After a year of studying Chartered Accountancy (that, by the way, didn’t work for me at all), I dropped it for good and stepped into the creative industry. In the beginning, my parents didn’t get my work completely. Who am I kidding, they still don’t, but they know that it has something ‘creative type ka‘ to do with me staring into my laptop and pressing keys all day. All my friends think that my job is very cool and me office is a chilled-out handout where I walk in wearing flip-flops, crack some lame jokes, be on Facebook all day, watch videos, jizz out ‘creative stuff’ and voila, job done! Basically, everyone thinks of my job as a vacation that I get paid for.
Most people think corporate jobs are slavery while creative jobs are ‘cool’ and you can do whatever the fuck you want. Well, let me break the truth to you. As much as I love being in the industry, where I get to experiment with my weird ideas, it has its own fuck-ups quirks, which I never saw coming.
I had this bubble that my ideas are so creative, I’m the Barney Stinson of creativity. As soon as I pitch my idea to the client, he’ll have an orgasm, right there. But well, guess what? Your ideas don’t even get to the client most of the time. They meet their doom even before that.
Because, here’s the deal. We always think our ideas are amazeballs even if they suck really. But there’s a lot that goes into a great idea or as people call it, ‘award-winning idea BC.’ But clients have a different theory altogether and a lot of times, they wipe their asses with your ticket to Cannes.
Sometimes you have yourself to blame. You get that perfect idea, the brilliant shit that’s going to win a Cannes Lion, but it comes 7 million years after the campaign is already live. And no, that’s not okay.
There are times when you’re on a vacation and you don’t have any projects. Suddenly, you have a mind-blowing idea for a hypothetical client which you totally don’t need. Rest of the time, you’re sitting in office at 2AM, brainstorming for ideas but all you can think of is, “why didn’t I eat Dahi Bhalle at Gitanshu’s wedding?”
Brainstorming sessions are fun. A lot of times, we use ‘creativity enhancers.’
Now, if you’re planning to get into a creative line of work, you need to come to terms with one heartbreaking truth: Your weekends are fucked. The entire week goes by with nothing particularly spectacular happening and suddenly, an asteroid hits on Friday evening, just as you’re making weekend plans. And well, when other people will be hanging out with friends or chilling at home, watching ‘House of Cards’, guess who will be working their ass off?
It’s not just weekends, each day is kinda like that. When the whole day you’ve been thinking ‘Why am I here?’ and ‘Does my life have a purpose?’, and you’re about to leave, guess what drops in? A mail saying “Brief aaya hai. Let’s sit on ideas.“
Weekend ke bali ke baad, the feedback you get is exactly like Dhoom 3, definitely not what you expected.
You won’t realise when ‘chal coffee peete hai‘ becomes your catchphrase. And if you drink coffee like me, you’ll be high on coffee 24×7.
So, mind you, I’m not saying it’s not fun and everything. It is. But you need to take it seriously. It’s work, and it comes with its own set of challenges. The toughest challenge being explaining to your all-knowing rishtedaar what exactly your job is. You will fail at that and then you’ll have to just learn to deal with “toh beta yeh creativity vagera toh theek hai, par asli kaam kab karoge?” type judgements.
But well, all of this has its own charm and I don’t think I’d ever settle for anything less than this other than this. Wherever you go, there will be challenges to face and a different battle to fight. The key is to not give up and keeping drinking coffee. (Because wo ‘kaaffee’ sahi hoti hai.)
Fin.
For more fucked up rants and lame pie-charts you can follow me here: @awwdhikaar
