60 Travails of a Nairobi Blogger

1. Wondering what the hell you should do with that degree you studied but never really pursued.
   
2. The best of stories come to you when you are in the shower, but disappear the moment you step out.
   

3. Googling shit in a hurry when major global news break so that you can also sound like an expert on geopolitics.
   #BREXIT  #GOPConvention

   

4. Moving from Blogger to WordPress to a domain, only to find out that you need to be a computer wizard to understand how to run a self hosted website.
   

5. Receiving news that your website has crashed. AGAIN.
   “Error 404. Website cannot be reached. Check DNS.”
   

6. People assume you have a lot of free time to run their errands, because you do not have a “real” job after all. 
7. Deciding whether or not calls that come in at 7am are worth answering.
   Your working hours are between 9.30am and 3.30am.
   

8. Enduring people who keep on asking you not to write about them, and yet they are as interesting as an Athlete’s Foot.
   

9. Trying to explain to your friends and family that they will always be material for your work, however much they curse up a storm about it.
   

10. Your friend is telling you a horrible experience and in your head you are like, “Damn! That makes for a very good blogpost. I wonder how many hits it will get. Do you think she will let me write about it? Doesn’t matter. I will just change her name from Rose to Kimberly.”
    

11. Running out of things to write about, because terrible things have stopped happening to people you know.
    

12. Family and Friends asking you to do free and outrageous jobs.
    “Si you are a writer? Si you write for me my Dissertation. Words are your thing, right?”
    
13. When you have been waiting for a cheque for so long and then you receive an email from client. You light up with joy, only for him to say that you invoiced badly. 
    “Oh really? And you just found out after three months?”
    

14. Holding yourself back from explaining to your friends that your life is not as glamorous as it may appear on social media.
    

15. Being introduced as a Journalist by your mother because she is either;
    a) ashamed of saying you went through 6 years if Medical School only to end up as a blogger, or
    b) she has no clue what bloggers do other than insult the government.
    

16. People think you are an enemy of the state when you are just a foodie or fashionista.
    “Where are you? Umeona Alai ameshikwa tena?”
    

17. Client calling you in for a face to face a meeting that should have been an email, or better yet, a phone call.
18. Being paid with lunch or breakfast or free tickets to events.
    

19. Dealing with clients that ask, “Why do I have to pay you that much for something that will take you 10 minutes to write?”
    

20. Being broke when you have money. Your bank balance says, KES. 1000 bob and yet you are waiting for overdue cheques worth four months rent.
    

21. Local newspapers and magazines asking you to write for them in exchange for ‘exposure’.
    “Excuse me, are you Mail & Guardian or The NewYorker? If not, expose me to money.”
    
22. Plagiarism. All of a sudden, some website with a horrible name and faceless accounts is running your stories without credit/permission, and putting Google ads all over it.
    
23. Finding out that someone else was paid more and yet you did the same amount of work. 
    

24. Accepting shit pay for work because you know if you refuse, then some other blogger will accept it. Also, you kinda need to the money.
    

25. Added to ALL WhatsApp Groups for creatives who do not sleep, so you wake up to 3000 messages.
    

26. Trying to understand what the hell was happening at BAKE, with all those anonymous messages about money being stolen.
    “Umesikia nanii anajenga apartments Kileleshwa?”
    

27. Not being nominated for BAKE or SoMA after rallying your entire clan to nominate you.
    

28. Losing at BAKE Awards three times in a row.
    

29. Losing BAKE Awards three times in a row to the same blogger.
    

30. Being nominated again for BAKE Awards after losing three times in a row to the same blogger.
    

31. Attending a corporate event at night for the free food.
    

32. Having no money to cab back home from a corporate event that ended at midnight, and the javs to your hood have stopped operating.
    

33. Losing your phone on the way to an event you are meant to be live tweeting.
    

34. Your phone running out of charge in the middle of live tweeting an event and nobody wants to share their power bank.
    

35. Trying to figure out which god ‘so-and-so’ is praying to that they keep getting all the gigs in town.
    

36. Making burnt sacrifices every daybreak to appease the gods, so that a corporate you have been eyeing accepts your proposal.
    

37. Constantly checking your WordPress stats to see how many more people have read your latest post since you checked 3 minutes ago.
    

38. Checking WordPress analytics and wondering how the heavens a person from Trinidad and Tobago found your blog.
    

39. Typing an article furiously twenty minutes to your deadline.
    

40. Being constantly interrupted by your accountant girlfriend when writing a story just as the mojo struck.
    

41. Fending off comments by readers who get annoyed at Sponsored Posts.
    

42. Fending off comments by readers who decide to lynch your guest writers just because their styles are different.
    

43. Waiting for that horde of Tweeps and commenters who you know are going to come at you, the moment you post a controversial post.
    
    
44. Watching people react to your articles after reading the title only.
    

45. Listening to people asking Owaahh  where he finds sources for his stories, and deep down you know exactly what is going through his mind. 
    #IMPERIALBANK

    

46. Frustrating messages from readers who keep asking, “When are you posting the next story?” Meanwhile, you are nursing a writers block.
    
47. Avoiding questions like, “Enhe, so what happened after that? Is there a Part 2?”
    

48. Dealing with people who keep asking you to write a book, and yet they are always the first ones to share their emails on Facebook threads, so that someone can send them free PDF copies of Chimamanda’s books.
    

49. When that simpleton decides to pick a fight with you online, not knowing the kind of weapons you have in your arsenal.
    “DRACARYS!”
    

50. When you start a war on Twitter with another country, but then KOT have not yet found out, and so you are alone, holding the line as you await for the squad/reinforcement  to arrive.
    “I am not much of a social media comic. Apologies for what you are about to see.”
    #SomeoneTellUganda #SomeoneTellCNN #SomeoneTellNigeria

    

51. Secretly resenting that blogger you love so much who has refused to follow you back on Twitter.
    

52. Trying to understand why neither CocaCola and Weetabix has ever sent you a box of cereal/can of soda with your name like they did for Ian Arunga.
    “I am not even hurt”
    
53. Hiding your feelings from your internet crush because the moment she gets married, the internet will lose its wits and you will become a trend.
    #PoleKwaMwirigi
    

54. Wondering what tragedy befell the writers behind Ink Drops, SoulFood, and Media Madness…that they stopped posting.
    
55. Listening to old bloggers go on and on during meetings about how Twitter used to be like back in the day, as if they are the ones who invented it.
    “Here we go again with Twitter A this, Twitter A that…..A for ANNOYING”
    

    
    

56. Blackout from Kenya Power. To be fair this annoys the whole world.
    

57. Missing out on a trending topic because these days Zuku internet is as reliable as a government report.
    

58. Trying to understand what Safaricom ever did to Cyprian Nyakundi.
    

59. Watching cellphone brands give other bloggers new, snazzy gizmos every month, yet you are still stuck with your Kaduda 2.0.
    

60. Finding the right words to pray for people who bitch about 8-to-5 employment; talmbout how they want to quit to join the freelancing world because apparently, it is less hectic.
    *THE END*

Cartoon illustrations by Bwana Mdogo