As a single child, born in a typical middle class indian family, to a stereotypical loving, caring, overprotective, sheltering parents who feared sending their daughter anywhere out of their sight let alone to a different city within India, it came as a surprise to me when they planted the idea of me pursuing my masters in the States. And I can’t thank them enough for it! If it weren’t for the exposure and diversity that I experienced in the USA, I don’t think I would have ever realized the importance of having passion in life in the process of understanding the true meaning of happiness and how they both are linked together. The person that I have become today is a clear reflection of this incredible journey of getting to the point of realization and how it all changed since then.
Now that I have moved to Ireland, I couldn’t think of a better time to write about it. I never thought I would be saying this, but I feel grateful to the States for fortuitously providing a significant platform that helped me to break free and explore myself in a way I would have never imagined!
The sweet taste of Freedom!
I moved to the States in 2013 to pursue my masters, I had no bigger ambition than exploring a world that I was unaware of and stepping out of the protective shell of my parents at the time. However, living on my own the bigger challenge was to deal with this new found freedom. Yes, I call it dealing. Because for me it was overwhelming, no one to answer to, no deadlines, I could do whatever I wanted. I could finally use my wings and fly, I was the master of my own time. I was freaking out!
The realization of the strong foundation that my parents had build for me, played a crucial role in dealing with the freedom. I only realized how well the values had become a part of me after coming here when I started making my own decisions, when I could differentiate between right and wrong for myself, when I could see me drawing a line that I would never cross. Experiencing a different lifestyle made me appreciate my parents for providing a wonderful childhood. Knowing the amount of trust and faith they had in me, only made me want to make them proud and the most of this freedom! In a way it made me appreciate things I took for granted back home which then became an important basis for dealing with the freedom.
Finding Friends Like Family
Being away from the shadow of my parents, with no one to judge me for my decisions or help me in making one, I often felt vulnerable! Being comfortable enough to trust people, finding that comfort and wavelength was the next challenge. It also happens to be the time when I learnt the most, the time when I started flapping my wings. I was lucky enough to find friends like family here. Having a good company is the source of survival in Texas. My roommates made Texas feel like a second home.
Being the only child, I was not very used to sharing my space, living with the roommates taught me to step outside of my comfort zone, to share, to also care for another individual. Knowing that far away from home this was my only small family that would stand by my side and guide me in the right direction, a support system that I could rely on! Peer pressure and FOMO are inevitable when you have a big group of close friends but it made me understand that quality matters more than quantity. This philosophy helped me understand the worth of people in my life and also of who were worthy of being a part of mine.
Dealing With The Pressure
American Education system was refreshingly interesting. However, the rat race hadn’t ended and followed me across the continent. Finding an on-campus job to lift the burden off my parents, study to get good grades, finding an internship so I could get some hands on experience, getting a full-time job after finishing the course, phewww!! Turns out it wasn’t very different from India after all. Although it all sounded very stressful, the journey made it fun and worth remembering. The key was setting one goal at a time and working towards it with dedication.
Balancing a job and study was the next new challenge. Working in SMU law school was my first job ever. I still remember splurging my first pay-check on things that I thought then made me happy. And I did the same with my first pay-check from my internship in Ericsson. Just to get my expense under control and feel less guilty about spending money on shopping, I decided to pay off my one semester. It was a glimpse of what life would be after I finished my masters. There was no point stressing about it, the minute I started living in the moment, enjoying every bit of my journey without thinking of what’s ahead of time, the pressure was lifted off of me. It’s still something I swear by. The moment I feel stress or pressure taking over my life, I tell myself to only focus on today and now, tomorrow can be dealt with!
Entering The Corporate world
I graduated in 2015, student life was over. It was now time to enter an adult life which started with living independently without roommates. Now I had a car for my commute to work, I was staying in a beautiful swanky apartment that had a walk-in closet. It all felt like a dream come true. I loved working for Amazon Web Services. Everything seemed exciting in the beginning. A year went by in getting familiar with work, making new friends, team events, hangouts, a new relationship and it soon dawned on me that I wasn’t really enjoying it anymore.
Life had started to become monotonous. All the things that I hadn’t even thought would make me happy but were perceived to bring happiness started to seem meaningless. I had started to hate the fact that I had spend so much money all this while in shopping for my rental apartment. The walk-in closet was filled with clothes which I hardly used on daily basis. I had around two accidents on my car which had hiked up my insurance cost. It was during this time that I came across “The Minimalists” a Netflix documentary that I resonated with and inspired me in leading a meaningful lifestyle. Which taught the true meaning of happiness and the concept of perceived happiness!
