Movie review: Whiplash

Lights out Alice!

Why hide it...I do watch movies, regardless of how cool and geeky I would like to pretend I am and how beneath me it would all be for me to watch sappy things like movies.

Good will hunting, Dead poets society, Perks of being the wallflower (all time fav), Hugo, Jojo rabbit, The school of rock are some of my top tier favourites. I am pretty sure I am only remembering a small sub-segment of what all I like but definitely something that inspires me to do better or talks about an passion or pursuit of excellence is something I would definitely give it a try. My understanding of my type would be that I try to search for meaning and excellence in these movies as well as something that would either reflect how I am or how I would like to become. Further, values and levelling up through inspiration and perspiration is right up my wheelhouse.

The list: The blind side, The pursuit of Happyness, Shawshank Redemption, Death Race, Gridiron gang, The Upside...

Not to say that I did not like Rush Hour (all 3), Harry Potter franchise or even Batman (especially The Dark Night rises).

Pattern that emerges - protagonist that is a bit socially awkward or suffers from major trauma, pain or tough times, emerges through grit and perseverance.

Onto the task at hand, Whiplash. How did I come about it? Simple really, needed something to inspire me because I have been feeling a little bit lost lately. Oh, not to discount the fact that I am a big fan of drums but for the life of me cannot understand music or hold a beat consistently but also that I didn't give it a proper try.

• The intensity. I loved the intensity, the cut throat competition and the raw need to become better regardless of the fact that these people are the best of the very best already with enough raw talent
• Hated the cussing. Hated the emotional abuse. I guess that was kind of the point but damn this was pretty bad and borderline triggering
• What I hated even more than the cussing was the ending. To me, the pursuit of greatness should not mean that you go back to what was abusing you just to reach the zenith. Yes, greatness comes at a price, but at the price the protagonist had to pay, it really begs the question if it is worth the high and where is the line that you draw. Sure, people will remember that person for ages, but isn't the point of life to live in a manner that you enjoy and making the lives of those around you a little bit better? But I then go on to also contradict myself because I know this can never lead to any major gains and would lead to stagnation in the long run. I know deep down that greatness does require sacrifice, it is just that I am unable to bring myself around to accept that this is the ground reality and the cost for the same is so high.
• Another fact of life that was conveyed through the movie that I loved was the need for practice. Relentless practice. Doesn't matter how good these students were, they had to put in the hours. Nothing beats hard work regardless of the talent. It resonated with me because all around us in our daily lives are distractions that tell us to not focus on the improvement which we talk about a lot but never take any concrete action towards.
• The part that irked me and was a bit of romanticism of reality was when he was forced off the stage and then he walks back and takes over a solo and turns it around. Movies have to do this I understand, but this was not something that the pragmatic in me will ever agree to. The protagonist must have been prudent enough to see if somebody is giving another an offer that sounds too good to be true, it most likely is!
• The father son bond that they shared, that the protagonist still maintained did leave me with a bit of hope for humanity, especially for the sub-section of geniuses. What I took away from it was that even though they might not be the most emotionally available person or decent at being humans, they try in the way they know how to. We just have to be more patient with them and try to understand how they are trying to something that is pretty low in their priority list and give them space.

Lights out Alice!

A walk, some humans to remember: Aurangabad edition

Pick a side. Left or right. Turn. Walk. Keep walking till the next major intersection or till you have crossed 5-6kms. While walking, just soak it all in. Question, but only to observe deeper. Understand. Listen, don't speak.

It is a common practice for me. Walking for hours in a new city. Randomly just picking a street and walking for miles with no specific goal and observing nothing in particular. I like just seeing the place for what it is. The People, their hustle, how they go about their days, the peculiarities of a place, the architecture, the demeanour.

Just being a fly in the wall. Observing the world while going about it unnoticed.

Aurangabad today felt like an apt example of the same. Took a right. Walked for 6 kms. Made some curious observations. 

First, the buildings are not cookie cutter blocks but people generally try to make one with a great front facade, some kind of design that would either be modern square architectural design or paying homage to the roots of Aurangabad. 

Next, pan seems to be a big thing here. Chai is common but that's in line with rest of Maharastra.

