That quote on Makhandia's current WhatsApp profile pic has got me thinking about my blogging journey. To be honest, I sometimes wonder when the audience of this lovely blog of mine will ever grow to one million visitors every month. I also wonder when the blog will ever get featured on Wikipedia and become recognised by Google search engine.
In my focus on making this blog an international success, I have forgotten how far I have come from. It has been quite a journey to becoming the talented writer that some folks say I am. Okay, let me tell you more about the journey.
While I was growing up, I didn't have anyone drumming into my head the importance of intellectual honesty in writing. I therefore shamelessly plagiarised some of the compositions I wrote in school. Like in 2003 when I was in high school at Starehe Boys' Centre, I extracted a passage from an English textbook, edited it a bit and then submitted it for an essay-writing competition that had been advertised on a school notice-board. I didn't emerge as a winner in the competition despite my clever plagiarism.
Then in 2006 when I was applying to four top American colleges, I came across a recommendation letter in a certain book I found in the Starehe Boys' library. I liked that recommendation letter so much that I extracted it, modified it a little to suit my situation and then took it to one of my high school teachers to sign it as his own work. The teacher obliged to sign the recommendation letter and after he did so, I mailed the letter to the colleges. A foolish plagiarist I was.
With such a background in plagiarism, it's no wonder that when I took up blogging as a hobby in 2013, I continued engaging in plagiarism in the stories I posted on my blog. I plagiarized from such various sources as magazine articles and speeches uttered by great leaders like Richard C. Levin, the intellectually gifted former president of Yale University.
Interestingly, I used to receive compliments of what a great writer I was from the people who visited my blog. One Saturday afternoon in 2014, for instance, some members of Users & Survivors of Psychiatry (USP) told me that I had a gift of the gab when I turned up for a USP meeting held in downtown Nairobi. I just thank God they didn't know I was a master plagiarist.
Sometime in 2015 while roaming on the internet, I bumped into a website whose author poked fun at some bloggers whose blogs were "held together by plagiarism". I was worse than those bloggers whose blogs were held together by plagiarism because my blog stories were not only full of plagiarism but also exaggeration and lies. If I wasn't plagiarizing, I was exaggerating; if I wasn't exaggerating, I was lying.
In 2016 after I rebranded this blog to what it looks like now, I resolved to turn over a new leaf by putting to a stop my bad habit of plagiarizing, exaggerating and lying. I have adhered to that resolution to the letter. And I can now proudly report that for the past six years, all the stories I have been posting on this blog are truthful and original works of my own hand.
I must say that nothing fulfills me more these days than getting complimented for the stories I post on this blog. One evening last year, for instance, I was elated on receiving the following feedback from a lady in Portugal called Haytham Reid:
Thuita, I've visited your blog. You write wonderfully well and are very articulate. I only wish I had a fraction of your eloquence! I've read some of your texts and they are so fascinating! My feedback is nothing but positive. All the best for you.Such kind of feedback fulfills me since I get complimented for writings that are a product of my own sweat. It's like what former U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama quipped: that "success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own."
Truly, I have come from far, even though I have a long way to go to becoming a successful blogger. I have come from plagiarizing, exaggerating and lying to penning stories that are both truthful and original. Now, that's something, isn't it?
My beloved reader, I challenge you to also reflect on your career journey. Like me, you might be pleasantly surprised to discover how far you've come from; maybe from doing dull, low-paying gigs to landing a well-paying job that has afforded you a decent car. And whatever progress you have made, I beseech you to celebrate it. That's all I am saying.
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RECOMMENDATION: If you've enjoyed this story on celebrating progress, you might also enjoy another one I wrote about three years ago on "My Storytelling Journey".
