The purpose of THIS

I came across this image on the internet in the recent past.

If you can't see the image, here is what's written in it.

"Time changes everything.
That's what people say. It's not true.
Doing things changes things. Not doing things leaves them exactly as they were."

I came across all this and more at a site called "quora". There, they have civilized discussions on all topics under the sun, from "what's your opinion about a guy who worked as a professional footballer for over 20 years without ever having to step onto the pitch" to "Do female astronauts were bras in space?". Like I said, they discuss all kinds of topics there. ;)

Anyways, I found the picture that I've shown you in a discussion happening in that site. The topic being discussed was "At age 25, would you pursue a good paying corporate job that makes you unhappy or a hobby that makes you happy, but has no guarantee to pay the bills?"

Well, just picture me reading that question. A 24 year old guy, in a good paying corporate job, who is partly unhappy because he finds himself not anywhere near where he wanted to be by now. And sad to say, I don't think I'm that good enough at any of my hobbies to earn a penny from it. After all, knowledge in most matter relating to the football club called Arsenal; or knowing how to use the computer in an optimal manner; or writing something every week is not going to make me any money.

Moreover, I don't think I want to make money from them. It's all well and good, if you can work in a field you love, but for people like me, who have a mediocre skill set, it's always safe to make sure that the hobby is just that, a hobby. Something you do to derive pleasure from. Something which strokes your ego. But there was a time when I felt that it was tedious to make an effort to do your hobby.

That was the time when I asked myself this question over and over again - "How do I make myself happy?" That is a question that has plagued the minds of the best. I saw my friends trying for higher studies; trying for high paying jobs; trying to get into government service; trying to follow their dream; trying to go and study abroad; etc etc. I evaluated each option and said "NO" to each. The fact that I had to "try" for them put me off from doing them.

Don't get me wrong. It is not that I'm lazy or anything. I look at where I am now, and I feel that if I step in any other direction to better my career, it'll be asking more of me in return. I won't say that the job that I've and the work that I do are perfect, but, to be honest, it suits me fine.

There is no never-ending, undue pressure on me; the work is always doable; I get my weekends off; I'm valued for the work I do. These are the things I want from my work. Of course, I would love to get paid thrice the money for doing a quarter of this work, but you can't have it all, can you?

It is in this scenario that I accepted my friend's advice to work on my writing skills as a means of improving my look on my life. And what better way to better your writing skills than to write regularly. Jerry Seinfeld is a popular comedian in the Western world, and this is what he had to say about how he continually achieved creative success.

"Seinfeld explained his method for success: each January, he hangs a large year-at-a-glance calendar on his wall and, for every day he wrote new material, he had the exquisite pleasure that can only come from drawing a big red "X" over that day.  Drawing those Xs got to be pretty fun and rewarding, so he kept doing it. Eventually, he began to create a chain of red Xs.

The idea was to never break that chain.

Not only does this approach program the body and mind to sit down and write daily – it also motivates you to continue that beautiful string of big, red Xs. If you don't write one day, you don't get to draw the X."

I came across this after I started the "5 things" series, but I'll gladly accept that this is in fact something I keep in my mind as I continue the series. I know that I might expose myself to ridicule just because I write for the sake of writing, but I feel it is necessary to write something every week. It makes me happy in the sense that I feel like I've met the target that I set for myself.

Speaking of ridicules, "She has a blog, and to tell the truth, it is ten times better than yours."

Let us forget for a moment that this comment is coming from a person actively stalking the said 'she', who is a new joinee at my office; and just concentrate on the last part of that sentence. 'it is ten times better than you.' But just after a short while.

Have you heard about the Infinite Monkey Theorem??

"A monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare."

I'm someone who believes very much in the possibility of that happening. So for a person, who believes in the prospect of a monkey outwitting him to full-on literature glory, I'm at peace with the fact that the world contains people better than me.

For a language as widely used as English, there are only 26 letters for you to work with. And with just those handful of letters, it opens up the possibility of a great love story; an emotional prose; a poem describing the beauty of nature; a phrase encapsulating the universal truth; a sentence about the current socio-economic situation; a word on the lifetime achievement of a legend, etc etc.

No where is it written that you can find a gem of a sentence, but at the tip of a genius's pen. What the internet has done is to provide "monkeys" like us a platform to showcase what we have typed. It has opened up our work to an unequal amount of praise and ridicule. It has provided us a way to know how good we are in the eyes of the world.

But if ever someone says to you that your work could improve, never be disheartened. Just realize that you might have to type some more on that typewriter, before you find your own literary gem.