Why I almost abandoned writing…
I've always thought that my vocation was to become a Lawyer and a Diplomat. Maybe the former was influenced by the popular Nigerian movie "False Alarm"... While growing up, I was this problem child who always objected to everything. My mother even called me a sac of problems. Which looking back to my childhood, it makes a lot of sense now. So, it was but natural for me to spend the rest of my life saying, screaming, shouting, yelling: " Objection My Lord"
So, I decided to study law after High School until I realized that passion is one thing and talent is another. For the latter ideal job, I was inspired by my Aunt's husband who works for the United Nations Organization. This is a man who has lived in Ivory Coast, Gabon, Ethiopia and Senegal in just the 11 years I've known him. This is someone who has probably visited more Countries than I have visited villages and towns in my own country. Yes. That to me is a dream job. Maybe one day I'll become a lawyer and a diplomat. I might just get my degree and do diplomacy one day. The dream is very much alive.
The reason I stopped writing for a while could be closely related to the reason I started writing in the first place. I started writing because people told me I was good with words and so in order to feel important to others, I starting writing to impress. My writings lacked emotions( I still think they do. Because I'm not yet ready to open up) and expressiveness, but they were nice with a lot of rhyme schemes and pseudo wordplay. So when the desire to impress was greater than the need to express, I wrote without writing. But when the taste of pseudo glory and self aggrandizement was threatened, I stopped, blamed it on writer's block, family and school issues, a lot of things except the real things that made me to stop. Amongst many factors that there may be, I think I stopped writing because of two(2) main reasons:
1. I met people who were better and more intelligent than me on the World Wide Web. These past few months have been crazy. People have been telling me more often that they look up to me and that they are aspired by me. If I'd had this support and a little self-esteem back then, I wouldn't have left writing for a long while. I met brilliant minds online who made my poems look like nursery school rhymes with no meaning. I met people who made my own short stories sound so quack. People who wrote articles with so much class and tact. And then I said to myself: "Maybe I wasn't meant for this" Instead of learning from them, and constantly practicing to get better, I decided to give up. I chose the coward's way out.
2. I was lazy and I believed too much in my skills as a writer. Our teacher used to say that procrastination is the thief of time and he wasn't wrong. I let procrastination steal my time and even some of the future time. I even had as companions, the four horsemen of procrastination: Napping, Snacks, Social Media and Minor Chores.
You know when they've repeatedly told you how good you are so much such that you think you don't need to train or harness your skills? That was me. The laziness with finishing a novel too. The long hours spent in writing these novels and short stories and articles. The only thing that looked feasibly doable was to write poems( because of the time involved)
Amongst all of these, I think I almost stopped writing because I wasn't getting paid. Why not focus on something that'll get me a paycheck? But why did I start writing again?
My life was in turmoil and the pen and papers became my safe haven. I rediscovered myself. From it I hope to part no more. People still ask me if it brings the "dough". I don't know what to say because writing has become more than just an occupation, it's now my hobby.
