I don’t know why I work. As I type this, I’m sitting at my workstation, not too enthusiastic, not too kicked, glancing at my watch every now and then, waiting for Monday to be over so that Friday gets closer. Work is a bitch. Unless you love what you do. Which is a privilege that only a few lucky ones have.
It’s not like I can’t write for a living. Yet I choose to do it in the garb of a corporate veil and try extracting some semblance of work satisfaction from it. Ideally I would want to do features and write about why Blue is the new hue. Or scribble about some place dug from the past or a leader less remembered. I would want to write a book. Only that I don’t know what about. Once in a while an idea does present itself to me in form of a dream or an ephemeral thought. But then I am stuck and I don’t know how to churn words by the hundreds.
Also, it’s all very messed up because I know I can take a break and stay at home, write from home, edit and freelance, try finish that book I once started, go for a swim and get more ideas hidden in the bubbles underwater. But I choose not to. And that is a pity. But there is a story behind that too. On days I want to pursue a management course. Will I be good at it? Yes. But do I want to be good at it? I don’t know.
Like many of us, I have come to associate self worth with work, with money, with jobs that sound important but at the end of the day, are not important to you at all. Like many would, I am also scared of starting from scratch, from going and asking a magazine for internship at this age, afraid that when I see other women my age already have reached where I should have after these many years, I will feel disheartened and return to the corporate ladder and slot myself in the stereotype again. So why leave? And hence, get stuck in this rut all over again.
I get to hear of things like, treat work like work. It’s a job at the end of the day that helps you buy worldly material things. So stop right there and stop getting emotional. I find myself wondering very often how would it have been if it had chosen science instead of arts, economics instead of literature, mba instead of mass communication but then again, would I have been happier then or even more miserable?
It’s a complex maze we weave for ourselves. A web of thoughts where getting stuck is so easy and getting out, so tough. I want to work where I can write and smile when I get published. I want to pursue academics and also teach literature. These are the two things I really want to do. But I am headed in the direction of neither. Either my passion is not strong enough or the corporate lady alter-ego has taken over me. Or maybe its sheer laziness? I don’t know. In either case, it isn’t a happy world.
4 comments:
I've tried being different and pursuing what I wanted. And you know well what happened.
The entire system is a conflict in itself, and instead of filtering out people into slots according to what they want to do, it filters out people who're willing to do something different than what this system wants them to do.
All of us claim to have lives, freedom of thought and what not, but we're all hostages of this system we've cultivated and dared not change.
nice as usual :)
Great post!! just read your blog. you write well.
i have a suggestion, if you like writing and reading, why don't you take up a task (like Julie and Julia). a frnd of mine is doing it.. she is reviewing books.. 52 in a year :)
but keep writing, its good to read your stuff.. love your positivity.. we all face the same doubts..
Well-written Ishi!
Often, I end up feeling the same. Not sure, if we are influencing each other, or if we are really at the wrong place... the only hope I hold onto is that - we know for a fact, that it is for a short duration, of few years max - you know want I am refering to :D
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