I am all bark no bite

Lights out Alice!

Sidenote before the actual note begins: There is an increasing trend that I have noticed in this blog is that I generally start off with a particular topic which immediately turns into a rant of how I waste my time and how I should be doing better and that's that. I never really complete a line of thought that is different from my rants. On another sidenote, I never really do anything different or take action to change my life for the better, I just talk about it and if required, write about it, but never really take a step towards correcting it. 

Hence, this is supposed to be a two part blog, first part is my usual rant, second part would be some topic that I have recently read about or has caught my fancy.

The rant part:

• I am a procrastinator
• I do not see things through
• I jump ship and ideas far too often
• I overexplain
• I ponder over irrelevant details while missing out on the big picture
• I do not want to put in the effort of reading through other people's work and take shortcuts sometimes by taking the easier route of building on a framework from the ground up

The business case:

Problem definition: Any experiential good can be tricky to buy as per one's requirement.

The Why:

• We do not know what we want
• Too many options
• Which are the relevant details for us vs irrelevant vs broadly important for everyone in general
• Mapping use case with functionality (the better tablet for homework/ drawing/ notetaking/  or the better shoe for running)
• We do not know what is the solution we are trying to get through the product

What is a compromise?

Lights out Alice!

A new day brings with it a renewed vigour in me to make myself better and more amenable to people and their ideas. That lasts about as long as the first meeting of the day I have to attend to. I really try hard to listen but most of the time I feel like most discussions and brainstorming sessions are based on people trying to force their ideas, opinions or their way of looking at things on others. Don't worry, I don't think I am the exception in all this. I am actually the best example of how a person thinks he is better (read egotistical and narcissistic) and pushes other people and their ideas out, lives inside an echo chamber and demeans others, all the while believing that they are open and pretty accommodating.

But, on the flipside, how much am I expected to give in each time? 

How do I discern that the person knocking my ideas down is not just doing it out of spite but out of actual well being and concern for the project? 

I keep asking myself, am I unable to communicate effectively? But how much do I bring myself down to accommodate people who do not want to exert their brain? Isn't the point of work everyday to learn new things and grow? Am I pushing ideas and other POVs out and rejecting things just from my initial judgement without actually giving it time and serious thought?

I really hope I am not being the idiot in all this, expecting myself to be steadfast and classy whereas I was just being gaudy with bravado all along. Fancy words, tall claims but to no actual effect.

I need to create protocols to get better at receiving feedback Alice!

Sikkim Diaries: Looking for clarity

Lights out Alice!

A focal theme in most of my pointless blogs circles around me thinking clearly or clearly struggling to do so which causes a lot of frustration. I really do not like when I am unable to visualize a topic completely, which generally means I am unable to understand it completely or have not had enough time to think through it in my head, despite there being first hand spoken description given by people about it. My brain just flat out rejects anything that it has not come to by itself. It likes live in a delusional mirage that all the conclusion or insights that it (my brain) gains from any piece of information is original and unrivalled work that nobody else could have gotten to, even though it might be the most obvious answer out there or ten people around me would have told the exact same thing. 

Regardless of this sad modulus operandi, this is how my brain likes to go about doing work and hence this is how I have to go about anything. However, the frustration mounts when I do not get time to sit by myself with a topic and think through everything in my head first or separately. I am not able to constructively contribute in a meeting if I have not prepared. I do not get the logic of working in a group and figuring out/ brainstorming creative ideas while in a meeting. Not saying it is not the right way, since for some people it is the best way to get their creative juices flowing and get the best out of them. I just need a slight step added to this beforehand. If I have had time to sit with my brain and go through the information beforehand, I am not cranky, not anxious, not antsy, not impatient and off-hand with people. If I have done my homework, I am at peace with myself and my situation and am able to give extra leeway to anything that goes awry. Now imagine a situation wherein I have spent a few hours doing nothing, have no clarity on what I actually need to do and have just being given contrasting instructions from my manager/ boss. I would be furious, snappy, argumentative, snobby and borderline rude.

