Divide your earnings into three parts

Writing a personal blog for ten years, you tend to expose more than just your thoughts and emotions to the world. Slowly, in subtle ways and occasional nods, you reveal the life you live as well. Your work atmosphere, people at home, the land you live in and yes, even the food you eat, are all part of what makes up your story. And as I flip through the pages of old, it is nice to see the evolution too - from what the blog once was to what it is now.

One of the (relatively) recent things that popped up probably over the last two years only has been a new found love for traveling and meeting people across the country. You would be hard pressed to find anything other than my hometown and cities of education (Pune and Mangalore) in the first three-fourth of this blog. Life just had such a tight grip and kept squeezing month after month out of me until one day I looked back and suddenly, the blog that had started in 2005 in Mangalore was right there once more even in 2012! Seven years of my life had disappeared in the interim and I found myself a thirty plus man who had just spent a lifetime behind books or inside operation theatres. I had a passport at home which had expired without a single stamp on it!

I would perhaps not have done a lot about it had I not read (and drooled!) over the 2013 America Trip post of my dear blogger friend Nisha of Simmering Sunshine. She and I go way back and are part of the golden oldies circle of the Indian blogosphere. I love watching her travel and living a vicarious life through her holiday posts.


In this particular post, Nisha ends with these lines -
"After this vacation, all I want to say is... divide your earnings in three parts. One, for necessities. Two, save as much as you can for old age. Then use the rest to travel beyond your city. There is no better gift you can give yourself." 

Those words struck a chord in me. I knew she was absolutely right in what she was saying and I also knew it was something I had not been doing in my own life. I actually told her the same that very day in her blog and we would discuss it further on Facebook.

But the thing is I followed her advice. I stopped living as a 24/7 doctor simply because I knew that there would be no end to it. There would always be patients in hospitals. But there were other doctors. I could not keep bending over backwards and living inside hospitals endlessly just to watch my own life pass me by.

Book launches, car launches, off roading experiences, trying out exotic foods,
Meeting celebrities, meeting old friends, making new friends,
photobombing people, being photobombed, weddings & birthdays,
flying, driving, riding, trying out exotic food... All Done!

So instead, I decided to be the best darn doctor I could be while I was at work but make sure that when I was off work, I was OFF WORK! I started taking trips across the country and meeting up with people I knew from days gone by - schoolmates, college mates, doctors and most importantly, my new family of fellow bloggers whose thoughts I read everyday but had never met before.

I have traveled more in the last 2 years of my life than I have in the previous 20. And I want to thank my fellow blogger buddy, Nisha, for that. Her words made a lot of sense to me that day and I always encourage my colleagues and friends to do the same.

In your hurry to earn enough to live a successful life, don't forget to actually LIVE and see the beauty of the world around you. Travel while you are young and still able to enjoy it all.