So many things to write about

Opemipo
5 min readApr 25, 2018
Eminem in Stan, one of the few songs I can sing from beginning to end

Honestly, sometimes I just want to type out everything. From my chest to you, with my chest.

I want to write about all my plans, those things that go from a random conversation to multiple cloud documents, and then to history. I want to tell “the crowd” about the ridiculously cool things I want to do, and how (I know!) it sounds so much cooler to say “I will be spending three or four months in another country every year to explore new places I can call home” than it is to pull off. I want to write about rediscovering boredom. It became no longer enough to just exist, laying in my room; always felt like I was missing out on something, because now I have the internet, and I can see everyone else in motion. I need to one-up the internet and relearn how to wander with just my mind, and I want to write about that. I want to write about my plans to make a book, and how badly that’s going at the moment. I want to write summaries about the books I’ve been reading.

I want to write more about romance, that bitch of a thing. Relationships are done with living breathing people, not laundry bags that you leave in the bottom drawer and return to meet laying there, having caught no feelings for you. I know that is common sense, and I also now know my ideal arrangement may be a farce, a simple reflection of what it means to be human and insatiable. How often do you text your friend-with-benefits? How often should you talk? If you want sensual sex, how do you build up for it? What’s the right number of people to juggle before you don’t really have anything special or scared to share with any single person. It’s never going to be easy to find the perfect mix of care and nonchalance in one person, and I want to keep writing about it.

I want to write about my close friends, every one of them so so special. My friends can do things, and I want to tell you all about it. Sometimes I remember specific experiences with them and I want to exercise whatever literary abilities I have, so they know, in prose, how they’ve changed what it means to be me. I want to write about my distant friends, and how hard it is to keep up. I want to write about growing out of people, and not being able to truly admit that I’m a rolling stone, and I gather no moss. I want to write about everything I’ve stolen from all my friends, both distant and close; the gestures, the jokes, the life hacks, my new-found technical curiosity. I want to write about everything I’ve stolen from them that now is all me.

I want to write about work. It’s like this baby I changed diapers for and is now getting too big for my bed. Nothing special, tons of people went through that, but even the wealth of writing from these people doesn’t make it easier. I never will answer the question “Don’t you want to grow with the company?”, because it means I’ll have to answer the question of what I want to grow to become. I don’t [know] want to think about it. Sometimes, you can step up to the task without knowing what it is. That’s my play. I want to write about all the brilliance I work with, and how I became a better [insert skill] by working with [insert awesome person at Paystack]. I want to write about all the changes in values and how we’re going about structure, all the sprint methodologies we’ve tried, all the problems with working with people, all the design hacks I’ve garnered, all the tools I’ve picked up, all the tea.

I want to write about bad dreams, about waking up and feeling everything. The dreamscape. The place where I huff and puff and run and dodge and drive fast and jump and fly and mourn, and then I wake up and it’s just been a few hours. The place where people I will never see again pop in and out like next door neighbours, like Mr Alex and Andrew Idoko from secondary school do. Even though I know they don’t look like that anymore, or maybe never even looked like that, in my dreams I recognize them. If Andrew is not Andrew, then the people in my dreams, who are they?

I want to write about all the questions. You know what they say about ignorance being bliss? Well, I’m past that. These days, I’m haunted by the sheer futility of human life. Death is disturbing, not scary, and when I remember all the people plucked away who were no more or less different than me, I see no reason why fate won’t choose me next. Videos of dead people, surviving where they would not, make me feel weird inside. The origin of life, this floating rock, the patterns that repeat themselves, my small reality, the insignificance of my….

“Guuuuuuys, see this yansh on Instagram”

I want to write gratitudes for everything else about life that distracts me so that I never spend enough time mourning my meaningless existence for it to become detrimental. I guess it’s just a few difficult minutes of sobering reality every day, and I make sure to take my pills.

I want to write until it’s all off my chest. About a hundred people scattered around the world will read, and bear some of my burden, or celebrate some of my joy. A few of them will meet me at a bar and ask me about that article, and for a few seconds, I’ll feel more special than I usually do. I even want to write differently than I’m comfortable with. This… storytelling pattern is getting old, and as with everything, I’m too itchy to move on.

I want to write, but I can’t get myself to.

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