… Again

My first blog post went out 14 years ago. I had to count the years on my fingers to be certain. Fourteen years is a long time. I don’t remember exact details, but considering it happened on the 27^th, at the tail end of January, I’m guessing that I wanted to ensure that I stuck to my planned resolution for that year. 2012. Who knows, I may have written – take your writing seriously, in all caps on some damn post-it note that I stuck somewhere visible.

January is quite notorious for piling on such pressure, especially on young impressionable twenty something year olds, suddenly racing against time because there’s your classmate from university doing wonders; starting a business, building an app, making money, travelling and you are in Abuja, working a 9 – 5 that lets you get by because well, you are still living with your parents thankfully, and eating their free food. 

I didn’t necessarily think about the next fourteen years when I started, I mean, who does? But I guess aspirations sit in the brain like a taxi driver in an airport rank, waiting their turn. You just sort of hope that things will move along. That maybe as you continue in your new-found adventure, your dreams would meet you busy with humble experiences in your hands, and turn by turn, those things begin to happen. You write for the New Yorker or land that TV role, then publish a book, and maybe Oprah would call to say she liked the book so much she was giving 100,000 copies away and making it her book club pick, then you go on tour from New York to London to Ibadan, telling of your small beginnings in an ancient town, the first place you ever picked up a paper and wrote.

Someone in the audience might ask very gleefully, as they do of all authors – when should we expect the next book? And you would say dutifully, your voice measured, in a cadence assured with a small slice of pride – “Soon, very soon,” because you know that you have done the work and already have a couple thousand new words in your computer. Inadvertently, you will hope to ride on the wave of the previous thing gallantly into the next.

Well, here I am, fourteen years later, armed with the knowledge that aspirations will make you wait, and the act of waiting can get really frustrating. Excruciatingly so. But of course, you probably already knew that. There are many things that I hoped I would have in my hands despite not necessarily thinking fourteen years ahead. For instance, a book deal or two would be a very wonderful outcome of events. A marvellous website with a link to a multi city event you can find me at sounds like a lovely reward for all these years of writing.  

And yet, here’s what I’m learning. The journey to aspirations being met is not often linear. Every new year can feel like it will be the one. The one where the consequential shift you are hoping for happens and you don’t have to second-guess your talent and ask yourself questions like  – Am I even a writer if I don’t have that book published yet?

Whether you are waiting for a job or a child or a relationship to get better, or a publisher to sign you a book contract, there’s something crushing about time passing by, staring you in the face with the stark reality of your inability to account for the thing you’ve been hoping for. But there is also something incredibly unfortunate about the miracles we miss when we stare unmet realities in the face.  

The miracle of small things accumulating, of what it means to go and try again. The miracle of tomorrow being another day to try.

Here I am, learning that to survive the journey of reaching aspirations, a resolute tenacity must be seared into our reality, woven into the fabric of our dejection. Insanity, almost, that notoriously hopes and hopes again, tries and tries again, believes and believes again. A doggedness that sees as much value in the process as it sees in whatever the expected outcome is. A willingness to keep doing the work that makes us happy, despite never getting recognition for it. To keep holding on tight, continuing the work of beginning, and carrying the responsibility of showing up daily.

Here I am, fourteen years later, still without that book contract, still asking if I’m a writer even without a published book, but still finding joy in writing, in reading, in crafting stories and reviewing books I’ve enjoyed. Still feeling a sometimes dubious joy when the writing is going really well.

Here I am, fourteen years later, still committing to share, to not leave words in my drafts.

Perhaps this is the year I have hoped for every new year. Perhaps it is not, But I am still buoyed in the miracle of tomorrow. There is always tomorrow.

Every dream may not materialise soon or now or today and that’s alright, but one thing is for sure, If you give up now, it sure as heck is never going to happen. And so, the deal is to keep moving forward. Writing that poem, recording that music, recording that video, attending that audition, again and again.

It is in the everyday that the magic of met aspirations compound. All of that waiting, showing up regardless, is part of the process of the product. Holding the line.

Doing the work and waiting.

Waiting.

Because what’s that Nigerian saying…? Na who give up lose.