Finding your true north.
Reading the road signs to your destiny can be a slow, frustrating process.
I look at the Document Recovery panel on the side of my screen and see a list of unfinished documents from the last few weeks. Short stories that don’t have an ending. Heck, some don’t even have a middle. Poems that start in a great place but have nowhere to go. Blogs with a great title, a great idea, and if they’re lucky, a great intro. The biggest one of them all, novels. These are big because of the scale of work that goes into them, the scale of how they are perceived, and the scale of what they could be, looming intimidatingly large in my head. The scales from my eyes however, have trouble dropping, although my novels-in-making do.
I actually have documents called Blog ideas, Short story ideas, Novel ideas (ha!) where I jot down rudimentary ideas which I may visit in ten years if I’m alive. I say ten years, because that’s how long it took me to visit my earlier set of ideas.
Why am I sharing my list of failures with you? No, I’m asking myself this question, so don’t feel pressured to answer. I suppose I am simply voicing them aloud so I can take cognizance of them. Take cognizance of a dream that appears in broken parts across various hard disks over the years. I suppose I am also sharing them with you so you could pick up from where you left off from your own dreams and not wait ten years. I don’t know what they are, but I hope you have dreams whose embers are still burning.
Honestly, this is not a blog I had planned on writing, even as of five minutes ago. But now that I’ve started, perhaps this blog was my destiny for today. Even though I don’t know where this is going, sometimes you need to simply be in a state of flow and trust that it will take you to where you need to go. I find, no, I KNOW that when you do what you love and what gives you immense satisfaction, you are doing something right. And are doing something that will take you further along in your destiny. I say ‘further along’ and not ‘closer’ because I don’t believe destiny is a destination. It would be very sad if it were, for then where else would you go after?
But if it were a destination, I would like to think of it as a pit-stop at a beach, one where you take a deep breath and jump into the sea for a swim, or go scuba diving, basically go to the next level. Or change course and head to the mountains instead. All the while doing what feels right. Even if it might sound flaky to others. I have a friend who was working, when I first met her 17 years ago, in Television, then got into advertising filmmaking and then copywriting and now is a photographer. She believes she has found her calling. I am completely inspired by how she simply did what she felt she had to and found her calling/many callings.
At this point I must talk about my own destiny. Something I have been repeatedly struggling with. But that has also repeatedly saved me. And that is, of course, Writing. One might call it my dream. I call it my calling. How did I even know if it was my calling? I didn’t. But it called out to me nevertheless. Repeatedly. But I had a hard time listening to it.
I had planned on becoming a doctor. Not because I wanted to, but because I was raised by a Tambram Mom. Apparently I used to play with a doctor kit and pretend to operate on my younger sister as a kid. So that was a sign that I was meant to be a surgeon! But maybe my mother had misread the signs. Maybe I simply liked to play, and back then, that was the only toy I possessed. And maybe my sister really did need a lobotomy that no one else was willing to perform. Just kidding, my kid sister is sharp as a whip and could slay anyone inside (or outside) a courtroom.
This may not be a secret but I did not end up becoming any sort of doctor. I don’t believe I ever showed a penchant for it even though I really loved biology and could draw a mean diagram of your reproductive system. The vocation simply didn’t call out to me. Neither did any of the medical colleges I applied to.
A little less known secret is that I wrote a poem when I was maybe 10 or 11 years old. I do not know what compelled me to do it. It was about the world we live in, a little philosophical, a little physical. I only remember the last line now. It went something like ‘and there (the world) we all lay curled in’. I remember this only because I am embarrassed by my thorough ignorance of the world (read earth) at the time. I didn’t realize that we all lived on the outside of the earth. I assumed the earth was a huge ball and we were all nicely, compactly living inside of it. Because, more volume, duh. But I was also befuddled as to how we all didn’t fall into each other because of gravity. Anyway, my mom cleared that doubt for me when I asked her. Of course I didn’t believe her.
Anyway, that little poem got published in my school magazine. It’s possible no one else had submitted a poem that year, but maybe they were impressed by the weird imagination of a 10 year old. I think that should’ve been my first clue.
