Writer's Block

I’ve just left this meeting at Covent Garden. I’m on the tube home. This is a simple commute, a single Central Line train to my stop.

I feel an overwhelming urge to write. I reckon the urge is heavily influenced by having spent so much time amongst creatives who are putting themselves out there in the meeting I just left.

I’ve looked around this train for inspiration. Something to write about. The black lady to my left with nose masks - probably to prevent her against meningitis(💀)? The Asian lady to my right with a well-matched outfit scrolling endlessly on her phone? There either isn’t much on this carriage, or I don’t have enough patience to stare at the carriage until it confesses something to me, something fascinating.

Whatever the case is, I’ve now settled on writing a reminder to myself about the kind of spaces I need to be in. If you grew up Nigerian like me, you must’ve heard all about how you should be mindful of the kind of company you keep. I’ve largely tended to interpret that statement from the white and black moral lens - keep morally upright friends, discard the morally bankrupt ones, depending on what the definition of moral is.

However, given how I’ve felt tonight - a feeling I always get when I spend time around creatives, creatives in the true sense of the word, I see very clearly how much that phrase applies in the aspect of creative fulfilment. Personally, I think about this in less of a “discard category X” way, and more in a “remember to spend more time with the people in category Y” way.

If you spend time with people who are fine with “just good enough” creativity, you’re bound to start becoming fine with it too. On the other hand, if you spend time with people who put in creative work, who are sometimes obsessed about it, who “get it done, creatively” and who put out work even when they’re scared of the reaction to the work - the kind of people I just spent an hour chatting to in Covent Garden tonight - then it’s hard for me to imagine a world where some of that doesn’t rub off on you.