Writing Well: Craft and Wellspring

Well, it’s tough

“Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.” This quote is attributed to both John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1647–1721) and André Breton (1896–1966); however, I do not intend to make any issue of the results of my internet search.

Writing well can be viewed as both a wellspring and a craft. At least, this became my reading of the quote, not as a sign of wisdom, but as a recognition that the willingness to express oneself and the choice of expression have won changes in areas that seem intractable.

Over the last few weeks, the teams in which I work have found themselves subject to management's pressing inclination to seek statistical successes with little consideration of the effort involved that does not show up in the figures. It has been nigh on impossible to communicate the difficulties in our battles to tackle the problems we have encountered.

Well, Bad Faith

At one point, in what was clearly a breach of trust and confidence, we were both threatened and bullied. It was a particularly low exercise of managerial control, oblivious of everything but meeting some arbitrary target. It rankled so much that I even found my voice fading in agitation, anger, and angst whilst challenging the various ungallant uses of office.

Much as I appreciate that people in authority might be caught up in the illusions of power and demands, they cannot defy the reality of the practical elements necessary for achieving what they want. It is against this backdrop that I entered the fray of another push for targets without a sense of effort.

My goal, expressed a few days before, was for management to reward those putting in the most to achieve the target, even if the seemingly impossible target could not be met and the goalposts shifted in the meagre rewards they were offering. A difficult exchange ensued that first challenged the premise, then conditioned the situation, before adjusting the focus.

Well, Write Well

Fetching from the writing well of wisdom, gauging the time to interject and pressing the case, I first exposed the numbers malady before setting the perspective. This was presented in an inadvertent comment from a manager; my response was a case of writing well for effect.

It put the purpose on the defensive and led to a reassessment of the goal, but I held back from responding further. The ordered use of words is a skill demanding the scalpel blade of teasing rather than the machete of chopping. What ensued included receiving a slight rebuke, but the bruises of battle are part of being in a fight, though it rarely feels like one when the other party needs to exert authority.

The initiative eventually came without my suggesting it directly. Whether the target is met or not, the best-performing member of the team will be adequately rewarded. This should have been done the week before, beyond empty platitudes. Is it any wonder morale is so low?

Well, Just Write

The writing well is a resource from which I have dug deep to fetch the fresh water of writing well in the art of persuasion. The wounds matter less given the many victories won through time. I don't even bother to celebrate the wins, except in appreciation of the gift of writing well.

I suppose this is why this blog exists. Of all the mediums of expression available to engage us, writing has the potential to exist long after interest has been lost in hearing and watching people perform.

Thought Picnic: Battling a dimension of legitimacy

Where it seems to be

There are things and situations that seek to rob you of your peace and invade the witching hours to inflict insomnia on the necessity for sleep. The back and forth of rumination that presents as worry that brings no solution but much bother to the fore.

You wrestle with much about life and desire, the dreams that seem too distant to the reality you seek, yet you cannot stop believing that the possible is not as far away as it seems.

Some think it is a mid-life crisis, sometimes it is much further on than mid-life, just before your golden jubilee, there are considerations that come to the fore, the insurgence of self-doubt as much as the ebbing away of self-confidence. Motivation becomes alien in the scheme of things.

What they expect of you

There is a battle raging in your being in the usually observed futile attempts to get your life back on track. It is a daily war against so many elements, it is by abundant grace that many are not overwhelmed even as exhaustion taxes on both strength and will.

As if that is not hard enough on the individual, there are external pressures in addition to the ones prevalent, familial, familiar, and further afield. Those who are secondarily affected by a somewhat whispering campaign about your situation, more perceived than real, the constant need to keep up with the Joneses than brings you in regular comparison with others whose trajectory has never been of concern until you met some roadblocks.

Who is doing the talking?

How is it that when adversity comes, the support you get is sparse but the questioning about your legitimacy borne of activity and achievement apart from progeny becomes topical? When this is broached directly or in code by those you expect an understanding from, you can be left not only discomfited but also discouraged, despondent, despairing, and disappointed.

It is in terms of that situation that I was advised not to submit myself to such discussions as there is just about enough pressure on yourself trying to find a solution to your situation before carrying on your shoulders the concerns of others simply trying to keep up appearances totally at your expense with little appreciation of your plight.

