I Got A Glimpse of My Future As a Writer: It’s NOT What I Bargained For
Do you celebrate how far you have come, or do you weep about how unpleasant the journey ahead will be?
The day is Wednesday, 12 October 2022; I received a notification from Medium that ILLUMINATION accepted me as a writer for their publication. This wouldn’t be a big deal to any regular person, a Medium writer, but for me, it was. It meant a step in the right direction until I saw what lay ahead.
Despite how bad it may be, I know there is always hope. I have real-life time-travelling tutorials from Looper, Time Cop, and Interstellar to help me correct my path. Yay!
How It All Started: When We Branched Off From The Sacred Timeline
From 2018 till now, I was that guy who quietly surveyed other writers as a reader on Medium. Writing a complete article and publishing it was one of those far-fetched dreams I had, that’s how low my goal was, but I wanted it.
I remember the mixed feelings of envy and inspiration from continuously reading Medium content. I envied how effortlessly the writers brought their world of ideas to life while enchanting me. On the other hand, I was inspired to write. I hadn’t written much online except WhatsApp messages and a bunch of emails here and there, and aloooooooooot of Facebook trolling.
So, the journey began.
In my pursuit, I had to accept the reality that if I was going to start writing on Medium, the platform where my passion started. It would purely be for fun. I have a slim chance of ever getting into the Medium Partner Program in this lifetime. Stripe, sanctions, global politics, Bla-bla-bla. Just another excuse.
I made peace with it. Being a writer was worth more to me than the money. I would get it elsewhere.
So when the notification came, it was like a dream come true. I jumped with joy. I wanted to share that joy with someone, but honestly, I had no one to share it with. This is the future I saw: a quietly agonizing life with no one close to share my excitement about a hobby that torments me.
THE EVIL THAT THREATENED TO TAKE OVER
Family and friends are there, but they don’t quite get what I am doing. They say it doesn’t pay the bills, so why bother? The older you get, the more everything is about paying the bills.
The older we grow, the more we want and the more competitive we become. We demand the same of others, which makes us lead dissatisfied lives. Jordan Peterson suggests that this is how tyrants are born. And as writers, we tyrannize ourselves more than the rest of them. We will always want more of it all. For what reason? I don’t know.
When we compete, negativity starts oozing into our hearts undetected but ever-felt in the exchanges we have with friends.
But, it seems as if the ‘negativity’ serves a purpose. It keeps us from being complacent. For us, any reason to celebrate could easily be a reason to be complacent and will eventually dull us down.
I wouldn’t quite feel it when the homies said they were happy for me. Is it because I didn’t feel it for them, either?
Are we just competing and projecting our inner tormented world outside in every interaction? My friends comment that I wrote well, but it means nothing. Now I know we both need help with learning how to give feedback.
But I don’t blame them; they are only human, and so am I. Sometimes, we only support something when we are sure it’s worthy of our support.
A client testimonial simply says, ‘it is cool to support this person. And in turn, you get more people supporting you. So your friends are not exactly haters. They are humans. And the human brain only supports people when it is cool to do so.
Mthokozisi Mabhena in How is your religion similar to your friends not supporting your work?
So I made peace with the overbearing loneliness in my writer’s journey. As long as I support my passion, that’s good enough.
And then the question comes, “Do you celebrate how far you have come, or do you weep about how unpleasant the journey ahead will be?”
WHAT THE FUTURE ME LOST, AND WHAT HE WAS WILLING TO LOSE
I saw an older version of myself with a beer belly in the future, sitting slumped on his reading desk. His old friends had become distant, but he didn’t seem to notice much.
Everyone was busy doing their own thing. And he was happily typing away.
He was only obsessed with reading the next article or book to help sharpen his craft. He read other people’s work, dissecting what worked for them. Re-reading their old pieces and trying to learn from the masters. Now that I think about it, it’s a bit sad once a consumer, always a consumer.
Deep down, he wanted to share all these weird premonitions and feelings with his day ones. Like how he used to, sitting in that old rusty Volkswagen Bettle smoking cheap weed on those symmetric fat blunts we rolled.
He desired to dream again about what romantic success would look like with the boys while blasting dystopian heavy metal or some conscious underground rap in the back.
But he can’t go back to that paradise. None of us can.
Our niggas are busy, too busy on the chase, as we are. You would be lucky if you got a text back in a week. No hard feelings, though. It is what it is.
You know they are grinding. They don’t have a choice. None of us does. You can’t afford to slack if you come from where we come from.
If you dream of something, you must push for it regardless of what is lost. Nothing is of value; therefore, anything can have value.
The good part is when we catch up with old friends; we know it’s real. Fruits from the same tree taste the same regardless of the distance between the branches.
In those catch-up conversations from the future, I saw one challenge remaining loud yet unspoken, “Nigga show me your results! You know we can’t afford to play if we come from where we come from.”
For that reason, the future me had no time for love. He kept on saying, “Not yet. Love is a war no man like me can win.”
He rationalized that even though love is incredible, it’s not an achievement. The article Not Here To Make Friends made him choose this stance even more. His work kept him busy, and his writing hobby made him busier.
He was too sure that the friendships from the past would die if he didn’t have the results. Having no results makes him a failure. No one wants to be associated with failure. Iron must sharpen iron.
Another realization came to me: The competition that separated me from my friends was also the one that kept the friendship stronger together.
Once I saw him regret his choices, I jumped back to my timeline. I had tough decisions to make.
BACK TO THE PRESENT DAY
I have wasted so much time afraid of publishing, questioning my mind and asking myself, “Who the hell am I to write this?” But now I finally know, so I can’t let the momentum go. Seneca taught me, “Fortune knocks once on a man’s door, and she might never return if his response is weak and she is taken for granted.”
That’s when I realized that I had become a paranoid writer. Previously, I was a paranoid non-writer. It’s funny, but it’s sad. Nothing has changed once a consumer, always a consumer.
Is this what the life of a writer is like?
Worrying at every single stage: Is the wording correct? Is the idea worth it? How many views? When to publish. Why are they reading only 34%? Hey! The least you can do is clap! Man, I need to get paid! Goddamn it, I’ve got to get paid.
In my future as a writer, I saw myself, the laptop, maybe a printer soon, and the alcohol. Yes, alcohol is becoming a consistent friend—that cold crisp, bitter beauty.
The Pussycat Dolls told me, “Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it,” but I was too busy staring at Nicole Scherzinger’s tits to appreciate what that fully meant.
Now here I am. What’s next to come? The future already looks like it’s too much for me to handle.
I may need to jump back in time to the moment I read my first book if I am to reset the timeline.
