11:09 #1- YES

Aminat Badara
Sep 1, 2018 · 2 min read

Always say ‘yes’ to the present moment… Surrender to what is. Say ‘yes’ to life — and see how life starts suddenly to start working for you rather than against you. -Eckhart Tolle

No.

I try and fail to count how many times that word finds a way to waltz into my mind and sashay back out as I consider doing this.

My mind, the complicated over-thinking maze that it is, has successfully written up a list of how this whole thing can blow up in my face before I even start.

Yet here I am.

This was supposed to be a writing challenge; just 11 random posts inspired by this list of writing prompts I happened upon sometime back. An e-birthday gift from me to me and whoever reads. Nothing fancy. Just words. Not a diary session either.

Between July and now, the idea has taken so many shapes in my head until I settled for this- personal essays that are not so covered in layers of fancy words or names that aren’t mine that would make it fiction.

11:09.

11 posts by 11:09pm up until the 11th of September.

Perhaps the reason I have decided on word therapy as a birthday gift is a compilation of the inner thoughts of a man in 10 tracks. Yxng Dxnzl has spoken to me in many ways than I have decided to speak to myself. It must have been scary to release a body of work with so much seemingly deep stuff. But because of a ‘yes’, that body of art is lifting someone’s spirits as I put these words in writing.

Or, it could be Shonda Rhimes’ ‘Year of Yes’. Maybe it’s even a combination of all the ‘yes-sy’ things that have been crawling up into my space.

So yes.

Yes to the things that scare me.

Yes to this gift to myself.

Yes to the thoughts of ‘No, this is crazy’ at the time I move to hit publish.

Yes to me saying to No, ‘Shut the hell up. I choose yes.’

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