Things I wish I had written

I  wish I could explain what getting feedback on any of article I write does to me. Err, they are not always fine and dandy comments. Some are. Others aren’t. I do appreciate everyone of them none the less. I had shared some of them at the start of the New Year.  I’m talking about the most interesting comments I received to some ‘Pressure Cooker’ articles in 2012.

Perhaps some background will help. When I started out writing, my guide who was a journalist turned publisher who had asked that I expect no feedback whatsoever. His many years of experience as a columnist, showed that only people who wrote on topical issues received feedback. This meant you had to be writing politics, gossip or something related to that.

You can then appreciate my delight when I got the first positive feedback which wasn’t from a friend or family. I have read and keep reading interesting articles (there are many out there). I truly cannot recall how many I have managed to reply, hence my deep appreciation goes to readers who spare some of their time to write in. What is interesting is that I’m a true comment junkie. I love it when readers post comments on articles. I love to read comments from Nigerian audience, there is usually too much to laugh at. Anyway, as I move towards two years of writing ‘Pressure Cooker’, I look back and realise there were still so much more I wish I had written or could write.

I do have a lot of constraints, some self imposed, some work imposed, still I wish I could have written about my frustrations with some aspects of my beloved country-but well I can’t. Not just for the constraints I have enumerated above, but because I am painfully aware of our not very bright image outside Nigeria and how all these add up. I am also aware how much of that poor perception comes back to haunt me personally at immigration points. Yes, I should be phrasing it in a way that sends the message without dragging the reputation further down-yes I can, but won’t. I’m too passionate about various things that affect my beloved country to write half heartedly. I wish I could write about things that really affect women, like my children will say- really affect; I mean apart from what affects us at work. Like how often women are cheated at home and elsewhere, what may be behind women cheating others. I wish I could write about polygamy that fascinates me to no end. If the women or are bound by religious beliefs or truly accept it or otherwise? I wish I could write often about religion- my walk, stumble, rise and journey. I wish I could write about how much influence it has on us as a country. I wish I could articulate my silent discussions with my peers that whilst it has liberated us in more ways than none. There’s still a dissonance between what we say and what we do. Even worse, we all appear to have abdicated our civic responsibilities under the guise of religion.

I wish I could have written about the poor service some quick service restaurants offer (not just write but name and shame). I wish I could have written a manual for their employers to drum the connection between our visits and their salaries. Oh I wish I could whine openly about how tiring children’s home works are. I wish also I could whinge about the unrealistic rise of school fees and how accepting parents have become, never enquiring, never pushing back.

I wish I could write psychological pieces without appearing mad. I wish I could write freely my thoughts of why, myself and others behave the way we do, or even dig a little further into why humans behave the way we do.

I wish I could share some of the stories from one of my favourite blogs without risking some judgment, it’s called remembering my journey (in case you care). I wish I could as write as intelligently as Maureen Dowd of New York times who is also a 1999 Pulitzer prize winner for commentary or Penelope Trunk, the brazen careerist, who speaks so forthrightly about her work experiences, dispensing but asked for and not asked for advice! Arianna Huffington is another one I wish I could write like, including having that level of platform for expression.

Today, I care very little about the ‘if wishes were horses theories’, some of the wishes are in the past, I may or may never be able to recapture some of the wishes, but I have had thoughts on running a series called the ‘people I admire’. Many of these people I admire are still living, some are long since gone. Today, I’d arise and get started I’d be borrowing the lovely but un attributed quote, the one that requests that I “stop the habit of wishful thinking and start the habit of putting into action those wishes.”

Nkiru Olumide-Ojo