In middle school I started writing essays and such. Because the school made us. I really enjoyed them, as I realized my English teachers also did. I remember distinctly being asked to read my essays on ‘My favourite film hero (Jackie Chan, it was)’ and ‘Riding on a crowded bus’ out loud to the class and hear them laugh. That should’ve been my second clue.
Later in high school, my school entered me in essay writing competitions that I won, and that must mean I had to be the Literary Club Secretary. Which meant that I wore a plastic badge on my shirt and remained the sole member of the club the whole year. That badge should’ve been my third clue.
Later in Undergrad, I was asked to read my poems and essays to a wider audience at the college assembly many times. Once, I entered an inter-college poetry writing competition. I wrote a long, heartfelt poem that was threatening to compete with The Odyssey. I was sure it would win, so can you imagine my shock when it didn’t? But, I remember how much I enjoyed simply the process of writing it. It felt like I was on drugs when I wrote it although it would be painful to read today. That should’ve been my next clue. The pleasure, not the pain.
So I started writing poetry. I wrote cynical poems about ex-boyfriends, love poems for current boyfriends, and poems that shockingly, had nothing to do with boyfriends. And made my entire college listen to them. Once, I was called into the office of my Head of Department to discuss the disturbing topic of my poem that I had read out that morning at assembly. I think it was to do with ‘Why sympathy was over-rated.’ I’m not sure if I spoke at assembly after that.
The clues seem like clues only in retrospect. At the time, they were simply things that happened because you did things you enjoyed doing. For me, it was writing. But I did not know that then. Even when I was in my early twenties. I had changed course through the magical forces of the Universe, from Zoology in Undergrad to Mass Communication in Post Grad. In fact, I had no idea what I was going to do. Maybe TV production? I had no idea what that even entailed! Until I got in the TV business briefly as an actor. Production, ugh. What was I thinking?
Then as fate would have it, we had to do an internship in a media company. By some stroke of luck (?), I picked an ad agency where I was an Intern Copywriter. I was told by the Creative Director that I was actually good at this. I guess that’s all I needed to hear. But also, I wouldn’t have picked that career if I hadn’t genuinely enjoyed the process of writing! (Also, it seemed easy) So through some twists and turns involving a lot of dead rats and cockroaches (sorry, you guys) I became a sort-of-writer, which is really what a copywriter is.
I spent almost a decade doing that, with no thought of becoming any sort of serious writer. Of course, encouraged by a friend, I started a blog which some people really enjoyed, but which I cannot go back and read. A side hobby in an effort to make sense of my life, a compulsion if you will.
It wasn’t until my late twenties that I decided that I actually wanted to be a writer. It took me a sabbatical, a baby, postpartum blues, a crumbling marriage, basically a very dark place in my life to arrive at that decision.
It has been a decade since I made that decision. I have been the opposite of prolific in that time. (In a sense, I’m glad I never published a book back then. Because I might have to hunt down every last copy and burn it, ‘The Shadow of the wind’ style.) But I did write. I wrote poetry, I wrote short stories in short bursts. I reviewed other authors’ books for newspapers, all the while thinking I should be one of those authors. I have since, become an entrepreneur, which means I still have a day job where I write for brands, but I am not hiding behind that excuse.
I have since, found a passion that consumes time and energy. No prizes for guessing, it’s running. It’s wrong to call it a passion. I would call it a destiny (a person can have many destinies), one that keeps me going, keeps me moving, in every which way. It helped me course-correct my life. It has helped me take tough decisions, right decisions and become myself more wholly. It also helps in removing self-doubt. A writer friend challenged me recently, ‘If you can find an hour to run every day, can’t you find half an hour to write?’ I had no reply. Running, along with amazing people, has veered me more clearly in the direction of my other destiny, writing.
I have since, become a published author, even though it is still hard to call myself that. I found in my path, a dear friend who saw in me what my school magazine did, my English teachers did, my early blog readers did, and asked to publish me. I am eternally grateful for these signs and the people who literally make up these road signs leading me to my true north. I hope you will sit down and think of who these road signs are for you too. For the longer you look at the signs and engage with them, the better you get at reading them. I, for one, have been slow in reading the signs, doubt still rearing its vile head now and then. But I hope to shush it with the only weapon I own. Words.
