Obinna’s Content Creation Adventure 1: Inception
“Ideas don’t come out fully formed, they only become clearer as you work on them. You just have to get started.” ― Mark Zuckerberg
For a while now, I’ve been fairly certain about my desire to create content that would serve the following purposes: Communicate to the world the militant (and sometimes fascinating) thoughts always going to war in my head, edify and entertain the consumers of said content (you reading this!) and ultimately, give myself an area of life where I have a semblance of godlike control over and a sense of constant achievement as other areas remain ever so unpredictable. To be clear, I’ve been writing since I was a child. I once wrote a storybook in primary or secondary school that could not be published because no dough. I also wrote articles and short stories for my church’s notice board as a kid. In the university, I wrote a couple of fictional stories and non-fictional accounts of my observations of certain phenomena. Most recently, I wrote a guide for folks planning to apply to grad school in the US. Still, I desire(d) a more consistent form of content creation.
My friend, Hameed Obileye does something similar every Sunday and it’s always a pleasure to read what he has to share. We spent a couple of weeks toying with the idea of establishing a content-creating partnership with each other but our plans are currently buried in the graveyard. He was studying in Europe (or was it Asia?) and planning to move to yet another part of the world, and I was working in Nigeria while planning to relocate to the US. We were and are still at transitionary periods in our lives that made such an impulsive quest unattainable. However, I am fairly certain that in the future, we will cross paths again, in our personal and or professional lives. He’s a proper gee.
That partnership may not have worked out, but my intention to write, record videos (YouTube) and or record audios (Podcasts) had not disappeared. So I reached out to my phone contacts via my Whatsapp status to carry out a quick pre-launch study. I asked friends if they would be interested in consuming content I produce and there was overwhelming support. Particularly, folks wanted me to record videos so I began to figure out the logistics of launching a channel. I then faced some major challenges including the fact that my mobile phone then would probably struggle to record quality videos and I would have to purchase a camera, lighting, microphone, etc. However, this did not work out mainly because I was: 1. Broke and 2. in a transitionary period… (I had just resigned from my amazing internship at P&G and wanted a whole month free from responsibilities before travelling around the world and starting a journey that would be by all accounts, difficult). I used this month to visit friends, restaurants and bookstores in Ibadan and Lagos with P&G’s year-end bonus LMAO. It was refreshing to be lounging for 1 month!
As this went on, one of my big bros, Elijah Shokenu approached me with an idea for a YouTube channel for his growing startup, Studentbuild. Elijah has a knack for figuring out what people want and like and of course, I was hooked. We began to cook pre-launch plans but again, things fell by the wayside. It was partly because Elijah was trying to figure out some more pressing issues with the early-stage startup and I was settling into the routine of a grad student in Blacksburg. I am fairly positive this channel will be launched in the future and that its target audience - young Africans, will like what it will offer.
In the meantime, grad school began and deadlines started coming in left and right. All plans of a content creation career went on the back burner as I struggled to stay on top of my numerous engagements. Serendipitously, as these things often go, a couple of nights ago just before I slept off, I published ten tweets in a Twitter thread, detailing a bit about my journey from my lowly upbringings to my current station in life, the gratitude I feel for my minimal accomplishments and my hope to remain grateful and reflective as things get even better. I went to bed not expecting much engagement but woke up to hundreds of likes and tens of retweets. At the time of writing this, the tweet was at 3k likes and 850 retweets. My account suddenly acquired hundreds of new followers. In comparison, my only other tweets to cross 1k likes include the one I expressed my frustration about Buhari during the October 20, 2020 #EndSARS protests and another recalling one of Naval Ravikant’s quotes.
What impressed upon me most was the warm reception received in the quoted replies and comments. Tweeps used adjectives such as inspiring and interesting in describing the tweet and someone explained,
“Beautiful thread, it felt like I was reading a novel.”
It is always refreshing to hear nice things about your creations and I was reminded about the fact that people appreciate authenticity.
Consequently, on the first day of October 2021, I launch my content creation adventure with this reflective write-up under the title Loud Ruminations by Obinna Ugwu on substack. This impulsive move is more in line with my character anyways as opposed to spending weeks agonizing on how to set up my room to shoot videos. I hope you join me on this journey and enjoy the work of my hands dancing across my keyboard. My primary target audience includes young Nigerians, Nigerians that are young at heart :) and anyone else who enjoys my writing. Off the top of my head, I plan to write about our lives, Nigeria and Africa, UX, AR and technology in general, my grad school and diaspora experience, philosophy, psychology, and fiction in a fun, engaging and edifying way!
Have a great weekend and remember to subscribe to Loud Ruminations by Obinna Ugwu by clicking the button below!