Into the Archives
sharing what I was writing almost a decade ago
I once ran a WordPress blog.
I set it up over four hours in church on a Tuesday because I had been writing for about a year and my friend thought I needed a platform where I could share my drafts and possibly build a community. This was shy of a decade ago, March 2016—and yes, I cannot believe it’s been over ten years since that Sunday afternoon my friend tried to persuade me to put my work online when all I wanted to do was read, write, and hope someday the right publisher would, while scrolling the internet during lunch, discover my blog and proclaim their marvel at such brilliance.
Oh, it was the year of wild dreams, lofty dreams, big dreams unchained to a geographical axis. It was the year of believing without a second of unsureness that I could write, that I would write and write until readers across the universe fell into the magic of my writing. It was the year of reading 100+ books before yearly wraps on social media became a thing. It was the year of delusion long before delusion was embraced as a lingua franca.
The first thing I shared on WordPress was a meditative rant titled The Way of Jesus (and how thankful I am that ten years on, I’m still pondering this way). However, that phrasing reminds me of some of the materials I was reading at the time: Ted Dekker’s Circle Trilogy, Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness, and later on, The Believer’s Authority by Andrew Wommack. Till date, that year remains my most voracious year of reading, if we highlight the quantity of books read. I would argue it takes extraordinary zeal to read, week after week, even when no one knows you’re reading, when you know nothing about sharing on social media, when you don’t belong to a community of writers or readers or even know that it is possible to get a degree in creative writing. To read and write simply for the love of the game.
Perhaps I’ll write a longer piece on this someday.
Last night, having read a while for class, I began missing the years I wrote a lot of fiction and nonfiction, and that spiralled into remembering my WordPress. So I hopped online and after a few technical maneuver, gained access to the site. The posts were…unrecognizable. Not that they were grammatically unpleasant, but that I couldn’t, on a whim, recall being the writer.
After I’d site-shopped, I decided I would re-share some of those pieces on Substack. Of course, it’s been years, so I do not expect that the writing is as improved as it is now, and you’d be understood if you find these WordPress pieces…unrefined—though I can argue that I’ve always been a good writer!
Here’s a post first published February 11, 2017, titled Monday Morning, written after my first month as an undergrad studying Chemistry.
I remember Monday morning precisely as Ben Carson recalls the day he separated the Binder twins. I remember it like Ted Dekker cannot forget the day Black was published, like Science cannot forget the day Newton’s laws were postulated, like Music cannot forget the day Hallelujah chorus entered our world, like a prude recalls with clarity the place where she had her first sex.
Monday morning did not start at 12am or 6am. Perhaps the time is of no importance, for time is a subject of perception. Nine minutes and eight seconds to a grammarian wouldn’t be defined the way a physicist would define it.
It was three forty-seven in the morning, second hand ticking twenty when my eyes, heavy as a detached leg of an elephant, shifted from the clock to the sheet spread before me. My eyes weren’t heavy because I lacked sleep. They weren’t heavy because I had the previous evening.
They were heavy because I had worked them.
The entrance to the room was steeped slightly upward. I stared at the vast of black sheltering the compound. To the left were decrepit structures with jutted roofs. These structures displayed wares for fourteen hours as students trooped in tiny flocks to see to their needs. These structures fed families of twos and fours, and the woman with child.
Ahead, a field coated with dry cement swallowed a respectable segment of the floor. Invisible white lines bordered all sides of the field. A pole swayed in the center of the field, bearing a halogen lamp. The lamp was not functioning.
The sky was stuffed with stars impossible to count. I buttoned up to prevent an onrush of wind slamming against the exterior of the room. A tag scribbled in bold fonts spelled READING ROOM.
Movement behind had me turning. None of the fourteen students – all male – had changed positions. The boy with the KEEP CALM shirt was still lost in his letters. Two rows ahead, another sat with mouth so wide it’d swallow a basketball. Spittle hung on his lower lip.
I walked over to my wrinkled drawing sheet and smoothened the tuft. Though disturbed by the howl, the beauties constructed in thin lines, thirteen of them, held my gaze. As I considered, I spotter angles that had required patches and manipulations.
I recall all these for it was Monday morning. Monday morning was the moment you dragged a bag to the floor, not minding the scattered contents. Monday morning was the moment for sorting out assignments from notes, like the Shepherd does sheep from goats.
Monday morning was the beginning of five days of intense, choky learning.
This Monday morning, I couldn’t help but not be afraid. I had, after all, spent 25% of a day working constructions. The week would be windy, a stretch, but I’d survive. My fingers would not bleed and my eyes would not fall out of my head. I wouldn’t call black grey or label a banana as cereal.
So I believed.
It is Thursday now. The sky is overcast with mournful colors. I watch a Camry teach a bus lessons on road swiftness. I’m walking along the concrete pavement that extends the length of the tarred road, thinking about the day before. I cannot recall in staggering details the things which have shaped me these last days. I cannot begin to tell of the habits, the irritations, the lad who plays flute at a quarter to midnight…
I do know with all assurance that my eyes, heavy still, are yet to fall off my head. In this do I delight.
So, first thoughts?
A notable fact about this piece: I wrote it, and several others over the next few months, on my phone. As I was traveling to university for the first time, we didn’t think it was the most expedient decision to carry a laptop, the only laptop we had at the time, all the way, so I left it at home before traveling. But I didn’t want to stop writing on WordPress, so I turned to my mobile device. This practice would later become helpful, even when I got the laptop, as I stopped waiting to return home whenever the idea for a new story (or nonfiction) hit me.
I’d simply just find a quiet space, bring out the phone, and write. Oh, the things we do for what we believe in.