Stop Dreaming Start Earning
To my 20 followers, I did this for you!
TLDR; If you must read any single book on copywriting in 2022, this is it!
→ Get it FREE at this LINK
Use code at checkout: free1000now
It’s 2022. 50 days in, and I’ve convinced myself that my desire to write something meaningful everyday, may still not be me reaching too deep into optimism’s bag of overambition. After all, who gives up even before they’ve begun?
I’ve psyched myself to the point of no return, high on affirmative assurance, brimming on a mental cloud state that’s almost ethereal. It’s now or never, for me. I’m armed with a new mantra, ‘No Place For Failure’. Hence, this post.
I wanted my first post to be a grand opening gesture of worded brilliance, an oratory pouring forth line upon line, enchanting captivated audiences swooning to my lyrical might as I expanded a trending topic of everyday concern. I dreamt of the moment it would be caught by a curious Quartz reporter swiping this platform’s Explore tab on a lazy afternoon, upon a high terrace in downtown Nairobi. I persistently upheld the image of being an overnight success in the literature world, whose discovery was as much a miracle as any good ‘rise to fame’ story. Yet anytime I opened my Google docs app, I stalled. The faintest ounce of inspiration fizzling away as the app home screen loaded. At the onset it was convenient to blame the app, because who’s ever chanced upon a great post that began on Google docs, or even more on a phone? Any good writer knows the clanking of keyboards is what keeps the creative flow sustained (as though the repeated pattering of fingers atop polycarbonate squares in themselves were a divine portal into the sprawling museum of best-seller Ville), a tale upheld by delusional writers.
When I couldn’t fault Google enough, I pivoted to blame everything remotely linked to a history of inducing writer’s block. I sneered at the eerie swivelling howl my office chair made when I leaned too far back, to the dusty hand stains on my bedroom door from my little cousin’s attempt to support himself as he walked past, catching his quizzical gaze anytime I looked up from scrolling social feeds as if to say, “is this you writing?”. At 1, he had only begun embracing the miracle of self-navigation with one’s own two feet. Gone were his days perched up on the baby stool-brace pointing for everything within sight, hollering when his mum said no. If anything, I was delighted to see him totter from couch to kitchen back to the couch before crash-landing onto someone’s feet. I can still hear my sister yell every few minutes, “You guys should keep an eye on my Kendrick before he knocks something down.” Only if writing were as natural to humans as walking, then possibly I wouldn’t find myself in this state of emergency, as it were.
My cousin who had talked me into including writing into my new year plans couldn’t have known it would require this much effort. He said I was the best writer he’d met. However, writing isn’t easy and it’s tough to acknowledge the space between starting and ending, which is essentially the path called “doing the work”. I’m led to concede to the realisation that my biggest constrictor despite my attempts to convince myself that everything else is perfect, is in fact myself.
This morning as I waited for the elevator door to open at the office, I stared blankly through the walls of the glass cage at the high tops in the distance. Accra was beautiful when you could see past it’s numerous shortcomings and the battery of political conversating the city’s radio waves strung in every morning. I had worked on a new website the night before. I figured I needed to put my art skills to something profitable. At 31, it wasn’t too late to start something new, as Napoleon Hill had reminded me of on my drive to the office — “It’s not too late to take control of your mind and direct it to the attainment of whatever desires you may have in life”. I’ve listened to Napoleon Hill so often I could repeat every word of the 3-hour audiobook. This new project had to mean something. I had long felt that every side project had simply remained that — a side project. I longed for scale. For unfettered growth. A ‘bootstrapper to unicorn’ story in under 12 months. The headlines reading, “Ghanaian founder blah blah blah…”. I’d frame the Washington Post publication in a large frame on the wide wall of our New York offices, so I could point it out to investors whenever they visited for our Latin & North America annual conference. I fantasized and imagined every detail, even the clothes I would have on that morning. But this new project was still a website waiting to be published.
I had discovered a stack of apparel illustrations I made during spurts of inspiration at work. In 2019, I began a clothing line as an attempt to cash in on the 2019 December Year of Return supposed tourist rush. The government wouldn’t shut up on projected figures and estimates. They promised that the President’s much debated foreign trips were worth it. He’d been to every black community in the diaspora to speak on the investment and tourism potentials of Ghana, the star of West Africa. So, I had quickly put together a logo, a brand name and a catchy tagline. WARDO TENGO. It’s to the ends of the earth. That night as I fiddled with Shopify’s ecommerce setup, I bubbled with excitement. I would simply fix the red, gold and green colours atop jackets and tees and make a killing. I didn’t make a killing, but in my defence, I was young and clueless.
Now however, armed with experience and renewed optimism, I hope to approach my new project with some sense of maturity, having worked on the website and mobile version, making it as visually appealing as I’d imagined it to be, NoMonkeyTales.com was going to be my second shot at virality and success. It was too simple to fail. Napoleon Hill would have said, “Son, there’s no such thing as failure, till you accept it to be so.” Even after 100 years, those words were still relevant today.
The bank teller just called my queue number and I have to go, but I hope to finish up this post before nightfall. If I don’t, then this may just be that explosive opening post I anticipated, because in truth, there’s really no such thing. — the story is only as good as you tell it.
“Great writing never dies”, they say. It only winds up in some forgotten library, dusty and scarred with water stains, from being left too close to the window by the librarian’s little daughter”.
I’ve prepared myself for the “come what may” storm, so let’s do this!
Follow me on Twitter : @ZionSpirit for more stories!
