Life In A Lateral Orbit

So for all those of who’ve even been remotely considering entrepreneurship as an option at some time or the other – I am sure you’ve had your dose your stories about those who mortgaged their jewellery and their houses to build their startups. I still don’t have my heart-wrenching mortgage story yet and hopefully won’t have one.

I am better off without it!

But one things for sure, in a way, I have had to mortgage my life the way I knew it. And I am not even talking about lifestyle here. That’s a given obvious.

I think the first thing that’s changed dramatically is the composition of my friend circle. From being surrounded by my golfing buddies, corporate friends, some school and B-school friends and colleagues who keep flying in and out of countries - I find myself relating only to a completely different set of friends. All of a sudden I have no office-politics stories, no golf vacation stories, no fancy travel stories and hardly any views on politics and economics (which is staple conversation of the employed).

Also, these friends also find it difficult to sustain the conversation with me beyond the cursory – “How’s business?”

My choice of alcohol has changed strictly to the affordable Old Monk and the right side of the menu card has also begun attracting my attention. Bottom line, my friends who I enjoy hanging out with are also startups and my friends at work.

The other critical change in orbit happens with family. They begin getting used to missing you at most times. Till such time when they don’t really miss you as much. You usually begin going off the list of wedding invites in the family. Some of them remember that you were in the city that they traveled to, only after going home to their city. The number of calls on birthdays certainly go down.

Parents are funny bunch. They are somehow the only ones who don’t seem to change much and nothing much seems to change with your relationship with them. Anxiety is perhaps the only new variable at play here occasionally.

However, clearly max orbital changes happen with the relationship with spouse. He/she clearly bears the biggest brunt of the random tectonic shifts in your everyday life. The biggest learning that you acquire is to make the best use of time – quality over quantity. Every now and then you have to deal with his/her depleting patience levels. But then you really cannot let the only stable element in your life go wrong.

Angerpreneur, everyday struggles with all these orbital changes and yet again wishes somebody helped him brace for all these. Life in a different orbit!