Week 8 — Let’s talk about perseverance

When I first started this adulting series, I wanted the stories to be real and vulnerable. As a young Nigerian in my early twenties, I had many questions and not enough answers. However, somewhere along the line, I became a little busy and dropped the storytelling for one-sentence posts, but this doesn’t sit well with me. So starting today (Week 8), I’m going back to drawing ideas from real-life stories. My hope is that through the documentation in this series, people can see the true face of adulting and how to adapt to it. I went through it, so you (don’t) have to go through it.

Everyone who knows me knows that I'm not too fond of self-help books. Well, I wasn’t too fond of them till recently. I would always wonder why one would volunteer themselves to read a book entitled “let’s talk about perseverance.” But here we are, talking about perseverance. I am giving this disclaimer because this sounds like an inspire to perspire post, but it isn’t. It’s just bants about freelancing and perseverance.

In 2015, I met Chidi. One of my earliest memories is from him and Ozed borrowing my notes to photocopy during exams. They rarely attended classes and always seemed to be at hilltop doing god knows what. I eventually got closer to them and got introduced to the world of freelancing. I realized that the reason they didn’t show up at the department a lot was that they were working as freelancers.

Chidi & I as undergrads in UNN.

At this point, the concept of freelancing seemed vague to me. No one I knew personally did it but these two guys. Then it was them and Uti, then I joined, then Edu joined. Initially, I started writing as a freelancer because I wanted to stop collecting money from my parents. You know when you start feeling independent but you don’t know that it’s really just village people. Then I realized I needed it for things that were more life-changing, like a new phone or processing my grad school application.

I’m not sure why Chidi took it upon himself to teach me how to freelance, but he did. I would bring my laptop to school and once in a while I’d catch him sitting opposite records using the Wi-fi and he’d give me some mobile advice about how to land bids for new jobs. I tried for many weeks (literally), and then I almost gave up. Chidi asked me to come to his house for a session to go through the process with me.

I remember this vaguely, but I think the evening began with him, Uti, and I eating an unhealthy amount of rice. Then he taught me how to write sample bids and identify projects that I had greater chances of getting. We iterated a lot, and I was finally sent into the world for real to go get writing gigs.

The jobs did not come immediately, but they eventually did. Those years working as a freelancer taught me so many skills that have remained relevant to me over the years. I will start writing some of the things I gained from this experience;

Big victories are inspired by tiny steps.

1. Consistency is the best tool in your arsenal. The beginning of anything is never easy. You’re passing through territories that you have never been to before, and to succeed you need daily progressions. Small small. One step at a time. I submitted well over 200 bids during my time as a freelancer. I believe this figure is modest. Knowing what I know now, I’d probably send fewer bids with better results.
2. Discipline is a self-care word. As a freelancer, no one is going to wake up in the morning and scold you for not getting to work on time. It’s between you and your chi. However, without discipline, you won’t make deadlines, you’d get a bad reputation and no one will want to hire you. If you really love yourself you must approach the things you care about with discipline.
3. Community — there isn’t anything you are going through that someone hasn’t gone through. Having Chidi, Ozed, Uti and Edu as my community meant that I could ask them questions. ‘How you take get this job?’ ‘How una dey take withdraw una money’ etc. The journey is lighter when you go together.
4. To write better, break things down. First, you need a structure, then a few points. Take things in bits and pace yourself.
5. I learned to pick interests about things that were outside my immediate gaze. I worked on pieces for construction, fashion and nursing, topics I had no direct connection to in my every day life.
6. There’s no such thing as an impossible deadline. As I said, the reputation aspect of freelancing was a huge deal to us. We wanted to always have nice reviews and 5-star profiles. One of the best ways to piss your client off is to miss their deadline. It didn’t matter what NEPA had going for them or whose daddy was GLO, I learned to always find a way to meet deadlines or communicate well ahead of time if I couldn’t (which was very rare).
7. Most importantly, I learned to say no. Saying ‘I am afraid I cannot do this job’ can be very difficult. It might be because you’re overbooked or you feel it’s beyond the span of your technical strength. Whatever the reason, knowing when to say ukwu m emene m (AKA RUN) is a very solid skill. There’s no point giving a client your word and ending up disappointing them.

These days, when I meet tight deadlines or get through hectic tasks that drag on for the longest time, I recognize that it’s those days of freelancing that have prepared me and made me become more resilient. Those days taught me to lean on consistency and discipline when the going gets tough.

No experience, at least in my life, has been a waste. Everything eventually adds up somehow. Trust your daily process anon.

#52weeksofadulting #Week8