon and stars…
I don’t have a lot of money yet, so there are still too many unchecked beautiful places on my bucket list: Rome, Venice, Athens, Giza, London, Budapest, Prague, the Serengeti, Bhutan, and maybe space (why not?). I’ve only been to four countries. Yet I long to see the world and to explore the many pages that’s earth.
I’ve been in love, and I’ve been heartbroken. But what does one have if one has no love? So, I love again and again, for there’s no greater feeling and no sweeter desire.
My Values
Executio. Excellentia. Elegantia.
These are my core values. Excellence and elegance in execution is my motto. It’s why I’ve never learned how to do a bad job or not put in my best effort, come what may. What’s worth doing is worth doing well, eh?
If there’s one word that summarises my approach to life, it’s service. Service is how I find fulfilment, and I agree with Albert Schweitzer: I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.
I once wrote a poem about happiness being a function of service:
I like to think I’m a misanthrope, yet I have faith in humanity. Because no matter how bad it gets, I still encounter some goodness in this world, and I think it’s worth fighting for. Do you?
I can’t tell you all about me in one piece but I’m sure you have enough to get going. Catch you in the next story about me. 🤗🤗