What I have found to be effective is to have some time alone before I start my day or work to go through what I have to do. Create some semblance of a structure or a plan. Post that, first go in and get some of my personal work done. Once I am happy with my status is when I can start thinking of following up or getting into group work. However, therein lies a key flaw. As you grow, the job is less and less about doing your own work and more about managing other people and their work, which does not strike my fancy at all. Being the hall monitor always feels like a sellout job to me. I do not see the point even though this is currently where my life is headed. What is funny is that the society actually pays people more to monitor other people who are creatively gifted and underpays the geniuses and the smart folks who come up with creative solutions. 

Isn't the compensation pyramid upside down? Why are the people who manage the creative people paid more? Why are the people who ACTUALLY do the ground work, or work in the fields valued like cash crops and why are dum dums like me sitting in an ivory tower with no understanding of the acumen it takes to drive change paid more?

Why isn't physical labour valued? Why is a farmer considered less important than a person concocting shit for a marketing campaign? Maybe I am looking at the wrong scale or way of measurement since on a financial level farmers might be lower but contentment CAN be greater, although there is no hard and fast guarantee on this.

I just need to be better and actually meaningfully contribute to society Alice!

Sikkim Diaries: The Room with a view

Lights out Alice!

This part of Sikkim Diaries focuses on what is easily the most spacious and elegant room I have ever stayed in although it is a guesthouse inside a factory (important to note that it is inside the factory as it comes with its own set of limitations). 

The guesthouse is classy. Lavish, but with elegance. It has everything you can imagine in a hotel room, with added benefit of having everything that you might need in case you were on the road or living out of a suitcase for a long time. Initially I felt it was a bit of an overkill, a form of opulence, but after spending a few weeks here, the conclusion is far simpler than that. It is not opulence, but a requirement to be self-contained and self-sustainable. The guesthouse is inside of the factory and the factory itself is located in a remote area up in the hills, by the wayside, overlooking mountains with a raging river next to it on one side. The setting, is serene but more importantly, balanced. While the mountain peaks that can be seen adorned with clouds straight out of the window in the morning offer peace and calm, the incessant buzz of the raging river right not even 10 metres from my room reminds us of the ferocity of nature. The river, to be fair which it is not, it is just a tributary that goes on to connect to Teesta, is mesmerizing, inspiring and annoying, all at the same time. It is mesmerizing to see how water flows. Allow me to explain. The flow rate of water here is very high. Since it is coming down and the entire land is sloping downwards, it has a lot of potential energy combined with volume. The mesmerizing part is because of what it flows over. If the same ferocious water is flowing over a smooth bed, there is very little turbulence because of which the water appears deceptively calm. However, this myth is immediately shattered as soon as the bed is filled with rocks, of which there are many and of multiple size and shapes. As soon as something breaks the laminarity (I am not sure if I am using this word correctly or how the Reynolds number is changing), because of the rock, the turbulence brings out the violent nature of the flow. It rages over, around and surrounds the rock, reminding it of a power that is unshakable, even though the rock is adamantly stuck in its place and provides a good battle. This constant battle wherein neither the rock is affected nor the water is deterred is what is inspiring to me and symbolic of the balance that is beautiful in the world for us to observe.

Just like everything else in life or in inanimate objects, over time it loses its sheen and you start taking it for granted, which sucks, since I try to remind myself that it is all fleeting and this view and the combination of this time, headspace, lack of responsibilities or real pressure in life will never come back again. This moment is probably one of the most beautiful room with a view combinations I will ever have in my life and currently I am drowning in irrelevant issues to even realize and acknowledge the beauty that is surrounding me. 

Sikkim Diaries: Prologue

Lights out Alice!

Most of the times I do have a lot to say. About everything mostly. As usual, given my lack of discipline, I fail to write any of them down in time anyways. Most of my thoughts just get lost in inner dialogue which is just sad given that there are some good arguments and self realisations that I come across. Furthermore, the ability to describe places are way better in my head versus when I actually get around writing them down.

Don't forget the fact that I am scatterbrained and it is very hard for me to stay put and complete a line of thought. Thoughts come flying at me at the speed of sound in all directions, my brain reacting and processing it even faster, (most of the time at the expense of thinking critically and originally) resulting in the fact that I jump into different schools of thought without actually completing the first one.

