Monk! I need a Monk!

Well, I've lost almost all of the motivation I had under my tray in this big ordeal called life. I mean, I am not that drugs kinda person. So I have nothing too specific to attribute this one to. I have been riding with this level of motivation (or lack thereof) for about a month and a bit longer now. I am part of the many crazy people on earth who love their cars. Old or New. To add to what I have been going through in the recent past, I ran into a mind block this morning when I drove my car alongside the apartment gate and bought myself a rather nasty scratch on its nice and glittery red clothing. Like the way J.D.Salinger puts it in his epic novel, I think I'd rather have a Goddamn Horse instead of this one.

The feeling of nihilism is one that is a superlative of what I am currently going through. I know it is not that bad with me. I did try out a couple of those traditional approaches of getting over these mind blocks. Once I came out of it like I never cared about anything in life. I thought there wasn't much to worry about in terms of job, love, money et. al. But then, these things grow upon you. Even a slight-ish impact on your state of mind like the one I had this morning is good enough to add salt to the wound. The  picture of those long white marks keep flashing in my mind ever since and I am not able to get out of it.

These phases in one's life, by and large, tend to make one lose hope on oneself. You can go out under the sun and start dancing to your favorite tune or sit down on a couch at the bar and sip your favorite whisky with soda. But it doesn't work like any sort of magic. I've tried drinking 2 cups of tea each time I go to the corner store. I've tried losing my mind to some lengthy hours of cleaning ordeals around the house. I've even tried to go out to the beach to untangle my mind from what is currently holding it. I know these things aren't going to give any motivation to fill the void that I am referring to. But I expected them to get my mind out of the logjam. In vain.

Socializing/Finding someone to love have been agreed upon as good options out of these nasty situations. But in my case they aren't helping either. I kind of have a screen in front of my facade that filters the good energy out of what touches upon me in day to day life. It is not about the career/job. It is not about the lack of love. It is about something else that I am trying to figure out. I always believed the culprit in my case was, more often than not, the idle time that has filled most of my agenda sheet in the last months. But trying to keep me engrossed in conversations didn't help either. So I am ruling that out of question too. One intriguing thing that is probably still inscrutable to me is the fact that in this period, markedly, I had a number of unrelated and random dreams. Different and more in number than usual. I think it comes down to saying that the mind is preoccupied with something else and is not able to negotiate with its subconscious brother.

The emotional snapshots that these dreams give me are probably arising out of a good number of unanswered questions in the mind that the subconscious of mine is not able to handle. These blocks have been a burden for quite some time for me. And they've more or less made me retire from a few things that I used to keep myself busy with in life. I am totally idle. I think I need some food for my brain, mind and body.

A Tag, New or Old.

I really don't know if this is a new tag or an old one. I don't even remember if someone really tagged me with this topic to write on. But since I can't think of anything worthwhile to write about, I am going to do this one. Here it goes....

20 years ago I......
1. was a chubby little kid who peed on the sofa more often than I drank milk from the feeding bottle.
2. went to my first school and started my first interactions with people outside my parents.

10 years ago I......
1. was busy with my coin collection and stamp collection and wanted radium stars on the ceiling of my bedroom
2. got my first real infatuation (stress on the adjective "real") and started doing combined studies just for the heck of it (She was the first ranker in class) .
3. got my first bicycle and loved the evening rides on it.
4. was a die hard fan of cricket and loved the after school games of cricket.

5 years ago I......
1. was enjoying my early days at college and loved life away from home..in a remote village in Rajasthan.
2. was quite sure I had committed the usual blunder of joining the rat race for an engineering degree
3. had football (Manchester United to be specific) as my first priority in life and loved the psychic fan in me.
4. just got to know that relationships are not made, they just happen.

3 years ago I......
1. loved the long nights alone in my hostel room and the endless sessions(all inclusive, games and more)
2. was confused about what I wanted to do with my life

1 year ago I......
1. was busy filing my first tax returns and fabricating all proof documents.
2. was already fed up with my first job and was in a clearly confused state as to what I wanted in my career next.
3. was trying hard for a B School admit which never happened.
4. was already ruing the fact that I had to work in the software industry.

