Me? Write?

I have spent 12 years in the publishing business. Eleven in the same publishing house. I got appraised every year and for special skills I wrote, "I read and I write." That is all I do. It is all I know how to do. I feel most alive when I write. Like an active participant in my own destiny and the ideology of the people around me.

I am a typical younger child - more independent, more self contained, probably more selfish. I could retreat into myself and my world of books and was reading Ukranian folk tales to myself before I was 6. (It's what i got for topping first grade). As I got older, I read more. To have a long chat with me, my mum had to lock the book I was reading in her closet! And I went through all the phases. Enid Blyton was my first real friend. Famous Five, Secret Seven, Nancy Drews.... I even recall a Summer of Mills & Boons. Thankfully that didn't last!

I think the only thing for me to do was to write. My first poem was when i was 9. I still remember most of it. But I fell in love with prose and then feature writing. Essays, articles, papers. As my father spoke, I wrote. Turn of phrase was accorded special importance and I matured out of writing for myself and understood 'my writing as read by others'. And then I met the Post Feminist editor of Elle who gave me my first job.

Lifestyle writing consumes you. I have in my career worked for a fashion magazine, an upscale women's journal, launched a bridal magazine and edited a luxury lifestyle magazine that created an interesting trend within the fashion/ lifestyle magazines that existed around me. And last year after 11 years of taking my first job, I was asked to shut the magazines and clear out. Over a weekend. You know those pictures you saw after the Lehman Brothers fall, of people walking out with a box of their stuff - I had 5 cartons full. I practically lived at the office.

Last year, I went digital. You can't look back, you know. The numbers, the passivity, the environmental responsibility does not let you miss the feel of paper...much. At 31 I was a relic. There were 23 year olds who rolled their eyes before I had left the room. I was lucky to be working with some of the smartest kids of the digital block - in content, technology, creative, apps, gaming and most importantly marketing and distribution.

And I learnt some of life's lessons with the shift. I found scale. All the boundaries of exclusivity fell away and I became more inclusive as a human being. There is more power in participating in the marathon than there is in the most upscale private gym in the country. The global village was a clever 'turn of phrase' till I became a Netizen. I am one of the millions - more power to us!