Half Baked!

"You really are a pro with that lens. Maybe you ought to be a photographer. Not a software engineer." 

"Your words have some power dude. Maybe you should stop writing code and start being a story writer or a poet."

"You are such a good singer. Why don't you try in cinema? You are not meant for this corporate world."

"You speak so well. Have you ever tried to be this stand up comedian or something? I think it would suit you better than computers."

"You have such amazing design skills. Why didn't you take up fashion tech or architecture instead of information technology?."

"For your level of fitness and skills, you might have very well become a national level athlete and have represented India for olympics rather working with Java here."

Being in the industry for quite sometime now, I sometimes hear and mostly over-hear these kind of questions a countable number of times if not frequently. There are this dedicated set of people who ask this to almost anyone they see. Sometime like drop them somewhere and they would be "You drive so well. Why don't you get a cab and do this full time?". 

Not blaming their concern nor is it frustrating, for it doesn't happen so often. But the fact is, it happens. And giving it some introspection, three levels of thought ponder. One, is software engineering or coding perceived to be one of the dumbest jobs of mankind with no scope of creativity what so ever?

   Secondly, creativity is a skill. The one that most of us possess here. Just in different forms. But the problem always arises with the metric system. When you get compared. A good writer is appreciated more when he is an engineer. There are good chances that he will fail when compared with people of the same cadre and better skills.

   And thirdly, any artist is a better artist not by the applauses or rewards. But for the confidence that he has on himself and his skills. With enormous pressure, any artist loses that confidence. And there is evidently good amount of pressure when you start to do something/anything for a living and your skills are your only bet. 

  The three, something that most of us here forget before taking up the most challenging task of 'Following your dreams and passions'. Not anyone's fault. While the post as such might sound a little pessimistic, cheers to all who indeed chased the dreams and got it right. The concern was only for the rest. The ones who proceed and fail and the half baked ones like me who are never convinced. After all, we all come from a society which once persuaded, "You get all those C outputs right and work with MS excel at ease. You are sure bound to be a software engineer".

P.S : Partially inspired from the ted talk, Art-preneur.

Cheers, Nvn.