Empty Ramblings

They say our lives are a sum of our decisions. If you choose to turn left instead of right, do economics instead of MBA, work instead of PHD, stay single instead of getting married. If our lives are  a sum of our decisions then I am scared if I am making the right choices.

My life choices have led me to a cud-de-sac, I spent a portion of my day today thinking how I can get myself out. Maybe its not just the job but everything needs an overhaul... an internal makeover. Maybe the thing missing in my life is a sense of purpose. I always seem to be ready to work hard even if its not really needed.

I literally draw happiness from the smallest things.. I single event can keep me amused for the whole day. It might sound like a good thing but is it.

I have reached a point that if I get worked-up about something I am thinking this will keep me occupied for a while now.

I think my life has too much empty space and I am filling it with insignificance. On the one hand I don't want life to come and take my empty space and fill it with the troubles of life. I don't want worries and unpredictability to occupy the corners. I don't want the centre space to be taken up by events beyond my control. So on one hand I am grateful to have this space, this emptiness and this opportunity to focus on the mundane. But on the other hand I would like to find a purpose to my life. To getup thinking, I want to do this for the rest of my life.

This life of mine

Writing a post after along time... didn't have much to write for awhile. Maybe I still dont :). I realized that we shouldn't past judgement on ourselves or others. Life has too many details, who is to judge  which which ones are the highlights. Doesnt matter what you have done in life... it always ends badly. dying is never a pretty sight atleast in real life. Who is to say you did or didnt have a good life, who gets to say you succeeded or failed. Who is to judge.

The invisible daily triumphs, the moments you felt awesome about yourself, the pat on the back from a friend, spending a great morning, finding something that makes you smile.... why arent these things equally important. Who is to judge. 

Going beyond Boundaries

A Walk to Remember, is a very emotional movie. It has all the right parts, young love, transformation, terminal illness without the ugly bits. Beautiful songs, perfect pitch for emotions. But watching that movie I wondered if anyone was capable of so much love, that they are willing to love unconditionally, without jealousy and resentment. If someone was capable of giving everything up for someone without resentment, without anger. Is anybody able to love someone without judgement, without expectations. And I don't restrict this to romantic love. This question applies to all kinds of love- of a mother, child, sibling, everyone. I cant imagine how it feels to love somebody completely, that you will do anything for them... they become your top priority. They take precedent over your work, everything. They come in between you and your idea of an ideal life. And you are ok with it, you accept somebody completely. I am guessing if anyone feels this, its going to be parents. They would come closest to this stage. But even with them life seems to claw its way back and interrupt this unending love. Issues of a livelihood, practical matters become important, but parents forgo their idea of a life. They come closest to living for someone else. But even for them moments of panic come and go. When they wonder about their individuality, Their identity.

I cant imagine how it would feel like this, to be willing to let go of oneself so completely, that no sacrifice is a sacrifice anymore. To be ready to change your life. Give it all up for someone else. And to do it without resentment or fear.

I seem to cling on to material things like my job for an identity, I think I would be lost without it. I could not imagine giving it up for anyone else. I cant imagine. I need this immaterial thing to define me. I hold on to my fear, as it keeps me on a straight logical line. On the flip side it prevents me from ever doing anything adventurous, anything questioning my identity. I am actually scared of complete freedom. To live one day doing exactly what I want, telling people what I exactly feel. One day without inhibitions, endangering my identity of self. The idea itself is terrifying.

Negative post

When I see all these discovery programmes the ones on the solar system, and they talk about how big the solar system is, how big the universe is. How rare life is and then I think about my existence which is dominated by issues such as loosing my job, worrying about people in my family, worrying if I will die alone, if I will live those isolated lives. The horror stories you hear on the news of 60 year old woman found dead in her house after one week, due to foul smell. And then I see these programmes on TV which talk about our planet, our life, evolution. The amount of time it took for us to develop eyes and how that is linked to higher brain function. And then I go back to my horror scenario where I have no life, no friends. I worry about my youth, I worry one day wrinkles will come and I am still living my life just the way it is. IT is getting unbearable to live on the weekends, weekdays goes to a job I am not sure how I will keep.

What was the point of all this evolution, dogs are happier than I am. 

