My Passion for Storytelling
I got into writing during my college days in India. I would pen my thoughts and observations in a pocket notebook as I journeyed between college and home, in busy trains, buses, and seclusions of my choosing. These were the mid to late 90s when blogging was not a word in our vocabulary when the internet was dial-up.
After college, as a young coder with basic web skills, I created my first website to take my thoughts online. I connected with like-minded people to source content and positioned the website as a collaborative space for thought-sharing on the internet. Then life happened. I got my first paying job, and my focus shifted to work and career building.
Meanwhile, the blogging platform Blogger is co-founded by Evan Williams, opening up opportunities for people to publish online.
My Search for Purpose
From 2001 to 2007, my focus shifted to leadership; and I started to get the itch to write again. I was climbing the corporate ladder at a startup and was learning a lot. The need to share my experiences with those who may benefit from it emerged. I dabbled with WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr to find my purpose for writing.
Meanwhile, those who were sure of their purpose started to create a fan following with the Mommy blogs and such. Google launched YouTube to promote vlogging. The White House gives press credentials to a blogger and legitimizes blogging as a source of valuable content. The Huffington Post comes into existence, and Evan Williams creates Twitter to kickstart the age of microblogging.
An Early Mid-life Crisis
The day I turned 30yrs old, I made a desperate attempt to reignite my passion for writing and launched a leadership blog for a creative outlet to reflect upon my experiences and learnings from work-life. The blog signified my 31st lap in life, as I found myself racing towards a podium finish, afraid that I would get lapped if I just stayed the course. I was an ardent Formula-1 fan at the time. The site had a tagline, a question to the self: Are you ready to lead?
Over the next four laps of my life, I engage in collaborative writing gigs, networking, public speaking, and podcasting to find avenues to share my thoughts and experiences working with culturally diverse and globally distributed teams.
In 2011, I caught the entrepreneurship bug and co-founded a startup that would live on for ten years before it dissolved.
Meanwhile, Evan Williams creates Medium.com, a new blogging and news reporting platform.
10 Years Later
Evan Williams is snaking for his next big wave, while the world is distracted as ever in a whirlpool of micro-posts, doom-scrolling factually-disputable content. Nevermore has there been a need to amplify our voices to cut through all this noise.
And here I am, going back to the basics with this newsletter, trying to reignite my passion to explore and to collaborate through storytelling.
