Emotions are weird

Humans are weird. 

That is a fact. How our emotions work is even weirder.

Currently, I am reeling from a unreciprocated wave of emotion that is wreaking havoc in my control systems. 

My behaviour generally pushes people away and anytime someone sees through that BS, I mistake it as affection which could be nothing more than kindness. I have made this mistake before hence my blanket reaction to this has always been that I am wrong and I will contain my emotion to let the feeling pass, regardless of all the chaos it is causing in me. My heart would like to believe that this time it is different, my brain blanket applies the fact that it is never the case and I will never be good enough for anybody, which slowly but surely is the overarching feeling that every other fibre of my being is coming to terms to and has accepted as axiom.

Damn dude...it is pretty bad

It is a recurring feeling, indeed but some days it hits harder than the rest.

I have always been a loner and still am. Nobody ever stayed. I have been lucky to have great people and family around me, but in the personal front, damn yo...I am pretty old and never really had a long termer.

How much of it can be attributed to my own behaviour? A lot! But does than explain away the situation in its entireity. Not even close. Some of it has also been bad luck. Most of it, by design (read: the way I behave), I end up attracting the wrong set of people.

I am guilty of referencing the fact that if it doesn't happen, I am okay alone, but damn dude, some days it feels real bad. Thankfully, I have family around me which softens the blow, but pretty soon I won't have that safeguard as well and I am not sure I am strong enough to handle that. I truly believe in the philosophy that since our lives are so insignificant, we need a witness to feel like we are actually not so. A witness to share the highs, the lows, to just not be reminded of our insignificant worth in the cosmos. The right person can make the world revolve around them and make you forget the cosmos. However, is it worth bending beliefs just to escape this feeling? Although, principles (or ethics) is a matter of convenience.

Only time will tell which way the sword falls, hooefully I make it out...and even if I don't, I hope the people that matter to me are not affected too much.

Another blog about Kol

What makes Kol special to me?

Sidenote: At this point this is a recurring topic everytime I come back home. Most of it might have been said before, but hopefully it captures perspective in different epochs.

I don't know what it is with Ggn, probably the tall buildings, the fancy cars, the expensive taste, but it makes one think in a single dimensional metric of financial return or wealth multiplication.

Kol has always been the studious city. Kol always was poetic. Creative. Artistic. People filled with kindness. People who took care of each other. Yes, we are a loud bunch but by no stretch of imagination do we hit each other or are heartless. Delhi NCR gives off that off-the-cuff brash and uncouth feeling.

As soon as I stepped into my chair back at home, I found the feeling that I have been missing for a while. The feeling of wanting to learn more. To read more. To expand my knowledge. To grow. To do more. To be more. To help out. To spread kindness in the world. I don't know if it is just Kol or the atmosphere of home or the upbringing that my parents gave me. But I was happy to rekindle that part of me that I thought had been trampled over by greed and other vices in Ggn. I don't want to chase money. I want to chase knowledge. I want to do good. But alas, all I have ever done with my life is chase money and have done nothing for anybody other than myself.

It is but action that defines us in the end. All I am is a bag of words. Words, well intentioned but nothing more useful or different from a person chasing self gain.

If I seem anxious, It is because I am, all the time...

These thoughts, the monologue, they never go away. They just grow louder as the day progresses and resets the next morning.  There are good days when the rate of increase in frequency of thoughts and negativity spewing from my internal voice is low, thus allowing for some work to get done. Then there are other days that just start like a marriage band constantly playing self-derogatory tunes at the highest decibel. Although, it is still not as bad as the days where it is just a soft constant murmur, a chant that never ends, a drone that is constant in every measure except it creeps up on you and slowly and surely gets inside your head, taking over anything else and soon occupying your entire mental bandwidth, rendering you effectively useless to get anything else done.

I am back in Kol today. It has been a while and also hasn't. I was here two months back but it was a whirlwind trip to attend Aman Chemical's marriage, hence I had little time to ponder and be in the present.

What's funny is that this was the first time I did not feel like I was coming back to my base location. The base location has now blurred, since people keep visiting more often in Ggn than everyone assembling back in Kol. Is it the beginning of the end of my connection with this place? God, I hope not. But even if this is an omen for an epochal transition, I am grateful for the time I had and the values that Kol instilled in me.

I hate the fact that I do not have the same sense of home when I landed today but I also wanted to dive deeper into this new emotion since I don't think I have felt this completely before. Does it mean that I no longer associate myself here? Does it mean that I no longer care about my parents at the same level? Does it mean that I have left it all behind and moved to greener pastures (pretty ironic since Ggn is anything but green)?