How I see the future

If not for the unstinting support of my partner and my best friend, there is no telling for how one could cope. Then it is not about coping, I don’t just want to get by even if each day seems a drudge of the unchanging same, I am strong on the will to not only survive but thrive too.

For at present, I have walked and wandered through the valley of the shadow of death, encountering evil in various forms, but in all of that, the Lord is with me and will bring me through it all to the refreshing still waters and luxuriant green pastures. A table is set before me in the presence of my enemies, my cup of blessing and joy overflows and I will yet testify of the goodness and mercy that follows me, all my days. [A paraphrase and adaptation of the Psalm 23]

Thought Picnic: We are not as connected as we think we are

The tears for fears

It was a strange feeling of regret and partly self-pity that one would not normally admit to when I went through a list of 15 job roles that I somehow felt I could not apply for. This, for all sorts of reasons as I felt the warmth of tears welling up around my eyes. It has been a long while since I have cried for myself and I do wonder if there is any relief in it.

The fact is and I would point it out in its own paragraph, people are a lot more vulnerable than they say or present, they are not as alright as they seem, they are not as happy and cheerful as they appear, and they need a lot more than just checking up on to ascertain how they are.

Out-of-date interventions

Yet, it is the assumptions that people make about others that I can be painfully aware of, that torches with flames of anguish or something like it. When I think of the other day and there are many to consider, the day some prayers were prayed that I thought could have been so useful, so many months before they seemed desperate and even out-of-date for the suffering that has been endured, it leaves a sense of abandonment and unease, that one should do the best not to attend to.

The other other (written for effect) day was another who called to determine how one was getting on and the core of his advice was I should not lose my confidence. Heck! I could have done with that kind of encouragement six or months ago, how do you light a fire in ashes already dampened in a storm? Still, from the ashes, the phoenix rises or something to that effect.

These totally out-of-date interventions may seem productive but that touch at the heart of another reality, that we are not as connected with our friends and family as we assume we are. There is an unquantifiable distance in what we think are thriving relationships for which familiarity has replaced discerning and discernment to elicit the full truth. Maybe I help myself better through what I write for my speech has the sophistication of concealment that is both trained and curtailed.

How I feel lost

There are days I am probably entirely myself, as many consciences are quickly salved with the rudimentary as one battles with an Esau complex, wherein has one served up birthright for a pot of soup? The judgement on him was tough even as he did prosper in a way. One is left wondering about the vicissitudes of life, maybe a time to reflect in Ecclesiastes. Even the comfort I seek therein seems to elude me.

I often get asked that question that probably a sense of pride promptly denies, it does loom about and I refuse to countenance it, I refuse to give it any rein, which does not mean it doesn’t yap at my heels, every now and again. I want to believe and at the same time one is losing grip, there is apparently so much love out there as I wrestle in my mind about things present, things existential, and things beyond, that sleep will not repair.

As one would expect, there is someone somewhere who would read this and genuflect to feigned apoplexy with the opinion, “It seems he is giving up and losing hope.” Thank you for your very genuine concern, after that, what has changed? 

The battle is always in our minds, in our heads, in our dreams, and sometimes interfered with by reality, but it is one we dare to fight to win, and, on this score, I will wipe away the tears and look up because it is not over until it is done.

How I battled HIV stigma

In our silence of old

I saw the stigma that came with contracting HIV and met many people some of whom were my friends deserted by family and fair-weather friends to die in isolated or lonely hospices, taking that last gasp until they could hold on no more.

For many, they already faced the prejudice and discrimination for their sexuality, just as laws were being enacted for equal opportunities that stated the letter and for which there was no spirit to adhere to them. I had friends who were kicked out of their homes, sacked from jobs, banished from close-knit societies, and excommunicated from religious communities, disinherited, and shunned as if they were dead to the living. It was tough.

Then in the homosexual community, there is another kind of ostracism, the divide between those who were living like there was no tomorrow and those for whom tomorrow gave no assurance that they would still be living. Visceral hatred and abandonment in our already traumatised community, it was rotten.

