All is Well

Day 275 / 366

What is optimism?

It’s the belief that even though things might be wrong now, it will all work out in the end. It’s easy to be optimistic when things are already good. It takes courage to think positively when things are really falling apart.

My life and my career have been through some extreme ups and downs. However, one thing that has always been constant is that I have always thought that things would work out in the end. That belief is always there, though sometimes not as strong as it should be. But it never dies.

I’m not sure why I never choose the simple paths in life. After school, I had cleared SCRA, an exam that would have led to me joining Railways as a Class A officer. A nice and cosy government job. Yet, I chose to go to IIT Bombay. Even at IIT, I didn’t join the usual clubs, or go on semester exchanges to foreign universities. I decided to learn coding on my own and built a freelance career out of nowhere.

I got a nice job at JP Morgan, right after college, where I only worked 9–5, 5 days a week. And I got nice bonuses as well. But 2 years into it I was miserable, I wanted to do some exciting work, even if it meant taking more risks. So I chose to leave JP and join ErosNow, a company that I left within 6 months of joining because they ran out of money and were not paying our salaries.

Fast Forward to today. I am no longer a salaried employee. I do not have any guarantee when or from where the next paycheck will come. In addition, I now have a company, an office, and some employees to look after. In no way is this a simple life. And the funny part is that I chose this. After the last startup that I worked for closed, I had offers to join other companies with high packages.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.