how I write at work and get paid👨🏽‍🍳

i was lost but now I'm found

As I wrote the title of this, I thought about Sarah Fay’s body of work “Substack Writers at Work”. I know she isn’t advocating for writers to literally be writing articles while at their 9–5, at least, not if such a writer is trying to get sacked.

If such writer gets sacked, they channel their inner Shakespeare looking like this:

Photo by Timur Weber on Pexels. Edited by Author in PhotoGrid.

Wouldn’t you empty your bank account for such beauty-FULL and honest writing?

I certainly won’t! Because I’m not trying to become the next Shakespeare on the streets, too.

I digress.

From the moment I wake up (5 am), my day job takes at least 12 hours 30 minutes of my 24 hours. Commute times inclusive. I’m back usually at 6 pm, leaving me 5 hours before midnight (12 am). As an early-to-bed, early-to-rise bird who wants to catch the worm, it makes sense to be snoring by 9 pm latest.

Please, don’t give me that look. We all snore fullstop.

Getting home each day, I’m exhausted. This type of exhaustion doesn’t show physically, but you can feel it in the brain. Because thankfully, my job is a light one.

While at work, I already envision all the Amazon best-seller articles (this could be a thing 🤔) I’ve written. As I walk down the aisle of my home, I feel an instant match made in heaven, a union between me and mental exhaustion.

For this reason, for a while now, I have lost my spices for writing. But On July 22nd, the lights in the Jollof-Write kitchen came back on! As I sat at my workstation doing nothing but counting down to go home, my eyes connected with a bunch of white A4 paper sitting in my supervisor’s office. And at that moment, I had a Shakespeare epiphany.

I got the paper, took a clipboard, placed it on it, and wrote about the first phrase my eyes saw. A phrase by Karla Marie Sweet:

“You might’ve been drawn to someone broken because there is part of you that likes to fix people.”

Which eventually turned into this piece:

why do you like to fix people?

What I thought was a complete waste of my time was amazingly fulfilling.

my first week writing on every A4 paper I could find

Unfortunately, our 9–5 steals time from us, but we can borrow some back by writing.

As I write this, I’m reminded of a verse a friend shared with me:

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life — Proverbs 13:!2

Writing on paper has rekindled hope for me. Your HOPE might not have anything to do with writing at work and getting paid while at it, but I pray:

Whatever your heart dreams of, may it be fulfilled. 🙏🏽