What happens till you get that mystery job?

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I still am largely an undergraduate. This means like many others every decision I have made is to groom me for “Tomorrow”. This tomorrow I have been told is a place of uncertainty, a place where everything is possible, a place with the spindly legs of an infant, thus a place that totters from volatility and can therefore go in whatsoever direction the wind of life blows.

I have listened to news stories about persons dying from mad dashes at Job interviews, news stories about convicted criminals blaming their turnout on the devil and unemployment. I have Aunts and Uncles and neighbours and friends who have been fatalities of the inefficiency of the Nigerian economy and the world at large, people who we all now would say did not warm up effectively for “Tomorrow”.

Accordingly, every resolution I have reached was somehow designed to align with the person I saw in “Tomorrow”, somehow supposed to align with getting me that mystery job.

In the age I was nurtured, it was predominantly, if not only, the doctors and lawyers and engineers who rode cars and stood to give huge sums of money in church. It was predominantly them who came to mind when one thought of success, predominantly them who seemed to have disembarked at the much talked about “Tomorrow”.

And so, it was ordinary as a child to receive counsel escorted brusquely by “Don’t sing” or “Don’t dance, it is for wayward people”, it was ordinary to lend ones ear to those adult conversations where a female singer to thrive snoozes with the big men in the industry, or where a dancer was strained to go on performance enhancing drugs to obviously enhance his performance.

Because these things happened in Nigeria, not only were they professions with narrow chances of success, they were also immoral professions, unchristian professions. This belief I must add has not completely weathered even in this day, there’s a tape of flippancy playing in the mind of people when one says “I’m a dancer” or “I write for a living”- a tape of indolence.

Popular Igbo novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie refers to it as-Rituals of distrust-how we treat one another. To me, it’s a sharpened benefit of doubt, sharpened so hard to precision with blades of dim-witted conventions so that we’re left only with doubt and no benefit. It comes with reduced prestige than when one states the conventional ideas of success.

But what these adult conversations did not tell us was that there were doctors and lawyers and engineers who took steroids too, these adult conversations did not tell us about the dancer or actress who morally fought her way to the top, about the singer whether immoral or not who succeeded as well, these conversations above all did not remind us that there were unsuccessful people even in those prestigious positions.

It’s funny even how these incomplete gauges became the benchmarks of success , how everything we’ve done in life, every seed we’ve sown has been planted on this partial soil of success. We too are guilty of judging people based on these restricted standards. If one says “I want to be a doctor and operate on conjoined twins like Dr Ben Carson” he is the serious one with a bright future, if another with dreads and clout in baggy pants says “I’d die without dance” we’d shrug our shoulders as if to say with our eyes and pouted lips “Make who wan spoil spoil”.

These standards of success have been tendered to us mechanically. In our primary schools, we have articles that portray success in the chauvinistic glow of career, we know that when our teacher says “Become a better person tomorrow”, it is those career driven professions they talk about not even teaching itself, that when its career day, our parents prance to Surulere mall to get us Lab Coats and law robes not tutu’s or leotards.

Success therefore has become a synonym for career, so that when I say “I want to be successful” I am in essence saying “I want to have a career”.

Those adult conversations did not tell us even then that success was more abstract than tangible, that success was like the storyline of a book and not its recycled pages. Those conversations led us into believing in the success we could see, and so if a doctor is not extravagant, if he does not wear gaudy articles and drive well known cars, he even then although sheathed underneath the word “career” is still largely unsuccessful .

Success I believe is fulfilment, about how we can wake up each morning and say “Truly I’m alive!” even when the rent is long due, how we can do what we love although the slim wads of cash comes in trickles. Success like most things comes from within, springs up from an abundance of self love. But if along the line, the money comes? Perfect! It’s still success seasoned with extravagance and wealth, seasoned with additives and not the exact basis of success.

I am a writer. I might not have published the first book or gotten big league publishing opportunities, but I still am a writer and till I get that mystery job, I would remain one.

Of course, it might not turn out fine, I might end up writing as just a columnist with if any slim wads of naira notes, or I might publish a Novel which fastened on the heels of piracy and plagiarism makes lots of sales for which I get only a few returns, or then again it might turn out fine.

Perhaps, I might be picked up by some huge publishing company with a mouth watering deal and willing to do it traditionally, I might affect lives with my pieces, write for even bigger magazines and gain worldwide recognition.

In either of these scenarios, I still remain a writer.

But if the situation is more of the former, bills have to be paid and if I have luck smiling on me amongst the swarm of university graduates in the much talked about tomorrow, I might get the mystery job.

I might sit in an air conditioned office somewhere in Victoria Island, dressed in glossy shoes with pointed edges and slim ties as if to strangle me to death, I might weather the troubles of Lagos traffic to get to work at 8am every morning, take the stairs in twos to drop a file on Oga’s desk, rise to give huge offerings in church and speak at Youth empowerment meetings as a “successful” person because of the phony of wealth.

And still even in all these, even in the blur of that mystery job, I would continue to pen down words on paper, to wake up in the middle of the night and think of novel ways to tell our many stories, to wait with bated breath for emails with publishing contents, even in all these, I would continue to read and write. It is my only definition of success.



Caleb Tochukwu Okereke is a Nigerian writer and literary blogger born in the 90’s. His poetry and short fiction have been published on the Kalahari review, African writer, Quality poets, teenageaye magazine, new black magazine amongst countless others and in the Texas based journal-The Hamilton stone review. He has therefore written satirical pieces for The Vanguard newspaper and TNW for which he is an editor. A skin deep literary fiction writer currently working on his debut novel, Caleb is
also a well known spoken word artiste and part of the eccentric Sky People franchise.

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