I Prayed for This Exact Tiredness

I was at the library after work tonight, studying for INV 101

Here’s what was going on in my head. I’m tired. This is hard. I already worked a full day. I couldn’t focus. I read the same paragraph maybe four times and understood it less each time.

Then something came back to me.

Last year, right after I graduated, I prayed about this. Not a vague prayer either. I gave God a date. Let me be an Associate by 2027.

It’s August 2026. By the end of this month, that’s done.

I sat there in the library, and it hit me. I was sitting inside the answer to my own prayer, complaining about it.

Here’s what makes it worse. Or better. I still haven’t decided which.

Take the version of me who prayed that prayer. Cap and gown, no job title yet, no real idea how any of it was going to work. Now show him tonight. The library after work. The badge in my bag. The exam material. The tiredness that comes from a full day of doing the exact work he was hoping somebody would let him do.

He wouldn’t see a bad night. He would see the whole thing. He’d want to know how soon he could have it.

He would be jealous of this tiredness.

And once you catch it in one place you start catching it everywhere. I prayed for this job. I prayed for this city. The desk, the paycheck, the rent I pay an ocean away from where I was born, even the Houston heat I complain about walking to my car. All of it used to be something I asked for with my eyes closed, half sure I was asking for too much.

People message me on LinkedIn asking how to get into this profession. I used to be the one sending those messages. Cold, to strangers, then checking my inbox all day hoping somebody would write back. Some of them did, and that is the only reason I’m sitting where I’m sitting.

So yeah. I’m living in the answer. I just got so busy inside it that I stopped noticing where it came from.

That’s the whole thing, really. Noticing while you’re still in it.

Now, I still want more. I think about what comes after ASA. I think about what ActuaryKuda turns into. I think about people I haven’t met yet who are going to need it.

Wanting more isn’t the problem. God has never once been bothered by the next prayer.

You’re supposed to say thank you for the last thing before you ask for the next one. Otherwise you spend your whole life running toward things you won’t enjoy when they arrive, because by the time they do, you’re already complaining about whatever comes after.

And something always comes after.

Answered prayers show up wearing work clothes. The business shows up as invoices. The career shows up as a library at nine at night with your eyes burning.

Which means you may as well enjoy it. Not as a consolation prize. Enjoy it because you actually love this thing, and because there’s a younger version of you who would trade almost anything to be this tired for this reason.

Anyways, so at the library, I closed the laptop and paused to pray. I said thank you, God. For an exam that’s hard. For a job that wore me out before I even opened the book. For a boy from Mutoko sitting in an American library, living a life he once had to describe in a prayer because he had no other way to point at it.

And here’s what I want to hand you.

Look at the date on your complaints. Go back a year. Go back five. What were you praying for then? Some of what is wearing you out right now is the exact thing you were begging for.

Somebody prayed for the life you’re complaining about.

It might have been you.

Kuda