Coming to the behaviour of people. Warm and they do about their business but it is also that they get along nicely. Sadly, I had limited time to observe people and understand their bosy language hence cannot conclude much. Morever, what little I witnessed was a mixed bag. I met an awesome chemist shop owner today who was a pretty nice human being and genuinely cared for the people around him. What was special about the guy was his aura. His presence was enough to get people to fall in line and be better humans. It wasn't that he was working with people of great character. It was his greatness, his charm and his ability to extract greatness from others that made people who would otherwise be at each other's throats to work together. It was a bittersweet feeling to be fair. He was a great guy but what he had single handedly built also meant that he would have a lot of people wanting to take him down the moment they see any weakness. I say this because people with greed only see the empire that the person has created or how he is able to build and grow. They fail to see why it became what it is today and what is holding them together. 

I also met a MR who was one of the top sales person in the area. Observing him going about his work, which is no joke, let me tell you, just meant that I was taking notes all along on what he has built for himself, a brand. I always think that being a medical sales practioner ( or MRs as they are called in the industry) is the most cut throat of sales jobs and it gets all the more brutal if you are only a generic drug manufacturer. Being a generics MR makes the job an order of magnitude more difficult because a) you have no key differentiating factor to speak of and b) you have hundred other manufacturers with the same drug offering a better deal than you ever could.

Intensity, but at what cost?

Lights out Alice!

It has been a hectic couple of days, but contrary to what people would say, I love the intensity. When I have lots to do, I am pushing and optimising and it is a good state to be because I get to push out my problems and my brain is not getting onto idiotic train of thoughts.

But just like any other addiction, even though the high may feel good, it is never worth it. Primarily because the high comes at a cost. The most important cost being that it sets the benchmark for mimimum level of intensity to get the even lower amount of adrenaline high. This is a slippery slope, one which left unchecked, like any addiction, requires one to up their dosage on each subsequent use. Temperance is key. Balancing highs while managing lows is the only approach that is sustainable, especially for an intensity junkie like me.

Now with that disclaimer and pep talk out of the way, let me tell you exactly why I am a junkie. 

I am back on a caffiene high, drinking chai in copious amounts before the effect wears off. Call that around 4-5 mugs or 6-7 cups a day. This means I have loads of energy to spare, which means I want to do EVERYTHING but rest, and pushing myself to take up 15 parallel tasks at the same time in an unreasonable amount of time to create a false sense of pressure without actually completeting anything. Now that I read it back, this is probably why I used to like the intensity of MBA, because it was adjacent to medicated opium for me.

The rational side of me keeps reminding me that this is a bad habit but then I just drown it out or burn it down with a hot cup of tea!

A warm feeling

Sitting by the fire on a cold winter's night, sipping on warm tea, a book in hand, the cushion perfectly adjusted to your body shape and the chair having warmed up enough by your body heat but the surrounding area is cold enough to making it the perfect blend.

A personal to-dos

Lights out Alice!

Don't mind me, I am just here trying hard to get better and not atrophy although I am pretty much sure mind degeneration has set in and the high has been lost. All I can do at this point in time is accept it fast enough and start working on building myself for when the freefall ends. This is the beginning of the end for me if I don't buckle up...the intensity, the focus, the clarity and the need to reach greater heights will all be forever lost if I don't buck the trend now.

I will remain something I have forever been: Loads of potential but never the result

• Find something that you want to pursue outside of your career
• NEVER STOP LEARNING, no matter how big or small...build this into your routine
• Find the next mountain, the next sense of purpose and the next big thing you want to achieve; but this time, it should not be for career but for soul satisfaction
• Build different sub-systems
• Set goals and timelines - have a plan of action and not just keep putting things off
• Be patient - Not everything is going to work out or is meant to work out - have backup plans and never get overly attached to anything
• Build your FOCUS and CONCENTRATION - the biggest flaw that I have is the inability to sit and knock things out in one go - train this and overcome this
• STOP binging and unnecessarily taking long breaks everyday - your plans are to hover around doing things and not breaks

A short note on how moods can be debilitating

Lights out Alice!

What never fails to amuse me is the fact that the very brain I am using to decode all the swings in my mood and my recent series of bad spirals with unparalleled bouts of unproductivity is the source of all these troubles. 

Given the person I am, scatterbrained, thinking in a million different tangents every second, I am rarely out of things to do, but where I do lack is completing things or finishing things with the same gusto as when I started. That's a tangent for another day and it is an ongoing concern that I have droned about multiple times before.

