Priyanka Gupta

About a decade ago, I graduated with a B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IITD). In 2016, five years into an evolving investment banking career, I quit my job. Now I’m an itinerant writer. On my blog On My Canvas I write about alternative ways of living and exploring. My aim is to live by asking why rather than blindly following someone before me. And while I’m out challenging the norms, or if we may say, looking at things more with curiosity rather than habit or tradition, I share and write what I experience and learn. I read a lot of science and books (and science books), too. Personal growth ideas, cruising through the choppy waters of our emotional selves, writing tips, cultural biases, meditations from individual books, and travel narratives — you will find them all on my blog. Welcome!

Thinking of a Career Change at 30? I Quit My Job, Too

Why I Quit My Job, Shelved My IIT Computer Science Degree, and Started Writing

A software engineer by education, I was once a coder and an investment banker, but now I write full-time.

In this essay I talk about my six-year-long journey of thinking of a career change, why and how I quit my job, and finally went through a career change at 30.

If you are looking for a career change in 30s, I would recommend you read this piece for I have given an honest account of my own journey from coding to writing.

Let’s read.

a woman photographer clicking a fish used as feature image for the article on why being bored with work isn't normal

Why We Believe Work Is Boring, Why Is It Wrong To Think So and How to Fix It

A lot of us get bored with work. But we think that it is okay to get bored at our jobs and we continue working. In this article I unfurl why we expect work to be boring, why it shouldn’t be, and how does this belief harms us.

Why Do We Think That Being Bored With Work Is Normal

We always say that work is supposed to be boring — because adults separate the idea of fun and work early on for us.

Since childhood, we are trained to think that work sucks. We are told that we should play all we want for we would have to work one day. We see elders going to their jobs, but they don’t seem to have fun — they say that work is something they have to do even if they get bored at work and don’t enjoy it.

No one ever mentions having a good time as part of a profession/job, and we start believing that work is a dull thing grown-ups do to earn money(the more the better) irrespective of how they feel about their profession.

Now no one can ever enjoy 100% of her work 365 days a year(I’m happy if you do) but the problem arises when we are mostly bored of work and do what we do to only get money.

We witness enough close people following the idea that work is boring.

My father opened his shop every day of the week except Tuesdays. He never complained about his business, but he never cared if he enjoyed his work or not. He was only concerned about making enough to raise his family. Our teachers, relatives, elder siblings all seemed to pursue a career to earn at their maximum potential.

Fun was never discussed in the context of work and even frowned upon. In his book Le Petite Prince, the French philosopher Antoine de Saint-Exupéry raises similar thought-provoking questions about adults keeping their matters of consequence disjoint from (and above) fun.

You want to work or all you want to do is have fun? Someone would say when we created a game out of a mathematics problem.

From our younger years to adulthood, we grow up concreting the idea that something we enjoy can’t become our career.

But this isn’t true. Let me tell you why.

flamingoes bolivia salar de uyuni pictures

An Unforgettable Trip to the Salt Flats of Bolivia

Uyuni salt flats is a mystifying place. You must have seen the regular mountains, rivers, glaciers, deserts, but before the Salar de Uyuni, I had never seen salt flats, at least not as gigantic as the one in Uyuni. The Uyuni Salar are the world’s largest salt flat, extending over 9,000 square km.

On top of the vastness, the Salar del Uyuni is special because it is high up near the Andes at a height of 3,600 meters above sea level.

When you stand upright in these bizarre salt flats of Bolivia, you see a salt desert billowing into the infinity and beyond. The copper mountains with the mix of an occasional snowy volcano try their best to fringe the horizon. Walking on the Salar could be the closest we can get to walking on the moon.

castro stilt houses island chiloe chile (1)

My Beloved Chilean Island, Chiloé

The island of Chiloé in South Chile will be marked in my memories forever. When I applied to the English Open Doors program in Chile, I didn’t realize that the program would give me some of the best times of my life.

Run by the government of Chile and the United Nations, English Open Doors invites international volunteers to teach English to government school students in Chile. As a near-native English speaker, I could apply for the volunteer program.

Until I landed in Santiago, I didn’t know that I would be placed in Chiloé. When the program coordinator told me that I had to teach students in Castro, the capital of Chiloé, I ran back to my room and Googled Castro.

Rainbow-like stilt houses lined up against an azure shore. Velvety-green hills filled my screen. Stout lambs grazed over those hillocks in groups. Steam smoked out of a chimney in a hut-shaped roof.

Wooden churches were flaunted in abundance. Legendary and mythical were the keywords on-screen.

Azure rivers, dense national parks, fresh seafood brought a grin to my face.

fisherman fishing alone doing his work (1)

Lessons on Succeeding at Work From the Accomplished and Joyous Writer Ruskin Bond

One of India’s most popular writer Ruskin Bond was born in 1934 in Dehradun, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Ruskin’s parents—both British—got divorced when he was four. After a few years of the divorce, his father put him in a boarding school in Shimla for he couldn’t keep the little boy with him.

