All Good Things Come To An End

We live through each and every moment in our life making choices that shape our present and future. Some of them make our life better, some make it worse. But without a few ups and downs this life would be totally bland and hence the good, the bad and the ugly all are equally important. Such has been 2018 for me: Good, bad and ugly all rolled into one.

It started off on a very good note. I had some non-alcoholic wine with my parents in a hotel room while we were on a trip to Kerala. We made some amazing new friends over there and made some really good memories.

At that time I was working in this game development company named Talking Pixels as Tech Lead. It was one of the best experiences of my life to have worked there. When I had started my career in game development by founding my company GameEon I had never thought I'd enjoy working for someone else. But it happened! I truly enjoyed every bit of my time working at Talking Pixels.

I learned so many things working there that I normally couldn't have if I continued making games on my own. This experience helped me become more humble, curious and sharp in many ways. I had one of the best bosses who actually cared for me, Mr. Sanjay Soni. I remember clearly one such incident. It was around 4 pm and some folks had come by for a meeting. At that time I was having my driving lessons at 7 pm and I had to leave my office by 5 pm in order to reach on time. We had the meeting which lasted for an hour and then those other folks were requesting me to stay to complete the task that day itself. My boss instead convinced them to let me go as knowing how to drive is an essential life skill and should not be compromised upon. This was just one of the many incidents that I remember which taught me one thing: Care for the people who work for you so that the people who work for you will care for you.

At Talking Pixels we managed to do the impossible. We planned a trip to Goa in one day and executed it! More about it here. That was really fun. All the people that I worked with at Talking Pixels aren't just my office colleagues or friends, to me they are my family.

I fell in love. Yes, you read that right. I was in a relationship that didn't last but left behind some really beautiful memories. I went out on two trips with her and after coming back from the first trip I learnt how to drive so I could take her out for a drive whenever we met next. It was a long distance relationship so we couldn't meet much. But whatever it was, however it was, I loved it. Am I sad by the fact that it ended? Most certainly yes. However, I've grown mature enough to understand that at times it's good to let go of some things. Possessions are nice, obsessions are not. And so even if the relationship ended in one form, it took birth in another one: friendship. And friendship survives till eternity.

I traveled! I visited Munnar, Kaniyakumari, Allepy, Tosh, Kasol, Delhi, Amritsar and Goa this year. I absolutely love visiting new places and learning new things related to history. It was a delight to be able to travel right from the bottom to the top of India. I saw ice capped mountains, I saw lush green forests, I saw waterfalls, I saw beaches. It was mesmerisingly beautiful!

My job at Talking Pixels ended this year at the end of August 2018. That is when I realised how truly attached I was with the company and it's people. On my last day we went to Hoppipola and celebrated with the team. I was surprised when one of the team mates, Vivek Bhaliya, gave me a gift. There were two items: A Tom and Jerry poster and a wallet. The poster was particularly special because indeed Vivek and I had a Tom and Jerry kind of relationship. We had some really good bonding at work. I cried that day for the first time with Talking Pixels team. It was almost impossible for me to believe that I wouldn't be working with these people regularly at office anymore from the next day.

After this I was in a slight state of confusion as to what to do next. But I kind of wanted to write my next book. And so I decided to write a book on how to market mobile games. I wrote this book in about 30 days during which I also gained back control of my old game development company GameEon. I finished writing the book and got it self published on Amazon.

Once my book was finished my next task was to get things back on track for GameEon. However, by this time I was almost left with no personal money to fund my company. It was sort of a difficult time for me to go through but just in the right time a miracle happened. I got a game development contract via one of my contacts which essentially helped me establish a good amount of funding.

I worked on that project by finishing milestones on a timely basis and the client for whom I was developing the game for also took care of the expenses for the same punctually. This helped me get an office space for GameEon and also hire new people for the company. As of this writing, from next week onwards those new recruits will be joining the team at GameEon and we seem to be on track to develop some amazing games for clients as well as for ourselves.

All in all this year has taught me that everything in life is temporary. Everything including joys, sorrows, anger, sadness, madness. Every single thing. So it does not matter if you are doing extremely well or extremely dull in this moment. If you are feeling good then rejoice it, if you are feeling sad then may be take a moment or two for yourself or even cry it out but after that put on a smile and get to work to improve your situation. Because no matter how Gargantuan your problems seems right now, trust me, something or the other will work out and everything's gonna be alright. If though all good things come to an end doesn't take away anything from those good things that happened.

I am grateful for everything that happened in 2018 and am looking forward to 2019. With that been said, I'd end this post here with a small quote from the movie Forrest Gump:

Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get

- Forrest Gump (1994)