My mind

I am not sure if this happens to you, but I tend to visualise things when people speak to me... sometimes only. I remember my boss once saying to me during my review, "this more than a job for you". To which I was horrified.... because I had no clue. I immediately started imagining an ad for the Indian Army and I saw a soldier saluting the flag on top of a rocky hill... with trumpets playing. Recently my boss said, "you are good, you will be ready to hit the floor quickly". This basically means that I have been in the same organization for donkey ages now... so I will need very little training and can start immediately in my new team. To this my mind visualized someone grabbing my neck and banging my head to the floor.

When these visualisations occur, I go silent usually because I am between shock and a trying to control a smile. And then I continue to be silent as I missed my moment to speak and hence remain silent for an eternity. :)

Is it like this for you too??

Do you ever get the feeling that you are taking your company (that you work for ... not own because that would lead to bankruptcy) for a ride or that you are being paid to just sit in office. Paid well I might add. Is this the normal feeling... the more you study the cushier your job is. On top of that, I have been pushing for a change in profile, why am I doing that when I clearly have not interest in this line. Why am I pushing for things that don't interest me. Well I have a bit of perspective on this, the profile I am pushing for currently had come up two years back also and I didn't apply, because I thought I am not interested in this line, why bother. Then a number of my office colleagues came up to me and said, "what is wrong with you, how could you let this opportunity go?". And I told myself, no point for trying something you know you will get bored off or worse will not be able to excel in. But that strategy did not pay off as in my current profile, things turned for the worse. I missed up work and got nicely blown to bits. Then I was able to turn it around and get my act together and this opportunity came again. Again I felt now I should try, so that no one can say I didn't. But then something inside of me is a bit scared, maybe its because its a change (a very small change) and I am generally scared of change. but I needed to do something, anything. I couldn't continue meandering. my life had seemed to plateaued and I thought I must push. But I do agree its easier to live life doing something you love, rather than something you manage doing.

Most wise people say focus on the present, as that is all you have. Its still difficult thing for me to do, but I am getting better at it. I realised during bad times, when the idea of the future is terrifying, living in the present gets better. Right now my life is not plateaued, it is either on an incline upwards or steep fall downwards.

By the way do let me know if you feel your jobs are a sham? whoever reads this blog, let me know.

Short-term

As my life is currently dangling over a cliff... I have decided to focus on a few short term goals. Small stuff that I use to take for granted. There are the following:

1) watching the movies I will miss for maybe the whole of this year. I already have two I missed - crooks and yeh jawani hai deewani.

2) make short trips to Mumbai and finally place my ass firmly there. Like a flag on a battle ground, claiming this is mine.

3) learn to drive and hopefully buy a car.

4) look pretty again... aka wear nice clothes and stuff.

My wish

I don't want my life to be a tragedy... I don't want to look at my circumstance and think there is no hope. I want to think, despite the risk, despite everything pointing downwards. I would like to think that I am lucky and that I continue to be considered a funny light hearted (some would say light headed person). I no longer mind people making fun of me, I see it as a blessing that my life hasn't been so very bad... so that people don't look at me with pity.

I don't want to look at myself with pity... I want to consider myself as lucky... I would like to put myself in the creamy layer of life. There are moments in life when you know that how you react now will define the rest of your life. I am in that moment and I am praying that when I come out on the other side, my life, my ending, is happy.

Predictions

My family specializes in predicting the future, aka astrology. I don't remember a single prediction come true, except one. That is a success rate of one in thousands and thousands of predictions. I do believe we have to go through a certain set of events. Many things are out of our control, sickness, external factors over which we have no control. But I am slowly coming to the conclusion, that there is no point in knowing the future, especially if the prediction method is flawed. And to add to this what is the point, of knowing your life is going to be hell a year from now, why ruin this year. Its like doctors telling you that you have six months of good health left. Sometimes mysteries are good for us, the idea that anything is still possible, just the idea is so important for personal happiness. Why rob someone of that, why remove the element of anything is possible.

Possibilities, now that is something to be preserved, what we will go through, we have to, but its better if the possibilities are still alive. And please don't self sabotage yourself, there are enough other people to do it for you, don't add yourself to that list. Be your best friend, because we need all the help we can get. Be in your corner and punch life in the face!

