This Has Always Been Me...

_Pixabay

---

Of course, I have that one thing that just seems to have come with me from the womb. We all have it, just that some notice theirs right from time and others discover it late in life. For some people, unless they get to meet the right people or go through the right situations, they will never find that particular skill set that is buried deep within them.

What am I saying? Let us take Hive for instance, there are some people that it is only when they came onboard this platform that they realized they could write, and write well. Without this, I am sure that many would never have found out. Or maybe they would have found it later in life, and by then they may have lost many opportunities.

But then, there are those that right from the time they knew how to write and they knew they had a future in writing. Either way, on whatever side you fall, you are a writer and that is what matters.

I have always talked about how I started writing when I was in secondary school and when I wrote my first novel. But that was not the first thing that I had a knack for without learning. Writing was the second thing for me.

The first thing I found out I could do on my own without tutoring of any kind was fixing electronics and electrical appliances. I was barely a teenager when I realized that I loved working on electronics, I used to open up transistor radios, toy cars, and others, and then I would have no idea how to couple them back. Always getting me in trouble.

The first work I did on electricity, I fixed a socket that had stopped working. I didn’t really know how it worked then, but I opened the socket with a screwdriver and then saw where the wire was disconnected, and I just figured out that if I returned the wire into its slot and screwed it tight it would be fine. And I did just that. My joy knew no bounds when it worked.

That was how I started working on more appliances in the house, fixing basic wiring issues. I was the one that was always fixing our extension sockets whenever they got burnt or spoilt, I changed the lamp holder and even fixed a brand new ceiling fan. By the time I was in JSS 2, I was already certain that I was going to be an Electrical Engineer.

With the way I look at it, if I had discovered my writing gift before my skill in electrical appliances I would have gone to the Arts department in secondary school instead of science. But I did not, I found out I could write when I was in senior secondary school, about two terms into SS1. And it never crossed my mind to change departments.

_{ThisiIsEngineering}

I was always fixing things in my house, even looking in places there was clearly nothing to fix. One time I wanted to have two sockets in my room where there was only one, so I decided to run a cable out of the existing socket so that the new one will be closer to my bed.

It all went well until I was taping off the naked cables, then I made the mistake of taping it all together. Now, you know that both the positive and negative should never touch unless there would be a short-circuit. So when you are taping them, you will do that separately to protect your work.

I didn’t do it separately. I just joined them together and taped them, the work was done. An engineer in the making.

Well, until power was restored and we didn’t have light. Everyone else in our compound had power except us. They called me to find out why, but I honestly had no idea. My mind did not go to the work I did at all. I searched and searched, trying to rack my brain. Eventually, my Mom gave up and called an electrician.

_Pixabay

At first, he didn’t have much success, just like me. He went all over the house, looking for the source. He could see that power was entering the house, but it was just not showing. He was baffled. Then he asked if we had done any electrical work recently. That was when I confessed.

He asked me to show him my work, and in five seconds he saw my error and pointed it out to me. That taping off I had done was wrong and it had caused a bridge that had tripped off the circuit breaker, yeah that was the first time I learned about circuit breakers. So after taping it off properly, he went to change the fuse in the circuit breaker and we had power once again.

He cautioned me to be careful when doing anything that concerned electricity, faulty wiring can be just as dangerous as having a leaky gas cylinder. Apart from ruining your appliances, they can also burn your house to the ground.

I agreed, I had learned my lesson. Since then, any time a fault developed and it was beyond my scope and they had to call an electrician I would hang around them, assisting them and asking questions so I would know how they solved that particular problem. And due to that, they never came to fix the same problem twice, because the next time it happened I would be the one to work it.

_{Andrea Piacquadio}

And as the years passed, I got better. I graduated from secondary school and got into the higher institution to study my dream course, but the Nigerian educational system just squashed that dream for me. From the frustration of learning to the absolute lack of substantial practicals down to the always accumulating bills, I quickly woke up from that dream.

I still wanted to be an engineer badly, but if I was going to do that I needed to see myself through school first. And that was how I fell back on my writing, something I had thought was only a hobby and it became a lifesaver for me.

I’m still studying electrical engineering, I have a close friend that I go to work on sites with whenever he gets gigs, I assist him and at the same time, I learn more. Although I have not been able to do it recently due to time constraints, I will return the moment that I can.

In the end, I will have that title of Engr before by name. It is only a matter of time. I already have the basic knowledge, I am already studying it and soon I will be living it.

After all, who said I can’t be an accomplished writer and a certified engineer at the same time?

_Thirdman

Thank you for reading. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below, I would love to know what you think. Till we meet in the next post.

---

_{This post is inspired by the first topic of the week which is The First Time. Feel free to take part.}

---

_{Borderimage image: @deimage.}