Life of an IT employee

This is the first post in a series narrating my life and experiences after I quit my TCS job in December last year.

A typical IT guy working in a software firm does not have much to boast about in his life. As a routine day goes, he works in a project where client keeps giving requirements, which are, in hindsight, of really no use to their organisation. Time is spent on this useless task by multiple people like a functional guy, two technical guys, a manager and a super manager (if deadlines not met). After spending much time (9-10 hrs a day) in a hopeless way, he goes back home and usefully spends a few minutes on dinner and wastefully spends a few hours on social networking till midnight. The same routine goes for 5 days a week and at times 6 or 7 days a week too. A fortunate IT guy may have a whole weekend free for himself which again cannot be of much help to him as Sunday is a dull day spent with the bad thoughts of the next day’s office. Friday night and Saturday are the only times available for freaking out. A handful of people use this one day and one night to go away from the residing city to be part of nature (which I feel is the best way of refreshing oneself), either by going on treks or short bike rides to a nearby isolated place like a hillock or something. Those other than that handful people would mostly spend times in boozing on Friday nights or at restaurants and malls watching movies. Typically an IT guy will be effectively having some 40 hours for himself to be spent in a meaningful way (I know that “meaningful” is subjective). Like a carrot tied to a horse’s head, salary is tied to our heads and we run to get hold of it like a horse does. In the end we just get to smell it and then it disappears in a jiffy. A month-long wait is worth just for one or two days.

Bored with all such thoughts in my mind, I decided to call it quits. To hell with my job. I gotta LIVE my one and only precious life. Thus, 25^th December was the day when I (a typical IT guy explained above) last worked in a private organisation doing some monotonous stupid boring office work. It was actually not as tough a task answering others doubts regarding my decision as it was answering to myself. After successfully doing so, I immediately embarked on a simple leisure trip to Delhi, Rishikesh, Mussourie and Agra (all already visited places) with my friends. My break started with a bang with this one week trip (from 26th Dec '12 to 2nd Jan '13). The rafting at Rishikesh, the cold morning at Taj Mahal and many more things brought me back to life. I decided that travelling is what am gonna do the next few months.

Some of the snaps are here:

I went back to my home rejuvenated and was busy with helping parents for their long trip to US to stay with my elder brothers. One month went by being with parents and entertaining relatives. Then parents flew to USA and here I was all alone excited to lead a nomadic life. Fortunately I got in touch with one of my college friends who also had quit his job for taking up some venture of his own interest. But he had lots of free time with him before doing so. Things fell in line for me as he immediately agreed for some of my plans.

I had planned for two major adventure activities. One was a Tamil Nadu bike trip and the other one was a mountaineering course, either in Darjeeling or Uttarakhand. Initially the mountaineering plan faced a setback as both the institutes at the above two places did not have any vacancies. That is when I got to know of one more Mountaineering Institute called Jawahar Institute of Mountaineering at Pahalgam, Kashmir and luckily slots were still available. We immediately applied for the course through Speed Post and were glad to see the acknowledgement letter from the institute. One plan fixed. The course was scheduled for the whole month of April. We were completely pumped up thinking about the month long stay at Pahalgam (actually I was the only one pumped up, my friend is kind of stoic most of the times).

Wait for my next blog which will be about my TN Biking trip planning and execution.