The emphasis "curiosity kills the cat" didn't apply to me because if it did, I won't be here.
I knew I had a large imagination capacity from when I was still a little kid, I was curious and also an overthinker, I would spend time thinking and even get lost in my thoughts sometimes, and it only happens when I was still in my imaginary world.
It starts with the question such as what if there was a world I didn't know, different from the physical world I was in? What if the stars were universal with actual people in it? What if in a branch of a tree, the leaves were homes to many, sometimes it was so funny that I would get a leaf out of curiosity just to see if I could see a house or just anything.
I would look at a stone for hours, imagining how it could talk back at me, how things that did not move during the day could talk and move at night. And before I knew it I started gisting my close friends about it, forming stories that were beyond her imagination, and I was so detailed with these stories, sometimes I would plug into her emotions, making her laugh, extremely sad, and other times she cries, but she won't allow me to rest_ every evening before we go to night prep, (yeah I went to a boarding school) night prep can also be called night class.
Abigail and I would stay under the biggest tree close to our hostel, she was always an attentive listener, and she was always eager to know what happened next in every story, I would gist her till we got caught and told to go to class for night prep.
"Esty, sabi tomorrow you would continue abi, I want to know how it ended, please! please!! please!!!."
Abigail would just come to my room to disturb my sleep for a story or movie as I put it then.
"Abigail go to your room, if I have strength tomorrow I would gist you." Muttering as I try to continue my sleep.
"I would give you my refectory bread and egg, even my garri if you continue." And that's how almost all our deals were made.
I would accept and continue telling her more of my imaginary stories but that kept my imagination alive also, and that's how I got even more curious about mysticism, I would go to our school library just to write stories that align with my thoughts, with my imagination, and from there I established this habit of going to the library just so I could know more about mysticism, about adventure with mysterious beings.
And every night I would come loaded with imaginary stories just to tell Abigail, I can recall the last story I told her before we were caught and punished by Abigail's school mother
The School of the Unknown;
"It was about a girl who was born with a blind eye, her left eye was blind while her right eye was still very much good. She was bullied by her peer and was only loved by her little cat, cause her parent never really valued her since she was the only child and she had endangered her mother's womb just to be the only one enjoying their wealth, they never really loved her but they did their responsibility as parents all in the name of not being looked down on, as their reputation was a priority to them. But what they failed to notice about their daughter was that she could see the time a person dies, and when and what they reincarnate into. She saw her father become a tree that was cut off and used uselessly in his next life. while her mother was going to be blind, deaf, and mute...that of which she would never grow more than a 10-year-old kid.
And to avoid her embarrassing them she was sent to the school of the unknown while they adopted a son. She noticed that everyone in that school was dead. She was the only living being in the means of dead and unknown beings."
I wasn't able to finish the story when we got caught but when I got to Abigail's school mother's room, I was told to start the story from the beginning, and that's how I started telling a full room of seniors stories every evening, it wasn't so hectic for me cause I could just stand there and create a story.
It was fun and all, because I started to have this free relationship with my seniors. But one evening after I was done with the storytelling. One of the seniors, her name was Mirabella, her mates called her Bella, or Mira, asked me if I wrote down every story I used to tell them, and honestly, I wasn't, at least not all of them. She was a bit disappointed that I was wasting such a talent, that they were apps I could post my stories and get recognition but then I was skeptical and I wasn't so good at writing but I took her advice.
And as I wrote I became more curious about not just the world I couldn't grasp but also the physical world I could see and the issues it has, as I dug more I found out I could write, and writing became a passion accompanying my imagination, I found out I didn't need so much to be inspired to write poems, poetries, stories, it just came up on its own.
When I first saw writing as a profession was when I tasted the waters for the first time, I became a writer in a company, a copywriter, I wrote on products that dealt with health issues, mostly on prostate cancer, pelvic cancer, diabetes, long-sightedness, and short-sightedness, etc, I was able to market those products on different platform on the internet and how I got the job was through a friend who saw my passion and curiosity to want to know more. He always said I was a desperate writer in which I would just laugh over his statement.
But then I had to drop the job because I needed to focus on school as a freshman, that's where I found and fall in love with philosophy because as a philosophy student, you must learn the core act of writing, that is where I learned more on a philosopher called Plato who talked about the word of form_ where he differs between the physical world that can be seen and the word that can only be grasped upon with the mind.
And what did philosophy do to me, it increased my zeal to want to know, to seek answers with persistence, to engage in dialogues with people like Socrates did, to seek answers to my insatiable curiosity for writing_and that's how I started getting opportunities from people and one of them came as the reason of joining hive, my passion for writing didn't die even with all my procrastination, my imaginary mind never died off, so you can imagine how I felt when I first found out about Hive, I had to disturb my friend till I made my way here even with the fact that my phone got stolen, I still got another one just so I don't miss out. It was hard but I still made it through, and I was wowed by everything I have had the opportunity to encounter in hive
I don't only see myself improving, I see myself living my dreams of becoming an excellent scriptwriter, and immediately after school, that's the core area I'm diving into. Because in a few years from now, I see the Nigerian film industry (Nollywood ) taking a U-turn that would be evolutional and would be better and recognized in the world. I see Nigerian movies being watched all over the world, Nigerians getting more awards and recognition and that's the path I see myself moving and I'm living in it with each passing day.
Thank you all for reading my post.... open to corrections.