Why I Quit My 9-5
I was 10 years old when I wrote my first "book". It was 10 pages long, with illustrations (coloured, no less) on each left page. Illustrations that would probably have repelled my art teacher. I wrote it with my best handwriting with a pencil and bound it with staples. The shame is I do not remember what the story was about. I also tossed it out at some point in embarrassment and now I wish I hadn't. Because I want to go back and understand what motivated the 10-year-old me to do that. I only remember that at that time, it was well-received by me and the one other friend I lent it to. Yes, there was only one copy.
All my life, I have always been with a pen and notebook. Trips to the zoo, holidays to my village in India and even days at the amusement parks. "What the hell were you doing writing at an amusement park?!” you ask? I was never an active child. I was always writing something. And if I wasn't writing something, I was reading something. I just used to observe everything around me, soaking it all up like a sponge - which caused some to term me as a precocious child. Writing was my form of navigating the world around me, making sense of thoughts that I felt couldn't be understood by peers of my age, and in some aspects, my escapism. Diaries, essays, I used to just fill papers with words. I don't know who my audience was. I don't think I knew back then either, or to be honest, that I even cared. It was just so satisfying to put my thoughts on paper and read it again. Even when I got to school, I always picked the creative writing option for my English and Tamil assignments and exams. Never the debate or argumentative essays even though ironically, I was in the debate team. "This is not going to get you the higher tier of grades, Thendral!!!" my teachers would exclaim in frustration when I wrote a creative essay for the 19th time. "Creative essays are not going to show that you are well-read and informed of the worldly happenings!" they would repeat in exasperation for the 19th time waving my essay at my face. "But isn't it a language exam? Don't I just have to demonstrate my knowledge of the language?" I would think to myself, sulking on the inside and putting my best-wounded expression on the outside.
When I was 16, a replacement English teacher came in to teach us for a brief period of time. He was retired and did small stints like this so that he wasn't cooped up at home all the time. He was fairly old, and somehow, unsurprisingly, fairly old fashioned. He gave us a writing assignment one day, and surprise, surprise, I picked the creative writing option. I considered it one of my best work even though I fully expected to be scolded in class the next day. I've always been an average performer in school, just doing enough to scrape by. And to my surprise, the next day, he shared my essay in class, about how good it was and going on to say that mine was the highest grade he had given in the class. Me! The kid who just hides in the background! My work was the best! I was stupefied. I ran into him later that day and he mentioned again how well done my essay was. I was still surprised so I told him how most teachers would be disappointed (and by disappointed I mean irritated and annoyed) about writing the creative option. "No, no, my girl" he smiled, with an odd twinkle in his eyes. "You have a gift." He went on to say some other stuff but at this point, I had tuned out because, for the first time in my life, someone appreciated my creative writing. Both my parents do not have a good command of the English language but they were extremely supportive and brought me to the library all the time. I think for most kids school holidays were exciting because it meant fun activities and roller coaster rides. But school holidays were exciting for me because the library increases the loan allowance from 4 books to 8. And I used to devour the books, guys. Sometimes, I would even borrow more than 8 and use one of my parents' library cards. Which they were more than happy to let me. My dad also made me write out all the new words I came across in a book but that's about it. To this day, my parents have no idea what I'm writing on this website simply because they don't understand. The language, not the nature of my activities, even though sometimes it feels like the latter. But I digress. So for the first time in my life, some figure of authority was telling me that I had a gift! In writing! My work was getting validated. Do you know what that feels like? Screw cloud nine, I was on cloud nineteen! I decided then and there that I was going to write a book.
Then I got older, and let the noise of society distract me. I lost myself and stopped doing the one thing that always fulfilled me. I'm a big believer in signs and messages from the beyond and I felt like all the forces were telling me to leave when my contract was about to end in September last year. And after countless sleepless nights, tossing and turning, and the simple inability to stop thinking about it, I decided it was time I go back to writing. It felt right, and again, with the noise of the society about having a well-paid job and what my parents would think, I almost didn't see the decision through. But what pushed me was that the vision I had for myself didn't match that of the nature of the job I was doing before. Sure, I was writing, but not the type of writing the 10-year-old me and 16-year-old me thought I was going to do. When I was just 8, I had an existential crisis and I couldn't take it anymore one day and I cried in my mum's lap, lamenting about what the point of living was if we were just going to die one day. And as I got older and closer to the 5-year mark in my career, I realised, if you weren’t feeling fulfilled or experiencing personal growth, there is no point in living. And so I jumped. The more I'm doing this, the more I'm starting to realise there's no way I can go back. The more I'm doing this, the more I'm starting to realise there is no such thing as a perfect plan in life, you just need to experience progress. And the more I'm doing this, the more I'm starting to experience and appreciate the beauty and the thrill of the unknown.
So, what's your passion?
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