The only saving morsel of a saving grace is that this shit head sometimes comes back to the original thought and since it had swam across a deluge of garbage to get back here, the second take is somewhat easier. Don't take it to mean that I will actually complete my train of thought this time around though. Nope, I still go off on tangents. Case in point, I am returning back to this blog after a gap of three days. But since there were many parts of this story and it would be too much for me to complete all of it in one go, I decided to break it off into smaller parts in an effort to ensure I actually finish something which will then help the next part and the one after that.

Fingers crossed Alice to see if I follow through and see this out.

Note to self 14.08.23

Lights out Alice!

It is so funny that I writing down the thoughts being dictated by my brain to remind myself of the good things I have or the path that I am on or how it is all going to be okay regardless of it actually being okay given the propensity for my brain to forget the plan it itself created for me just a few hours or days ago to tackle the very situation we had found ourselves then in. Basically, these are my thoughts written down to reassure myself of there being a plan, which was itself created by my brain in response to this very same panic faced a few days ago. Kudos, shit-head.

The very desire to be successful in public drives most of capitalism, corporate culture and the need to grow, earn degrees, change jobs or chase a higher CTC. Corporate does not want you to bring your creativity to the table. It does not want you to bring your A-game everyday to work. It wants you to just do the job assigned. No questions raised. No thinking outside of the box. No questioning the JD or its relevance. Just do it. Think within it.

Life outside of academics has been a daily brain drain game. Not that academics wasn't constricted in its own right. But there I had the ability to be an outlier, to chase the things worth chasing, to claim the moral high ground of wanting knowledge, a journey so pure that very few would dare ask you the reason why that was essential even though deep down you knew that it wasn't the pure search for knowledge, but the sin of chasing attention that led you here. However, somewhere down the line, I started liking the journey and the discipline it demanded of me. I loved the fact that there was a sea out there that I could never traverse fully, a sea of opportunities or an ocean of hopelessness, depending on the day and our approach. Since my time with academics was un-constricted, in the sense that I did not depend on it for feeding me, I could dally with it on my terms and set the pace of how I wanted things to go and simply reject the pieces that did not fit. This should be a grim reminder that it is not all rosy but exactly like a summer fling. There was no expectation and I did not do anything responsible or mature.

Long story short though...TO MY IDIOT BRAIN:

• You need to decide what you want to pursue (everything is NOT an option, don't do it)
• Do you want to chase promotions or start figuring out what you want to learn, even if it does not give you any monetary return?
• Do you want to rely on your laurels and live in denial about the fact that you are slipping and just finding some external reasons and circumstance to blame it on?
• You don't follow through on your ideas!
• You are breaking your good habits and building bad short term pleasure seeking dopamine infusing habits (case in point: preferring gym over calisthenics just because shape is better even though it has a negative cardio and endurance impact)
• You are again getting drawn into people and their opinion and slowly transitioning to do things that people (external and irrelevant) find appealing and not doing things that you actually like!!! What a shitter...snap out of it...stop doing things for attention or glory or a positive feedback...DO THINGS BECAUSE YOU WANT TO...because you have that drive inside of you!

Anyways, I think I have repeated this numerous times yet I do not seem to get it...so I will keep reminding myself. Thanks for listening as always Alice!

About a happy place

Lights out Alice!

Time and again I have questioned myself as to why I have felt so attracted to motorsports/ automobiles/ machines in general. Is it the complexity? Is it the ingenuity that is intrinsically required to improve efficiency? Is the fact that in the end the greatest source of inspiration for all mechanistic movements is human motion or nature, the irony that in an effort to remove limitation of speed and efficiency imposed by humans, we got there and mimic nature and natural bionic movements?

To be fair, I don't know. I am sure the equation runs deeper than that and definitely there must be some emotional, trauma bonding or aspirational angle to it as well. But I still go back to Capeta in my head as to what a dream scenario would be like. Anytime I want, I can hear the opening credits of the show as well as the episode wherein he is about to start his first race in F4 in an international circuit. The roar of the engines as they warm up on the grid, the diminutiveness of the entire paddock as compared to the venue, all leading up to a panning shot as to how the entire atmosphere felt so large yet so minuscule in relation to the arena it was taking place in.  