My tests and my counsel

I took many HIV tests for years but gave instructions that I did not want to know the results. My results probably went into a study and since the test was at the insistence of the health and social workers, it was like I had no skin in the game, my curiosity did not lean towards knowing as if I found a world of bliss out of my ignorance.

When I did eventually go all in to find out about my status, I already suspected I had contracted HIV, but could not tell for how long. I should have curated the people to tell and not many knew, besides my pastor and a few close friends. One unguarded slip to an acquaintance I once had to kick out of my home some years before, brought vituperation, nastiness, and abuse. I ignored him even if I pretended not to be affected by his onslaught.

Battles with ignorance and denial

I had to face the stigma in myself first before I could tackle it from the outside. I am entirely responsible for my condition regardless of the backstory that might have made me susceptible to the misuse and abuse of sex. Are you so loose? That was the question from the matriarch, 19 years after the fact.

Blog - Thought Picnic: We Never Knew What a Healthy Sexual Relationship Was Because ...

It was one thing to know what condition you had, but that is quite different from understanding how it might have a consequential impact on everything that pertains to you; you can conflate denial with false invincibility and by the time you know it, you are knocking in death’s door.

HIV coursed through my body for 7 years from when I got the test results until opportunistic infections came in what looked like a wave of infirmity starting with shingles, but I was quite so immunosuppressed, what looked like athlete’s foot towards the end of spring was Kaposi sarcoma, and AIDS-defining symptom that was also cancer.

Deflecting out of embarrassment

Cancer was easier to use as a cover for everything else. I knew, my doctors knew I had full-blown AIDS, anyone else was informed I had cancer and as the treatment for Kaposi sarcoma included chemotherapy, it was just as cancer and cancer should be, there was no need to talk about HIV or AIDS. I had to grow into becoming comfortable writing, discussing, or sharing about it.

I guess it got to a point where I understood that HIV could be treated as a chronic condition quite manageable with the right therapies. Those of us living with HIV coalesced and began to give our voice to be active and contributing members of our broader community banishing the old pictures of young men dying to memorials that we still revere. Those gone before are all part of the body of knowledge and truth that has given us better outcomes.

We began to address HIV stigma

The concept of ‘Clean’ became a byword for not being HIV+, liaisons would ask if you were clean and by extension suggesting you were dirty if you were HIV+. Yet, people who know they are HIV+ probably test more frequently, are under medical supervision, and when on ARVs would most likely have an undetectable viral load. The frequency of testing also means they detect sexually transmitted infections earlier before the situation becomes chronic and get effective treatments and cures.

Blog - Dealing with sexuality and HIV stigma

Whenever anyone asks whether I am clean, I say, “Clean is when you have had a shower.” It should not refer even remotely to sexual health.

When medical science determined having an undetectable HIV viral load meant there was minimal risk of transmitting the virus, we saw the advent of the U=U (Undetectable Equals Untransmittable)

Blog - Normalising HIV Challenge against stigma

What I could have lost

My journey from talking about cancer alone to talking openly about being HIV+ with an undetectable viral load was one of development and growing self-confidence along with the desire to live my own life boldly without fear, shame, or embarrassment.

The deeper story of how my cancer was as a result of full-blown AIDS belies the fact that I had foolishly not addressed the issue early enough, hoping that some miracle and sudden change of fortunes would take everything away. I was in presumptuous denial of an existential threat to my life.

Blog - When I had the murderous cancer of denial

A miracle cure would not have served me well, and though I would have had a testimony of the power of God, I would have been excused from the human experience of knowing adversity and coming through it with my own story of life and gratitude.

This is who I am

Not that I wish adversity on anyone as a form of teaching lessons in life, but when one is met by misfortune and the acceptance of the reality of things we can control and the other things completely outside our control, we can face what is ahead of us and if good fortune brings us out to the restoration of wellness, verve, and vigour, we might find new meaning to the story of life.

I am HIV Positive, it did lead to full-blown AIDS, I had competent medical intervention that rolled back the grip of death, sent my HIV viral load to undetectable, gave me healthy prospects in life and the opportunity to find a new purpose in the joy of living. I will not be ashamed of those facts and the stigma of a projection of those whose ignorance I can help no further by allowing them to define me.

I saw this on a dating profile, years ago, “In a perfect world, the positive would be open and the negative would be open-minded.”

