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Jumping Head First #StartANewLife

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There was a time when I used to love to travel. Be it on work or on leisure. And I was working on a project where I had to travel regularly. The wanderlust in me kept me going and I was thrilled to visit one country after another. But after a while, I got so saturated that I could not bear to stay away from my family and the man I love. And as luck would have it, something went wrong and I chose to leave the project. So now I was out of a project and was sitting idle at home. I did have a job and was getting paid, but without doing any work. The guilt was getting on to me. But all the projects that I was offered were on the same stream and required me to travel. And I was adamant that I did not want to take it up. The deployment manager was pissed off with me and asked me to choose a new area of work. Choosing was easy, but since I was already on a higher post, entering something new would mean starting from the entry level. Although the pay scale would remain the same I would be working as a junior. I was fine with it as I was learning something from scratch and there was no way I could start from the top.

But the people around me did not take this well. They asked me to think about my career and how this decision could be the biggest regret of my life. I was just promoted and people thought that starting something new now was foolishness. It will be a black mark on your career, most of them said. But I knew that I would not listen to them. I had already made my decision. I knew it was a huge risk, but I was keen on moving into the Telecom domain as that is what I had studied and that was the project I had first worked on. Everybody warned me against this, saying that the money was in the current domain that I was working on. The same domain that required me to travel every now and then. Three years ago, it would have been my dream job. But now, I did not want to stay away from my loved ones as I was looking to get married and settle down soon. I wanted to get back to Telecom as I knew that I would be good at it and it was something that I was passionate about.

So against every ones' wishes I decided to #StartANewLife and jump head first into what I believed. This erased the previous four and a half years of my experience as I started of fresh. I had worked on Telecom before, but this was a different stream altogether. I was a junior here and I put my 100% into learning the system inside out. I was working on real time situations and that was super thrilling. I was soaking in all the knowledge that I could lay my hands on. It was a bit hectic at first, to handle all the things at one go. But with time I learnt it and soon I was mastering it. Within six months I was promoted and I was the lead handling the team of eight members. It was a huge responsibility as everything was still new for me and the others were there for quite a while. Thankfully my team supported me very well and we churned out one successful release after another. Things seemed smooth and I felt like I was back to where I belonged.


Leaving everything behind and starting of something new takes a lot of guts and strength. It was not like I did not get scared. My heart was thumping inside as I was making this decision. If it went wrong, then everything would collapse. My career would be scattered everywhere without any area of strength. Taking the risk was a bold move, but it was a successful move as I believed in myself. I knew no matter what happened, I would pick up the tricks of the trade and make something out of it. God gave me the strength to do it and I put in all that I had to work hard. My hard work was getting noticed and I began to rise higher and higher. When I was at the peak, I decided to leave the project. I was already at the highest post that project could offer and there was nothing more to strive towards. People again thought that I was being stupid while leaving something that I so good at. But then again, the creative demon within me was not at rest.

The next project I joined was in the same domain, but in a different stream. Every term was new and the system was complex. This started another story of #StartANewLife for me, professionally. I learnt the system soon and put in a lot of hard work. I was always a workaholic, but I gave more than what I could here. There was a lot to learn and I was keen on absorbing as much as I could. Within a year I was given projects to handle independently and I was able to pull it off. I began to rise higher and higher. Today I'm in a place where everyone wants to work with me and I couldn't have been more happier and content with my professional life. This would not have been possible had I stayed on with my old project. I'm so proud of myself for letting go at the right moment and deciding to #StartANewLife from scratch and excelling at it.

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