Conversations

Let me introduce you to my parents:

Conversation with my dad a day before I come home for one week:

Dad: "Where are you?"

Me: "Going to the mall to buy Pork sausages"

Dad: "I assume those are for me"   (doubtful but still hopeful low tone)

Me: "Yes they are"

Dad: "I bought chicken sausages for you" (high tone)

Conversation with my mother:

Ma: "You should prepare for GMAT, join an online course"

Ma: "You should do that six month copywriters course"

Ma: "You should learn to cook, that is how you will get married"

But I was happier when I was with them, much more happier than I am now.

Facebook

I temporarily deactivated my Facebook a couple of weeks back. This is not the first time, this is the third time I have deactivated it. But this is the first time I am free from the need to check Facebook, Check who is doing what, who is saying what, who is looking beautiful, who is looking worse. End of all the nonsense. In the olden days, if I wanted to gossip, I would seek that information, for which I needed to talk to another human being. But now all I need to do is checkout someones page where they put up pictures of what they did, where they went, with who. Personal moments became public moments, validated by 100s of likes. You don't even need to talk to another person. Every time I checked my mail, Facebook said I missed some happening story, every time I logged in, it asked me what's on my mind. The funniest part is every time you deactivate your account, Facebook asks you why and suggests a website that will help you. A website to help you deal with your problem of spending too much time on Facebook. It tells you five randomly chosen people who will miss you. Sometimes it will choose someone I liked in the past and I use to wonder, does Facebook know. Sometimes I didn't really care for those five people who will miss me. I now have the phone numbers of the people I want to keep in touch with and who will hopefully miss me when I am really gone. Today, at this very moment I felt less cluttered, more in control of the information I was getting about someone, more in control of the information I was letting out about me. My mind is at ease, I don't know what is happening in other peoples lives, I don't want to know. My own life is hard enough. I do agree it is a great site to keep in touch and reconnect with people in your past, but I don't really think we where were meant to know so much more about that person's life. Everyone's life, doesn't matter how boring, is a personal journey, what is happening in someone's else's journey really shouldn't be a part of our own. Its like driving on the road, you were not meant to keep an eye on what is happening on a parallel road, you will crash otherwise.

Giving in

Last week another one of my friends left mumbai, I am kind of getting use to this isolation. It has been a recurring theme for the last four odd years! I wonder why, but even after four years of wondering, I am no closer to an answer. But this time I have decided not to reach out of my shell, I will stay firmly with in it. Take all my introvertedness and wrap it around me. No more making new friends, Just trying to keep in touch with the old ones. Keep to myself, putting less effort to make people like me. Doing the opposite of what is advised and what I generally do.

This time I will stick to people who get me and let the people who don't, let them be. I try to stay positive and keep asking my team for more work and keep myself busy. Somehow I feel good when I have a lot of work, I feel useless when I have none. Maybe that makes me a workaholic but I feel more balanced when I have something to do, to take up the time that I seem to have. People say life is short, But for me I feel the gift of time is going wasted. I waste my days like a rich spoiled kid wastes his dad's money. Let see if this works. I have also come up with new philosophy if I foresee an uncomfortable situation, I will save myself the misery, I will make my life easier and avoid it. I was the kind that took the uncomfortable situation head on, but no more, I embrace the shell philosophy, at least for now. Give myself a break. I am also going to go a little easy on the self criticism, as I noticed that other people see it as a permission to criticize me.

There are situations while you are in it you know its not a big deal, you know you will look back at it with a light heart. But while you are in it you cant help yourself, you cant help but take it seriously. It is like when you trying something for the first time, you are fully focused on it but then after a point of time it becomes a habit. Right now my full focus is on it and I know I will laugh after a few years (let up hope it is just a few), but right now I will let myself focus on the  situation fully and do everything in my control to make it easy for me. No more grin and bear it, no more pretend happy, no more. From now on I run, run from the situation. When I feel up to it, I will grin and bear it, but for now I leave the grinning to other people.

Beautiful song by outlandish - walou            (the word apparently mean nothing)

There has to be more...

