Once Upon A Blog…

 

For as long as I can remember I have always wanted to write. When I was a little girl it was my greatest joy to help my mum write her grocery lists every Friday evening. I had a chalk board at the backyard and I wrote on it every day after school, without fail. I fancied myself a teacher and my helpless baby sister, some fowls and lizards were my adoring students. The older I grew, the stronger my desire to write, so I wrote a novel (if you can call it a novel) when I was barely nine years old. The title of the book was: “The Girl who Refused To Go On Errands”. For the life of me I don’t know why I picked that title. I remember sitting at my dad’s table, writing away. Making sure I correct every spelling error, checking that my punctuation was correct. I skipped meals and playtime because I wanted to finish my book.

My aunt was so impressed, she was my editor and of course I dedicated the book to her. I miss my aunt terribly, I love her so much and her death fourteen years ago hasn’t changed the love I have for her because she was the most important person in my life, but that’s a story for another day. Back to my book, so my aunt took my finished book to a typesetter,(I don’t think we had computers then) and my book was typed up and spiral bound! No words can describe the joy my little heart  felt seeing my book in actual black ink. I was already thinking about publishing it and my aunt and I would spend hours talking about a better title, colours and designs. Then she died and my book died with her, because I couldn’t bear to finish the book without her.

My love for writing has stayed with me all my life, I don’t think it’s something you outgrow. I have read over five hundred novels or more, I am pretty sure it’s more, so I always wanted to write one of my own. When I turned 25, I started to write one, but I couldn’t find my voice in it. I felt like all the novels I have ever read were juxtaposed into the one I was trying hard to write. I couldn’t decide on a title, couldn’t figure out a genre, and so I just stopped. The skeleton of that book is somewhere on my laptop though. I visit it from time to time just because.

Then came the blog. A lot of my friends kept telling me: you have so many funny stories, so many things to share, put them down, start a blog! But I refused. I was so daunted by the fact that it would be too much work, or I wouldn’t know what to write or nobody would read it or if they manage to read, enjoy it.  I was so focused on what would go wrong and I was adamant that I would never have a blog, I would settle for writing in my journals. That didn’t banish the need to write though. Way before I started this blog in September 2014, I had several posts on my laptop, just waiting patiently. I would dream them, write them, edit them and then leave them.

Then came the Dday. My friend at work, Joshua woke up one morning and decided that he was going to make sure I start my blog. He created my wordpress account, signed me up and he just walked so casually to my desk at work and said: hey, what’s the name of your blog going to be? I looked up at him and blurted out Adaugo’s dairy because well, my middle name is Adaugo and I have had diaries all my life. And before the end of the day, I had a blog, a domain name and a theme. That’s how this journey started and it has been an amazing one so far. You can find  my first blog post here

I have had bad days, scratch that bad months. I had the most severe form of writers block. So I just carried on living my life as though I didn’t have a blog to maintain and readers to talk to. But I overcame, because like I said writing is a gift, its a love that cannot die. I get ideas at the oddest times and places. I cannot count how many times I have woken up in the middle of the night to grab my laptop and start to write, and boy! There’s nothing quite like it.That is exactly how I wrote this post and the famous 22 things about this girl Nothing beats that private joy of seeing or experiencing something and saying: yes! I am going to write about this. To me, its priceless. Nothing quite compares to that orange glow of notification, that tells me that someone somewhere has either followed my blog, read my posts, liked them or has made a comment, that feeling is better than food or sleep, well almost.

Thanks guys, for loving me and my craft and if you have made it to the end of this long post, please like and share and comment, because its a good feeling when you do and I could use a lot of good feelings at the moment.

All my love,

Adaugo.

“When I write, I lose time. I’m happy in a way that I have a hard time finding in real life. The intimacy between my brain and my fingers and my computer…yet knowing that intimacy will find an audience..it’s very satisfying...” – Jil Soloway