From a very early age, perhaps the age of seven or eight, I knew that when I grew up I should be a mechanic or an engineer. But I got addicted to books along the way and I remember reading everything I could lay my hands onto in the vicinity of my place of stay; books, magazines, newspapers etc. In primary school, my compositions and Insha’s were some of the best. In high school, I fell in love with poetry and couldn’t get enough of it. My first contribution to our high school (Kitondo School) magazine was in the form of a plagiarized poem “You are yourself to blame by Mayme White Miller”. I was in form one then.
If things go bad for you
And make you a bit ashamed
Often you will find out that
You have yourself to blame
~
Swiftly we ran to mischief
And then the bad luck came
Why do we fault others?
We have ourselves to blame
~
Whatever happens to us,
Here is what we say
“Had it not been for so-and-so
Things wouldn’t have gone that way.”
~
And if you are short of friends,
I’ll tell you what to do
Make an examination,
You’ll find the faults in you…
~
You are the captain of your ship,
So agree with the same
If you travel downward
You have yourself to blame
So I decided that whatever I was going to do professionally, writing would become part and parcel of it.
I have only written one non-fiction book and hope to write more non-fiction and fiction books in the near future. I have also written numerous essays and several amateurish poems. Why do I feel the need for writing? What motivates me? Why do I write?
- To massage my ego, for attention and desire to be liked.
I need attention.
To be honest, I write to get people like me. And I know I am not alone. All writers do the same.
I didn’t grow up with all the attention being focused on me.
Every moment I was alone, I always would recoil and deeply focus on my gadgets then, assembling and disassembling them, repairing watches, radios, re-circuiting them etc. Ofcourse I was as social as any other boy then and I engaged in all manner of activities a typical village born and bred boy would(hunting with bows and arrows and catapults, swimming, playing all manner of games etc).
Now I seek the attention that I lacked then.
- Desire to seem clever and smart.
To be talked about. I want to seem smart. To be remembered after death.
I don’t know whether I am clever or smart or whatever …but I know, deep in my heart, I desire to seem so.
- To be an expert.
This is especially in regard to my writing at www.eeekenya.com and www.eeducationgroup.com.
The more I write, the more I improve even professionally.
Even on the personal level, I write here, my failures in business and life and how I overcome them. I write so that my reader will say “that essay or book changed my life.”
I would like (and I will) to write the time I lost everything, and the steps I took to get off rock bottom.
How often I have disappointed people and felt guilty and ashamed.
How I have been embarrassed to tell people the truth about my failures.
I want to be always story telling.
Everyone should write a book. Even if it is for yourself only.
- To share things that may help people..
I wrote my first book, “Smart Way to Improve Your Mind and Grades” in 2014, specifically for my cousins who were then joining form 4. It is a high school guide book. I write things that may help a friend, relative or an acquaintance. I want to write such essays and books. Whatever book I write, I want it to be based on personal, practical real life experience.
I want to write in the styles (and mix them up) of Montaigne, Benjamin Franklin and Nassim Taleb.
I want to write about things that embarrass me and cause me to feel ashamed.
- To share embarrassing stories about myself.
Readers relate to some of the stories I write about and this makes me feel part of a community.
I share stories and I see people identify with them, and it makes me feel nice, and not alone.
- To learn.
The more I write, the more I learn.
There is a saying that, “If you want to learn something, start by writing about it.”
I have done this for several fields, programming, electrical (building services) and even education.
The best books are by people who have been through the struggle. They are the most enjoyable and relatable. You really learn through facing hardships, overcoming them in various ways and emerging a changed person to tell the tale.
That is why I don’t like books written by theorizers who just summarize what other authors have written. I really find it hard to read a self-help book that is written by those who never had a skin in the game.
- To market.
This is also in regard to www.eeekenya.com and www.eeducationgroup.com and www.brendatt.com .
I have not disclosed this publicly. I have got more business referrals and inquiries because of my writing at www.eeekenya.com and www.eeducationgroup.com. I won’t have done many personal projects if it were not for what came out of this.
How do you market anything? Write about the thing. Write a book about it. Write helpful posts about it.
- To give back and contribute to culture.
It seems much of what I know about life has been learned through books and writings of others.
And now, any time I want to learn about something, I search online. Most of the times I am directed to personal websites and blogs where people have shared freely? Why shouldn’t I do the same? Why should I continue being just a taker and not a giver?
Of course, I can never give back in equal measure but I feel the little that I do adds up to something. Once in a while I get comments and emails of people expressing their gratitude to me.
- Love.
I love the process.
Writing anything is hard. Typing is boring. My past is dark. But with love, it becomes a sweet process.
Every time I improve. The writing has improved and I am 100% better than I was last month.
And when I look back to what I wrote three years ago, it is very refreshing, and nostalgic. I say, “I can’t imagine I write this, “or “I can’t imagine I was this creative”.
Whether you write or not, time is moving forward.
I started journaling a month ago, and so far, it has been a wonderful experience. This was after postponing doing so for almost four years. As I had initially intended to do so in 2015.
What prompted me to seriously start doing so? Late January this year(2019) I happened to be in Bloemfontein, SA and I was lucky to be accommodated by an elderly white couple, Keith and her wife. During one of our many conversations, Keith asked me if I journal. I quickly offered a rejoinder, “I don’t journal but I have thought about doing so for the last four years. Keith then told me that one of his deepest life regrets is that he didn’t journal and that it was too late for him to do so. He explained why. He quipped, “When you are back to your country, start journaling. Buy a hardcopy journal and start immediately.
Being lazy as I am, once I was back, I dillydallied for almost a whole month. But then I said, enough is enough and starting journaling. I use the online Journal called Penzu, because it can be used across devices and the journal is synched across all your devices. It is also highly secure. You can edit, add photos, links and even export the journal in PDF in case you would want to write a book later. You can also have multiple journals and also back date some of them. I have two in my account: One called, “Benard’s Journal” and another called “Journal of the past-Memories”. So I can backdate events that I can remember now that occurred in the past.
If you don’t journal, start immediately. Don’t wait until it is too late.
Journaling has many merits that are priceless.
Journaling helps you freeze your experience and thoughts in time so that you can always go back to that years later.
I wish I had started doing so when I was 10 years of age. But it is better late than never.
How would my children or grandchildren feel when they happen to come across details of what their father’s or grandfather’s (respectively) life was at such and such an age? I think they would appreciate it greatly. I would want to bequeath them with that: my experiences and thoughts in my twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, etc.
Thank you for reading.
