People assume that because I’m so sure now of what I want and seem so focused on getting it, that I always have.
This isn’t true.
For a long time, I struggled. I didn’t always admit it, because I was ashamed of my struggle. People came to this blog to see a freelance writer at work. People wrote to me saying things like, “If you can do it all the way from India, there’s no reason I can’t do it from here in America.” I got so much great feedback and so much love and support, that admitting that I was struggling was like admitting that I had failed not only my dreams, but my readers’ dreams as well.
So I quietly fought the need to do more, to maybe quit writing, to admit that I was meant to do something else.
Until early 2006, I wasn’t doing any journalism. I was writing how-to features for magazines on technology and health. I’m not knocking anyone who does that kind of work, but I loathed it. I was very unhappy. Every assignment was a chore, a reminder that I had quit high-paying engineering to do something that made me equally, if not more miserable, and paid nowhere close to it.
In mid-2005, I started looking at graduate programs. I also, eventually tired of my struggle, walked all the way to my old high school, and asked to see the principal. I was going to apply for the job of an English teacher.
“Did you see the ad?” asked Ram Jeevan bhaiya, one of the workers at the school, who was loved by all students and who I knew well.
“What ad?” I replied.
“The ad in the papers today. For an English teacher.”
I hadn’t. What perfect timing, I thought. Serendipity. I’m meant to get this job.
Sure enough, I was called in for an interview almost immediately, and the principal sat me down and spoke with me for half an hour. We discussed my work, my writing, my life so far, and why I was quitting freelancing to teach English.
When I’d finished my spiel, the principal sighed, took off her glasses, and looked straight at me.
“You’re not a teacher,” she said. “You’re a writer. Can’t you see that?”
I opened my mouth to explain, but she put up a hand.
“Come back in six months,” she said. “If you’re still interested in being a teacher, I’ll give you a job. But I know, as you should, that you’re not going to come back.”
She was right, of course. Exactly six months later, I was traveling for my first reporting assignment for Elle magazine covering the one-year anniversary of the South Asian tsunami.
I came back from that assignment a changed person. After months of saying, “I don’t know what I want, I just know what I don’t want,” I finally knew exactly what I wanted.
It didn’t get easier, if you’re thinking all my problems were solved after that one assignment. In fact, they were just beginning. Because after I’d successfully rejected thousands of dollars worth of technology and health assignments to free up my time for meaningful work, I realized that I didn’t actually have any.
Not only that, I didn’t have any journalism experience. In 2006, after three years of making a living as a writer, I was starting over. It was quite scary.
I made almost no money over the next year.
I’m sharing this story now because once again today, someone looked at me with awe and said she was envious of me because I was so sure of what I wanted. She, on the other hand, hadn’t yet figured out her path.
And I just want to say, it wasn’t simple for me either. But what I did manage to do was get my head out of my ass and just be. Just be quiet instead of running round and round in circles, chasing my tail like a dog. I had to see what I came up with when I was at peace and wasn’t trying to follow someone else’s dream.
I see so many writers, day after day, who’re struggling with who they’re meant to be, what they’re meant to do. And I think the only way to do it is to try. Do all of it. See what brings you the most joy. Read your favorite magazines. Tear out the articles you wish you’d written. Draw. Paint. Take photographs. Don’t hold yourself back. Don’t limit yourself. Be creative. Be artsy. Drink lots of tea. Stay up three nights in a row. Write a short story. Paint all the chairs in the house. Don’t be in a hurry to declare yourself a certain kind of writer, artist or photographer.
Try everything that brings you joy. Something will surely stick. And until it doesn’t, at least you’re having fun.