The day I chose to forgive myself (Chronicles of “The Block”)

“Find what you love and let it kill you”!

We must have heard this phrase at some point or the other but how much meaning can we extract from it? What may probably come to mind first is “how can I let what I love kill me? Then it’s not good for me”. The truth about it however is; if it does not give you so much unrest when you don’t attend to it, if you don’t find yourself constantly being challenged by it, if it does not consume you so much that you crave it every minute, and if the dream it builds in your head does not scare you, then it’s probably not worth giving your attention to. You definitely haven’t found that which you truly love. This is the true definition of talent, and the killing is the thrill!

I’ve most often heard people say that they don’t have talent. Once a friend said “the only thing I love to do and constantly anticipate doing is sleeping. I guess that’s my talent” I laughed! As much as I would’ve loved to affirm what she said in order to buttress my point about every person possessing a talent, so perhaps that was indeed her talent! But it sounded absurd to me and I gave it another thought and finally came to the conclusion that if that which you call a talent is not first of all “positive”, if it does not connect with your physical, mental (and if possible spiritual & emotional) wellbeing and finally, if it is not productive, then it’s not a talent. This is my own definition of what a talent is.

But when you find your talent, what do you do with it? How do you get the best out of it? How do you let it actually kill you?

I’d found mine. Which is best to say, that I found it or it found me? Either ways, I found myself loving the art of writing since I was young. I’d loved to sit in a quiet place, away from the buzz and rants and create scenes in my head which I can pen down. I’d write from short prose to long and short dramas. Just like most girls, I grew up keeping a diary to pour down my emotions whether happy, sad, and indifferent or just “mind to head dialogues”. I most often found something new to write about, something that my mind alone could not conceive. No! It had to be penned down! As time went on, the poet in me could not be kept mute for too long. And so I wrote! I would switch from writing stories to poems and from poems to opinionated articles, and when I was not inspired to write any of these, I would switch to laying my hands on scripts. Whatever it was, I wrote!

Was it killing me yet?

Yes. I died inside the realm of my passion. I died inside so much flames of inspiration that sometimes I wrote and I did not understand where the hell I got inspired to write what I came up with. The more I wrote, the better I became. Those long quiet moments of creativity became for me the best moment of my life and I would spend long hours “mind crafting” with so much anticipation of sharing what I wrote with family and friends. The beauty of writing I must admit is in getting lost in it (but being able to find your way back). This is where for many the problem ends and perhaps begins! What do I mean?

You may get to a point where you might stumble upon an inspiration and proceed to giving life to it with a stroke of your pen but then you hit the “red-light”, which I like to call the “notorious Block”! Am I speaking your language? Well, this is what the English dictionary has called the “writer’s Block”. It’s like living as a king in your kingdom, and waking up one day to realise that you ain’t shit! It’s the point where every writer (I) gets (got) hit by the so called “block” and ends (ended) up losing their (my) mojo to write. At that point, nothing they (I) come (came) up with seems (seemed) to make sense and it eats you up slowly. (And days turn to weeks, weeks turn to months, and months turn to years………….and most times, it all ends!) Yes! This is about me! – When I once suffered the painful years of dealing with the so-called writers block. So did doing what I love kill me? Yes! I died. Not inside the realm of my passion this time but literally, I died! I died because I had stopped doing what I once loved to do –Write.

How sad it is to know that you once were good at something and you wake up one day and it was all a dream! Like I said in my previous article “an unlived dream will definitely haunt you!” Read here . This happens to every writer sooner or later. Sometimes we lose our mojo to write and can’t be bothered to go in search for it. Sometimes we spend hours unending struggling to develop a write up or even just trying to find some spark to work with, and when the spark comes, we just can’t find the words to express it! As frustrating as this is, it’s not difficult to overcome!

I would have called this a “How to combat writers block” article (coming soon) but it stands to speak to anyone and everyone, not just writers. It says to anyone who once had a passion for something, a spark, the zeal to achieve a purpose and have somehow fallen out of track– Go get your mojo back! Passion is a steady work-in-progress. You must take a stab at it, give careful consideration to how it feels, water it when it dries up and even when you don’t get it right, take an attempt at it once more.

As with love, not having a “romance” with our passion leaves us with nothing short of a long-lasting feeling of guilt, failure, regrets, and dysfunctional state especially when we see others thriving at what we once could say we could do better. With passion comes pain but what matters most is how well you walk through the pain to get better at it. The only way to be recognized and be looked up to is by going for what you love and sticking to it! And if you have stumbled on some self-made kind of “block” or fallen out of track with what you love to do, recognize that by depriving yourself of it, you will remain haunted. Get back up, and decide today like me that it’s time to forgive yourself for not giving your best to what you love to do and go get it back!

 

QOTW:

“My dear, find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover”― Charles Bukowski

 

Written by: ‘Nonye J. Chidolue (@NonyeWrites)

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