The last time I wrote something utterly new was last year. My last three posts were from the archives, with some last minute polishing. I have been wondering if I still remember how to write. That is why I am in your inbox, today, practicing—not necessarily how to write again.
I’m simply putting into practice what I know about getting better: doing the thing you want to get better at and emphasising, at first, quantity over quality.
I feel I’m retrogressing (yes, I should have used the simpler alternative that is regressing, but that occurred to me a few seconds too late, and it’s easier to keep typing than go back and edit, so I’ll keep going), so much so that sometimes I am hesitant to pick up the figurative pen and write so I don’t disappoint myself. My thoughts are so scattered and tangential that I am afraid I could never string them together into a coherent narrative. If I were confident about wrestling them into something coherent, you’d hear from me every week because my god, there is so much to say.
That’s a lie, somewhat. There’s only a handful of topics I’ve thought enough about—a few long essays would exhaust them.
I often make the error of wanting to say nearly everything I want to say about a topic in a single essay because I do not want to sound like a broken record every time I revisit it to explore a new slant, a new angle.
The problem with trying to say everything at once, of course, is that very little ever gets said. See how little I’ve said in two years.
Sometimes my views on a topic are so irreconcilable that they cannot inhabit the same narrative without the narrative eating itself with contradictions. While this should encourage me to separate my thoughts and deliver them piece by piece, I used to spend too much time on Twitter.
I am conscious of how professing your love for blue skies can be interpreted as a hatred for grey skies if you do not declare your love for grey skies in the same breath—even then, much can still be misinterpreted.
Sometimes I feel pressured to cover all bases, but that’s a fool’s pursuit. Many times I have been a fool, but I’ve never successfully covered all bases.
Do I have a fear of being misunderstood? I am not sure. I have no problem with being criticised or disagreed with. But I am often bothered if these arise because my failure to clearly express my thoughts led to my words getting misconstrued or my omission of something leaves others to fill in the blank with details that are heinous and unreflective of my beliefs.
Sometimes I am so frustrated by the limits of human language that I wish telepathy were a thing. Like, look: my mouth and fingers may be using the wrong words and sentences, but if you looked into my mind, you’d understand fully what I mean—and then we can disagree on the right foot.
Anyway.
My concerns about retrogression extend beyond writing. For example, I used to draw. But I haven’t sat down to do it in so many years that I fear I no longer know how to replicate a human face and its tones on paper.
One time, I found myself thinking seriously about something my father used to say while I was growing up: if God gives you a talent and you do not use it, he will take it away. I was thinking about this because one day I suddenly realised I no longer knew how to write a poem. Of course, it’s possible I never actually knew how to write poems and youthful exuberance deluded me into thinking what I wrote as a teenager were high quality poems. It doesn’t matter.
I used to write short stories, but my drive is full of unfinished or formerly finished stories I have forgotten the inspiration behind.
These days, I feel uneasy when someone asks me what my hobbies are because, one by one, I let enough life get in the way that I stopped doing all the things I used to enjoy, some of which I was good at.
What is a writer who doesn’t write, an artist who doesn’t draw, or a reader who now rarely reads? I don’t know. Me?
I read somewhere that it does not help to think of oneself through the lenses of such labels, and I agree. This contradicts something else I agree with, but for different reasons. Here, the argument is simple: such labels can make you too attached to what you create or fail to create, and they can cultivate a habit of self-flagellation when you fall short that it prevents you from trying altogether.
That’s not good.
I’m wrapping up here by resisting the urge to launch into a spiel about how getting good at something you used to love can sap the joy out of simply doing it as you used to before you began to care whether the outcome was good or not. I’ll save that for another day.
•⋅⋅•
If you can’t tell by the number of tangents I have been moved to take, I am writing in stream of consciousness. Loosely, this means I am writing as it comes, unstructured. The way I should for a while if I am to avoid overthinking and churn out new stuff.
I picked up this Art X Lagos jotter with blank pages at work some months back because I wanted to sketch in its pages for fun. Because that’s what all of my talents were for before I either let life get in the way or overthought them. I only put pen to paper once or twice before I let the pressures of life pressure me again. I’ll try a few pencil strokes when I get back to work this week.
It’s a bit abrupt, the way I’m ending this. But here’s what I would like to say:
If there’s something you like doing, find time to do it, however badly you do it. Because so much joy can be sapped out of your life if you stop doing it for long enough.
I’ll try to take my own advice.
Best regards.