A Storyteller’s Palette - The beginning

how a mid-life crisis in my twenties has prompted me to create this newsletter.

"every master was once a beginner. every pro was once an amateur." - Robin Sharma

Image by Kormbat

It’s April 2023 and I am experiencing a midlife crisis in my twenties. Often when people go through this, they may be licking the wounds of bad decisions, wrestling with the scraps of a failed marriage or trying to find their way out of a financial crisis. For me, the reverse is the case. I am walking in a life filled with many opportunities folded into baskets in every corner of my mind. Instead of picking them up, hanging them or wearing them, I am considering throwing them into the washer to scrub off every trace of faith from them. I feel frozen, unsure of the next step, scared of continuing on a path not true to me. Every decision right now feels like a trade-off because I no longer want to do many things at once. I no longer want to live a life that doesn’t feel like home.

After asking myself what the common thread is in everything I have ever played with and dumped or currently doing, I realized storytelling is at the core of it all. It is that one dream that tends to slip out of my fingers despite always finding its way back into my palms. It is that identity that has been here since I was a 12-year-old writing a fiction series titled “High School Circles” in 100 sheets of higher education notebooks for a class of 200 students who scrambled to read it every day. It followed me to age 14 when I wrote in my secondary graduation yearbook that I want to be a bestselling novelist.

Storytelling wrapped itself tightly around my pen while I studied History and International Relations while writing a full-length novel for a 2-credit elective course offered by my school's English department. A course not necessary for graduation. The course leader, Mr Ogunbayo said to me one morning, a year after, while the memory of the 200-page novel I wrote in 8 weeks was still strong in his mind, “irrespective of whatever career you choose, ensure you never stop writing”. A few months later, an English student, Omolola who asked that I guest post on her blog said to me with a wide smile while I stood transfixed in shock at her words, “he wouldn’t stop talking about you and using your novel as an example in our class.” 

This love for stories followed me to my one-year NYSC experience. While working in the digital department at The Nation Newspaper, I started a blog and created stories that made me enjoy the traffic journeys back home. The long commute from Oshodi to Ikorodu felt like a stroll to the next-door neighbour’s home. And despite standing in the bus on some days due to arriving at the bus stop late, the hours that I wrote on my phone with my fingers on one hand, while the other hand gripped the BRT’s standing poles felt like 5 minutes due of how deeply engulfed I was in the inferno of telling stories. This blog eventually garnered a dedicated reading community through marketing on BBM, but I soon stopped it to write heartbreak poems on social media in the rupi kaur era of Instagram poetry. Blame it on the breakfast I was served. If you know you know.

This storytelling dream followed me to the Street Project Foundation creative boot camp where in the final talent showcase I gave a 30-minute live storytelling narrative of my life. After several days of not knowing what to present, one hour to the deadline for submissions, I picked up my phone and recorded a voicenote exploring my childhood and sent it. That voicenote eventually got printed on 7 pages of A4 sheets and I performed it without editing it as the headliner at the showcase. I remember the founder of the foundation, Mrs Rita said to me “you are a born storyteller” and that title never left my heart. 

More recently, this love for stories led me to build a platform for storytellers, The African Writers and then build another brand sharing success stories, AFM Stories, both of which have touched thousands of lives. Storytelling served as the propeller that enabled me to win a fully-funded scholarship that supported me study in my dream country without breaking the bank. But now, here I am. Despite all of the impact I have had in the lives of people and the experiences I have had, I feel unfulfilled, and incomplete. It feels like something is missing because the first love that brought me here is out of reach. I haven’t written stories in a while. I haven’t created microfilms. Writing feels rusty. Writing this felt like learning to walk again after an accident.

Faith Moyosore Agboola performing at Kokopelli, Night of Storytelling 2022.

Thankfully, spoken word poetry, that one art form that has remained all through the years, has been like a torch, shining the light on the dark corner in my heart that the storyteller in me has hidden, begging to come back to the light. Even though she is still a teenager in puberty trying to figure out her true identity in terms of her medium and skill level, she wants to come out. 

As such, this substack is me giving her a palette to grow, to evolve and to bloom into who she truly is. This would be my storytelling playground. I would write stories on my journey to chasing my dreams of being a storyteller and the lessons I am learning in life, stories of others, and reviews of stories I love (books, film, music & culture).

I hope you subscribe to this palette as we embark on a journey of a lifetime. I pray the vulnerability makes you also dare to chase your dreams, whatever they are as my journey encourages you. I also hope I come back to read this when those dreams come true and I can look at the storyteller in me, hug her, and thank her for never giving up on us. 

How about you? What is that commom thread in your life’s journey? What is that one thing that keeps reoccurring? That one dream that is stuck to your shadow, lurking and waiting for you to shine the light on it. Spend some time journalling about it today and you would realize that it is tied to your purpose. I know for a fact that mine is storytelling. What’s yours? See you in the next story!

With Love,

Faith Moyòsóre Agboolá,

The Purposeful Storyteller.