What I wanted to write about when I opened the blog is how my fickle and ever swinging mood can govern how productive I am at any particular time and how easy it is to swing it from good to a shitty state of mind. It does not even take more than 20 seconds for my thoughts to derail my momentum but getting back on track can take the rest of the day or as is the case in my current slump, can take months.

What's unique about my current situation, or at least the shallow excuses that I would like to give even though I know the root cause is different, is that there are too many wheels in motion. I would have liked to believe that my adaptability was high enough to the point that I would not be affected by a new place, a job with fast changing deliverables or even the fact that my personal life front was still lacking even though I was devoid of any real family pressure or responsibility in this city.

Just to clarify (which is another one of my annoying habits), I know for a fact that the root cause lies in having a gaping hole in personal part of my life. But I also know that it does not give me a free pass to let my productivity go down the drain. I cannot be letting other people rule my life or emotions or get affected by that which is not in my control. 

It is definitely easier said than done. I go off on tangents and I rarely complete tasks. I can have 55 thoughts but I never see them through. I think I am moving (well, currently not even that) but all I do is sit and spin my wheels. I need an objective, an overarching purpose that would drive and define my actions. I need to know what is relevant and what isn't. I want to be able to push myself to be more, to do more, to achieve more to the point where I am actually making progress on a daily if not weekly basis.

The issue is that I have forgotten that a key part of my ability to even function at 10% efficiency required me to maintain a schedule, have goals, set daily plans and fail to reach all of them. The last part is just the grim reality that is the sad reality which sets me below the best minds in the country. They know and CAN get things done, especially things they set their minds to. I know and plan superbly and then immediately proceed to act in a manner that will ensure that I never meet my goals for the day. My subconscious deliberately sabotages my day through heightened sense of procrastination or even by making me restless or buzzing with ideas, all of which take me on tangents ensuring that I do not complete tasks in my original plan.

I hope that through incessant droning about my self-sabotaging behavioural I can bring about a change, although that does sound far-fetched. Maybe this is all I will ever be. Maybe I am meant to be sad. Maybe I am too used to pain and fall apart whenever I am remotely okay. Maybe the way I act, trying to be cool and distant, pushes people away and then I question why I am alone. 

Maybe the one thing that I was very proud of, my ability to think and get work done, is also the thing that I have lost long back in March and all I am holding onto is past memories and remnants. This is further contributing to my self destruction because I am not seeing with true clarity how far I have slipped.

Maybe I am too far gone Alice...but I still hope against hope that I can find my way back and get back at operating at a decent level. I really hope I get better!

Sit Rep

Lights out Alice!

Situation report: Issues remain, battling them a bit worse than usual. Life is pretty okay, which leads to that crippling and ominous feeling that danger awaits in the next corner. It's pretty funny that when you get so used to pain in life that it becomes almost the norm and is a source of comfort. You become so used to fighting to survive and struggling to stand up that when the headwinds subside it is unsettling. At this point in time, the mind weaves an illusion that it would be better to be in adversity since the entire focus could be directed towards that and there would be no time for wandering thoughts. This mindset is pretty bad and analogous to a country that only knows how to live under wartime and falls into shambles during peacetime because it does not know how to operate in non-emergency circumstances.

What's it like in the new place: Life generally works out well. Most definitely better things can exist out there, on higher floors, wider carpet area, swankier furnishing or any furnishing for that matter but the simple funda is that this fits. This fits well. It is clean, open, has a view that is pretty green and also balanced wherein the view outside is not of decadence but on that reminds me that I have been plain lucky and there are people who work twice as hard and aren't as lucky but definitely a hundred times more deserving. The atmosphere in the place is pretty residential, which is to say people are definitely curious but they also let you be. I am mesmerized by the fact that the view outside has coconut trees and their leaves hide the rolling clouds as they bring in the ever present and incessant rain in Mumbai.

Oh, also I fell into that trap again. I got swooned by another person and once again it has all promises to be unrequited. This sucks as this takes away from me doing my job properly and being able to focus on getting back onto the level I used to operate. That or the fact that I am just using another excuse to justify the fact that I am not doing a good enough job because I have lost all my focus.

I suck Alice!

