Life as a full-time creator
My Daily Calendar
I am struggling to fit into a creator’s life.
I wasn’t trained for it. In fact, I was schooled off it with ruthless efficiency.
The world I grew up in was governed by the leading trio of MPC (Math, Physics and Chemistry): a world where my road of education had two clear forks: Medicine, on one side and Engineering on the other.
I became a computer science engineer and discovered algorithms and coding. I enjoyed it. A nebulous MBA degree followed, filling my head with new words and opening my eyes to new experiences. Then, I was thrown into a world that glorified numbers (especially the one printed on currency).
Ten years of consulting, startup, corporate and semi-entrepreneurial roles had reinforced and fine-tuned my thinking to believe in a world of logic, structure and execution.
These lives did include some creative endeavors from time to time — in small doses and with objective purpose. Writing was always my go-to form of expression (from the time I can remember) and I’ve used this fledgling ability to think and communicate on paper across my roles.
Then one day, not too long ago in the past, I decided to be a full-time writer.
In the few months that I’ve been doing this, there is one realization that’s smacked me repeatedly: This is a journey like no other I’ve made in the past.
My experience in changing roles in the past had required me to spike along parameters that I was comfortable in: Analytical ability with a dash of creativity and dollops of decisiveness.
The only ‘new’ aspect I learnt drastically over the years was people — working with them, managing them, manipulating them and in general, getting things done in teams, with teams and across teams.
Jumping into being a full-time creator role, without an umbilical cord to this universe that I understand, is a strange and disjointing experience.
One of my friends puts it like this,
“Think of it like having a sex change. Having spent two decades learning to live in the old form, it would be unfair to expect to get used to the new one in just a span of months.”
I believe it.