Category: Thoughts uncut

Evolution of a copywriter

All the world’s a stage
And all the men and women corporate players
They have their exits and their entrances
And one copywriter in their time plays many parts,
Their acts being many stages. At first, landing page writer,
Whining and sucking up to search engine’s demands.
Then the musing copywriter, with a wonder
And unsure morning face, creeping like snail
battling the block. And then the reviewer,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful look
of enduring unendearing copy. Then a soldier,
The editor—full of strange rules, wired like a DJ,
Unperturbed, irritable, excited all in quick succession,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the manager’s good books. And then a senior,
In fair round belly with experience underneath,
With eyes bloodshot trying shoes of formal cut,
Full of wise wit and modern puns;
And so they play their part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and pushback chair,
With spectacles on nose and munchies on side;
The youthful curiosity well satisfied, in a world growing
bigger than ad copy, evolving into testing,
Turning toward marketing, managing social
media and listening. Last scene of all,
That topples this strange eventful history,
Is second copywriting and mere simplicity,
Sans typos, sans click-baits, sans vanity metrics—well, almost.

It’s been almost five years since I started working as a copywriter. And during that period, I’ve had to play many different roles within my team. I was wondering how a copywriter is also a content marketer, a social media manager, advertising writer, script writer, technical writer, creative writer, and so much more, when I remembered one of my all-time favourite poems. The connection seemed only too obvious.

The other mother

Why do we call her “mother” nature?

It’s more than personification. It’s a symbol. A mother—the one who births us—is a guide, a teacher for her child.

And nature, too is a guide, teaching our soul how to live. I used to think of nature only as a mother that bears us longer than a physical mother.

But there’s so much more likeness between mother and nature.

A mother is always there for her child, willing to listen and help without passing judgements. She’s patient and all-enduring, even the odd misbehaving child.

Nature bears with us despite every thing we do to her. We dump garbage on her, pump our waste on her hair, drill deep into her being searching for wealth, and yet, not once does she punish us for being as we are and doing what we do.

Sure, life isn’t always a walk in the park. Like my mom, nature has bad hair days, too. And sometimes the wind blows hard on our relationship, shaking pillars we’ve built over the years. Regardless, every catastrophe, every hard-to-face situation is a lesson for life. These incidents teach us to acknowledge and accept the bad things, just as we crave and cherish the good ones.

Looking back at the aftermath of those rough times, we can learn to amend our mistakes. For when we reflect from her perspective, we’ll see how much we’ve abused her selfless kindness. We’ll realise how we drove her into venting her frustration on us. Maybe we triggered a long-suppressed volcano of disappointment.

Just as we mature, so do our spiritual and physical mothers. We often forget that. Just as leaves, the hair changes, as seasons, the moods evolve, and then she becomes less intriguing to us.

Mothers don’t punish their children for bad behaviour, but even they have tipping points. And it often takes a breakout for her to get our attention—a reminder that we should spend more time with her. A reminder to call on her more often and listen to her. Because, once we’re grown up we forget how much we relied on our mother—how much we loved playing in the sand, dipping our toes in the river, and dancing in the rain.

A mother is an embodiment of everything we live for. We should preserve that relationship.

Let this mothers’ day be a happy nature day as well.

Thanks for this week’s muse, Kumud and #SpiritChat

Non-intelligence

After working in the tech industry for five years, I now know that it’s the only viable way of surviving the future. Sure, I’ve always known it, but a smaller part of my heart never accepted it.

That small part of my heart is the entire part of my being.

It’s the part that gravitates towards all things non-technical. The one that got away from science classes, math sessions, and chemistry experiments. The one that inhaled fresh prints, old parchments, and coffee dregs, revelling in poetic licenses. I’m a hopeless romantic—the latest Java Script breakthrough doesn’t excite me; the oldest of Shakespeare puns do.

What’s my place in the tech world then?

I can write. Ah, yes, the hipster glasses, the grande coffee cups, the iPhone with multiple notebook apps, and the whine and the wine.

Stereotypes aside, I found my way into a tech company because I wanted to write. But I soon saw that technology grew faster than I can comprehend. We’re now in the era of chatbots waking us up with inspirational quotes and sharing over two-thirds of links on Twitter. Social media has redefined itself from human-to-human interaction to human-to-bot interaction.

All this, even without the slightest interference from the world’s largest tech company. What happens we bring them into the equation, though?

This.

 

I don’t applaud scientific humans. Our minds are fascinating. The signals we communicate to and from others form our essentials.

I’m all for convenience and getting things done faster, but that small part of my heart—the one that makes my being—cherishes the little things that make humans, human.