There has to be more to this life, more than the rat race, more than rejection, more than the sum of our fears. What is the point of this miracle if we keep looking at what next. There must be more to this life, than people who don't accept you. There must be more than just getting through the week to the weekend. There has to be more to this life than who is ahead and who is left behind. Why were we given the ability to hope, to imagine, to dream even in a prison. To believe tomorrow will be better despite so many disappointing days. To dare to love, despite heartache, to leap in spite of fear. To believe that there is more to us than meets the eye. There has to be more to this life.

Meaningless

This life is meaningless.

Each day

Each breath

Each moment

Focus

Be grateful you are still alive.
Every time you go one step back in the rat race be grateful... u are still alive.
Be grateful even if your heart breaks.... u are still alive and beating.
Even if everything collapses on your head... be grateful you still can feel pain.
Be grateful even if you fall from cloud nine... u still can feel shame... u are still alive.
In the end all that matter is you ... and you are still alive.

The wishlist

things to do before I die:

1) paragliding

2) Going to Dharamshala

3) preparing one full gourmet meal, with a beautifully baked cake TLC style

4) work on a movie making set

5) manage the launch of a product

6) be my own boss

7) travel anywhere- be it Mumbai or other parts of India.

8) Have my friends nearby, all of them tend to go to the US.

9) see my sister the way she use to be  when I was in school, razor sharp and ambitious bordering on arrogant.

10) find someone to spend my life with. Especially someone whose pants don't fall off on seeing a pretty giggly female.

11) see my sister get married.

12) see my mother less worried.

13) have lots and lots of days where I look forward to getting-up.

14) have a day devoid of fear.

15) be surrounded by people who understand me and don't see me as an oddity. 

16) spend the majority of my life doing something I love.

17) not dying alone. As I know god's track of misunderstanding, I would want to clarify this does not mean dying in a mass accident!

tik tok wait for me

There are many secrets that we cant share with anyone but ourselves. Secret desires, hidden truths, unacceptable flaws, things you cant share even with your friends, who will not judge you. There are sides to me which don't come in the definition of good, but I need to ignore them or keep them hidden. Because once revealed, I will lose my place in the category of nice, which I hold on to with my dear life.

I try to view myself in the most simple fashion, I keep complications at bay, I avoid grey areas with a watchful eye and stick to the white side.  Holding my tongue, because I know those words will be a little too harsh and wrong. Everyone has flaws, an ugly side which no amount of understanding can ever accept, except by your own self.

Of late I am beginning to feel my age, there is a heaviness which remains constantly. The giddy feeling of being on the edge of my skin is going. I feel firmly within my skin, a little too comfortable. I am beginning to own my own. This scares me, I am not ready for the next stage of life, I want my youth to remain. There are so many things I want to do, so many worries, I want to be able to worry about. I want to feel uncomfortable, to feel thin skinned again. I want small events to mean more to me again. I am not ready to be content thirty year old, not yet. I want my desires, I want my stupidity, they made me feel each day.

Time does fly away quickly, I hardly can feel how the last four years of working have passed. I cant account for the days, for the years. My resume will tell you where I was, but I cant tell you what I was doing, let alone where am I headed. Every time I talk to my family, I feel I should be more in charge, knowing exactly the plan by now, being a pillar of support. But I have hardly ever wandered off the beaten path, to give up that option of going down the unknown. I have always chased certainty, at the cost of ever finding the secluded path. Always scared of what next, happy to be at step two, for too long.

I am not ready.

There is a saying....

... that if god closes one door he opens another. Well he seems to be shutting all the doors for me slowly taking away all the people I care about, my close friend is now firmly on another continent, my family in another part of the state and me firmly and completely isolated. I am still waiting for that other door to open.

27 years

I was thinking of all the landmark changes I have witnessed in my 27 years of life. the kind that marks the end of an era and I realised that 27 years might only be significant to me because its three short of 30! But I have witnessed many land marks in my lifetime -

Cassettes to CD: Wikipedia says that CDs were commercially available by 1982, i was yet to land on earth by then, but i clearly remember using cassettes in my early school days. I remember having a cassette playing Walkman and thinking this is cool. But it was replaced by a three CD player music system, which I also thought was cool. The Ipod was introduced when i was 16years old, I had recently woken up to the concept of fellows :), while the world of music changed for ever.

