Keep walking Geethu!

I joined my first job over 5 years ago.

12.06.2006 to be precise. Today, 5 years, 2 months and 19 days later, I have come home after having quit my fourth job. I get to relax over the weekend to prepare myself to join a fifth firm. This would be the third change in my career - from banking & finance to advertising, now to marketing.

How do I feel?

Awesome.

And perhaps awful.

My mom was a nurse. She joined as one. Worked for over 30 years and quit as one.

Perhaps nurses can't shift their careers. That is what they have learnt. Injections and anti-biotics. How different can it be!

But I am different. After all, I am an MBA graduate. I get to choose.

Sigh! Pathetic attempts to justify myself. Not working.

My shift from banking to advertising was easy. It was a welcome change. In advertising, I did not have to bear the grunt of trying to sell a loan to someone who absolutely could not afford it, just so that I could meet my sales targets.

And 6 months later, I did not have to call that same 'someone' and demand to pay EMIs and threaten them with dire consequences, this time to meet my recovery targets.

Advertising was different.

Though my hopes of meeting stars, my notion that daily work meant glitz, glamour, sheer fun and partying, went down the drains within the very first week. What awaited instead, were tons of survey questionnaires waiting to be administered to unfriendly, unwelcoming people on streets; collating, understanding and tabulating data; figuring out what those numbers meant; drawing innumerous pie-charts and deriving conclusions that gave solutions to address the business problem that was raised. That was just one part of the story.

Managing angry clients who would not flicker an eyelid as they said "Get out Sir!" (to the extent I began believing that I did look like a guy); arguing with 'efficient' marketing teams who started conversations only with 'Our CEO expects to see it now', 'Our VP has to use it in the presentation tomorrow morning'; managing 'angrier' creative teams who were already sitting on endless 'pathetic' briefs and now despised me for being an inefficient servicing kid who was not even able to negotiate for some more time, so that they could come up with an award winning idea - was the other part of the story.

Imminent deadlines.

Sleepless nights.

Lean pay cheques.

Scream matches.

RTBs. RGBs. TRPs. TGs. GSMs. Jpegs. PDFs.

Yet, I loved advertising. Despite all its madness, I loved my job.

But now I realize I am ready for a change. Yet again.

I do not know what the future has in store for me. Whatever it is, I am willing to go where life chooses to take me.

So I move on. Once again.

Wish me all the best!