The Content Strategist Sleeps Tonight(1/3)
A deadline-stricken content strategist in ‘New Normal’ finds ‘New Life.’
172 miles northeast of Delhi, the capital city, up near the serene top of the state of Uttarakhand, off the river, where you take a moment to decide which sign to drive through from, and instead you’ll perhaps find an old scrap metal advertising sign: encouraging you to stop at the famous tea point.
Then you’ll find an almost empty road leading away from the highway to a dense forest with a beautiful archway entrance that looks like it's made from the joined branches from two trees. A little further down the road, behind the timbers are padlocked gates, and beyond the gates lies a beautiful path less traveled by.
On a recent April afternoon, the content strategist sat in the Volkswagen Vento, just outside those gates with the driver’s window open. A group of students with trekking gear walked past the car. “Do you remember what it was like then?” He asks me as he convinces me to put on my trekking shoes again.
“I do.”
Inside the gates, it is mostly quiet unless we are in the mood for an impromptu dance night. The silence is broken by the chirping of birds, the pitter-patter of the rain pouring overhead, and annoying notifications.
One such notification emerges from the pool of messages and drops dead across what used to be my to-do list for the day. This chore becomes the center of attraction of my former to-do list chores. Using a simple yet deadly six-letter word ‘urgent’ as an instrument to pull me away from doing anything — that I was already engaged in.
The lawn, now crisscrossed with my quick trails, was my anxious and impatient attempt to get a hold of the situation. I grew up in a city, and I had often heard the story of the ‘fleeting tension.’ Yes, it’s a thing. It’s a time when your brain runs out of logical ideas and fails to draw a valuable conclusion, leaving you with a feeling of intense confusion. This is when we as humans are either advised to sleep on it or take a walk for the fresh supply of oxygen to the brain to start making sense again. Just an hour after walking back and forth from the front gate, everything fell in place.
Until…
Suggested Reading: Part II — The Creative Block Next Door
