Sketch: The Dood

                  This is story of my friend. He calls himself “Dood", as he doodles.

My Mid life crises hit me hard. I was always loner by nature; never had many friends, few family members, mediocre career, not much money in the bank either.

I realised that after 20 years of my career, I hadn't achieved much. There are not many people in the world who knew about me, even about my existence.  Whatever I was doing at my job was not going to make any difference to the world, or to anybody. If I die, nothing matters. I lost interest in doing things. It was dead end for me. Nothing made sense. I started getting suicidal thoughts.

Whatever I did, my brain told me, “Why bother?" Many people tried to advise me. But it didn't matter. In my life, for the first time I didn't care about others' opinions.

One day, I doodled something on paper. I realised that I like to doodle. So, I doodled more. I felt happy. I did my nine to five job, but whenever I got time, I doodled.  After few days, I put them for sale on several platforms. I wasn't expecting anybody to buy them. In fact, it was like I was craving for rejection, just so that I can get that "I don't care" feeling.

I started wearing whatever I like. I started doing things that I liked. I realized that I am the most important person in my life. It lifted a lot of weight from my mind. I felt free.

After almost one year, somebody bought one of my doodles as a company logo. Did not get me much money, but I felt good. I gave the money to charity. So, things haven't changed much in my life. But my attitude has changed. My biggest achievement in my life is my change of outlook from negative to positive. I started meeting many unfortunate people through my charity work. People who don't have roof on their head, people with terminal illness. I realized how blessed I am, to have this kind of life. Now I have stopped taking things for granted. There is lot in life out there, more than promotion, bad boss, and the dirty office politics.

"It is up to us, whether to be happy for what we have, or to be unhappy for what we don't have."