Writing. I used to do it during my high school days. I was in fact awarded for being a decent writer in front of the entire school assembly at one point. But as time went on and life happened, I gradually lost the urge to write anything. I could literally sit to write a 100 word article and it would feel as though I have been asked to make food out of car parts.
My best memory of this talent of mine would be when I had the chance to pitch an article to the Head of State awards scheme in my country, Ghana. I was so elated that I hardly slept that week. I went over my lines about a thousand times so I could nail it perfectly. I ended up writing 9 pages of pure text! To put this in proper context, I wrote 9 pages of text in Times New Roman font in font size 10 and Normal page margins. Whew! I can’t say where the inspiration came from, however I can tell you that I couldn’t stop it from flowing through me. After all the editing and proof reading, it came down to 3 pages with the other 6 pages morphing into another article. Long story short, I placed 9th out of all the other applicants in the country and I think it was published in a school magazine or somewhere. After this feat, many people, as expected, started advising me to go into full time writing and make money out of it. But I had different dreams. Writing never occurred to me as a career path – only a hobby at the time. I used it to relieve myself of stress and also I didn’t understand how someone could write for a living. That idea was never clear to me ever. So I pictured IT as a career path (this didn’t work out for me though) and ignored writing when I left high school. Currently, I am into public health and not even the IT I left writing for. I believe it’s one of the things that happen when you are just a kid who still needs life experiences to understand yourself better.
Fast forward 2020, Corona Virus has all of us locked up in our homes and I have to stay home because my government has placed a lockdown on the entire country. I was getting bored in the first 2 weeks of the lockdown and needed something to do quickly for some cash. So I started writing for myself to just jot down my thoughts from time to time on my PC.
The Comeback
The first article in my comeback to writing was painful LOL. I sat behind the laptop and was just starring for about 30 minutes, figuring what to write. But as soon as I got the first paragraph down, I couldn’t leave the room anymore. I just kept writing and writing and when I had enough I took a contract from a tech blog to write about Smart Houses and Smart Watches. Since the corona virus had us stay home from work, I have written about 30 articles for various blogs and have made decent amount of money. Who knew?! Writing paid!
I discovered Thrive Global when one of my clients told me he liked the quality of the articles and layout and asked me to check it out so I could produce articles of that quality. So after reading 3 articles, I signed up and wrote my first article here “4 WAYS TO COME OUT OF THE LOCK DOWN A BETTER PERSON”. Since then I have planned to release maybe 3 articles a month on Thrive Global to at least keep my mind fresh and at the same time inspire others.
The lesson
Never give up on things you love to do. Instead, concentrate on your strengths and maximize them to your advantage. It took me a couple of years to understand this writing gift I had. It shouldn’t take you same number of years. Act now and I assure you will reap the benefits.
Stay safe, Stay home.
Cheers.