Ruskin was only eleven when his father died of the plague in the second world war in Calcutta. After his father’s death, Ruskin continued studying in the same school in Shimla and lived intermittently in Dehradun with his grandmother and mother. When Ruskin was seventeen, he went to London to get a job there and work. His mother had insisted him to build a career there.

But neither did Ruskin like London nor did he enjoy his job. He wanted to become a writer since he was a little boy.

peruvian ladies observing local life top things to do in peru

Covid-Related Travel Update Jan 2025 – Peru is now open to international travelers. And as per Supreme Decree 130-2022-PCM in Peru’s official gazette El Peruano, Covid entry requirements and all other regulations and restrictions were lifted. You can also look at the official website of the Peru government for more information. My guide to Peru Travel Visa would …

collage of backpacking in south america images

Covid-Related Travel Update 2025: Though every country would have its own requirements and rules, most South-American countries are now open to travel. Please check the individual country’s official government or tourism website to know the specific rules.

What does this guide to traveling in South America contain?

a cat sitting in the balcony alone on the house on a beach

Coronavirus has slowed everyone down. People are staying indoors. Schools and colleges are shut. Offices have been closed down, and employees have been asked to work from home.

Borders are getting closed. Travel is forbidden, somewhere by law and somewhere by conscience. Some are still traveling and facing the wrath from the strangers on the internet.

Claude_Monet,_Adolphe_Monet_in_the_Garden_of_Le_Coteau_at_Sainte-Adresse,_1867 used as feature image for article on daily small habits

Habits automate at least forty percent of our daily life¹. Most of the things we do are habitual actions, not the outcome of conscious decisions.

Covid-Related Travel Update Jan 2025 – Peru is now open to international travelers. And as per Supreme Decree 130-2022-PCM in Peru’s official gazette El Peruano, Covid entry requirements and all other regulations and restrictions were lifted. You can also look at the official website of the Peru government for more information. My guide to tourist visa for Peru for Indians would be helpful.

An Adventure to the Manu National Park, also known as Parque Nacional Manu, in the Amazon Rainforest Peru

Table of Content (TOC)

My Fascination with the Amazon Rainforest and Deciding to go the National Park Manu, Peru

Amazon, the world’s most biodiverse tropical rainforest, covers nine South American countries — Brazil (60% of the Amazon), Peru (13%), Colombia (10%), and the rest lies within Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana.

As a little girl, I used to see the Amazon forest on television. My parents and I watched the National Geographic and Discovery channel every evening for hours. During dinner we switched channels because my mother couldn’t eat while the lions and jackals devoured their dead deers. But as she took her last bite, papa would put the Discovery channel back on. And the dense jungles of Karnataka, ochre shrub lands of Rajasthan, and the most mysterious of them all — the Amazon — would spellbind us.

Suggested Read: 27 Pictures of Nature That Asks Us to Protect It

unfocused mind going in all directions without any specific goal

What does this guide on Why are Goals Important contain?

What is Productivity?

Productivity is a measure of doing things efficiently. It is the rate at which you deliver work.

We adults constantly worry about our productivity.

I wake up to a long to-do list. By the end of the day, I have only picked a few items from the top. Even after working all day long, everything important still seems to be in the queue.

Rather than thinking about what I have done, I think of the work I haven’t done.

One blog post is published. But what about its marketing? I made that phone call. But what about the email I had to send?

Some days, I don’t work with a task list. On such days, I am hazed in the cloud of things to do and cannot focus on one thing.

Pending tasks hover in the sultry evening, and then it is a never-ending game of self-blame.

belligundi waterfalls sharavathi valley shimoga karnataka

From Bangalore to Shimoga – In search of the Belligundi waterfalls in Sharavathi Valley

The first time I came to Bengaluru in 2010, everyone told me that this tech city is the base to explore the green Karnataka state.

Back then my knowledge about Karnataka was limited to the first page of Google that showed a standard list of destinations in the state: Coorg, Hampi, Chikamagalur, Gokarna, Ooty, Mysore, etc. My batchmates from IIT Delhi who had done their third-year internship in Bengaluru had specifically told me that there are a lot of water bodies and waterfalls near Bangalore. Though the phrase water bodies had sounded strange, I was thrilled to move to Bengaluru.

To know more about the things to do and places to see in Karnataka, I browsed through its pictures online. Mighty tigers, shy leopards, sloth bears, colonial and heritage buildings such as the Bangalore Vidhan Soudha and Mysore palace, lush tea and coffee estates, tall palms and coconuts fringing the highways, sunrises from hills, caves, turquoise beaches, foreigners in groups, women in heavy traditional gold jewelry — the plethora of pictures that came up when I searched about Karnataka gave me an idea about the state.

Frankly, I was still clueless about what I was going to experience here.

My decade-long romance with Karnataka has enriched me both physically and spiritually. Now I have a long list of popular and offbeat places of Karnataka I’ve seen and experienced. But when I discover places like the Belligundi waterfall, I wonder if I would ever be able to say that I have seen enough of Karnataka.