Originally published in 2020 on medium.com

Where do I even begin? There is so much I could have done to become a better writer, so much I could have done for myself. I choke it all up to life and its twisted surprises. It is true, I have been surprised by life on many occasions, where I was checkmated by experiences and events out of my control. But still. . . there is so much I could have done better.

I wanted my writing career to be on a forward trajectory to Mars, maybe become part of the Medium top writer’s clique, get published once or twice in the New York Times or WIRED, travel some parts of the world with my scribbled-gotten loot, you know, live the dream as it were. But instead I am here, nowhere, where creative people come to die.

But the highest peak of disappointment in my career as a writer is when I have written an article for a client and I was asked to make some minor changes, it is at moments like those that everything in my world goes to hell. First, I feel so scared I might lose the job, then I feel like I am not good enough. I worry it’s because I haven’t done my best, and that my writing skills suck, so I end up feeling like a total failure.

I get all these insecurities, and they resurface all at once in the face of ‘minor changes’ to remind me I have not put in the work. I guess I feel like they are consequences of all those times I binge-watched a cartoon series while I had a ton of writing assignments on my desk, those mornings I slept in and ignored to add anything to my blog, the times I went out with friends third time in a row in one week, and the list goes on.

Let me back up a bit, and start at the beginning, when my life was less insecure and my position at work less dangerously volatile.

My Uninteresting Life Story

Hi, my name is Hafiz, and I am kind of a failure (this is where you all chant back ‘Hi Hafiz’). I was born and raised in Nigeria, don’t kid yourself, the word Nigeria always sets off an alarm. I get it.

To me it means I am at least a decade behind my American and European peers in discovering content writing online, that it was a thing, and you could actually get paid. So I was late to the party, a bit.

Contrary to this grim narration about my fear of failure, my personality is actually quite upbeat, if I may say so myself. I am the optimistic type, and I loved rebelling against the norm. Fortunately for a lot of stuff in my life they are not normal, except of course school. I mean, my brain just couldn’t find a correlation between school and ‘interesting’.

And like a true school degenerate, I found freelance writing very exciting. I was drawn by the prospect of being hired like I was some cool hitman, to “finish assignments”. You should know this however, despite my feeling towards organized education, I did not flunk high school. . . not entirely anyway.

So for three years I wrote for people online, gaining experience and discovering a world of sheer adult-ing. Adulting as in actually doing responsible things; responding to emails, signing contracts, and such.

My first client was a business blog I pitched 2 guest posts to, he published both of them and followed me up with a call. He offered me a job to write on his blog at about $80 a month (dollar rate back in 2018), at the time it was a very nice rate, especially since students in Nigeria make on average nothing each month. Seriously though, they have like five thousand Naira (at most) to their name, which is like $13. So I was doing preeeeetty well, I was earning the salary equivalent of a small government worker in Nigeria.

Everything was going smoothly at my new first job until one day I got a call, he sent back a whole article saying it needed additional X,Y and Z, that I should change this and that paragraph, yadda-yadda-yadda, my heart constricted.

In not so many words, he was trying to tell me that my writing is okay but it could be better, and some of it is just downright awful it needs to change completely.

I felt inadequate, and about to disappear in despair. 

The Downfall Of My Ego

Then it kept happening, changes after changes, clients after clients and at job after job. They ask for a minor adjustment, and I brood for days. I abhorred replies from my bosses other than “okay”, “that’s great”, “received”. Anything more gives me anxiety, and to open the mail, is a battle between my thumping heart and a guilty conscience.

I started to think some of my problems stemmed from being a writer in Nigeria, not because I was behind, but because friends and people around me spurred me on.

In Nigeria, you can’t easily find well written or well-spoken English, it is a very rare skill, as it’s a second language there, but thanks to my upbringing, which was mostly in front of the TV screen watching American cartoons, I picked up a lot during my childhood. So for myself and my brothers, our English speaking skills were not so bad . . . well, compared to the average spoken English in Nigeria anyway.

Because I am sure even this write up is not foolproof, some of you might notice a few errors or mistakes that to be totally honest I am oblivious to (still working on improving that), point is, beyond our borders, I am a nobody. But I didn’t know that yet.