You would think studying ends after school, but that’s far from true. It was a constant race at work, to climb up the ladder. I was not enjoying my work and hence climbing up the ladder felt like a lost cause. There was a void which had to be filled and not knowing how, was very frustrating. Everyone around me only advised that not liking your job is normal, but it pays the bills! However, not liking what I did made no sense to me. Deep down I knew that isn’t normal. Moreover, being surrounded by people who love their job was depressing. I was looking for answers to my own question, what is it that I really want? That was the first time I started re-evaluating my life. With so many visa restrictions in the States there was no chance of a career switch, I felt lost and depressed. Every day at work was a forced one, which affected my relationship with everything and everyone around me.
Finding Myself
When you are already going through an existential crisis, you would hope for nothing to aggravate the situation. Well, it is good to have hopes but be ready to face disappointment and realize that when shit goes down it all goes down at once! It was also the time when I went through a major heart break. One of those relationships that shakes you to the core and makes you introspect. One of those relationships that takes you on a joy ride from where you didn’t expect to fall down and get hurt in an irrecuperable way. One of those relationships where you know that even if the wounds heal the scars will always remain. A void in life and a bad relationship was just enough to fall in depression, which also happens to be the time when you make an effort to truly know yourself if you can get past the suicidal thoughts.
I knew I had to pull myself out of this misery, I realized how much I loved being happy and how I wasn’t anymore. My goal became to bring back the happiness. I started asking myself, what is that one thing that will instantly make me happy at this moment, the answer was “a change of place”! That is when I decided to move to Seattle. At first I only wanted to move to a different city so I asked my manager if I could move to Seattle team. However, my request was declined as the team was already overstaffed in Seattle. I started looking for a different job role then and was lucky enough to find one, a better one. Within two months of applying and interviewing I had made it to Seattle.
That time had put a lot of things about me in perspective. I now knew I could truly care for myself and that my happiness mattered more than anything to me! I now knew myself better than I did in 2013.
Being Independent
After moving to Seattle is when I learnt what truly being independent meant. Earning and being self-sufficient is a part of it but you become independent when you think you are enough for yourself. I am not saying that you don’t need a companion but cherishing the relationship by being two separate, self aware individuals forms the crux of a healthy relationship which I only learnt with time. I felt like I could depend on someone in a relationship, which meant my happiness was dependent on someone else, it was other persons job to cheer me up when I felt low, to handle my tantrums, to give me gifts, to take me on a nice dinner date. It all changed after the heart break, some self-realization and living alone.
I was in-charge of my own happiness now, I took myself on dinner dates, I pampered myself with the things I value. I realized taking life seriously was no fun and only stressful, so why not take yourself seriously instead! That way you don’t take yourself for granted and hence you don’t let anyone else take you for granted either. Being truly independent meant being completely self-cognizant and standing up for myself without expecting it from anyone else.
Finding Passion In Life
I remember my mom flying the next day to meet me after seeing me low on our skype chat back in Dallas during my depression phase and we took a trip to San Diego. It was then that I was still finding answer to my question of what I really wanted to do in life? I and my mom were watching a lovely sunset over a cliff and talking about our travels since my childhood. That was the time when the thought of travel blogging had crossed my mind but I didn’t do anything about it since I wasn’t in a very good mental state. After moving to Seattle, I finally started researching on how I could make the travel blogging career happen for me. Travel bloggers like shivya, kamya, nomadic matt inspired me and that is how the inquistiverobot was born. I finally started my own blog after a lot of doubts. I had nothing to loose and if I ended up loving it, it would only make me happy!
Seattle was a great start to my blog, being a beautiful city that it is. Apart from exploring Seattle, I made sure I visited at least 5 countries a year and wrote about it, the void was finally filled. As the blog kept getting better, the passion only grew and I wanted to do more. Traveling solo and working on my blog helped me better myself in many ways, it made me fearless, spontaneous, I started following my heart and living to the fullest. My blog inspired me into moving to Ireland, to experience European lifestyle. It being closer to India to my parents was an added bonus!
All of these stages are intertwined with each other in helping me find my passion and most importantly myself. An advice from the bottom of my heart would be, stop chasing the perception of happiness. Invest time in getting to know yourself better to truly understand what makes you happy and life will naturally fall in place with time! Being an adult sucks, but it is the journey of being one that makes us who we want to eventually become.
As much as USA has helped me in becoming a better version of myself, I have come to realize it is not for me and that, it’s now time for a change. As I make a big move to a different continent, I only plan on following my passion and enjoying every bit of it. I am not sure about the end results but as long as I keep following my heart, I know that I’ll at least be happy!
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