The rush of adrenaline, the veins pulsating with blood, the mild exaggerations in prose, the excited squeaking of the voice, the racing heartbeat, the elevated tension, and the undeniable climax—that’s what we’re made of.

To experience the smartest of technology being smarter, more human-like than humans themselves is more than just an achievement. My pencil-wielding hands, poetry-laden mind, and puny self finds it an unacceptable abomination.

It’s hard for me to digest this transformation—this spurt of growth, this advancement in human intelligence. I don’t understand why we try so hard to invent replacements for ourselves. But I realise that this is the way we live now, and I, too, will learn to live with it.

But—hey—the heart doesn’t want what it doesn’t want.

Growing with nature

Gardening. It’s a weird concept. Though I don’t do it anymore, I have I have in the past. And that’s why it surprised me when a friend compared life with gardening.

It got me thinking and I realised that in each of its steps, gardening teaches us a valuable life lesson.

Step one: Get down and get dirty.

When we divulge in the dirt, turning up the soil, both our body and our mind connect with the earth. It teaches us to stay grounded, to remember we are only a tiny speck in a greater evolution, and that we came from the earth to which we will return as well.

Step two: Sow the seed, watch it grow

Gardening is about planting a seed, watering it every day, nurturing it, pruning it, and waiting for it to sprout. Life is the same.

To cultivate a thought, a philosophy, we should first let it seep into our soul and take over our body. We should nourish it with encouragement and positive thoughts for it to evolve into greatness.

It’s inspiring to observe a plant grow from a shrub to a branch to a strong benefactor. It makes us realise that we too will grow stronger with time. We’ll face challenges like weeds and pests and our own self-doubt. Despite the challenges, the many painful twists and turns, we will emerge stronger.

Step three: Clean up, prune away

With every plant comes along unnecessary weeds. For a tree to grow without hindrance, to achieve its potential, we should prune away those weeds and make space for new sprouts to appear. Likewise, in life, uncertainty and negativity will surround us, but just as we prune the plants, we should learn to chip out the evils that hamper our progress.

When we eliminate the obstacles, we’ll create room for positive people and good vibes to occupy our soul. Like spring-cleaning our lives.

Step four: Re-plant, re-live

Regardless of how much we fail at times. Some seeds don’t grow, no matter how much we want them to. Maybe the soil isn’t right.

We learn. We try again. We become better gardeners.

Sometimes in life our efforts aren’t fruitful either. We whine—and it’s understandable—but we shouldn’t give up. We should try again, because that’s how we grow.

Gardening teaches us to persevere in our goals. Every strife during the journey is only a lesson that makes the destination all the more worthwhile.

Good things don’t happen overnight. No seed flowers in a day or night. Just as gardening is a long and arduous process of growth, so is our life. The purpose, thus, is to enjoy the journey.

Thanks for the muse, Kumud and #SpiritChat.

How badass are you?

When I asked myself that question, I had no answer. Sure, I’d shown cheek a lot of times, but nothing came close to being badass.

I define badass as being unapologetic in who you are. Unwitting, to an extent, but also uncaring of what others think of you and perceive your actions. Being badass is speaking your mind, showing emotions when emotional, and voicing every bit of doubt without worrying about offending or hurting anyone. And—most important—doing all that without coming off as arrogant.

In other words, kids are badass.

We all love kids. It’s not because they’re tiny and make us wish we were young again. It’s because of who they are. They don’t care about anything or anyone. They don’t worry about the consequences of being their own selves. Whether they’re hungry, angry, or sad, they show their emotions right away. They push, they pull, and they even make us pull our own hair apart, but at the end of they day we still love them. The reason? They don’t pretend to be someone they’re not. They show their true colours, in all its good, bad, and unbearable shades. And that’s what makes them so likeable. They are true influencers in a way. They get what they want without being rude, arrogant, and asshole-like.

Sure, kids are adamant at times, and almost scary when on tantrums. But they learn soon enough that frown-face doesn’t work as a smile does.

We learn that as kids. But forget as adults.

We grown ups are too conscious of our selves to be bold enough to speak our thoughts. We don’t want to look like a vulnerable school child. And that’s why we lose so much.

We’ve become so invested in preserving our image—the image we set for ourselves, the brand we try so hard to up hold. As a result, we’ve lost our lighter side. We see people in full suits, clean hair dos, and prim postures who wouldn’t dare put a toe out of line because it would wreck their reputation.

Afraid of losing face, of looking like a failure, we become rigid instead. We stick to what we know, ingrained in inertia, and force others to do as we say. While kids smile and declare their minds, we smirk and demand action. Like the boss.

But we don’t have to be that way. We can still still be ourselves without being childish. By being casual and light hearted, we become more approachable individuals. By flaunting our humanness, we become easy to talk to. And influential. We can be badass without being forceful.