I’m sorry for the clickbait caption. It is a creative interpretation of the truth.
I turned 50 in February. Yesterday a strapping young man in the gym locker room politely told me, ‘Uncle can you shift your bag a bit, please? I want to take out my gear.’
Nothing gets my goat as much as being called uncle, but then I listened to Tina Turner & not Taylor Swift while strolling on the treadmill.
60 refers to my hitting 60k on Instagram the day before. Not a big number when people talk in terms of lakhs. One thing that I’ve learnt over the past few months is to define one’s reality.
I am not a professional influencer. Lakhs are their currency.
I am a writer. The keyboard is my accelerator. It moves at the pace of a tortoise.
I measure progress in terms of whether I have moved ahead from where I was.I stagnated at mid-59 for months. 59K
.
We went on a holiday to the UK. Returning to the ‘prime point’ (I was born there) helped clear my mind.
I realised I wanted to create the sort of content I wanted to consume. Tell the stories I wanted to tell. Talks with K & my therapist (whom are two different people),
coming across articles which ignited creativity, reading copy that struck a chord, and introspection, helped me reach this conclusion. I like to tell personal stories. So I did so. I stopped focusing on what ‘works’. I began to enjoy my work a lot more.
One doesn’t work in a vaccuum. I moved to Instagram to write long copy for that’s where people are today. The exercise taught me brevity.
I did reels. That’s how new people come to you. I did the sort of reels I wanted to rather than aim for trending videos (which I don’t think I could). Full credit to my Gen Z videographer for pushing me.
My numbers didn’t move. Engagement did. My posts sparked off conversations among my TA, millennials and Gen X. I loved that.
The speedometer moved mm by mm, hit 60 without my realising it.
Thank you profusely for listening, reading, watching.
Please keep supporting me. Make uncle happy!
Ps: You can call me that if you are my niece. Jethu to be precise.
