Happy March

It is 8 am on a beautiful March Sunday morning, I have managed to push off the noisemakers to work and school, they wouldn’t agree though! Sunday is the best day of the week, more so if you live in the Middle East and work from home for clients outside Middle East. It is that double-bonanza weekend day that allows complete ‘me’ time. I decided to skip the morning workout and pamper myself with an extra coffee at the balcony. It is March and I can feel the cold war between the summer who is trying to barge in, and winter who is hesitant to leave. Coffee at the balcony will most likely result in a blog, and here it goes. After all, this could be one of the last refreshing breezy mornings for sometime this year before summer emerges the winner.

For me, March is the best time of the year. Not just because it is my birth and wedding month (needless to say month of gifts, but nay I’m learning to say ‘no’ to gifts). Also not just because of Womens Day, though I call myself a Gender diversity Enthusiast (I dont mind it is dubbed as Feminist by some), so guys you can continue reading. Also not just because the stressful exams will be followed by the much-needed vacations (I am obviously talking about the kid’s exams, but the stress reserved for the parents these days!) Another new occasion to celebrate in March is that it has been three years since I took the entrepreneurial plunge. That is a good reason to celebrate though!

Many friends ask me ‘are you successful’. Yes I say, because success to me is a relative term. Success is not just the ROI, or getting Series A-Z funding and being featured on the covers of top magazines. Success depends on what you wanted to achieve and how far you have been successful in that attempt. The primary reason why I decided to switch from the corporate rat race to a self-paced one is to be able to decide what I do and when I do it. Needless to say, that gives me the much-needed quality time with family and opportunities to pursue my creative instincts. I am conscious about the fact that return depends on the risk and efforts involved, and I am good to go.

We all have but one life to live, and work is not all that we want to do. I cherish the times Vivek and me spent with our little (or should I say fast-growing?) daughter in beautiful ‘Keranadu’, the many different varieties of Thattu-kadas we ate at, the many ‘Sadhyas’ we had (Kerala feast lunch), the breezy beach get-aways, the long drives through the dense forests of Kerala and Karnataka and the much-needed time with grandparents and extended family. All thanks to Prernaa (who let us work guilt-free) and Vivek (the silent partner in life and crime), we made happy moments and memories for a lifetime!

Now now, before this sounds like a social-media post on how to live life, let me change gears. These mantras make me laugh. Who better than ourselves to define what is success and happiness in each of our lives? It is just that we need to push ourselves to pursue what we want to do in this world of distractions. We need to unlearn a lot of things we have learnt all our life to be able to relearn based on our changing priorities in life.

I have been successful in unlearning a few like algebra, trigonometry, chemical properties of x,y,z etc. God, I still wonder why they made us learn all this! Here I must say the current generation has more clarity about things, at least what they don’t want to do. I asked my 8-yr-old what she wanted to do when she grows up and I could see the evolution in the answer itself. From a 5-yr old who wanted to be a veterinary doctor or zoo-keeper, to 6-yr old who wanted to be a ‘Grade 1 English teacher’, to an 8-yr old who is fine with owning a pet and doing some job which doesn’t use MS Excel. That’s probably one of the side-effects of remote work I guess.

There is a lot more we need to unlearn like the default roadmap to success and happiness in professional and personal lives. Then we will be able to create our customized roadmap that will include all things we value in life to live a much more fun-filling and full-filling life. I have been writing for about a decade now, on and off and without making a penny, but the happiness it gives me is immense.

Finally March is special because it is the month of the day. Today is like Cash-in-hand, yesterday is cash spent, and tomorrow is the Receivables. So all we have today is what is in hand. Let us live each day as if it is our last day, and make the best of it.

Happy March!