A recent addition to my happy place has been driving. No, I do not have a car yet (my parents' car) and Zoomcar has gotten crazy expensive to the point wherein I can no longer stretch any argument to justify the expenditure. When I visualize it, it is as simple as me approaching a tight downhill right hander starting off with both hands on the steering wheel at a decent rate of speed, nothing too insensible. I take my left hand off the steering wheel and start moving it towards the gear stick while I start decelerating through a gently increasing application of the brakes. A clean jerk of the clutch in between to shift down from fourth to third which is extremely satisfying when the revs match and the car just catches the sweet spot of the rev range around 3000, which may be too high for some eco-maniacs, but I like using the entire rev range. The downshift, if done right, gives me such a high. Then gently peeling off the brake as I line up the turn. The turn in, while again selecting between second and third to see which would ensure that I have good power out of the corner.

Simple really. This moment, the entire sequence, is my happy place for now. Maybe things change, actually they definitely will. Nothing ever stays the same. I will fall down and I might never be this happy again. But I will thank my lucky stars for this moment and all that I have gotten recently.

Lights out Alice!

What is the right way to choose?

Lights out Alice!

Sometimes I think that I am not made for being with people. This fear is real and has manifested itself big time now that I am on the receiving end of unfettered attention.

But it would be ironic if I stop at this level given how I keep telling people to dive deeper and find the root cause.

The next level that has come around is the situation itself. Usually I am used to being told no and being the one that has to work towards getting the other person to like them. I have to "accept" them for who they are and get them to see what I am, a marketing pitch of sorts. This also creates the illusion in my head that the other person would be a good addition and it would be worthy to have them in my life. In my current situation, the other person is not a chase, they are there. Furthermore, they are pretty open about their feelings towards me. There is nothing for me to help fix. No goal.

Is that why there is no attraction?

What is it that people call butterflies and blinding attraction? Is that just the thrill of the chase? Or is that real?

I compare and ask myself this question over and over again. My gut tells me that this is not a good fit, but that idiot organ does not give an explicit reason why. My brain on the other hand, sees the potential that this person has and is excited in sharing a future with them.

The other thought that floods my brain is what if I am not meant for any person. I am definitely attracted, somewhat (maybe, I don't know what is the right way) to the opposite gender and we can rule out me being gay.

Thoughts, old and new; scrambled and straight

Lights out Alice!

Whoever must have created us must be pretty disappointed in the way we CHOOSE to use our brains. The unchangeable human nature to find the negative in any situation is such a morose way of functioning that sometimes it gets in the way of our own happiness.

To be fair, the issue lies deeper:

• I don't know how to be happy
• Actually, I know it is okay to be happy, but I feel like if I do not acknowledge it, it won't count and I don't have to face future hardships
• What if I am happy right now and I actually chose to live it and never face this kind of happiness again?
•  Counter: What's the point of holding on to something that can never be held, clutching on desperately to something that was never solid enough to be grabbed at in the first place? Time passes, memory fades, wounds heal; everything moves on, so why as humans do we hold on to a memory, a connection that wasn't meant to be, an opportunity that was never right for us, a construct of our imagination that selectively construes the message that all we were hoping for was there in our past but has now eluded us because of our choices. No, at this point, we need to remind our brain that it is playing tricks on us. It is selectively telling us the things that we do not want to hear (but actually do) to make us feel bad about our choices. It is our brain WANTING TO FEEL BAD.
• Counter: What is superbly infuriating and frustrating me is the fact that even though over 90% of my life is PRETTY STONKING great, I am messing up my mental space by caring about the 10% that is currently out of whack. WHAT A SHIT thing to do...why are our human heads wired to focus on misery and completely ignore the awesomeness surrounding us. I have seen this time and time again. Whenever I am in a situation where everything is pretty decent, the situation giving half a chance to be happy and