What’s up y’all,

This first post is gonna be real bare bones. Bare bones like Nigerians eating chicken wings. (If you’ve never witnessed it, it’s a sight to behold. Once more people catch wind I’m sure it’ll be a Wonder of the World—or at least an honorable mention. I grew up in a Nigerian household, and unless your chicken bones end up looking like fossils, you haven’t finished the assignment). That’s the level of bare bones-ness you’re gonna experience while I’m getting this thing up and running. No extra nothing will cling to this page. At least for a little while.

Honestly, I didn’t intend on writing anything. Let me correct that, I intended on writing a whole bunch. My intentions have never been the issue. My discipline has. Good intentions have been my drug of choice. A hallucinogen really. Allowing me to see and feel things that aren’t really there. My good intentions have let me hold the joy of accomplishment and achievement. They’ve warmed me with pats on the back that aren’t really there. When I sober up I realize, they likely won’t ever come—because I haven’t really done what I intended to.

So what I really meant to say is, I didn’t plan on writing anything. I planned on just signing up for this account. It’s the first drum beat of my usual rhythm of procrastination.

1. Sign up for some microblogging site.

2. Rest. Remind myself of how good a job I’ve done and reward myself with much needed recreation before I head into the rest of this journey

3. Stress out over the design, layout.

4. Write 45 drafts of my about section.

5. Scrap every one and convince myself that I can’t move on until I knock this out of the park

6. Fill up my iCloud notes with all of the things I think I need to address.

7. Fill up on all kinds of insecurities about writing.

8. Buy books on writing and read them voraciously.

9. Start to practice my writing to ensure that when I launch the microblogging site, I’ll say something in a way that people will enjoy reading.

10. Fall off on my little writing exercises, and get busy doing some other work.

11. Shelve the project and wait for inspiration after I find another one that works out.

I just completed step 1, which was huge for me. While I was taking a breather before sprinting to step 2….you showed up. Out of nowhere. It wasn’t a bunch of you. But it was enough of you. Notification after notification crept into my inbox. If my inbox was a set of blinds, substack’s email notifications of the people that subscribed were the invasive fingers spacing out little slivers in those blinds. Lifting up the spam emails from J.Crew & Footlocker, letting me know that you were waiting for something. Anticipating something. Hoping for something. Wanting something.

Some emails I recognized. Others, I didn’t. And still others, I laughed at. My face curled into a question mark when I saw a couple of @hotmail.com’s standing awkwardly in the corner—as they have been since 1997.

Anyway, I just wanted to break ground here and let you know, I see y’all. I’m glad you’re looking this way. It’s easier for me to do this when I feel like I’m in conversation and not stranded on an island sending out notes in a bottle to vague silhouettes.

In all honesty, I’m not quite sure what this is going to be. All I know is that I’m going to continue to come back to honesty AND hope. (I capitalized the AND emphasis).

Most people tend to live as if Honesty and Hope are parallel streets. You talk to some people and they can navigate honesty about politics, religion, relationships, sex, identity, culture, etc. like no one else. And we’re better off because of a lot of their insights. While honest, they never really seem happy. The corner of their mouths are always curled downwards. They’re insightful, they just aren’t pleasant or a joy to be around. And when you smile, you’re reminded about all of the reasons why you shouldn’t be.

There are others who travel down a very different pathway. They smell like hope, but it’s not the real fragrance. It’s the TJ Maxx version. The cover claims it smells just like the real thing, but you know it’s not. It’s more a naïve optimism. If the above is grow is never smiling…they always are. And something doesn’t sit right with you either.

All I can promise you is that as we journey together, we won’t be traveling down either path. Honestly, we don’t have to make a choice between the two. Truth be told, honesty and hope aren’t parallel streets…they intersect. I’m ain’t much of a walker anyway. I tend to like to just post up.

So I’ll be here, posted up on the corner. Writing about a little bit of everything!

The design will come and there will be more order and structure and all of that later. But I really just wanted to say hey because y’all were peeking through my blinds and I felt a little pressure to get started.

Last note, like I said before, I’m not interested in sending messages in bottles across the ocean to vague silhouettes. I want to have conversations and interactions. So this little corner of the internet won’t just be what I make it. It’ll be what we make it.

Let’s make something beautiful.

Peace,

John