In today's world, it's common to hear the youth sometimes defame hard work and refer to it as an archaic way to achieving goals and dreams, they even go as far as making examples of some elderly ones who worked hard all their lives and still end up impoverished in their old age, the reason why some of them are always on the lookout for the shortcut to success, of course, which doesn't always end up great either, rather further damnation.
I am a strong believer that hard work still pays in our current world, although there is a thin line between working smart and hard, and that is what stems confusion in the mind of those who diminish hard work as a path to success.
I will be furthering this thought with an experience that molded me into someone who can make an impact in my society today through my talent which was borne through hard work.
Whenever I tell people about how I stumbled into my passion for fashion designing it always amazes them, at first it was just what I did to kill boredom during the lockdown period in 2020, but I fell in love with the little things I managed to create then through the help of YouTube, mostly facemask which I distributed to people living in my locality, I knew there was no stopping for me since I had already grown a liking to sewing, but I had no knowledge of dressmaking then, and nevet knew it would become something that would generate income for me in the future, I just kept on practicing with thereold abandoned sewing machine I had picked up then.
Luckily for me, I saw a post on Facebook from a well-known designer who wanted to train five beginners who were passionate about learning how to sew but never had prior knowledge or training, I commented below the post indicating my interest and was lucky to be among the five lucky beginners chosen, it was supposed to be a 3-6 month duration of the free training, though we were mostly taught the basic dress making pattern, how to take body measurements and how to operate the sewing machine which I had already mastered on my own, being in that environment during that period opened my eyes to more than what was taught, I am quick a learner, and would always want to practice what I saw older students do, even when they told me I wouldn't get it and stil had years before I could master what they did, but shockingly to them, I would always end up with good results, after countless hours and days practising a single thing, although I would have some errors here and there, but I never gave up as the more I practices, the more I got better, learning from my experience.
At a point, my fellow beginners thought I was a scam, they began to question if I had learned how to sew somewhere before, but truthfully, it was all due to hard work, and it's paying me today, heck, I left my 8-8 job and became my own boss, had more time for my family as a mum since I work at home mostly, and there has never been a regret since then.
So you see hard work pays, and one has to be smart as well, so we don't work hard for nothing.
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