All about 2019: Quitting a Job, breakup, & design
The time has come.
Yes, it’s that time of the year which asks me to see where I am right now and what have I done so far?
Have I grown a bit? Have I learned something? Have I made progress? Basically, I try to find answers to these questions.
In a nutshell, this year has been a roller coaster ride for me.
First big function(My sisters marriage) to quitting the job, breakup, finding a job in a different sector, travelling to different cities, speaking at my first design event, meeting a hell lot of new people. This year has it all.
And while I am writing this, I just felt like patting on my shoulder and saying, dude, good job 👏.
Meanwhile, year in review, 2018.
In a nutshell, Year 2019 looked something like this for me:
And Gratitude towards these people:
And now, I’ll be telling you about the few major happenings and rightly so, because I want to document it.
⚭ Sister’s Marriage.
It was the first big function of our family and as you all know, In India it is a big social gathering where we as the host family, have to take care of all the responsibilities.
I still remember those days, we went up like 2–3 days without sleep, going places to see if the arrangements are proper or not and that was one hell of a function.
In Indian context, this is what I believe. A boy transforms into a man, 1st: when he gives his first salary/earning to his mother and 2nd: when he contributes to his sister’s wedding. Been there, done that.
Just a disclaimer, this is something that I believe, necessarily need not be true for you all.
❌ Bold Step: Resigned yet Unsure
This was one of the toughest decisions I have ever made. Pondering over this for over 2 months, I finally took a plunge and sent my resignation over email on 17/03/2019.
While serving the notice period, I never thought that it was going to be tough. Though, I was unsure on what to do next?
I wanted to do a blogging based startup as I had just sold one my websites for 4 figure dollars but turned out that I wasn’t ready for that.
Meanwhile, Breakup 💔.
While I was juggling with the scattered thoughts, the breakup happened. I won’t get into much details here but it primarily happened due to couple of following reasons:
- I failed at understanding the expectations of the person on the other side.
- I, Being a little insensitive though unintentionally.
Learnings:
- Sometimes situations are wrong and if anything has to go wrong, it will go wrong.
- Communication is the key factor in any relationship, especially in a long distance one as in my case.
As if all of this was not enough, we also had to change our apartment due to some issues with our landlord. Even though this may seem very trivial to you but when you are going through tough times, all of this seems to be a big setback.
The good part is that I am a very linear thinker, so, I decided to focus on one primary thing that is my career and that helped me a lot.
🥺 Anxiety Attacks are for real.
One thing I would like to mention over here is that “Anxiety attacks” are real. Every single morning of this timeframe, I woke up anxiously and mind you that it’s a feeling that makes you very uneasy.
And meditation helped me a lot. This app called “Headspace”, I purchased a subscription and followed the guided mediation and it helped me reduce my anxiety to a considerable extent.
If I look back, I don’t know how I made it? It isn’t easy but certainly I was the one who signed up for it. So, fair deal. 😂
👨🎨 Design is the calling.
I dropped the idea of doing any startup as I wasn’t sure what to do?
Design was always in the back of mind while I had quit my job. So, one way was getting into design but that was tough. I had made some connections in the design fraternity but it didn’t helped much.
Except one phone call with Sankalp Sinha gave me a clarity on which sector I should be choosing and that was product design.
And then I made a roadmap along with my friend who discontinued after a while but I persisted. That series is called “#Designerfromscratch” and guess what, I succeeded in that.
💼 A New Job
Within the timeframe of #Designerfromscratch series, I got a new job as a product designer in one of the fastest growing startup in India @Udaan.
How I got the job? That’s the story of another time but that was the silver lining of the entire struggle.
I still remember the time when the company rolled out the offer and I couldn’t believe it.
But that made me believe in the phrase that says, consistency beats perfection. It does.
👨💻 UXSprout Turned 1
August 4th, 2019, my UX blog UXSprout turned 1.
It’s an amazing journey so far and hoping that 2020 will be amazing as well.
Here are some stats as where do we stand as of now:
Also, this year, I was quite active on Medium as well. I wrote about 10 posts here (including this one) and here are the stats:
🎪 First Design Event
30/11/2019 — I always wanted to do a design event of my own and what’s better than my Alma Mater.
Mind you that, the awareness around design is close to zero there and hence, I considered it as my responsibility to at least tell them that it’s something that you can explore.
Rest of the experience about this event is captured over here.
And yeah, these were the major events that happened this year.
📃 Few amazing resources that I came across this year:
A Junior VC: A blog to read detailed case studies about startup ecosystem.
Pablo Stanley: Designer at Invision and amazing comic artist.
Design Pilot: Amazing design resources to know more about UI and UX design.
levels.io: Indie hacker. Creator of Nomad List
Kunal Shah: Follow him for great life and business lessons.
Let’s talk about failures:
- Failed at keeping a relationship.
- Failed at certain series that I do, “#DemystifyIcons”, “#DailyUI”.
- Failed at changing one bad habit that I have.
- Failed at keeping track of my personal finances.
- Failed at launching any product as side hustle.
And learnings as well:
- Learned a lot about myself, I can become an absolute jerk when things are not my way.
- Learned that, I am also comprised of anxiety, jealousy and insecurities. Accepting that was hard for me.
- You can’t have it all, there is an opportunity cost associated with every single thing that we do.
- Life is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. You don’t have to hustle up every single time.
- Burnout is for real.
- Live and let live.
➡ What next?
- Scaling up things.
- Becoming competent in design.
- Maybe launching a product as a side hustle.
- Writing more, reading more.
- Experimenting
And above all, taking life on an easy note.
Yeah, that’s about it.
If you have made it this far, thanks folk. Means a lot.
Just in case, if you want to talk about design, philosophy, blogging or startups , do let me know. Coffee/Lunch on me.
Here you can connect with me: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Blog.
Ok, Bye. See you soon.
