And So Begins The Task...

Tomorrow morning I sign in at @amazon.com, after nearly a year off the treadmill – give or take a few days. Both events seem a bit unreal – I never actually expected to take a break this long (despite planning for it), and I never really thought I would work for a company other than Microsoft (even though I strongly believed that I needed to).

I am writing this today only to document what it feels like on the eve of this new beginning (or end, or end of the beginning, depending on how you look at it). I feel certain some day in the distant future I will want to be reminded of it.

Twelve months is a long time, and certainly the second half passed significantly faster than the first. Starting with the relocation from Bangalore in January, and ending with our recent decision to move to another house in Seattle, it has been a hectic few months. I mention, of course, only in passing, that we also had a baby, just to keep things from getting boring.

I had anticipated a rush of activity after Tanvi’s birth, as I pondered what I wanted to do with my life, and juggled being a Dad with the intensity of a job search. Being a Dad – to Shilpa and Simba – certainly did take up some time, all good (there really wasn’t much I could contribute to Tanvi’s nursing efforts ☺). But the so-called search for a new direction in life turned out to be surprisingly anticlimactic, and perhaps one of the biggest lessons learned during this hiatus.

There tends to be an assumption – at least within my demographic – that an open ended break from work represents either a bid for retirement (a term that defies strict definition), or the pursuit of an irresistible entrepreneurial calling. Retirement is a subject best left well alone, but it was a fair question as to whether I, like other lemmings, was destined for “start-up fever”.

Easy answer – NO!

Typically, it takes two out of three conditions to kindle the startup fire in one’s belly – a) a healthy appetite for risk, b) an original idea, or c) a well fed bank balance. Possessing very little of a), and drawing a complete blank on b) and c), this was an easy question to answer.

But the deeper lesson here was even more fundamental – that perhaps my career decisions no longer needed an Inner Calling. I had started my time off defining an earnest set of objectives, things to be accomplished during this break, and through their accomplishment, effecting the discovery of something profound that burned within me. I had it all planned – after all, that is what eleven years of conditioning in the business world had taught me to do. I explained all this to a friend, who asked me a simple question by way of reply: “why not enjoy the journey instead?”. Why not indeed!

Paying attention to the journey, instead of identifying the stops, turned out to be invaluable. It taught me to recognize the things I enjoyed doing, and why. More importantly, I began to truly understand the motivation behind the professional choices I had made over the past decade. And I began to let my goals go, because they needed to be let go. Very important stuff. And my aspirations began to condense around a few simple truths.

A discussion of these truths is better left for another time, suffice it to say that I firmly now embrace the notion that a job is only a means to an end. I no longer expect to begin the day driven by the challenges I face at work. I wish instead to wake each day, seeking to continue a comfortable, mellow existence, despite the needs of my career. And that makes all the difference.

But my final evening of freedom is now here, and I see long forgotten emotions distantly announce themselves (like the Sunday evening blues). But in a departure from the past, there is also a blinding sense of clarity, and the reassurance that every li’l thang’s gonna be awright…