The Stigma Project

Thought Picnic: In terms of the friend I have become

Unwittingly winning battles

Sometimes, we are unaware of the lessons in adversity that through what we have lived and experienced become the pointers for others in their times of trouble. When in my own situation out of ignoring the essential and the circumstances of disease progression, I came within 5 weeks of expiry according to the prognosis, I had no other choice but to face what was ahead of me.

There were battles I had to fight, mostly in the mind and usually unseen in the pain, the fears, the uncertain, the unintended, and the anxieties that could bring on debilitating worry, in those, I could not afford to be defeated, my circumstances were part of life, and people do live it, for it belongs in the spectrum of the human experience.

Acceptance leads tomorrow

The other issue was cancer, that I could neither battle nor fight, not with my already ineffective immune system nor with some pretense of mind over matter. I had to rely on the efficacy of the drugs and the treatment hoping that my body could carry me through the ordeal to a form of survival and recovery.

The greatest battle was in my mind, the transition of responding to pain alone whilst being in total denial of my condition to the point when I accepted that this was serious, I had cancer and so, what next? Once providence and I were in agreement that things were going to look and get better, we were on a long hard journey to recovery.

You are first in your situation

Inadvertently, the gruelling encounters with medical personnel and medical science have informed me of how to seek and obtain the best medical outcomes for whatever situation is under review. Whilst not getting doctors and consultants to second-guess themselves, it is important that they are convinced and convincing of what course of action to take.

If at any time I have had to encourage anyone, it is to be appreciated, respected, and treated with dignity. The superiority of a doctor’s knowledge, experience, and expertise should never be ahead of you as their subject and patient, it should be subject to your understanding with detailed explanation of what they want to do, the purpose for it and the outcomes expected.

Afterall, it is your body first, before it is their Guinea pig. That truth alone is sometimes enough to give a new sense of purpose and acuity to your situation. To my friends, I am a living miracle, a message of hope, a teller of better stories, and as one so endearingly said and I have heard in different modes of expression, I am their role model of resilience. I am just thankful for the life I have been given and the example it lends to others.

Thought Picnic: Participation begets the victories in life

Battlefield victories

Listening to the radio this morning, there was a discussion on humour and laughter that brought opinions and viewpoints from many perspectives of culture, gender, location and experiences.

In one of the exchanges, a comedienne of mixed heritage was chatting to her mother who had had a severe stroke with the likelihood of imminent death. Even under the strain of the ordeal, she could still communicate though quite laboured.

The comedienne asked her if she was afraid and her mother answered that she was not afraid and was never afraid in her life, then conveyed a lesson in life that resonated with me in the first hearing without the need to rewind the broadcast. “You don’t get to speak of victories if you have not been on the battlefield.”

Missing nothing

In that statement was a story and a life of experience that we have to be careful to learn attentively. What you have neither tried nor participated in cannot give you experience. Yet, I do realise that when people say to me, “You don’t know what you are missing.” Usually, to persuade me to do what I am not inclined to do, my retort is, “I can’t miss what I do not know or don’t want to know anything about.” What I am not persuaded of, I will not be persuaded about.

Then again, in life, there are things that require our participation because circumstances compel us, or the need arises to progress or to just to save or redeem ourselves. It would not work to be defeatist before we have been tried or tested. If we are a defeated, there are lessons for the next trial and if we are victorious, we have the opportunity beyond the lessons learnt to advance to the next challenge.

Temporary setbacks

In a conversation with my cousin that lasted nothing short of 3 hours altogether from learning of the demise of a close relation to the ennoblement of another, other topics composed of reminiscences going back over 4 decades, one other nugget of wisdom that has helped me in my toughest times was recalled. “An opportunity once lost can be regained after a temporary setback.” This was shared with us one evening by a tenant who I learnt had since passed away.

We were taught that in antiquity that an opportunity once lost can never be regained, as if everything and all was lost and we should sink into despair, be lost in the defeat from which we can never recover.

Making heroes

The truth is life is rarely like that, we have guts, we have nerve, we have chutzpah, we have verve, we have hope, we have spirit, we have than never-say-die drive that one defeat or even many failures are just hurdles. We review, reassess, realign, retry, redo, rejig, repeat, we determine that we would rather die trying than never to have tried at all.

