What are you willing to do? [from ismatu.fm]
Prelude: Hello, all. I recorded the following for ismatu.fm, a site I am utilizing to garner increased funds for my various projects (namely, rice farming). The money from threadings has been laying the groundwork for rice production in Sierra Leone for about a year now, and I am seeing the (literal!) fruits of that work this fall. I could just die. To reward those choosing to pay for essays, as well as create a place of accountability for regular project and system updates, I made ismatu.fm. The site is still under construction and also not for the public, hence the password protection; only for those paying $10/month or more via Ghost or Patreon subscriptions can access right now. This is because project updates have knowledge about where I am and what I am doing in a way that would be straight up unwise to make accessible to everybody. However, in the interest of including people outside of the Western world (who cannot afford ten USD a month on some silly internet person), all of the paywalled items will be released to the public after (about) a calendar year. Should you be a paid subscriber here, you gain access to that website.
This is a supplemental piece I wrote for ismatu.fm; I thought it was a good bridge for the next piece I publish, which is on media production as a means of world-shaping. Please enjoy (or don’t, I suppose).
(More) Midnight Musings on Fear
In lieu of a transcription for this week’s Blueprints (the ramblings from Monday were a bit too unmoored for my tastes), I have for you a short essay. It’s the middle of the night in Sierra Leone, the power is out, and I am too sleepy to sleep, if that makes sense.
When I first began public speaking, I did not have time to consider that I might be afraid. I was a child (fourteen years old) and I had a very clear and obvious gift (poetry, then manifested as spoken word), and I was in a religious/spiritual setting where if God bestowed a particular gift upon you, especially one that manifested in speech, you did as you were told. So I spoke. There really was not the… space to consider whatever fears I might have about being on stage (especially in front of that many people) very often. Even as I continued to larger stages, to bits of increased autonomy as to whether I would share or not… the idea of fear was always, essentially, negligible. I felt compelled. Obliged, even. I had bargained with the almighty, entered into a convent to save my own life (long story, but I’ll shorten it into a refrain: I have to tell God thank you with every day of my life). I don’t think I had enough wherewithal to fully consent to how big the skin I wore became. Hundreds— thousands— of people that saw me every weekend knew intimate details about me, my spiritual life, my mental state, because I stood barefoot on a stage and proclaimed them. I never really thought about fear.
In the Blueprints video circulated on Monday, Jan. 20th, 2025, I said exactly one sentence about how fearful I am of my own success. It was supposed to be the thesis of the video, yet I never retuned to the concept. Success means that everything I conceive of is (1) possible (2) actively on its way to me. And then what? What will I do without my current comforts? What will I do without my perceptions of self that keep me safe? How can I just… continue to become bigger and bigger? What more will I have to give up?
Spiritual, temporal, cerebral, and fiscal maturity indicates now that there is a choice. I do not have to become bigger; I can just sit here and respirate (though, that comes with its own costs as well). True nature of creation– the true genesis of a brand new thing and not just a mere extension of self– means that what has been created develops the ability to deviate from whatever the creator might like. And so God (et. al) extends the freedoms of denial towards me. I know that the highest calling of my life is to continue to walk in this very particular path of light chosen for me—that Ichose for myself. I know that I now have the power and insight to say no. The choice to remain in situations that are comfortable makes the decision to move forward harder, because now I have to decide. In the video on Monday, I likened it to growing up in poverty vs. having expendable income: there is no willpower or discipline of the psyche when there is seventeen cents in your bank account. You simply can’t afford it. Once you have the money for instant gratification and immediate comforts, you have the desire to enact those things at long-term cost to yourself. In short: you now have to say no, whereas before you didn’t have to say anything at all.
I like being comfortable! And there is a persistent comfort in pretending like this life has happened mostly by accident. This sounds silly writing it down, but it’s… settling to imagine myself as someone who just happened to fail upward. I suppose I do mean settling as in a downgrade, but when I wrote this word, I imagined the calming settling, like in the way sand settles on the shallow ocean floor. I cannot stress how wayward and ungrounded my life was at the point in time I began making videos on TikTok. The idea that I just ended up here in this position, somehow, brings me the comfort of feeling like forward momentum is not on me but instead some higher power with a sense of humor (and therefore has nothing to do with my discipline, my self-control, my keeping my own word). If this life was just an accident, maybe the next life will too just… fall into my lap, somehow.
I think the life that I want now requires too much sacrifice for that to be a decision that’s made over my head. My folks love me too much for that; I have to actively consent. Plus, if I am signed up for the consequences of a life of sovereignty and responsibility, as a volun-told situation rather than knowingly giving then up, I’ll be resentful of the life that I prayed for, no? It can’t be an accident. I have to choose now. And so: the fear lies in my success, not in my failure.
I have said previously that my blowing up on TikTok was “by accident.” While it’s true I didn’t necessary set out for instant virality, I did say that year (that January) that I wanted to be good at TikTok. And I am a trained and honed public speaker. Circumstance and opportunity folded over someone who was trained enough to steer the moment. That’s not accidental; it’s an accumulation of the work I put in years before. This life I am living in 2025 does fit the bill of the life I wanted to be living in spring of 2022, an era that saw the most disregulated substance use and suicide ideation of my adult life thus far. I wanted the life I am living in now; I was not convinced it was possible. I once again bargained with God (et. al) for a change in my timeline; here I am, alive. Living in Sierra Leone.
We have, essentially, come yet again to the boundaries of my imagination. The life on the outskirts of my mental plane is calling to me. I know that I will succumb to my desires; I always do. I can’t stand regretting myself. I can’t stand letting my own self pass me by. I am just.. frightened. That’s a very new feeling! I now have enough wherewithal and maturity and agency over my own life to keep myself in a purgatory of sorts, where I am on a metaphysical, metaphorical treadmill; instead of working to move my life forward, I am working to keep everything in the same place without everything disintegrating. It requires that I use up every drop of patience everyone else has in me. It requires me to use up every bit of patience I have in myself as well.
The growing pains, the discomforts, the tears I am shedding at my necessary isolation all work in service for the life I now want openly. I want to be as widely effective as possible. I want the same thing I’ve wanted since I took writing seriously as a discipline, and not just as a hunk of raw, uncut talent: to have the words that pass through me change our material world for the betterment of all of us, the stewards of the Earth and our constituents. I want my words to change what we see and hear and touch for the better. I said this aloud. I prayed this. I never doubted that it was possible, or even probable; I guess I just always considered that it would be like it was when I was a teenager: the life would be handed to me and I wouldn’t have that much of a choice.
Why did I imagine I would be so infantile forever? I suppose I cannot be surprised. I loved childhood even as a child. I never walked around longing to grow up.
I write to let this be known, to cement it with my physical voice in front of an audience who I gave my word to: whatever is waiting for me on the other side of that discipline, I want it. I want to know that I can succeed after failing. I want to know that I can reorient myself to execute my goals even after I didn’t the first or second or umpteenth time. I want to know that my grit extends beyond instant gratification. I want that cool confidence of knowing that I can do it because I’ve done it before. Whatever ismatu lies on the other side of this mountain that hones my strength and endurance— I want to meet them. Her face shines upon me. I become my own North Star, my own new sun.
The top of this week was me reconciling the weight of failure and the costs of what it is I actually want. I am ending this week considering how badly I still want it. So the obstacles are, in fact, growing pains. In truth: there is nothing I cannot do.
So then the question becomes: what are you willing to do?
Hoping the work of your day passes through your hands with ease.
peace.
ig
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