So far this year I......
1. have been doing nothing worthwhile.
2. have got a good amount of bad news to worry about.
3. have followed the routine of eating, sleeping, eating again, sleeping again, eating yet again....think you get the broad idea here...
4. have seen a few movies in the theatre after a long hiatus on the cinema front.

Yesterday I......
1. had a really tough time with the procedures one has to follow in this country after a minor road bump.
2. did not touch my bed time book for the first time in many days.
3. was on the phone for longer hours than usual.

Today I...
1. thought hard on what I should write on my blog.
2. have taken half a day off from work.
3. lunched twice (once at home, once out on a treat)

Next year I......
1. will definitely know what I want in life
2. will watch movies like crazy and catch up on many bygone box office hits.
3. will spend my money on a new car.

P.S : Comments like,

From tomorrow you......
1. will stop writing crap like this and bore the shit out of people

ARE NOT ALLOWED in this space. People who can't control their fingers from typing something of that description, please hit the red cross on the top right immediately.

Of Corporate Worlds, Software dummies and CATs

So yes, once again it is the usual set of chores. I start feeling the need to write after a good few decades and then I realize that I have lost that thing for writing these days, and that leads me to a state of limbo where I wonder what topic to write on, what would make a good blog post..what for the humor bit in it.. et al. and then decide to write something about some shit in football or give some tangential funda to the poor readers who chance upon this blog. Deja Vu. I went through such emotions for a couple of days now and after good amount of deliberation, decided.... better not to write at all....

One may wonder what the hell made me write this shit then....Folks, the answer is "frustration". If the thing has already put you off, please hit the red cross button to your top right...Alternatively, for a detailed description of this thing called frustration...read on.....

Frustration, taken as a wholesome feeling, is definitely one of the frequent visitors in a common college passout's life. I mean...you see a chic on the road and think she is the only woman in this world and start wondering which of her wonderful features strikes you so hard that makes you think she is the apple of your eye and all that sort of thing when you suddenly realize there is this specimen, 6 feet high and 3 feet wide that's acting like her escort more or less, staring at you intently. This gross situation, I would label as one that leads to frustration, anger fear etc. Or to take another instance...you watch a bollywood flick where Sallu bhai unbuttons his T shirt to show his six pack and hottie Katrina's eyes widen and she falls for him and they go to Switzerland for a song sequence..then you start dreaming about the song in general and slowly start substituting you for Salman in the scheme of things when your friend calls you out for a cigarette break....That gives a similar kind of feeling. But the kind of frustration that i was alluding to in my introductory note, cannot be classified under this kind. It is the feeling that creeps into you when you realize that you have written an exam for 3 years in succession and still don't seem to have grasped the knack of getting through. I mean, such problems are not disturbing.... for people whose brains are no different from a rotten cauliflower stored in a refrigerator (borrowing from PGW, if I may). But for sharp ones like mine, which can tell a white cat from a black one, this is certainly a disturbing thingy.Cutting the tangent and coming to matter... For the third time, I have royally screwed up my CAT and wonder what....the third one was the nastiest amongst the three. These, if I may use Bertram Wooster's patented phrases, are deep waters, my friend. One does not know where to go from such faux pas situations...

As I write fervently about the frustration that makes me go crazy at this juncture, I notice on the 'Title' area and realize I have to touch upon 'Software' and 'Corporate'. Real Stinkers...That is what they really are....Why can't we all just be self employed? All of us I mean. It is just getting sicker by the day..this software thing... that's earning the bread, butter and alcohol for us poor twenty somethings....it is a pain in the ass. Listening to the dumbest of customers who blab from across several thousand miles is one thing. But "indeed, sir- ing" and "your are right sir-ing" to such dumb asses makes you go crazy. When are these fools who buy 4000 lines of half-baked software for a few million dollars,going to cut the crap and start thinking rationally?I mean if they don't exist, this industry wouldn't exist and if you get the drift, we software engineers wouldn't exist at large. And we would be forced to do some other shit for the bread, butter and a. One may definitely tend to ask me at this point.."Why can't you quit and do something else you brat???". Yes, valid question. That takes me to the other part of the corporate equation. With software on one side, the corporate equation holds 'money' on the other side. Take a minute to try and look at it from the other side of the court. Isn't it just too difficult to say no to big money that comes for nothing???