In battlefields, many do die in the cause, in fact, many do die for their country and they are considered heroes. Then one general said to his troops, “It is noble to die for your country, but we are in this battle to make the enemy die for their country, in their becoming heroes we gain the victory even if we are not celebrated as heroes after winning.” Somewhere in this is another perspective to life’s challenges, the need to challenge traditions for different and better outcomes.

Cancer is a human experience, not a battle won or lost

In the great spirit of man

I did not know much about Chadwick Boseman or the body of work he had done. In fact, when Black Panther was a box office hit, I was still thinking of other representative films as Fences, Hidden Figures and Moonlight.

His passing at 43 after suffering stages of colon cancer diagnosed from 2016 during which he exhibited amazing acting prowess in seminal films is not only commendable but a show of stoicism and human spirit under great life-threatening affliction and infirmity. In the great spirit of man are such fortitude and immeasurable strength.

Cancer is not a battle

When I had Kaposi’s Sarcoma, a form of skin cancer as a result of HIV complications in 2009, I was 43, each time I read of people dying from cancer I find it difficult to appreciate the narrative of losing the battle to cancer.

As we live with it and sometimes live through it, it is rarely a battle, we are not at war, that some of us have survived it is one of great providence with many other factors of medicine, medical care, probably good fortune and even state of mind, but I did not cross swords with cancer and leave it vanquished.

We are given stories to tell

I will not pretend to speak for others who have survived cancer as I have, but what I know was at diagnosis, I was given 5 weeks to live, if my physiology did not respond to the treatment favourably. The consultant, however, was confident that if I did respond well, it would be fine. In just 5 weeks, I will mark the 11^th year of my first session of chemotherapy.

Cancer is a scourge on humanity, maybe even a terror and terrorist as it ravages our bodies and we are left at the mercies of many things outside our control except for our human spirit that remains a force of life until our bodies give in to find eternal rest.

For me, I have been given a story and the way I tell it is, cancer happens, it is part of life, some of us live it to the end and others come through it, but until we are gone, we are still here, to some a hope, to others a light, that it does not have to end with just that.

All experiences are gifts to medicine

Any death from cancer reveals our vulnerability even more, to such a young man, there are no easy answers but the fond memories and tributes we can offer in recognition of his life along with the support and sympathy we can offer his survivors.

In everyone’s experience is also some new knowledge for medicine to give us all new hopes for survival. That is what gave my consultant confidence at my prognosis and that is why I encourage inviting medical students to my consultations. I am a story of possibility not of triumphalism over cancer.

May the soul of Chadwick Boseman rest in peace.

Thought Picnic: Fighting Cancer

Seeking to care

Reading a Facebook status just now made me reflect on an aspect of my life that I have somewhat tried to leave behind but find is almost always in the centre of my existence.

She wrote, “All of us have a thousand wishes. To be thinner, have more money, a new phone. A cancer patient only has one wish, to kick cancer's ass. I know that 97% of you won't post this as your status, but my friends will be the 3% that do. In honor of someone who died, or is FIGHTING cancer, post this for at least one hour.”

I can well appreciate that many would chip in with sympathy and empathy with a comment in support of those fighting cancer, it is however hardly the whole story.

Recovery is a lot more than recovery

I find that my recovery period is long, hard and very present from the physical and physiological condition that requires quarterly check-ups through my blood tests and inspection of the scarred areas that bore the cancer lesions to challenges of life in making a living and remaining relevant in the workplace.

It was the reality of this that compelled me to go back to work within 6 weeks of chemotherapy and it was not an easy task at all but with all the bills and the risk of losing my home looming something had to be done because welfare support could only go so far and it had yet to kick in then.

What made me cope with the thrust and pressure of work after literally 11 months of illness and out of the job market was the accommodation that allowed me do a 32-hour week with Wednesdays off, but each day for the first few months was the force of the will and mind over the capabilities of the body – it was patently against medical advice but circumstances can so seriously dictate the decisions you make especially if you are single and dependent on the goodwill of friends who have stuck closer to you in times of adversity.