The brass tacks of the argument between cities is the values that it instills, not overtly but through body language. Everybody is in a rush (which is anywhere in the world to be fair) but what people are rushing through is different for Ggn vs Kol. Or maybe that I was in with the straggler crowd more often in Kol than in any other city. I got in a bus everyday morning for 4 years with different walks and stages of life but with a common drive, a drive to achieve something meaningful and lead a life with purpose, a purpose that not necessarily begins or ends with material gain.

To be fair, I don't think that is the case. On the flip side, it would also be true that I no longer feel that deeply about it. But does it mean that my allegiance has changed? No. Does it mean that I would be as ready to shift back to Kol as I was a couple of years' back? Not sure Does it mean that I am shunning my responsibilities? I hope not.

It hurts. Pretty bad.

Humans are such stupid beings. We are barely able to hold it all together and most of the time what is portrayed as logical is just a justification of underlying emotional driven actions.

I have given up on that thing. I keep telling myself that but I still find myself back on the platforms, although not deviating from my SOP, trying to find what I have been looking for. Obviously, the urgency for the same is reduced when I have family around me, but when they are not, given how pathetic I have become at sticking to my longer term goals and indisciplined I have become at learning, my mind seems to wander off.

Currently, it (my mind) seems to have gone back to making the mistake of becoming mystified at new things (as is usually the norm). I have been trying to talk it out of this feeling, but to no avail because being the ADHD it is, it has decided to hyperfocus on the said thing and ends up trying to find hints where there aren't any. That person has clarified through multiple statements that it just the good fun that ensues on a road trip that is the priority and not the people. Further clarity was given when there were multiple people being brought into the road trip, which sounded like a safeguard and a good precautionary measure.

I know that I shouldn't put my longing on somebody else. However, the mind does what the mind wants and right now it is pretty hurt and just looking for a place to rest on. It is hurt because it keeps getting reminded that it was never good enough for anybody to stay. The ones that matched my crazy, which is the BIGGEST selling point for me were the ones that were never available.

Actually, you know what, it REALLY BLOODY hurts. I try a lot to get everyone to feel at ease. Sounds entitled, yes, but I am being a sourpuss at the moment. I hate that after all these years, I am left standing with nothing. All that I ever did was for nothing.

Nobody wanted to stay. Nobody cared. Nobody fought for me. Nobody bothered to reciprocate the care I had shown them.

I keep fighting, yes. I hope I do. But with every iteration it gets more difficult. With every iteration, I lose a bit of myself and get colder. With every iteration, I reinforce the belief that I am not lovable or someone anyone would ever want to spend time with.

All these people that left, each one of them, their memories come back haunting me, messing with my head. I well up, and the constant statement that keeps cycling in my head: "Am I that bad a person?" "Am I that bad that nobody ever wanted to stay?" I gave my heart and soul to each one of them yet they just took it for granted and threw it by the wayside. MDS still hurts. SB hurts but it was not right anyways. SR hurts as well. Again, the vibe matched but it was never enough.

I WAS NEVER ENOUGH!

Still not doing the work that needs to be done

Self esteem isn't about others' praise but comes from proving to yourself that you can do something hard. Hard, not just because the external world is telling you so, but because deep inside you know you had to push yourself for this. Other people don't know you, they don't know the challenges that you had to overcome so why would you expect them to understand?

Getting swept up in the hype created by a big group of people (anything bigger than 3 is big for me) and their externalization is the worst thing I could ever do. I seem to have gone ahead and done it again. I hated and knew that I hated big groups, mostly because I feel the bond is superficial and high is an outcome of the need to expel silence in such a big group, which is pretty superficial and can never be replicated again and the chase for the same is a fruitless endeavour.

Purpose builds confidence more than validation ever could.

I seem to lack any clear sense of purpose right now. I know for a fact that I have been slipping, but instead of working on catching the slide, I have been engaging in mindless and meaningless pursuits in an effort to not work on the hard thing. I do not have the concentration power that lazier people have when they can get things done faster and in a more efficient, motivated as they may be on just getting back to their energy saving normal state.

Grateful for the mundane

Picture this. An hour-long round trip. Highway roads, mostly in pristine condition, mostly empty. From the society gate, go straight, take a left, go straight for another 5 kms till the toll booth. Slide right to join the flyover and take it all the way to the exit. Merge on to a slip road for another 5 kms. Take a left and then in another km, take the left towards the airport. Another 5ish kms of straight forward driving will lead you to the terminal where I had to drop off people. I did this twice in the past three days, both in the early hours of dawn. Sounds mundane and life draining right? I would have the same outlook if driving was my job and this was part of a routine that I would have to repeat without a choice hundreds of times in a week.

However, driving is just a passion. I don’t have to put pressure on it to earn a living out of it and can choose to enjoy by pushing hard on every acceleration or treat it like a chore and just get from point A to point B. This choice, combined with the fact that I am a car guy, combined with the fact that early in the morning roads are empty, means that I am able to just enjoy myself. I don’t have to be the fastest out there. I am not trying to set any records. I don’t need the most powerful car out there, for I couldn’t afford a semi-decent one to begin with.

