Bloom Where you are planted

Although I work in the IT industry, I am not an IT person – I am a non techie – someone with a humanities background stuck in an IT company –When I started learning the language (Japanese) I had visions of myself wearing ethnic clothes from Fab India, doing literary translations and discussing Indo- Japanese art and literature over coffee. The only thing that has come true is that I wear ethnic clothes. Instead of doing literary translations I translate technical specifications and instead of discussing literature over coffee I spent my time with so called techie nerds who think Yasunari Kawabata is not worth knowing because he didn’t write an idiots guide to Java programming.
I wrote this post earlier about being stuck in a job we don’t really like but the truth is that in this country literary translation jobs are as rare as unicorns and what gets the bread butter on your table are usually jobs which we don’t like 100%.
My mom had a poster on her office wall that said [Bloom where you are Planted]. She always wanted to be a doctor but due to some quirk of fate, she ended up a teacher. Once when I was cribbing to her about my job, she told me how badly she wanted to study medicine and how disappointed she was when she couldn't. But she said “Once I was a teacher I put all my disappointments aside and tried my very best to be a damn good one”. And she has whole generations of grateful students to show for her dedication and commitment.
And so as I toil and tumble, and grumble about my job, I try to Bloom Where I am planted.