Once, I met a man from Norway, we talked a lot while I shepherd him to see my father, when we were almost at my parent’s door he turned around and said to me, “you speak really good English, I have spoken to a lot of people around here and none of them spoke like you just did.” I am black, so my blush doesn’t show, but I am sure there was a reaction somewhere in my face at the revelation.

Once, I was at a place with a bunch of new graduates and they were discussing the schools they graduated from, when it got to my turn they couldn’t believe I did not school overseas. People who schooled or lived abroad in the states or wherever have this proper and trim English accent that is regarded as cool in my home country, apparently I have one of those. I kept telling them I have not been across any seas, and the farthest I ever went was to Togo, and they don’t even speak English, its a FRANCOPHONE COUNTRY!!!

Locals are impressed by my English writing and speaking skills, and they don’t shy away from letting me know. I am sure everyone in Nigeria who speaks like me gets the same compliments all the time.

I am not saying I am very good, oh! I am far from perfect, the people from my job made that very clear, I am just saying — all the praises I received for every little Facebook post, and emails telling me just how awesome a blogger I was, and so forth — I think some of that got to me, because being told I not good was new to me.

But still, deep down I knew it was the guilt of not working hard enough, and not giving it my best that makes me feel anxiety, and fear that I might lose everything.

You have to understand what writing meant to me to understand how deep a cut this is to my ambitions, writing is everything, sure I have dabbled in graphic design, I know how to edit videos, and I am a novice photographer and I can take up carpentry anytime, but writing, it is everything, so when you tell me I am flunking that too, I don’t just feel inadequate in my freelance job, I begin to question my life choices.

Am I A Failure?

I read posts about freelance writers making six figures every year, and those that are paid a thousand dollars per article, and so on and so forth, and you know what, reading about those writers does things to your self-esteem.

I begin to question what I am still doing here, and if I am a total failure as a freelance writer.

It’s not really about the money with me, or the vacations (I don’t even like travelling much), no, it’s more, I feel like making that first million dollars and travelling to Bali is a sort of graduation rite for freelance writers, since we obviously did not go to school, those were like markers and I felt the need to make those markers to call myself a real freelance writer.

So yes, every correction that undermines my articles remind me unabashedly how far from the finish line I am, and how afraid I am of being a failure.

But for all my misgivings, about myself, I have somehow successfully meandered my way through this psychological racket and gnawing fear, in fact, after every shock wave, I realized I was knowing more and more about content writing.

I remember at my first job, I don’t even know what a keyword is or how to use it, my client proposed I start using keywords in my posts, and after being told that the world crashed on my head (as per usual), but at the end, I did get the hang of it, I did become adept at keyword research, SEO, social media marketing etc., and I learned about many tantalizing content marketing-speak. I fill in my dark spots every time someone flashes a light on them.

Perhaps, three years is not such a bad number of years for an academic course, since I consider the first two years of my writing career as a learning curve anyway, because the real deal began in my third year of writing.

First off, more than 80% of everything I have earned as a content writer happened during my third year of writing, and more than half of everything I ever wrote occurred during the past eight months, so if I have written 200 thousand words in 36 months, more than 100 thousand words were written in the past 8 months alone.

With that, I would say no, I am not a failure, yet, I just have some very serious discipline issues to fix, and pray life doesn’t throw another surprise at me.

I mean it still hurts to see those emails (it did last week), but I guess taking damage makes you survive, it makes grow. . . if you did not cave in. 

Why Did I Write This?

I still have long ways to go, no doubt about that, and I am no dashing hero fighting against the odds, nope, I am just lazy and my story is pathetic. But I just got to say, that fear, that feeling of being inadequate because of some suggestion or correction, is very real and very concerning, and some writers are probably going through the same thing, especially the perfectionists amongst us, I don’t want to imagine the wreck you must have been.

I am not going to tell you not to give up, I am not your counselor and this is not therapy, but I am saying it’s okay, and looking from my experience, the odds will steadily rise in your favor. The trick is to never stop, grind no matter what, then find a way to step up.

In fact, for me, writing and publishing this on Medium.com is one of my attempts towards becoming a better writer. I don’t usually try to sound emotionally dramatic or stuff like that, this is a new side to my writing, but I wrote this because a friend once blurted “. . . common, you don’t know who it [my story] could inspire”, so, here we are.