Nokia Phones to every other kind of phone: In my college days 90% or even more people used nokia, Samsung was still a rarity  and only became a novelty after i was in Masters course. The touch screen phones I only became aware of it after I started working. But before that, phones moved from compact key pad to a qwerty key pad. The Iphone was unveiled in 2007, I was still in Delhi doing my masters in economics just trying to pass my exams, when some guy who had started a company named after a fruit, changed the phone business forever. While I was lost in a haze of insecurity in D school, the door was being opened for Samsung to give apple a run for its money.

Internet - dial-up to broadband to wireless: In school my family applied for a dial-up student internet connection. No images only text on a black screen. My sister knew how to search stuff on the net and I use to sit beside her. It was more like Dos prompt. Everything took time to load. Then came the dial-up connection with images. It was slow but there was nothing else to compete with it, so we all adjusted, did other things while it was still loading. I still remember the sound of the dial-up connection, its the kind that they show in the matrix (part I) for those who were not born to see it. Then came broadband, it was still expensive so I use to go to the internet cafe. My 12th class results were seen in an internet cafe. My dad went to see it, while i stayed at home, he called me and said 78%, you passed! I broke down in tears, it was technically the highest score I had scored in my school life. I was the kind that failed in three subjects in first term, then two in second term and then by some miracle passed in third. So while I realised that my options post school were considerably limited, the world was embracing for the information age! Down went the books, up went the uploads.

Computers: from Kb to gb:  My first computer was an off-white colour box with a large CPU, which needed a strong desk to keep it. I use to play battle chess and the man game. it was a windows computer with limited colours. Just a CD drive, nothing else. I was just trying to go from class six to class seven, while the computer entered our homes, never to leave. As I started to put on weight the moment I passed out of school, computers started becoming thinner and thinner. They went from three piece to two piece to one single piece - a laptop. My family bought a laptop when I was in d school, it was the second semester, I was trying to survive game theory. I no longer need a whole desk for a desktop, my breakfast table is all that is needed for my Imac and a lap for my laptop. I started working, completed two years of working when i got my Imac, so as I went from zeropati to lakhpati, Steve jobs and his company was already earning billions.

The god particle:  CERN or the European Organisation for Nuclear Physics, located on the Franco-Swiss border has discover the Higgs particle last week. While I was in depression over living alone again, physicist proved the existence of the particle that gives matter mass, only after which gravity can operate and the universe was formed. While I sat in office and dug European eco data, scientist recreated conditions which existed one billionth of a second after the big bang!

CERN: The Large Hadron Collider

The big-bang

27 years might just be an embarrassment for me, but its been an incredible period in history. I know I have missed out a lot of other land marks, but these were the ones that came to my mind as I looked back. I cant even imagine what lies ahead as I move towards 50! 

Things I am grateful for

I always list things which I am scared of, its almost automatic and i am very good at it. The list goes something like -

i am not good at my job.

I am not comfortable of speaking in front of people.

Due to above two I might lose my job.

I have to face the very real reality of living alone forever.

Losing someone  in my family.

I will get fatter. This was initially get fat but with time the starting point changed!

Post which I successfully feel scared and lousy. So i though i would list a couple of things I am grateful for, not good at, but grateful for -

My family, they are still here, even though they are not in the best of health.

my health, i do put on weight extremely easily but I am grateful for a healthy body, that becomes better when I really need it. I mean my asthma disappeared when i joined my master's course, I would have never made it otherwise.

My job, it sucks but i am payed well. I have lady boss so I cant be harassed to the full extent of the term.

Friends, even though they all go away, US seems to be a popular destination. But I still have a bunch of people other than my family who wish me well. Also when one goes another comes to my rescue.

Mumbai, if you have to be a girl and want to be relatively free and in India, Mumbai is a blessing.

Money has never been plenty but it has never been scarce.

A house in the middle of nowhere, but it is always a bailout option to run to in my weakest moments.

I have always had good people to work with.

My sister, who never fought with me and who probably never wants to live with me thanks to my temper, but still loves me.