As I have been sharing this blog with others, a select few have asked me what is up with the name. What did it mean? Why did I choose it?
Well well well, this post is me thinking out loud and typing my thoughts on these questions.
The Flashback:
I have always been an inquisitive and creative mind since my childhood. During my school days, Math and Science were the subjects that needed understanding, reasoning, and practice. Social was my least favorite – blame it on the teachers.
As part of my languages, I learned 4 – English, Hindi, Telugu, and Bengali.
I loved the language classes as most of our creativity was expressed in these classes through essay writing, debates, elocution, poetry, etc.
This is when I was introduced to writing. With just a given topic, we had to write down all the thoughts occurring in our mind related to the topic and structure it in a certain format that is readable and appealing to the reader.
I was an average speaker as my mind kept wandering (even it does now) and at any given point in time 100 thoughts rushed in my mind. Putting them into speech was kind of a challenge for me. On the other hand, writing calmed my mind and structured my thoughts. I always stood out in my class with my essays. That’s how the journey with writing began.
Moving on to college, I joined the events committee. At any cultural event in college, I was part of the scriptwriting group. I also actively wrote for the college magazine and designed invites for events.
It was in college that I came up with a pen name – Sassy Soul.
Those were the days with limited internet exposure and no smartphones allowed in hostels. I came across the word ‘Sassy’ while my friends were discussing a random topic at the Mess. I instantly felt this was going to be my word, and that’s how I started writing with that name. In fact, my very first WordPress account was with the same name (though I don’t have it anymore). Sometimes you feel an instant connection with some words that you hear and this was one such word that I couldn’t let go of.
The Present:
After starting my professional career in IT, I became distant from writing. I wrote quite occasionally. My 9-9 took all the space in my head and there wasn’t any space for thoughts. Until last year, I wrote random stuff on my old blog and didn’t consider writing seriously.
Then came a time when I fell in love with Testing. I started reading and learning about it. I published my notes, learnings, and articles mostly on LinkedIn. As I read blogs of other senior testers (Influential and Impactful bloggers) in the field, a thought struck my mind – What if all these people just learned and mastered testing and never published anything? How would we ever get to know about them and their learnings, knowledge, ideas, experiments, thoughts, etc. if they hadn’t written it down?
That’s when I decided I need to have a place of my own which would be a collection of my thoughts, ideas, learnings, and musings.
Why Explorist?
While my friend and I were looking for a lot of domain names for quite a few days, I couldn’t fixate on any. I wanted this blog to have content on testing as well as on general topics. I wanted a name that could fit both. As Archimedes would have it, while brushing my teeth I was struck by lightning and a word occurred to my mind. I immediately jumped in front of my laptop to check if it was available. As they say, things align when they are meant to be, and that’s how I got started with this name – Explorist. This is the one word that describes me.
Experiencing, Exploring, and Experimenting are at the core of testing, and so is life. We are born into a limited life with unlimited possibilities/opportunities. Let’s keep learning through the 3 E’s every single day 🙂
As an Explorist, I’m here to share with you my experiences, explorations, and experiments in life and in testing.
Let me know what would be that one word with which you could relate yourself to. Have you found it? If not, keep thinking, the eureka moment could be Now! 🙂
Thanks for reading 🙂