Transition

Wow! The pace at which life moves is simply unbelievable.
15th September to 29th September -14 days. And I already skipped a startup.

Let's see how Mumbai would be like this time. Loads of work to do.

The plan

Given the current trajectory, I think I am going to be touted as a thought leader in Personal branding. Which I am not. And which I do not want to be. I want to be into digital marketing. I want to be known as a thought leader in digital marketing.

However, the service which we provide is digital marketing to startups & reputation management for the corporate. Then why am I writing about personal branding? Why am I doing this?

To be with Jappreet and getting to know how to run a startup. But that experience I would have also got with Arunabh. So why now? and why this?

I don't think there is anything wrong in this. The only problem is, i am doing too many things. I am running 3 different projects in which I a executing all the 3 at the same time. Either I do one thing, and do it right. or I do two things. I cannot run 3 things at the same time.

But shouldnt I have told Jappreet that the last time when we discussed this? I could have, but now that I have already said it, I cannot go back on my words.

In the end, relationship matters. But I am anyways losing friends! I am already not liking what I am doing. Is this the reason why I had left the job?

Or is this the room and me talking to everyone, and telling everyone what I am doing, is doing to me,

I think I should not talk about the project, and spend more time working than telling everyone what I am doing.

Question: Why are doubts arising?

Because I am taking opinions. Stop taking opinions. Work, Don't think.

From now on, if someone asks: I am working on doing digital marketing for startups.

I will go there on my 30th Birthday.
Till then, I should have:

1. atleast 20 lc in my bank balance
2. A reputation of having a digital marketing company of my own
3. Enough confidence that I can make it on my own in the big city

The only thing I am losing right now is the 2999/- Mumbai fight ticket.

I did not have any plans of doing anything there anyways. Lets go there with a plan and not on anyone's mercy. 

A long silence and then a bang

So its been almost 2 years since I posted here. Seems like a long time, and a lot has happened.

I went to IIM, completed 2 years, started a job, left it, and now again on a job search. Time has changed but  I am still the same. Seems like the vicious circle is yet to end.

Its been almost 5 years since this circle has been going on. Its spiraling upwards, and that's the good part. The sad part is, I am still at the same place as I was then.

Lost.

Is it a good thing? Being lost?

There are two ways to look at it, as is for everything.

One way is when you are lost,you make mistakes and then you learn the hard way. The bad part about is, you are not focused on one thing. You are always dependent on external factors for your state of life. Hence you keep going with the flow for what life throws at you. Like a leaf flowing with the wind, you are taken to places which you might not even want to be in the first place. There is a very simple way to justify this state of being - destiny.

The other way is to make up your mind,focus, and keep walking on a path you have chosen.

Till now,I have chosen the first path. The one defined by destiny.

I have been a believer of destiny for  a very long time. Destiny has taken me to a lot of places. It got me to Mumbai, got me to do a play in Prithvi Theatre, got me to IIM, and now got me to marketing.

I remember myself to be really sad in those days. Full of angst, working to avenge my hurt soul,to pull my spirit out of the dungeon it had fallen in. I remember my days sitting at the rooftop of my kolkata home at 3am I'm the night, high, trying to put the beads of my would-have-been story together and tell the world about the could & would haves. I gave up too easy, distracted by my job at hand.

Fate took me to Bangalore, and then Mumbai. Bangalore taught me patience, and pushed me like a spring, enough to give me the power to persevere my passion of movies. Fate made me meet different people - struggling actors, celebrities, strong headed youngsters making their own way through the crowd, corrupt bosses, amongst other things.

Mumbai gave me the freedom to do what I wanted to do, punishing me, consoling me, allowing me to make mistakes, giving me hope, holding hands, walking with me.

I even had a one and  a half year stint in a haunted project site.

The best times of my lives were spent in closed rooms rehearsing a play on how a bunch of kids protest against the system and are thrashed by their own selves in the end.

With all this, I even managed to clear the said toughest competitive exam in the country landing an absurdly high percentile - with a 10 day study program. I think the rigour by which I prepared for the exam in my Bangalore days with nothing to do helped me here as most of the stuff I did was brushing up.

We never did need any education.

I don't regret going to an IIM, not like my IIT days. I learnt a lot, and I learnt some really good things. But life was waiting for another lesson for me at the end of the stint - people management. You need to be good to people. At the end of the day, the higher you go, your capabilities become less significant. How you behave with people becomes more important.

So unlike in my IIT days where my later job wanted expertise in my course of work, here what I studied didn't really matter.

One thing which I sort of, subconsciously was learning was that in life, textbooks can only help us pass competitive examinations. The real exams in life never have a syllabus. They don't have a set pattern, and they do not wait for the bell to finish it. It is everlasting and you are always being evaluated.

And now I am thinking, what if.

What if when I was 23, i would have joined a movie production house, got paid peanuts but learn the trade. What if I would not have been rich, but I think I would be happy.

The one thing in my life I have learnt in my life is that there is only one thing that matters the most- happiness.

Degrees don't matter. Brands don't matter. Companies don't matter.
Only your state if mind, and your happiness matters.

I matter.