Episode 379 : King Bruce and I

'Your photographs have become different, the way you take them has changed. You used to spend time figuring out which angle to take, how to compose them and things like that. Today you whip out your mobile phone and click for Instagram. I miss the photos you used to take using your camera', Anna lamented.

That was what I got for feedback. Most of what she said was true, and I knew it too. But what I could not figure out what caused it, or what I should do to change it.

The two times I looked forward to take photographs using the camera was last month during our road trips to Goa for a wedding, and to Bidar to see its fort.

Murphy struck and the camera developed a fault even as I waited for the bride and groom to get into their car after the wedding. After that, it was my mobile phone and I. It felt odd to "focus" on Bidar fort's sprawling walls using a mobile phone and not having to ponder over which setting would be better for landscape photography. On my mobile phone, one gets only a point-and-shoot type of camera and its better suited for Instagram than landscapes.

To take good photographs, one needs creativity and for some reason my creativity had hit a blank. It takes a lot of effort to even draft a blog post, and this one that I am typing is a forced effort only because my office work is taking some time and I have a few minutes to spare.

You see, the reason for my lack of "creative juices" could be traced back to those years when I threw myself into work to prove to myself that I could build a team, learn more about the product and try to climb the ladder of success. Those years at work got me recognition, two consecutive best performer awards and many sleepless nights. That was also the time when I reduced the time I spent on a blog or with my camera, and probably led to me unwittingly killing off any creativity I had left, in the name of innovating at the workplace.

Innovation on, creativity gone. Irony anyone?

But I also realised that I had somehow gotten into a rut that I refused to recognise all these years.

I worked with the same type of people, had the same type of friends, hardly read books that stimulated any discussion in my head, listened to the same music, had the same kind of discussions with Anna over breakfast and dinner, and so on.

I had stopped asking myself questions, stopped myself from getting lost in music when I listened to new bands (listen to Cigarettes After Sex if you haven't), and became more unfeeling with every passing day.

When I was subjected to a questionnaire to know how a motorcyclist-slash-biker-slash-traveller thinks, I figured the questions would be cliched and the answers even more so. But as I tried to answer the questions that were posed to me, I realised this was one of the missing ingredients. I stopped asking myself why I did what I did. Or why I stopped doing what I enjoyed doing earlier. Writing blogs, imagining short stories based on a song I had just heard, or looking at a map and wondering which route to take next.

All these need time, and I convince myself that time is what I don't have what with a product release every 3 months.

But these are excuses you make each time, I argue to myself. All you need is to spend an hour trying something out: a photography exercise or a writing exercise instead of something that is easier because its more technical and I know how it can be done quickly.

Which is why I, once again like King Bruce in that story, am making this renewed effort.