Ok.....I am bored of this obfuscating the trivial problem thingy.....Point is....I am not able to get a b-school admit nor am I convinced about quitting a software job that pays...In other words, I am ok with one part of the corporate equation...viz money...but not ok with the other viz..software.... Thoughts????

Do I really know what I need in life?

This is a thought that has been spinning my head for quite some time now. Me and my close circle of friends (read: my girl friend) discuss a lot over this topic and have been cribbing over how we want to change the typical IT lifestyle that we currently have. We have clearly realized that our goals in life are quite far from what we are doing right now. As in most cases of human predicaments, we talk a lot about it but haven't been able to get a concrete step taken in the right direction.

Let's consider my daily schedule. My Monday starts like a scene from the movie rush hour, where i realize that I have a stupid meeting to attend at 10 AM (wee hours of Monday I would call that) and this aforementioned realization usually happens around the time frame of 9:25 AM or so. After making it to the meeting at least 10 minutes late, I extend my nap in the conference room only to be awakened by periodic gurgles from the organizer sitting next to me. After a lot of deliberation and almost nil participation, I get out of the room for a cup of tea to stimulate my grey matter. The day goes by with a couple of fights with the disastrously slow computer which is my lone companion for the day. After a few hours of #including and ClassA-extends-ClassB-ing, I get out of the shit hole like a tired pugilist who has fought 5 rounds only to lose it all during the final stages. It would be like deceiving my readers if I said the time of the day when my exit from office happens marks the end of the day. To put facts straight i should rephrase that sentence to read "End of the Night".

If weekdays are so boring and pass me like a turbulent storm, weekends are worse. I get up fairly early in the morning(read: 11 am) and spend a substantial amount of time thinking what I should do over the weekend. With that thought doing all the calculations in my mind, the clock decides to tick something like 1 pm or 2 pm and there's a call from my gastro-intestinal tract to save it from dying of hunger. After dealing with things and managing to call off that hunger strike, English Premier League/Indian Premier League or some such league demands an attendance and I sit glued to my TV set for what I think is close to 2 or 3 hours. But in fact, the time I would have spent on that ordeal is much more.... which in turn means that it is time for the next meal so as to avoid another turbulent attack from my digestive faculties. With a ditto repeat of the same itinerary on Sunday, I face the rocket-speed-weekend-that's-close-to-an-end phenomenon. With nothing much that can be done about it, I go back to bed ruing my 2 wasteful days only to wake up for a repeat telecast in the next week.

I am not any soothsayer or fortune predictor. But I am pretty confident that most IT folks are stuck with the same/similar kind of schedule in their daily life.

On one such Sunday, that has been well described above, I happened to read a book by Paulo Coelho where he talks about what one does in life and how a winner is determined by the essence of his presence (excuse me for the rhyme) in this universe. I wake up the next morning to welcome another dreadful Monday and I realize that one thing has changed. I wake up a completely new man and realize i have a drastic change in attitude and outlook. That situation demands some explanation. I agree. Here it goes. The change that has been mentioned above is that I start to think "If I really know what I need in life". I know that is not a change per se. But as our experienced ancestors have repeatedly said, thoughts lead to actions and all that sort of a thing, It is always a good sign in the right direction if we start thinking about challenging the status quo that rules over us. But that thought took me nowhere which is an unfortunate thing and I ended up understanding the fact that I just simply exist in this world and occupy a corner of it like other stones, rocks and trees do.Period. I am sure a good number of IT folks who have managed to make it to this point of the long and boring passage will resonate on the same plane apropos the thoughts I have shared.

But the sad part is I am looking for someone to show me the way to correct this awfully boring lifestyle and I have not met anyone who can show some light at the end of the tunnel in that respect. Any thoughts?

P.S: Ok I have been tortured by an abysmal young blot who wants a mention in this post. Where I said: "I have not met anyone who can show some light at the end of the tunnel", I should have said "I have met someone(This Idiot) who could not show any light at the end of any tunnel even after hours and hours of gyan and free advice he gave me."