Hellllowwww lovely peeps. I know it’s been so long that I haven’t blogged anything but honestly speaking I was writing a book and prioritising it was my job. Sorry I have been missing out on blogging. I thought a lot on what should I blog and then suddenly I got trapped in the past. Yes, Past – is a place where no one wants to go but is likely to get drawn. I never talk about my journey because I feel I haven’t done much in my personal and professional life. I don’t have fancy tags like CEO or Entrepreuner. I am yet to be an entrepruenuer – it’s in progress of becoming and I should talk about it when I become.
Let me take you to a ride today, a ride which had no arrival or destination points. I started my journey as Technical Support Executive being an Engineer. Your first job is always special, what makes it special is you are new to the corporate world, you have the energy to work harder and you are earning for the first time by dedicating yourself completely into the things you never tried before. I started my first job as Technical Support Executive, when I shared this with my friends, they made a ‘Are you kidding me Zeel’ face. People at my workplace also made fun of me, they passed their judgements saying YOU ARE AN ENGINEER and you should be a DEVELOPER, you should be working in some top MNC’s. You should not opt this kind of job. Technical Support profile is for the people who don’t get any jobs or who aren’t skilled. I didn’t pay that much attention because if a developer develops the product, there should be someone in support to handle the critical situations.
Earlier days of my corporate life were difficult, I felt like an army who was on the border protecting the country, never knowing from where the missile or bomb will be thrown. The clients were not terrorists, but they simply gave us the heart attack when they had their system failures, they were nuclear bombs who would come rushing to us. I never limited myself from learning, I was keen to work in different areas rather than sticking my ass in support. I wanted to be a developer in the intial days when I was finding an opportunity post my engineering but soon I realised I don’t want to spend my life coding ‘if and else’, I was already living one.
I started learning testing, I was so keen to learn that I had wake up at 5 AM in the morning, packed my lunch and left for coaching at 8 AM to 10 AM and headed towards work. My shift was 11 AM to 8 PM. I was enjoying finding bugs in the system, it was easy to point out other’s mistakes – just kidding :). There is always a cold war between developers and testers and I was a part of it. Slowly with time I was into testing and support. I had a habit of writing my daily expenses in my diary – such middle class things my roommate once taunted me. When I was referring my dairy’s first half pages, I realised how regularly I used to write down everything in my diary since 2010, I flipped some more pages and found my goals, I had mention my feelings and emotions over things, I had mention about the incidents that were close to my heart and suddenly my hands were tembling thinking why did I stopped jotting things down and turning into an occasional one.
In 2018, I started writing again and I created my Instagram page, I wrote one liner or two liners. I couldn’t maintain consistency or never worked on my content strategy. In 2019, I started writing a story in my diary, my roommate kept wondering what was I doing, looking after window, one day she asked me ‘What are you always writing, Zeel?”. My answer was “I am writing a story.”. The story is still half-written in my diary and I am yet to complete it. Soon 2020 started and with that I lost my grip over writing that incomplete story because of workimg from home and managing other responsibilities. One day, I was having a conversation with a friend about modern relationships and how things are changing slowly, how people are not stuck in labels and how they are forming the equations, at that moment he poked me to write something on it. He told me “Zeel, why don’t you write something, I have never seen you doing something you don’t love.”. I took it as a joke first and told him it’s not an Instagram post, it’s a story that I have to write. He further mocked me that’s what I am saying write a story.
We discussed regarding the title of my book and at that point I had only two characters in my mind – my protagonists – Aarohi & Samarth. I lacked in terms of outlining my books, in characterisation and many more things. I found a book coach, who is not only a mentor but a dearest friend too. I wrote few chapters – also called first shitty draft and under her guidance I could write a whole book. Now, when I look back I feel like I have lived so many lives writing all characters. In my wildest dreams I never imagined myself becoming an Author but with time words started soothing my soul. When I wanted to heal – words helped me, when I was suffering from pain – words helped me, when I was happy – words helped me. Becoming an author is my favourite title of all my jobs I have done till date. As an IT Professional, I work as Consultant dealing with clients but I would always remain an author from the bottom of my heart.
I would love to cage myself in the house which is not made of stones but with words, characters and emotions.
While cheating on my clients and falling in love with writing, I unlearnt many things:
- To write better, you need to read better books
- Every author has unique style of writing, never compare your journey with great others. When you are a beginner, you will make mistakes and you will learn so many things
- Use metaphors and figurative speech to enhance your characters
- When you want to know your character, you have to live their life wearing their glasses
- If you are writer, then don’t judge your work, leave that to audience
ValorousSoul 