I have stopped pushing

Lights out Alice!

Oh how delusional we can become in our security and past lives. Although life could let me atrophy further by letting me sink deeper into the delusion that I was still functioning at any acceptable level of efficiency, it had some pity on me by serving a reminder through a colleague that I was not even remotely at the level I used to function. The worst part is that I was justifying it to myself by claiming that it wasn't that I was slacking off but more of the fact that there wasn't any real objective or work that needed me to push myself hence it was okay to put my feet off the accelerator. Oh how wrong I was. More importantly, oh how delusional.

I know that I know that I am justifying laziness. Hence, there are days I get up and take the first step in fighting it by creating a to-do list. Don't worry, it all goes downhill from there. I spend an inordinate amount of time in finding the "perfect" plan that would take into account practical realities and any curveballs the day might throw at me. Life still wins. Procrastination beats me to a pulp. I get such a high creating the plan that I actually start slacking off in actually completing the work, citing the fact that I accounted for the fact that I might take longer on the first task. The delay keeps piling, work barely gets done until it is too late, at which point in time I scamper and get something done, but not to the level I would like or the quantity of things I would have liked. I almost always fail to deliver on my plan which feeds the negative feedback loop wherein I take more margins and account for more of my procrastination when creating the next plan and fail to execute it still. A pretty bad spiral that ends up with zero relevant work done in any reasonable amount of time.

Work inflates to fill the time one has. Efficiency or the need to take frequent breaks is just all in my head. I am not working hard enough to actually warrant those breaks. Yes, frequently turning my mind off the work I am doing helps me have a better objective view of the situation and it was a superpower around the time when I was choc full of work and needed to get things done. This strategy however fails miserably when my schedule is sub-optimal or I do not have my day packed end to end. 

I hope I do better Alice! Action over words or plans

Building a system over reaching a goal

Lights out Alice!

I was recently listening to Ryan Holiday's podcast featuring James Clear of Atomic Habits' fame, wherein they mentioned a key change in outlook that I want to inculcate, which is the focus and unrelenting approach to building systems and not approaching anything as a one time effort. 

Thoughts in bullets:

• Consistency is key
• Everything worthwhile takes time and effort and needs to be developed if it is to stay
• Putting in the time in becoming the person you envision yourself before you get there, not just if or when you get there
• Building a system will ensure repeatability
• Doing hard things will train your body to be able to stretch itself and not atrophy
• You cannot be hung up on past laurels. What you have already achieved is gone now and people are catching up and overtaking and if you do not keep putting in the time and the due diligence then soon enough you would be left standing with nothing other than words
• The effort you put in is the reward. The systems focused approach means that you want to build a pathway and building that pathway is what excites you, not because it is interesting, but because you NEED to do it to get where you want to be. 
• "The height of the joy you feel is tied to the depth of your sorrow"
• Accountability is key, not just to others, but to yourself. You need to be able to look at yourself in the eye and believe in the effort you have put in. Obviously there will be times where the effort will give unfairly low returns and there will be times when you will be treated as the maestro for something you haven't put any effort at all in. Remember to be gracious in defeat and humble in victories. 
• Don't let anything get to your head. Nobody has the complete picture of who you are or what you have been through or what your demons are. Do not let the person demeaning you inside your head for they might not know the effort you have put in regardless of the work not being up to the mark. IMMEDIATELY DISMISS the word of the person praising you for anything, be it a job well done or some attribute or quality you might possess. Again, they do not know you and might not have the complete picture of what you are. Further, everyone has an agenda, whether they know it or not. All the more, their POVs can be fed by their understanding of the world which is completely their perspective and not reflective of broader societal narrative or too much in line with the broader societal narrative without due regard to the moral spectrum of things.  

Atrophying

Lights out Alice!

As usual, it is very difficult for me to break my habit loops, especially the bad ones. The good ones I break easily.

The ability to think clearly is something I believe I need to be able to do on a regular basis to be able to feel okay with myself. It hasn't happened for a while and it feels very irritating.

Further, life has been a lot of travel and a lot of adapting to the corporate rigmarole where they are engaging you to the point where your time is occupied but they are also not making you do anything worth your time and all you feel is your ability and skill being atrophied while being subdued under the drug called stable employment and societal acceptance, which sucks really.

Lights out Alice!