For more than a decade of my life I was a professional student (which means that I worked, took exams on the side for a professional designation and waited for a very long time to add three letters against my name). A chapter that started in the monsoons of ’89 in Bombay finally closed itself with the Fellowship admission course at a lakeside resort in Peachtree, Atlanta in November 2001.
2001 was an interesting year personally in many ways. After aiming to hit 30 I finally turned the corner, I lost just about 30 pounds in three months and finally passed my driver test after learning to cheat on the wide open roads in Southern California. It was the year when we wound up Avicena, the year when I lost a second fortune as a day trader and the year I received my first six figure offer.
With Avicena and the Actuarial designation out of my life, it was also the year, when one warm fidgety winter night, I started on what turned out to be the Blue Screen of Death project. Here I was, a 30 year old fresh Fellow, nursing withdrawal symptoms from a life that was no longer filled with crises, exams and major milestones. My decade old task list was now empty and I had no idea what to do with the extra 5 hours in my life.
“Write a book”, whispered my crazy muse, and so I did.
Come September 2009 and we have just finished another interesting year. The 30 pounds are back with a vengeance. So is the downturn. And surprisingly enough, I have managed to lose a third fortune in my life (some people never learn). Once again a decade old project is winding down. What started off as a ten page article for Harvard Business Review and ended as a 200 page thick book on failure, today landed on my desk as a printed copy fresh from the press in Singapore.
Reboot is here.
(Amin took one look and said, “You wrote a book. Oh, you are an Author”. Children, unlike critics, are so easy to please)