What I can relish, is the fact that I get to do this. Knowing the next pothole. Knowing which is the right gear for the upcoming turn. Knowing which line will reduce bumps. When to lift off so as to arrive at the next corner at the right speed without heavy braking or with heavy braking depending on the mode of driving. 

Approach. Brake. Match rev. Downshift. Be in the power zone. Place the car correctly. Look towards the exit. Check for people doing stupid things around me. Power out. 

That’s it. That’s all that matters and that’s enough to recharge my soul. Post the high, think of what could have been done better. Did I shift too early? Was I in the right gear? How much more could I push in that corner? Did I dump the clutch too early? Did I start shifting without engaging the clutch completely? Notes made, corrections to be done for the next time. Fun!

I am grateful and super lucky to be in this position and while I hope I am not trying to hold on to it, this post is a reminder to myself to be in the moment and savour it.

Taking that next step

In the end, all this is just an excuse to do the work. To get somewhere, at my low level of intelligence, it is just sheer hard work that is required. Till that happens...

Pretty sure I have touched on this before, but hope (or hopium if you are a Ferrari fan) is a pretty powerful drug.

Hope that something changes.

Hope that it all works out.

Hope that somehow it will all make sense one day.

Hope that we are going to make it.

If you look at it from a rational POV, just in India, today we have over 140 Crores and whatever I will do (given my below average intelligence) can be done better and faster by over a crore people. Not to forget that there are enough people who are smarter and more deserving and have just been undone by sheer luck.

Whatever I maybe, it has very little to do with me and everything to the opportunities afforded to me by my parents and sheer luck of things working out in my favour.

However, you need a bit of hopium for you to get off the couch and get your rear to work.  You cannot be perfectly rational and also reach that next level. You need to believe, especially when the numbers and people around you are against it.

Notes from Hyd Trip -12th Feb 2025

Why holidays to a different city is good:
I hate taking time off - not like when I don't take any break, it makes any difference; I am very unproductive most of the time anyways

However, a different city, a decent place close to nature ( a lake, a park) with a market nearby (full of people of different walks of life) - that's my happy place to recharge - take a stroll, have a tea, observe some people, walk around in nature - it nourishes my soul

Always felt high society to be such a "mendokusai" - having people from different walks of life and the ability to stroll around and explore as something that is very important for me. It reminds me of the privilege I have in everyday situations and how the things that I take for granted are what more hardworking people yearn for and yet are unable to achieve.

I get too caught up in my head/plans but am unable to execute most of the times - stuck in a rut - just like my runs not improving if I over analyze - mandatory time off helps break the cycle - moreoever, I start a lot of things and leave them halfway


There is the logical side of it, as illustrated above but also a case to be made for a the soul-nourishing human side of it. I am insignificant. I will die. Nobody will (or is supposed to) remember how many early mornings I commuted to work or how much I put into every proposal that got rejected. I didn't do it for the validation. But fighting the good (or selfish and stubborn) fight does take its toll. It is okay to pause and reflect.
To remind myself that it is alright.
To remind myself of why I started in the first place.
To remind myself of how far I have come.
To remind myself of the people who matter (M,P,R,C,MJi,MMa,NNji)
To remind myself that I need to also do right by the people who matter
To remind myself that in the end, it is okay to forgive myself and also heal myself because only I truly know how far I have depleted myself and the onus lies on me to recharge and ask help if I am struggling.

This recharging sojourn also gives me more energy to regroup and work on my next step. There definitely needs to be one. However, the biggest takeaway is also the fact that I absolutely cannot do without planned breaks. No point going to the extreme from being well travelled to not travelling at all. I need to plan to explore because it is the very fuel that recharges me. However, it cannot become a crutch. I have to keep myself accountable, while also learning to let go.

I can't control everything. Hell, I can't control anything other than myself and even that I fail to do most of the time. I can't control how people will feel. I can't control how people will react to my behaviour or even understand my POV. Which is why I need to evaluate my decisions on a separate metric. A metric that is independent of people's reaction to my stand. I need to do what is right by those metrics, regardless of the resistance. However, it would be imprudent to tune feedback out.

Listen. Implement what is needed. Stand firm where required. Keep going. Don't forget the people and things that matter.

Thanks Alice for being there listening to my rants!

The Paradox of choice

From Trevor Noah's podcast with Simon Sinek: The paradox of choice. When we are constrained, we find better purpose, better drive, better community. But once you have choice, you always feel like you can do better or do something else which in turn leads to indecision and divide.

For me personally, it goes further to the point where I think that I have grown so accustomed to chaos that I can harly function properly unless I have impossible deadlines, a situation which forces prioritization.