Being HappyHolic
This is probably a rhetorical statement nowadays: Do what you like and like what you do. And I’m blessed that somehow I now have not one but two of these things in my life, possibly three (we’ll get to that some other day). I’m not trying to flex; my train of thought is in a slightly different direction.
Over time, I have realized that there will be a day when you won’t like your favourite work. There will be a day when you hate some part of it. But there are going to be days where few things about it are going to nudge you to do it, it will nudge you to do it without even bothering about the outcome.
That tinkering with it, that you continue to do. It’s not actually associated with any aim. You like doing it, similar to the way a child plays a random game at a very early age, but the same grown-up when he loses in the same game becomes sad because he tides that to the outcome of winning may be.
From where exactly did that nudge come to us? What does that kick tell us? Just do it? Whenever I’m working on any tech project doesn’t matter, whether it’s mine or not. The simple thought of even adjusting that button to slightly left creates a wave of happiness inside me. Ohh! I have something to do today. That makes me realize—is that a sense of purpose if not the aim? But what am I even achieving by changing the color of that button?
It is all about the journey
Yesterday, I had this bright idea of adding SMS notifications to one project, but I already had email-based notifications working fine. I just started digging around it. I wasn’t looking to pay for this service, so I ended up experimenting and writing a bunch of code for it. But it didn’t turn out well, and after exhausting my day, I left it there. But I was still feeling happy. And that made me realize it was not the goal; it was the process that I enjoyed. It was the process that put happiness on my face and my stupid heart’s deep-down realization that something magical was going to happen on this journey.
I have found that it is also true when writing anything.
With the poems, I have realized that I can’t force it, and when it comes, I can’t stop it.
A few months back, I was forcing myself to write daily, and I was getting frustrated because I wasn’t able to write anything. Until one day, I finished something within half an hour. And boy, was I happy that day. Now every time I have a thought, like this one right now, I can’t stop myself because I know this is going to release a large amount of endorphins, and that’s why I’m writing this at 1 a.m. on a Saturday in full flow.
It is possible that this doesn't even go out like a dozen others in my draft but as I mentioned in I'm Flawed, “This process takes me to an Elysium right now, though it might change in the future”
High Stakes
While working in the office or on someone else’s project, the process doesn’t work as effectively because the goals are generally clear. And even when I try not to think about them, a sense of urgency can easily be passed on by other people involved.
I had a hard time figuring this out. I went through a burned-out phase. Travel, which used to give me a refresher, didn’t help, and I wasn’t sure what was killing me from the inside. I confined myself to my room and stopped talking altogether. I hated going on calls; even the smallest thing was irritating me to the core. I started to hate the work that I once used to like because it was no longer about writing code, and I was constantly under pressure to hit the same benchmark I had set for myself.
How I recovered from it is a story for another time, but as they say, jo hota hai ache ke liye hi hota hai. I rediscovered how much I used to like writing during that phase. And I gradually shifted to handling pressure like Virat does—one run at a time.
While any project outside of the office generally becomes my quick way to get some endorphin shots, it doesn’t matter if it’s mine or someone else’s. But it still has people attached to it, unlike my solo projects. Stakes are bound to get high. But so do they for Virat, when 1 billion people might be saying something, but not coming out of meditation and focusing on those 1s and 2s is the way to go.
This approach helped me in the office when I got a call at 3 a.m. to handle a production issue for a feature about which I knew nothing. My initial reaction was to run away from it. But then I realized, isn’t this a moment where I have to become Dora the Explorer? Read the puzzle for the first time and find the jigsaw pieces. I pumped myself up to discover something new, and that was one run for me. I ignored the rest of the chaos that was unfolding and just dug things through one run at a time. That day, I realized my burnout was over.
While some frustration is bound to happen when you get those calls daily at 3 a.m., 3 out of 10 times, I can find my Elysium in it. And baaki kuch nahi to, bah lete hai thoda, duniya khatam nahi hogi agar ye issue resolve nahi hua to.