Michael's Kitchen

who, while preparing for church on a Sunday morning, spontaneously starts a Substack newsletter?

When I was sixteen I wanted to be a chef, a dream which was both short-lived and ironic. Short-lived because three years on from that time I was in university studying for a Chemistry degree. Ironic because this fantasy, largely watered by my unrequited devotion to watching episodes of Knorr Taste Quest, was divorced from my cooking experience. At this time I couldn’t even make proper Nigerian jollof rice.

Let me tell you why this criteria matters. If you’ve lingered long enough on social media you would have chanced upon a debate amongst several countries on the superiority of jollof rice. Two countries forefront this dispute — Nigeria and Ghana. Two countries bordering each other, two countries bound by banter, bus trips, and a refusal to celebrate the other as the better cook. Two brothers, perhaps, and you’d be right to assume Ghana as the younger child. But I digress. Jollof rice is the rite of passage meal, the meal that certifies your understanding of basic kitchen etiquettes and recipes. In Nigeria, jollof rice transcends a meal, morphs into a song ferried overseas, a clarion anthem, a uniting staple. To fail in this simple task is to acknowledge that when God fashioned over ten scores of bones into your body, he didn’t dedicate a single one to cooking.

For that teenage boy, nursing thoughts of being a chef de partie while stumbling on this expectation required a mountain of audacity. Audacity, though, was like the dew which falls upon the grass. It was renewed each morning.

It’s been a decade now and I certainly don’t run a kitchen or restaurant. I still watch cooking shows whenever the schedule permits (filed The Bear into my watch-later folder some months back). I still cook, and with delight. Still experiment with recipes because the joy of nutrition is in tossing ingredients together to see what whets the throat, what lingers a tangy taste on the tongue. A friend tells me I might someday retire into the career path of a chef. My mum calls me the blessed cook.

My brother swears I make the best Nigerian fried rice anywhere, heh.

I cherish these memories, though I admit my current interests lie in the field of words. A year ago I was studying writing samples and cover letters for graduate school applications. All year I had worked a full-time job alongside freelance gigs that kept me at the work desk while men slept. At the start of last year I’d made a note to start a Substack newsletter. I did not. As the final quarter of 2024 trickled by, I wrote, edited, and revised letters. I’d nursed the graduate school dream for a few years, but when the window came to apply, imposter syndrome pitched its mammoth tent in the yard.

To summarise, I am now in graduate school. Applying was perhaps the second most audacious thing I’d done since my age became legal. You see, audacity had, like the sea which receded at the footsteps of the Israelites, faded into the background. The fact is, the inevitable rejections that mark the early adulthood phase chip off, brick by brick, the child’s bravery to dream, to chase things, to believe anything is possible until all you have left is a small block. You hold that block of boldness in one hand and promise yourself you’d utilize it well. Perhaps that was me last year, writing letters, dreaming of getting an acceptance email, nodding whenever my loved ones said, it’ll work out, it’ll work out.

When I was nine I wanted to be an engineer because I’d memorized a refrain from a comprehension passage which went: Mike is now an engineer, the one who will build our roads. This, I concluded, was my one true goal — to be an engineer and build roads for the community. I clutched it to my chest for years, even while other interests knocked. Clutched it until I wrote my university-entrance exams and learned that my scores wouldn’t suffice to study engineering. That was the genesis of my Bachelors in the Sciences.

Right now, I’m in the process of mastering creative writing (which seems to be a relentless course because what living writer can insist that they have truly mastered writing, but we try).

I have borne many interests. This, possibly, sponsored my reluctance to start writing mini essays on Substack. What, really, did I want to talk about?

As you may tell, I’m currently settling into a new country while pursuing a graduate degree. Ceteris paribus, I will be in academia through all of 2026. I still watch cooking videos on YouTube. I play speed chess. I watch football and American football. I started watching basketball the day I watched Steph Curry drain a three-pointer from beyond half court. This was also the year he won his first MVP. I sobbed when Roger Federer lost his last Grand Slam final match to Djokovic despite being one point from winning; I thought that was my last bout of tennis interest until I watched Alcaraz burst onto the scene. My graduate degree concentration is in poetry though I write fiction, too — and altogether have read more novels than poetry collections. I once played the flute, for a few months, in a small orchestra, though it’s been so long it feels like a past life. Before I started graduate school, I worked in marketing as a content writer.

See? I’m split into many fascinating topics.

However, I realise that I’m not particularly devoted to writing about a single one. I could be yapping about a poem today and about a basketball match a few hours later. Perhaps my one interest for this space is to spotlight what it feels like to write from the heart (and think with the brain) despite the perfection-driven content churned out by AI mills all around us.

Hence the decision to name this space “first drafts live here”. We’re not thrashing first drafts here. Instead, we’re pushing them out and sharing them with others.

I offer you two things: one, writing from the heart, as it comes to me, without the rigour of revision or edits or filtering through the lens of perfectionism (I already do a ton of that with my coursework, my poems, short stories, emails, and everything else I write week-on-week, and I’m not repeating the same here); two, connected episodes. Each “chapter” I publish will speak to the previous one. This connection might be minuscule — for instance I might decide to talk about ceteris paribus in the next episode — or grandiose. I won’t overthink it because, here, I’m invested in the flow, not the structure.

I might cover the art of writing. Or why I think God creates some people on special days. Or a book that read that made me sob. Or why capitalism sucks but you have to play along. Or how I shivered the night I left the library into the cold arms of Fall. Or what craft piece I’m reading. Or my experiences playing speed chess daily for 500+ days, including Christmas, New Year, and my birthday. Or life as a twenty-something navigating a new culture while juggling coursework plus graduate duties plus craft plus aloneness. Or what it means when a girl calls you a beautiful man.

No edits. From the heart to the page to your inbox (subscribe so you catch them hot!).

A third thing, new pieces will possibly come out on Sunday. It’s the least busy day of the week. Or maybe it’s Saturday but then when do I practice my recipes if not on Saturdays? However, I might publish on weekdays when the semester ends and I have more control over my schedule.

Does that imply one post weekly? Possibly, I don’t know.

Day by day, monotonicity eats into the writing universe. Everyone wants to be a perfect writer commanding the awe of readers globally. I simply want to be an honest man and a good writer (to echo the legend). Perhaps the unfiltered posts will nudge someone to be more affirmative with their writing.

I hope, I hope.