Chronicles Of A Wimpy Writer
By: Awab Hussain
Tags: Illumination, Productivity, Writing, Sarcasm, Comedy

Chronicles Of A Wimpy Writer

Image courtesy: the author

This is a picture of my desk. I took this picture from my new ‘one plus 8 pro’ which cost me 899 USD. The funny thing is that I bought this with my parents’ money.

Well, it makes sense. You see I’m only 23, unemployed, and currently studying in a medical school to which my parents pay, and in my line of work here in Pakistan, I won’t be earning enough money to afford this phone in the next 8 years.

You might be surprised__ but it’s a norm in Pakistan. Parents are supposed to pamper us and take care of us until we are well-grown adults and in return, they get to make our major life decisions as to what career to pursue, which girl to marry, and where to live. So it’s a dual exploitative relationship; just like the ones, average Americans have with their insurance companies.

It’s not a problem for most of us. Like culture, we have gotten accustomed to it. We even judge the parents who ask their teenage children to stand on their own feet.

But during this pandemic, as I was locked down with my parents in the same house after 5 years, it hit me hard____ the fact that I am basically a parasite and completely dependent on them even for my minor needs and desires. So, I started looking for online ways to earn some money and after going through some YouTube videos, I found Medium. It seemed easy money and since I knew writing, I thought to myself, “Let’s do it”.

Now, I have this problem, with online productive gurus. They have a habit of glorifying everything they do so beautifully. (I guess it’s a market strategy because it worked alright) The way they explained how easy it was to earn by writing articles, I couldn’t help but picture myself earning 4 figures right away_______ and that bubble popped real quick.

I don’t blame them. I not an out-of-the-world-good writer and I am certainly not a consistent writer. It’s like if consistency was a beautiful, hot chic from playboy magazine, then I would be strictly gay…… Because I cannot make myself try hard for her (pun intended)

For every piece that I write, I refresh the stats page like a billion times in hope that the medium curators might choose it for further distribution. Don’t judge me! America gave me this hope. Hey! you guys elected Trump as your president out of nowhere so; anything can happen. But in three months it never happened. ( should have written something racist or homophobic!) Right now, I only got 27 followers and 5 cents. Way less than the monkey whose juggler taught him to smile while receiving a banana.

The thing is, it’s difficult for me to sit down and choose a topic. Every niche seems so saturated and my mind basically goes like this….

“ Hmmm.. what should I write on? Self-help? Naah… there are a lot of writers out there for that”.

“Hmmm…… popular advice is that I should write about the stuff I am good at”.

“……. What am I good at?”

“Would someone be interested in 6 ways to justify procrastination? cuz I’m real good at it.”

“There should be a self-destruction category as well___ for writers like me. If The Ascent would have ugly, broke, and dumb instead of healthy wealthy and wise sections____ I would be their Tim Denning”.

He’s an amazing writer by the way. It’s cute when he tries to show humility about his success. I read one of his articles and he was like “I was an average Aussie who didn’t even know grammar.”….. Dude!! it’s easy for you to say. You have like hundreds of thousands of followers. You should start a religion; go write a scripture or something.

For me, it’s a struggle to write.. but I am a good talker and listener. I often have long meaningful conversations over cups of coffee with my friends. so I thought to myself, why not write like that. As if I’m making random conversation with all of you over a cup of coffee. What better way to write my thoughts out like this. To inspire and be inspired like this. To laugh, smile, cry, and learn like this. I hope to continue these chronicles in the future, apart from my struggle with writing in other niches of course. Feel free to respond because a conversation is not a conversation when no one’s responding. It becomes a senate speech. I’d love to be a senator though.