It dogs you for change

Recently, I had the opportunity to apply for an interesting job but that 11-month gap in my CV needed explaining and much as many are fascinated by the story of a cancer survivor they are not necessarily on the mercy mission to allow someone who had gone through such an ordeal to complicate their work schedules.

I also find that my CV is in need of a radical review where my once very strong technical skills now have to be relegated for soft skills of business analysis, project management, risk profiling and managing change in the enterprise all of which were core areas of expertise that allowed me do what I needed to do for the organisations I have worked for.

This is where a good 23 years of business savvy needs to come to the fore like no other time before and where I should probably seek some help in ensuring my closeness to this matter does not compromise the real message of my abilities.

Winning wars and fighting battles

However, the matter of fighting cancer is that of battles that are won each day against all sorts of prevailing circumstance with wars that endure for long with that hope that you are maintaining the upper-hand.

The pills have their hours, bills have their demands, the tills need to be ringing and the wills remain strong because this fight will never be over but we can find the might to make light of the fright that can readily blight the prospect of a bright future.

Until you have been there, these shoes are not the easiest to walk in on the rocky paths strewn with thorns and the swampy forests that harbour creatures that could so literally take your breath away.

Meanwhile, let’s kick arse, anyhow.

Thought Picnic: Stop goading my horses

The warriors for my soul

It is hard to battle with those who are warriors for one’s soul. Their concern becomes so intrusive that it begins to breed contempt and sometimes resentment.

The concept of minding their own business never occurs to them and your life becomes their cause, your decision not to acquiesce to their views or notion of what they think you should be becomes a source of friction.

Abuse is hurled at you as if you have no say in your own matters, you have become their property and they believe it is within their rights to domineer you until you succumb, they will not relent.

They cannot be engaged, talk less of be persuaded of need to back off, you are stalked and terrorised that only your obstinacy keeps you from succumbing.

Yield an inch and you are assimilated though the give was to get a breather from the suffocating pressure brought to bear on you by their views of what you should represent.

So you see, think you know?

Calmly, one had to respond to a message the other day that started with the view that my picture was not the best one to display, not that this person has access to my cache of pictures to make the right selection for me, well, I am happy with how I portray myself and I change that portrayal at my whim and at my will.

It went on to suggest and I quote, “I also think you could channel some of this your energy to …” obviously, that is an opinion unsolicited and rather uncalled for – it just grates.

Obviously, beyond the frailty observed in the picture there is some recognition that one has energy but it is expended in areas the observer does not feel is of the greatest benefit to both me and others.

I do have to take prescriptions for medicine and they are many but to take prescriptions for how my energies should be channelled no matter how good-intentioned is more like asking that I swallow a gob-stopper as a pill.

It is hard enough keeping my wild chariot of life in lane, stop goading my horses to go faster.

Thought Picnic: Acceptance, the end of all battles

Life as it is

The affairs of life and getting to live the life you have could exhibit conflict, confusion or uncertainty – dilemmas that vacillate between a secretive discretion and the possibility of living a lie.

The question then becomes who is being protected from the knowledge of who you really are, yourself for the fear of rejection or others for the fear of their possible irrational response to learning about what you have always been.

Time and again we hear that learning to love oneself is the greatest love of all but when the situation of loving ones neighbour as oneself was posed a certain condition of being very unsure left one wondering.

Life as it could have been

For instance, if the life one lives were a different life or as others might aver a normal life with the trappings of marriage, children and the attendant issues would one be devoid of the basic dilemmas of accepting oneself as one is?

In the end, normal is really where you are rather than where you want to be for the sake of pleasing others or getting others off your back, however, if that normality is challenged by philosophies and teachings that lead to deep internal conflict a battle of self-acceptance looms.

The love of life

Battles of guilt, of condemnation and probable damnation might be the order of ones existence or one is left with that basic and fundamental aim of just learning to love oneself.

The truth is one is just what one is and that is why the so-called norms of the so-called majority do not apply, if choices could be made maybe a very different life and dilemmas would have prevailed, but that is not the case.

Against all the memes and seared doctrines that have plagued the quest for knowledge of who one is there is a love beyond expression and the concern of others that prevails.

Even one that deals with the deeper conflicts of accepting ones own sexuality for which acceptance rather than conversion is the end of all battles.